80stastic

TOTP 1995 – the epilogue

Posted on August 7, 2023 by 80stastic

And there goes 1995. I said in the prologue post for this year that it could be one of the best years for revisiting for some time. Was it? I’m not so sure now. It was the year Britpop overflowed into the mainstream and onto the nation’s radar with the Oasis v Blur chart battle and the success of high profile hits like Pulp’s “Common People”, “Alright” by Supergrass and “Wake Up Boo!” by The Boo Radleys. But how big really was the reach of the movement? A quick glance at the Top 10 best selling singles of the year reveals just one hit that would be categorised as ‘Britpop’ with “Wonderwall” sneaking in at No 10. Most of the remaining names on that list couldn’t be more mainstream – Michael Jackson (twice), Celine Dion, Take That, Simply Red and Robson & Jerome (twice); only Coolio and Everything But The Girl buck that trend. Was it any different in the list of Top 10 albums? Slightly, Oasis, Blur and Pulp all feature but the other occupants are grimly familiar – Jacko, Hucknall, Celine, those two actor berks…Queen, Wet Wet Wet and Paul Weller fill the other places. Only the Modfather was a slight surprise with his “Stanley Road” album completing a remarkable comeback from the washed up Style Councillor that he was at the end of the 80s. This trend of the massive names garnering the massive sales wasn’t anything new of course but in the year of Britpop, were we entitled to expect something different?

Some people wouldn’t have wanted to see that movement proliferate any more than it did – not everyone was a fan and it would be disingenuous to suggest that the Top 40 was jam packed with Britpop tunes every week. This was the mid 90s so dance music was still more than well represented in all its many and varied forms. This year, there was a fashion for rereleasing dance tracks that had been smallish hits fairly recently but which were much bigger smashes second time around. Bobby Brown, Strike, JX, Nightcrawlers, Livin’ Joy, Felix and Happy Clappers were just some of the artists to benefit from this trend.

The tradition of singles slowly climbing the Top 40 to a peak position weeks into their chart life started to disappear this year. I can’t recall if the first week discounting policies by record companies were in full operation by this point or whether it was improved distribution services or bigger promotional budgets for new releases that was the cause but singles were in and out of the charts before you could say ‘Here’s another new entry…’ especially amongst the more niche artists with loyal fan bases. Of the eighteen No 1 singles this year, eleven went straight in at No 1. The exception that proved the rule was “Think Twice” by Celine Dion which hit No 1 in the UK on its 16th week on the chart, a then record climb. If we take a closer look at that list of No 1 singles, we can see that four artists (Michael Jackson, Robson & Jerome, The Outhere Brothers and Take That) had two each accounting for nearly half of those chart toppers. Of the rest, only Britpop heavyweights Blur and Oasis, rapper Coolio and dance act Livin’ Joy could have been categorised as being outside of the established order of artists (at that time anyway). A charity record, a novelty song, a huge ballad and bloody Shaggy made up the rest. I bought one on that list (Oasis). As ever, shite not cream had risen to the top it seemed.

Chart date (week ending)	Song	Artist(s)	Sales
7 January	“Stay Another Day“	East 17
14 January	“Cotton Eye Joe“	Rednex	60,000
21 January			85,000
28 January			70,000
4 February	“Think Twice“	Celine Dion	74,000
11 February			80,000
18 February			86,000
25 February			154,000
4 March			141,000
11 March			120,000
18 March			50,000
25 March	“Love Can Build a Bridge“	Cher, Chrissie Hynde & Neneh Cherry with Eric Clapton	150,000
1 April	“Don’t Stop (Wiggle Wiggle)“	The Outhere Brothers	90,000
8 April	“Back for Good“	Take That	346,000
15 April			185,000
22 April			140,000
29 April			85,000
6 May	“Some Might Say“	Oasis	138,000
13 May	“Dreamer“	Livin’ Joy	106,000
20 May	“Unchained Melody” / “White Cliffs of Dover“	Robson & Jerome	314,000
27 May			460,000
3 June			320,000
10 June			210,000
17 June			145,000
24 June			90,000
1 July			73,000
8 July	“Boom Boom Boom“	The Outhere Brothers	62,000
15 July			74,000
22 July			77,000
29 July			65,000
5 August	“Never Forget“	Take That	115,000
12 August			86,000
19 August			54,000
26 August	“Country House“	Blur	274,000
2 September	“Country House“	Blur	135,000
9 September	“You Are Not Alone“	Michael Jackson	83,000
16 September	“You Are Not Alone“	Michael Jackson	100,000
23 September	“Boombastic“	Shaggy	93,000
30 September	“Fairground“	Simply Red	211,000
7 October			142,000
14 October			129,000
21 October			96,000
28 October	“Gangsta’s Paradise“	Coolio featuring LV	107,000
4 November	“Gangsta’s Paradise“	Coolio featuring LV	166,000
11 November	“I Believe” / “Up on the Roof“	Robson & Jerome	258,000
18 November			224,000
25 November			118,000
2 December			80,000
9 December	“Earth Song“	Michael Jackson	116,467
16 December			149,549
23 December			150,739

TOTP increased its use of the ‘golden mic’ celebrity host slot introduced by executive producer Ric Blaxill the year before with guest presenters seemingly in the studio every other week. This year also saw the grand old programme (then in its 32nd year) introduce a new logo, theme tune and title sequence as well as a new set that saw the last remnants of the ‘year zero’ revamp removed forever. As for me, I was into my fifth year of working for Our Price and after multiple store moves in the preceding three years, saw myself ensconced in the Stockport branch for the second time. I would stay there until 1998 when things started to go wrong both professionally and health wise but that’s a while off yet.

Hits That Never Were

Hootie And The Blowfish – “Hold My Hand“

Released: Feb ‘95

Chart peak: No 50

Here we have that not unique but not everyday either phenomenon of an artist that was huge in America but whom we didn’t really take to over here. Hootie & The Blowfish exploded across the States in 1995 with their debut album “Cracked Rear View” which would top the charts there on five different occasions, selling seven million copies in the process and being the best selling album of the year. It went twelve times platinum in the twelve month period January ‘95 to January ‘96. The band had landed a monster. Over in the UK, the album managed much more moderate sales – 100,000 copies in total. Not an amount to be sniffed at but well short of its impact in the States. Why the disparity? Well, if I knew that then I’d be a music mogul millionaire instead of unemployed of Hull. However, perceived wisdom seems to be that America was ready to embrace some good, old fashioned melodic rock (with a hint of blues) after the extremes of grunge that dominated the start of the decade. Here in the UK, our alternative of choice seemed to be Britpop if the music press were to be believed.

“Hold My Hand” was the lead single from the album and made No 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 whilst it failed to make the UK Top 40 at all. Despite that, I would suggest that’s what the band are most known for over here; that and the episode of Friends where Ross, Chandler and Monica go to one of their concerts.

EMF – “Afro King”

Released: Oct ‘95

Chart peak: No 51

By 1995, EMF had resorted to doing a cover of a Monkees song with comedy duo Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer to get a hit record and it worked when “I’m A Believer” went to No 3. That couldn’t be the way forward for the band though so a brand new song was released as a what would turn out to be a standalone single in October. “Afro King” was a great return to form, prompting memories of the excitement of their debut hit “Unbelievable” five years previously. Somehow though, nobody noticed it (except me) and it petered out at a lowly chart peak of No 51. That was despite the safety net of one of the CD singles featuring the band’s first three hits.

With the failure of “Afro King” to make the Top 40, the band’s gambit had failed and they split. There have been numerous reunions and hiatuses over the years but they are currently together and released an album of new material in April 2022. One last thing, my wife and I used the intro sample (“Long live the king! It isn’t a king, just a queen with a moustache!”) for our answer machine message for a while. I never have worked out what it’s a sample of.

Ash – “Kung Fu”

Released: Mar ‘95

Chart peak: No 57

To the uninitiated like me, “Girl From Mars” was the first time I became aware of Ash but in fact they’d released four singles before that first Top 40 hit including this one – “Kung Fu” – the lead single from their debut studio album “1977”. A typical Ash thrash through two minutes and seventeen seconds of glorious pop-punk, its lyrics name check the obvious (Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan) the malappropriate (Daniel-san and Mr. Mirage from The Karate Kid*) and The Ramones (‘teenage lobotomy’ is a reference to their 1977 song of the same name).

*Karate and Kung Fu are entirely different martial arts with the former originating in Japan and the latter in China.

The cover of the single featured Eric Cantona’s assaulting that bloke in the Crystal Palace crowd with what the press described as a ‘Kung fu kick’. That incident occurred on 25 January with the resulting court case occurring three days after the Ash single was released. They couldn’t have synchronised the two events any better in terms of promotion for the single and yet it still couldn’t get them their first chart hit. “Girl From Mars” would get that particular job done a few months later. I wonder if there was any consideration given to rereleasing “Kung Fu” in the light of that breakthrough success? I guess it mattered not as “Girl From Mars” was the first of thirteen consecutive Top 40 singles for the band over the next seven years. “Kung Fu” got its own bit of spotlight though. In a case of life imitating art, it was featured in the film Rumble In The Bronx starring Jackie Chan.

Scarlet – “Love Hangover”

Released: Aug ‘’95

Chart peak: No 54

Not quite one hit wonders but almost certainly remembered for a single song, Scarlet really should have had a bigger legacy. “Independent Love Song” is rightly held up as a scorching example of how to write a startling track in the sphere of what we call pop music but there was more to them. “I Wanna Be Free (To Be With Him)” made No 21 in the charts and then there was this. “Love Hangover” was the third single released from their debut album and it’s another well crafted, accomplished composition full of melody and hooks. Somehow though, the UK record buying public saw fit to ignore the song, buying the likes of The Outhere Brothers and Shaggy in huge quantities instead.

*Tuts*

Cheryl Parker and Jo Youle went their separate ways after their second album bombed and are now only ‘Facebook friends’. Both continued to write songs initially but Jo is now chief executive of the “Missing People” charity and received an OBE in 2022 for her work with them.

Nick Heyward – “The World”

Released: Sep ‘95

Chart peak: No 47

As ever with these epilogue pieces, it’s time for me to check in on what Mr Nicholas Heyward (the greatest living Englishman) was up to this year as he’ll have not been in either the Top 40 or, by extension, on TOTP having been cruelly ignored by the record buying public once again. In 1995, Nick released his fifth solo studio album entitled “Tangled” which managed to do something his previous three releases hadn’t done, it charted. Admittedly, it was only at No 93 but I guess that was progress. The lead single from it was “The World” which would suffer the same fate as most of his singles – it peaked just outside the Top 40 at No 47. As usual, Nick was probably seen as not being hip enough for these Britpop times and yet, ironically, both “Tangled” and previous album “From Monday To Sunday” were almost blueprints for quintessentially British pop songwriting at its best. That progress I talked about earlier would be extended in early 1996 when Nick actually managed to get a single into the Top 40 with the second release off the album “Rollerblade” peaking at No 37 making it his first such hit since “Warning Sign” in 1984. No doubt I’ll end up talking about that song in the epilogue post for 1996 in the Hits We Missed section.

Hits We Missed

The Boo Radleys – Find The Answer Within

Released: May ‘95

Chart peak: No 37

I didn’t really know The Boo Radleys before “Wake Up Boo!” and its parent album “Wake Up!” and, in all honesty, I didn’t follow their career that closely after it but I loved this era of the band. And it wasn’t all about that single, the staple of breakfast radio shows. “Find The Answer Within” was the follow up and, for me, it was vastly superior but it seemed most people disagreed with me judging by its chart peak.

The case of The Boo Radleys is a classic example of an artist’s biggest hit dwarfing everything else they ever did. Even just within this one album, there’s some great songs like “Twinside” and “Wilder” but aside from individual tracks, it hangs together as a whole entity with design and purpose. 1996’s “C’mon Kids” sustained some of the momentum that “Wake Up!” had brought the band though by the end of the decade they were relegated to the outermost fringes of the charts. They split in 1999 but a twenty-five year anniversary reunion prompted them to release two albums in two years though without original songwriter and guitarist Martin Carr. I really should check in again with them and check out what they’ve been doing and who knows, I might find the answer within.

The Stone Roses – Ten Storey Love Song

Released: Feb ‘95

Chart peak: No 11

The fuss surrounding the release of The Stone Roses’ sophomore album “Second Coming” on 5th December 1994 fell away pretty quickly once people had actually heard it. In a way, it was doomed to fail to meet expectations given the mythical status that had been bestowed upon it by the music press and fans during its five and a half year gestation period. A combination of a release date right up against Christmas and mixed reviews with accusations of over indulgence and criticism of the length of its tracks diluted its impact significantly. However, in amongst those overly long songs was one of a more traditional length despite the claims of its title. “Ten Storey Love Song” was the second single released from the album as the follow up to the rather bloated “Love Spreads” and always felt like a leaner, cleaner track than its predecessor despite its elongated, rather mystic intro – much more radio friendly and yet it only made it to No 11 in the charts. It always seemed rather unappreciated to me. Aside from the album’s third single “Begging You” and a couple of remixes of “Fool’s Gold”, it would be the final release by the band for twenty-one years until “All For One” in 2016.

Gigolo Aunts – Where I Find My Heaven

Released : May ‘95

Chart peak: No 29

Nearly 30 years have passed since “Where I Find My Heaven” by Gigolo Aunts was a hit and I still get it confused with “Hey Jealousy” by Gin Blossoms. My perplexity can maybe be explained and forgiven by the following mitigating circumstances:

Both bands were American
Both bands played a brand of power pop/rock
Both bands had two word names with the first word beginning with ‘G’
Both bands had their biggest hit within a year or so of each other in the mid 90s.

Perhaps I should use the following details to distinguish between them:

“Where I Find My Heaven” was used as the theme tune to the BBC sitcom Game On about the lives of three flatmates in Battersea, south-west London which I quite enjoyed.
The track was also included on the soundtrack to the film Dumb And Dumber.

Gigolo Aunts would never have another UK Top 40 hit whereas Gin Blossons would have four in total (another difference) though you’d probably have to be a bit of a superfan to name them.

Crash Test Dummies – The Ballad Of Peter Pumpkinhead

Released: Jan ‘95

Chart peak: No 30

Canadian band Crash Test Dummies are pretty much mostly known in this country for their 1994 No 2 hit “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” but they’ve actually had three UK Top 40 records. Follow up single “Afternoons & Coffeespoons” made No 23 and then there was this – their version of “The Ballad Of Peter Pumpkinhead”. Now I did talk about the XTC original in my review of 1992 under the Hits That Never Were section so I probably didn’t need to cover it again here but there’s a nice little link with Gin Blossoms so I’m including it again here. Released as the second single from XTC’s “Nonsuch” album, it was cruelly ignored by the public causing it to peak at No 71. It was reactivated three years later by Crash Test Dummies for the soundtrack of…yep…Dumb & Dumber. It’s not a bad version either but compared to the original, it just sounds like a diluted facsimile. The video features actor Jeff Daniels reprising his role from the film as Harry Dunne in a story that apes the narrative from the song’s lyrics with a rather disturbing scene of his character almost being hung to death, a fate he escapes courtesy of the pumpkin on his head.

Alanis Morissette – You Oughta Know

Released: Jul ‘95

Chart peak: No 22

From one Canadian artist to another. Alanis Morissette created quite the controversy with this expletive laden, snarling rock track at the time. “You Oughta Know” was just so aggressive sounding that you couldn’t ignore it. Those lyrics! I mean…

Is she perverted like me?

Would she go down on you in a theatre?…

…And are you thinking of me when you fuck her?

Songwriters: Glen Ballard / Alanis Nadine Morissette
You Oughta Know lyrics © Vanhurst Place Music, Arlovol Music, Songs Of Universal Inc.

Gulp! The album it came from – “Jagged Little Pill” had to receive the treatment usually reserved for rap artists – a parental warning sticker and the availability of a ‘clean’ version of the album with the offending lyrics muted. The track was picked up by Modern Rock radio station KROQ-FM in America which led to heavy rotation for its video on MTV. Having spent the early years of her career being promoted and received as the Canadian Debbie Gibson or Tiffany, the transformation of her music and image was enormous. “Jagged Little Pill” would furnish six hit singles and sell 33 million copies worldwide (mine was one of them). Alanis Morissette was officially huge…until an Irish comedian called Ed Byrne realised that the lyrics to one of those hits – “Ironic” – weren’t actually examples of irony but rather bad luck and built a routine around it which took lumps out of her reputation as a songwriter. Not that Alanis just disappeared. Follow up album “Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie” was also a US chart topper but it sold a quarter of the numbers its predecessor achieved. She continues to record and release albums to this day but it’s the “Jagged Little Pill” era that she remains best known for and it started with this sweary, angry rant of a song. Lovely stuff.

Their season in the sun

MN8

One big hit with a single that some cruelly mocked as being about their penis size (“I’ve Got A Little Something For You”), and then an oft seen case of diminishing returns. A second album released the year after was as popular as as the Tories. Apparently still together, there has been no new material from them since November 1996.

Rednex

Possibly benefitting from the post Christmas sales slump, this oddball collective combined folk, techno and bluegrass to bring the world “Cotton Eye Joe” and like idiots we lapped it up making it the first new No 1 of the year. An identikit follow up…erm…followed but then nothing and thank the lord for that. The Rednex brand lives on with a pool of band members to rival The Fall and a 24/7 live streaming channel on Twitch. Mind boggling.

Scatman John

In the same vein as Rednex came this guy, a jazz pianist who would overcome his stutter to become a scat singer. Combining that with rap and house beats, he hit big with “Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)” going to No 3 in the UK. A further Top 10 hit followed before we all got sick of the joke and he disappeared from whence he came. Sadly, Scatman John died in 1999 aged just 57 from lung cancer.

The Mike Flowers Pops

Novelty records were all the rage in 1995, even if they didn’t know they were novelty records. Rednex, Scatman John and now this easy listening take on “Wonderwall” by Oasis. Almost the surprise Christmas No 1 when arriving late on chart from nowhere, the bewigged Mr Flowers (no relation to tuba playing, member of Sky Herbie) and his pals enjoyed brief fame in the wake of the success of “Wonderwall” but have not been near the charts since 1996 when a cover of “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina” took them to No 30.

The Outhere Brothers

Of all the shite that 1995 delivered to the charts this year (and there was a lot of it), I think these two prats annoyed me the most. What was it about this duo and their call and response moronic chant records that engaged our nation so much. Two consecutive No 1s and two other Top 10 hits in a calendar year suggests either a nationwide dereliction of taste or that I was missing something. I wasn’t though.

Last Words

Well, it wasn’t the worst of years but it also wasn’t the best. History will no doubt forever view it through the filter of ‘The Battle of Britpop’ which felt seismic at the time, an event that not only dominated the musical landscape but also that shook the cultural one too. In retrospect, does it all seem a bit daft now? Maybe. I still didn’t seem to be buying many singles from within the Top 40 though my albums collection expanded this year. A sobering thought is that for all of Britpop’s posturing, for all the media frenzy of Oasis v Blur, for all those bangin’ dance tunes crossing over from the clubs to the charts, the act that had the ability to sell the most singles and albums this year were two actors in their thirties from a TV military drama.

TOTP 12 JAN 1995

Posted on July 25, 2023 by 80stastic

Christmas and New Year have disappeared from view and we are well into January 1995 with the Top 40 singles chart ringing the changes. The bloat which saw festive hits lingering like left over turkey has dissipated as some brand new hits appear. I say brand new but the first song on tonight was onto its third attempt at chart glory. N–Trance were sound engineering students Kevin O’Toole and Dale Longworth who met at Oldham college and teamed up with a then 16 year old Kelly Llorenna on vocals to record “Set You Free” in 1992. It failed to make the Top 40 when released the following year but a second go saw it secure a chart peak of No 39 in 1994. That still wasn’t deemed satisfactory so a third release was commissioned with a shiny new remix and it would finally power up the charts all the way to No 2. I think it would probably be described as a ‘dance floor banger’ by those knowledgeable about such things but it sounds a bit like “Insanity” by Oceanic to me and I sometimes conflate the two. Despite both having euphoric, anthemic choruses though, “Set You Free” also features a break beat which is reminiscent of early Prodigy material.

I’m guessing the obligatory two anonymous blokes on keyboards here are O’Toole and Longworth but they also have a Bez type geezer dancing in the background in a boiler suit and sporting an oh so mid 90s curtains haircut. Excellent! One of the keyboard guys comes to the front of the stage to mess about with a guitar near the end of the performance but it’s not very convincing. Maybe he was setting his inner axe hero persona free.

I didn’t catch that much of Glastonbury 2023, just the headline acts each night and this year’s festival winner Rick Astley mainly. One band I did seek out though were The Lightning Seeds. I’ve always been a sucker for well crafted pop songs and Ian Broudie certainly knows his way around a good tune. I first became aware of his songwriting in 1983 via the nearly-hit single “Flaming Sword” by one of his early bands Care (though I didn’t actually know that Broudie was one of the band members). Then when “Pure” came out in 1989 by his new vehicle The Lightning Seeds, it shone out of the darkness of the late 80s house dominated charts like a lighthouse to me – a cracking pop single. By 1992, Broudie had teamed up with Terry Hall for the “Sense” album and single whilst “Life Of Riley” (written for his son) would become synonymous with Match Of The Day in the 90s when it was used to soundtrack the ‘Goal of the Month’ section.

However, it would be the band’s third studio album “Jollification” that would see them become chart regulars producing four Top 40 hit singles. However, the album got off to a faltering start with lead single “Lucky You” failing to make the Top 40 in the August of 1994 (it would peak at No 15 when rereleased in 1995). As such, there must have been a lot riding on the album’s second single “Change”. As it turned out, it would prove to be the band’s biggest hit (at the time) when it progressed to No 13. I think record label Epic pushed it (and the album) hard promotionally – there were strawberry scented promo copies of “Jollification” sent out as I recall. That success lit the blue touch paper on the band’s career heralding a run of nine consecutive Top 40 hits including a No 1.

Ah yes, that No 1 single. Both a huge money spinner if we’re being cynical (it’s been a hit four times) and the killer blow of any credibility the band might have had for many but there’s no denying the cultural impact of “Three Lions”. Originally released for the 1996 Euros, it’s resurfaced for just about every subsequent football tournament England have competed in since – it returned to No 1 in 1998 and 2018. Its appeal might just be on the wane finally though having seemingly been usurped by Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” for some unfathomable reason. With that huge commercial success though came accusations of sellout and naffness similar to the fate that befell Level 42 (maybe there was a curse for bands whose name began with an ‘L’?). Some of the people I worked with at Our Price hated The Lightning Seeds for being too mainstream and the default safe choice of artist for the shop stereo. I could see their point but I still quite liked the songs.

That’s all to come though. Back in early 1995, “Change” was charging up the charts and although not really part of the scene, the band were probably helped in their commercial fortunes by the parallel emergence of Britpop. Fast forward 28 years and the aforementioned Riley Broudie is now a member of the band playing on a stage at Glastonbury alongside his Dad. However, ultimately I was a bit disappointed with their set. Maybe those catchy pop tunes didn’t really suit a massive outdoor music festival. Still, they seemed to be having a jolly old time of it, one might even say they were living the life of Riley (ahem).

So after my claim about the show being littered with new hits at the top of the post, here’s a song that had been on the nation’s collective consciousness for nearly 9 months. To be fair to me, it was a new ‘hit’ if not a new ‘track’. The interval during the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest had unwittingly unleashed a cultural phenomenon upon an unsuspecting global audience. The spectacular that was “Riverdance” combining Irish folk music with modern dance and featuring principal dancers Jean Butler and Michael Flatley had wowed the watching TV hordes and would totally eclipse the winning song that year (it was “Rock ‘n’ Roll Kids” by Paul Harrington and Charlie McGettigan for Ireland once more for all you pedants out there).

The song from the performance by composer Bill Whelan was rush released in Ireland due to the public response and would top the charts there for 18 weeks (keeping Wet Wet Wet off No 1). It was a different story in the UK where it loitered around the edges of the Top 100 for months until it was reactivated by an appearance at the Royal Variety Performance sending it crashing into the Top 10 where it would peak at No 9. By this point, the whole phenomenon had been turned into a stage show opening in February 1995 with a soundtrack album from it also released. The show has visited over 450 venues and been seen by over 25 million people since its opening. In retrospect, its success rather makes host Mar Goodier’s comment in his intro “just watch the footwork” seem rather trite and silly.

The whole Riverdance happening didn’t really make my feet tap though. Indeed, if we’re talking Irish interval acts at Eurovision then there’s only one for me…

I used the words ‘totally eclipse’ earlier whilst discussing Riverdance and if I’m using them again about a song title then that can only mean one thing…Bonnie Tyler. Well, actually it doesn’t but it does mean “Total Eclipse Of The Heart” or rather the nastiest cover version of it you could ever imagine. Everything about this is wrong. The idea in the first place, its execution, the TOTP performance – this is just pure karaoke nonsense. A hi-NRG version of a Jim Steinman power ballad? What?! How?! Why?! It wasn’t even a totally new concept – Rage had produced a danced up take of “Run To You” by Bryan Adams which went Top 3 in 1992. Hadn’t we all realised what a terrible, useless mistake that mess had been by 1995?! The vocalist tasked with bringing the record into being was one Nicki French who had previously been a cruise ship singer just four years before. This sounds really awful but her performance here has definite cruise cabaret vibes. You can almost see the look of disbelief and melancholy on the faces of her band that their careers as musicians had come to this.

As with N-Trance earlier, Nicki’s single had been out before in 1993 and had peaked at No 54 but the rerelease would take her all the way to No 5. In a bizarre turn of events both Nicki and Bonnie Tyler would end up representing the UK at Eurovision – Nicki in 2000 and Bonnie in 2013. Neither won obviously.

Some proper music at last! Contrary to popular opinion (including my own probably), Britpop wasn’t the only game in town in 1995. There was also the emergence of trip hop. The name was first coined in an article in Mixmag magazine in 1994 about DJ Shadow (an artist my aforementioned Our Price colleagues did love) but its origins lay at the start of the decade in Bristol. Fusing hip hop with electronica into a downbeat yet affecting sound, the main protagonists of the genre were Tricky, Massive Attack and of course Portishead, according to the music press anyway. “Glory Box” was the latter’s third single and second chart hit after “Sour Times” the Summer before and it was, let’s be fair, a tune. Haunting, shimmering, hypnotic we’re just some of the descriptors used to give expression to its sound. Singer Beth Gibbons unique voice was a main ingredient in the recipe I think. Their debut album “Dummy” which housed all three singles would go to No 2 and three times platinum in the UK and would win the Mercury Music Prize in 1995 beating the likes of Britpop heavyweights Oasis and Supergrass.

My ever more fashionable wife was into Portishead from the get go and bought the album whilst I didn’t even know quite how to pronounce their name thinking initially it was ‘Porti-shed’. Clearly geography hadn’t been my strongest subject at school as the band took their name from a North Somerset town 8 miles to the west of Bristol. This from a guy who was working in a mainstream record shop at the time! The band were never devotees of fame and celebrity though and took 3 years to follow up “Dummy” with their eponymous second album which performed well but nowhere near the numbers of its predecessor. To date, the band have still only released three albums with the last coming in 2008. Theor active status has been on and off since 1999 but they are currently an ongoing entity and performed a benefit concert in 2022 for refugees and children affected by the war in Ukraine.

Who the hell are this lot? Well, they might not have registered on my radar but The Almighty were briefly a big deal. Scottish heavy rockers from a punk background, their third album “”Powertrippin’” made No 5 on the UK charts in 1993. This track “Jonestown Mind” was from the follow up “Crank” and would be their highest charting single when it peaked at No 26.

It’s not really my thing at all so I haven’t got much to say about The Almighty other than the band’s name puts me in mind of this clip from Life Of Brian:

And the title of the song of this from Alan Partridge’s Mid Morning Matters series:

Go to 3:00

Now if we’re talking Scottish rockers, here’s a band who I feel much more qualified to comment on. Like many I’m guessing, I first became aware of Simple Minds in 1982 with their breakthrough chart hit “Promised You A Miracle” – I’d been blissfully unaware of their first four studio albums – and by 1984 was impressed enough to buy their “Sparkle In The Rain” album (on white vinyl no less!). I also didn’t mind their much maligned ‘stadium rock’ era and even bought “Don’t You (Forget About Me)”. They ended the 80s with a No 1 single and album in “Belfast Child” and “Street Fighting Years” respectively. The 90s though were more of a struggle. 1991’s “Real Life” sold well enough but was poorly received by the critics and a rethink was required with a gap of four years to the next album filled by an albeit very successful retread of past glories in Best Of “Glittering Prize 81/92”. 1995 saw the release of “Good News From The Next World” and lead single “She’s A River” and guess what? It sounded just like Simple Minds. As I say, no bad thing in my book but it was hardly a new direction to reignite their career. Still, maybe they didn’t need to do that and this new material was flame enough to keep the home fires burning a little longer yet. After all, the single did make the Top 10. However, it would be the last time the band were ever so high in the charts. A second single from the album called “Hypnotised” made the Top 20 but the writing was on the wall for their commercial fortunes. They continue to record and tour however and the nucleus of Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill remains in place.

Now about this live by satellite performance. A few weeks back Jamiroquai played from a building from which you could see the Eiffel Tower in the background. Enter Simple Minds to run with that concept but take it up 1000 notches. Never mind seeing one of the planet’s most recognisable landmarks in the background, we want to play at the top of the damn thing! It makes for quite a vista and is certainly up there with Bon Jovi’s Niagara Falls performance. It also brings to mind the video for Duran Duran’s James Bond song “A View To A Kill” which was filmed at the Eiffel Tower. Thankfully there’s no repeat of that video’s ending here. No, I don’t mean the Eiffel Tower blowing up but rather that there’s no awful breaking of the fourth wall moment when a fan approaches Simon Le Bon and asks “Excuse me…aren’t you?” to which the singer replies “Bon. Simon Le Bon”. I suppose “Kerr. Jim Kerr” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it anyway.

Before the new No 1, host Mark Goodier introduces us to new Radio 1 DJ Lisa I’Anson who had taken over the station’s weekday lunchtime show and I’m pretty sure would go on to present a few TOTPs.

As to said No 1 by Rednex, I asked a Facebook group recently if “Cotton Eye Joe” was the worst song of the 90s? I was roundly scolded in the replies with respondents quoting the likes of Mr Blobby, Teletubbies, Flat Eric, Spice Girls, Westlife and even The Fugees at me. Fair enough I guess though my favourite reply came from someone who simply asked me “Are you on drugs?”.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	N-Trance	Set You Free	Nope
2	The Lightning Seeds	Change	I thought I had the Jollification album but can’t find it
3	Bill Whelan	Riverdance	No
4	Nicki French	Total Eclipse Of The Heart	As if
5	Portishead	Glory Box	No but my wife had the album
6	The Almighty	Jonestown Mind	Nah
7	Simple Minds	She’s A River	Think I might have it on a Best of somewhere
8	Rednex	Cotton Eye Joe	NO!

Disclaimer

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001nq1p/top-of-the-pops-12011995

TOTP 05 JAN 1995

Posted on July 17, 2023 by 80stastic

It’s time to welcome in the New Year…of 1995. As I recall I was in a curry house in Rusholme, Manchester with my wife and a friend as the midnight struck on New Year’s Eve. The head waiter announced to everyone in the restaurant the following:

“Ladies and gentlemen; we have just slipped into 1995”

…with a very salacious emphasis on the word ‘slipped’. It was all very unsavoury. Anyway, 1995 it was and what a year it would turn out to be. Britpop exploded, the unfashionable Blackburn Rovers win the Premier League (try telling your kids that) and pubs are allowed to stay open throughout Sunday afternoons for the first time.

Meanwhile, over at TOTP, the first new show of the year is hosted by comedian Jack Dee for the second time and who does he introduce as the first artist as we enter the mid point of the 90s? A synth band from the early 80s. Yep, for all its Britpop associations, 1995 opens with The Human League. If you ignore the single “Heart Like A Wheel” which made a lowly No 29 in 1990 (and I am), this was the band’s first major hit since “Human” made the Top 10 in 1986. That song had been a US chart topper with American audiences unable to resist the band’s attempt at a soul ballad, aided by Janet Jackson producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. However, their 1995 offering “Tell Me When” was nothing like “Human” and was instead a return to their early 80s synth sound on which they’d made their name. The lead single from seventh studio album “Octopus” (terrible title), it really did sound like an anachronism – a pleasant anachronism but an anachronism all the same. Quite why it cut through with the record buying public of early 1995 I’m not quite sure although it did top the airplay charts so obviously that will have boosted its chances.

Phil Oakey’s distinctive vocals sound ever so slightly wobbly in this TOTP performance, not helped by the amount of words in the lyrics of the verses; there seem to be too many causing him to almost stumble. Still, the chorus is an absolute winner recalling the glories of “(Keep Feeling) Fascination” and “Don’t You Want Me”. The band were being promoted as a trio of Phil, Susan Sulley and Joanne Catherall by this point and I have to say I don’t recognise the other three guys up their on stage with them. I think most of the classic line up had departed by then. The sight of all six just standing in a straight line like a New Romantic chorus line is a bit jarring but they just about get away with it with Susan’s Sally Bowles from Cabaret vibe the standout. And Phil still had hair!

The album was their first for new label eastwest since being released by Virgin Records and performed solidly going to No 6 and producing another hit single in the Susan Sulley sung “One Man In My Heart”. Heartened by their success, the band went back out on tour whilst Virgin decided to cash in on their former charges by rereleasing their 1988 Greatest Hits album but with “Tell Me When” tacked onto it. A challenge this year from Pulp to the title of the biggest band from Sheffield not withstanding, The Human League were back.

Despite a new song to start a new year (albeit from an old artist), the charts around this time were usually stagnated after the Christmas rush and the next song is the first of four that we’ve already seen not that long ago on the show. In fact this one, “Eternal Love” by PJ & Duncan, had already peaked at No 12 and started descending the charts but the slow sales after the Christmas rush had created a rather false scenario which saw the record go back up the Top 40 from No 16 to No 14.

I’ve recently been binge watching the Channel 4 sit com Derry Girls (I know, where have I been?!) and there’s an episode where the gang go to see a Take That concert in Belfast. Inevitably, various events delay them on their journey including an escaped polar bear and a bomb scare. When they realise that they are running late, one of the characters points out that they’ve already missed the support act who are PJ & Duncan. Expressions of crushing disappointment ensue amongst the group. This got me thinking – was that based on fact or a work of fiction courtesy of the script writers? So I checked. As Derry Girls is set in the 90s and the episode concerned occurs at a time when Robbie Williams was still in the band, I checked for concerts between 1992 and 1995 and as far as I can tell, PJ & Duncan did not support Take That. The support acts that I found listed were Eternal, Ultimate Kaos and an act called Overlord X.

Just in case my Take That concert research hasn’t made me look sad enough, I think that I should say, in the spirit of full disclosure, that I have actively attended a Take That concert myself! It was in 2009 and I went because my younger sister (a big fan) had been let down by a friend who was meant to be going with her so I stepped into the breach. And you know what, they were great fun making the crowd forget all about the terrible weather (it was at Old Trafford cricket ground in Manchester). Oh and the support that day? It was meant to be a young Lady Ga Ga and some bloke called Gary Go but Ga Ga went doolally and didn’t turn up so we got an extended set from Mr Go. It could have been worse I suppose – it could have been PJ & Duncan.

A future No 1 incoming. For now though, “Think Twice” by Celine Dion is up to No 4 on its 9th week inside the Top 40. It would get held up at No 2 for a further three weeks before finally getting to the chart summit. Its thirteen consecutive weeks rise to the top was a chart record and when it got there it stayed for nearly two months. Why was it so enduring? Well, the UK record buying public had already shown in spectacular fashion in the 90s that it was an utter sucker for big ballads with the towering stretches at the top of the charts of “Love Is All Around” and “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You” and “Think Twice” was certainly a big ballad so maybe we shouldn’t have been too surprised by its success. Plus, Celine had already put us on notice of her penchant for a huge love song with her cover of Jennifer Rush’s “The Power Of Love” so she had it in her armoury to inflict some major damage on the charts. Added to all of that, “Think Twice” was written by Andy Hill and Peter Sinfield who had a history when it came to writing UK chart toppers having been responsible for “The Land Of Make Believe” for Bucks Fizz. Even so, the song’s tenure in the charts and slow gestation to becoming a No 1 did seem like an anomaly. I think I’ll leave it at that for now. Seven weeks at No 1? Sheesh!

Becoming more regular than Rishi Sunak reciting his five pledges, here comes another future No 1 and unbelievably it’s worse than Celine Dion’s chart topper. Much worse. We have reached a definite low point in 90s music. The time of Rednex is upon us. Who were these people that were responsible for one of the rottenest singles of the decade? Well, they were a trio of Swedish producers who hit upon the idea / dastardly plot to fuse Eurodance and American country folk music into a diabolical hybrid. The first result of this experiment of the devil was “Cotton Eye Joe”, a bastardised version of “Cotton Eyed Joe”, a 19th century song that possibly had its origins in the slave communities working on plantations in the Deep South. It’s a ridiculous notion cheaply executed.

They needed some stooges to front the single so they recruited this ragtag collection of…well…ragtags. To make the whole project look more authentic, they were given rustic stage names which only made the debacle look more risible. Ace Ratclaw, Boneduster Crock, Ken Tacky and my personal favourite Jiggie McClagganahan were just some of the pseudonyms used. With depressing predictability, “Cotton Eye Joe” went to No 1 all around Europe including the UK where it remained in pole position for three weeks. In fact, it would get to the top of the charts before Celine Dion and would be the record they kept her at No 2 for three consecutive weeks. So, let me get this straight; we are looking at ten weeks at No 1 spilt between records by Rednex and Celine Dion. Yeah, 1995, the year of Britpop my arse!

It’s purveyors of melodic UK rock Thunder next who had been having consistent yet decidedly average sized hits since the start of the decade. Albums wise it was a different story though. Their second album “Laughing On Judgement Day” had gone straight in at No 2 and sold 100,000 copies in 1992/3. This single – “Stand Up” – was the lead single from follow up “Behind Closed Doors” which itself went silver and peaked at No 5. However, “Stand Up” couldn’t disrupt the pattern of middling success for Thunder singles when it peaked at No 23. Of the eighteen UK Top 40 hits the band achieved, none went higher than No 18.

I don’t recall “Stand Up” at all but listening back to it, there’s a definite whiff of “Crazy Horses” by The Osmonds to it. No really, listen to that chugging guitar backing. Well, I guess as a rock band they couldn’t really have done a cover of “Love Me For A Reason” could they?! Ahem.

A true one hit wonder next – one huge, mega smash and then zip, nada, nothing although to be fair to Ini Kamoze, he had been around for years making reggae/dancehall material with the likes of Sly and Robbie before his big commercial breakthrough with “Here Comes The Hotstepper”. I didn’t know any of that at the time though. Like most of us I’m guessing, he was the man with the song that went “naaa na na na naaa etc” who also described himself as a “lyrical gangster” as mentioned by Jack Dee in his intro. You had to give it to Ini, his dancehall/hip-hop/ pop fusion tune was damned catchy but then he had lifted said “naaa” hook from “Land Of 1000 Dances” made most famous by Wilson Pickett.

Two other things spring to my mind when talking about “Here Comes The Hotstepper”. Firstly, its use in one of the worst films I’ve ever had the misfortune to see – Prêt–à–Porter. A satirical-comedy (supposedly) on the circus that is Paris Fashion Week, it is one of only two films I have ever considered walking out of. The other was Young Einstein starring Yahoo Serious which I did leave before the end and whilst I made it to the end of Prêt–à-Porter, it turned out that the two people I went to see it with had spent the entire movie on the verge of leaving as well.

Secondly, and I can find no evidence of this online but I’m sure that it happened, when one of those hit compilations came out around this time that included “Here Comes The Hotstepper”, the track listing didn’t show Ini Kamoze but ‘I’m A Kamikaze’. I swear this happened but 29 years later I can’t remember which hits album it was on. My first thought was the relevant entry in the Now series but all the images online of the track listing for Now 31 show the correct spelling. Maybe it was an error on initial copies and any reorders were corrected? I don’t know but I’m convinced that it happened. “Here Comes The Hotstepper” made No 4 in the UK and was a No 1 record the US.

And so to a band who did feel able to do a cover of The Osmonds’ “Love Me For A Reason” but then Boyzone were hardly Thunder. With Take That still at the height of their commercial appeal at this point, was there really a need or indeed gap in the market for another boy band? Apparently there was as the five, fresh faced Irish lads were up to No 2 with their debut UK hit. Before the 90s were said and done, they would have accrued a further 15 none of which peaked lower than No 4 and included 6 chart toppers. Admittedly, two thirds of them (and all of those No 1s) came after Take That had called it a day (or so we thought) in 1996 and there definitely was an opening down the boy band Job Centre. Even so, despite their obvious credentials for the position, you’d have to say they took full advantage of the opportunity.

The band set out their stall early on with this performance. Ronan Keating was clearly the main guy with his gold coloured jacket while the rest of them are in black but, as co-vocalist, Stephen Gateley gets to share the spotlight alongside Ronan. The other three guys are relegated to the back to spend most of their time doing what can only be described as ‘arm dancing’ – seriously, they hardly move their feet at all during the whole thing. Westlife would take this inaction to a new level when they turned up as the decade was ending and seemed to spend most of their time singing sickly ballads whilst sat on stools.

We end with another boy band (of sorts) as East 17 remain at the top with Christmas No 1 “Stay Another Day”. This was literally the moment when the band were at their peak. A week later they were deposed from their throne by Rednex and they would never return to the chart summit. That’s not to say they weren’t heard of again. 1995 would bring two more hit singles from their “Steam” album plus a third studio album in “Up All Night” with the lead single from it going to No 4. By early 1997 though, Brian Harvey had given that radio interview and things would start to unravel…

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	The Human League	Tell Me When	Nope
2	PJ & Duncan	Eternal Love	Nah
3	Celine Dion	Think Twice	As if
4	Rednex	Cotton Eye Joe	NO!!!
5	Thunder	Stand Up	Nah
6	~~I’m A Kamikaze~~ Ini Kamoze	Here Comes The Hotstepper	No but I think my wife did
7	Boyzone	Love Me For A Reason	Never happening
8	East 17	Stay Another Day	No

Disclaimer

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001nq1m/top-of-the-pops-05011995

TOTP 1995 – the prologue

Posted on July 13, 2023 by 80stastic

So, to 1995 then and if I’m just relying on my memory then presumably this is going to be one long procession of Britpop acts. Now that prospect may fill you with joy or dread depending on your musical persuasion but statistically that can’t be the case so what else was happening? Well, it’s a bit like 1977 when punk was meant to be at its peak but in fact the biggest selling records of the year were all by decidedly mainstream artists like Wings, David Soul and Leo Sayer. Fast forward to 1995 and for those three artists read the likes of Celine Dion, Michael Jackson and pissing Robson & Jerome! For all the talk of Britpop, only one artist from that movement had a single in the Top 10 sellers of the year – Oasis with “Wonderwall”. Those two singles at the heart of The Battle of Britpop? They trail in 12th and 20th. So was it all just a media concoction? You can’t deny the sales that Oasis generated – “(What’s The Story) Morning Glory?” went 16 x platinum in the UK, sold 22 million copies worldwide and as of October 2018 was the 5th best selling album of all time in this country. And yet…it wasn’t the best selling album of 1995 being beaten to that accolade by…yep, those guys again…Robson & Jerome. The other big sellers of the year album wise are more rock and pop royalty in the form of Queen, Michael Jackson and Simply Red though sneaking in at No 10 were Pulp who became massive in 1995, the 18th year of their existence.

However, there were some seismic events in the world of music in this year. Manic Street Preachers guitarist Richey Edwards disappeared in February never to return and has been legally dead since 2008 though many a sighting has been reported in the intervening years. There was a drummer exodus of Manchester bands with Reni quitting The Stone Roses in March and Tony McCarroll being sacked from Oasis in the April. Not to be outdone, Robbie Williams left Take That in July causing such a meltdown in the country’s population of teenage girls that a helpline was set up to help them deal with what had happened (supposedly). The Summer also witnessed that chart battle with the story infamously being reported on the BBC’s main evening news programme. For all the band members who left or disappeared in 1995, the year ended with a massive return as The Beatles released a ‘new’ single for the first time since they split in 1970. “Free As A Bird” was a 1977 John Lennon demo reworked by the three remaining Beatles as part of the Anthology project.

As for TOTP and Radio 1, the BBC continued to wield its axe. In January it was announced by controller Matthew Bannister that ‘old’ music (i.e. anything pre-1990) would no longer be played on its flagship pop music radio station. This was followed in February by the announcement that Bruno Brookes’ contract would not be renewed when it expired in the April meaning he would leave Radio 1 after 11 years. Another line up change saw Chris Evans replace Steve Wright as the Breakfast Show host. Meanwhile, over at TOTP, Head Producer Ric Blaxill continued to ring the changes with a new set, theme tune, logo and title sequence introduced in February.

In the wider world, 1995 saw Eric ‘Kung Fu’ Cantona assault a spectator after being sent off for Manchester United against Crystal Palace in January (though it did nothing to affect his popularity as it turned out the fan was a right scrote). Cliff Richard became Sir Cliff Richard and Princess Diana did that interview with Martin Bashir when she famously said that there were three people in her marriage. The entertainment world lost a whole host of people this year with the deaths of Larry Grayson, Peter Cook, Kenny Everett, Marti Caine, Paul Eddington and Arthur Mullard.

As for me, I remained working in record shops for Our Price, starting the year in Manchester but moving back to Stockport in the February after the Market Street store finally shut down after years of being under threat of closure. In many ways, 1995 was the busiest time to be working in a record shop with the Oasis sales phenomenon and the national spotlight that The Battle of Britpop bought – I recall being paranoid about potentially running out of either the Oasis or Blur single that week. It was possibly the most enjoyable though for the same reason. This might prove to be one of the best years for revisiting in quite some time.

Disclaimer

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree

TOTP 1994 – the epilogue

Posted on July 2, 2023 by 80stastic

After the horrors of 1993, I had high hopes that 1994 would be so much better. And it was in many ways; so why do I feel like it wasn’t. Well, as ever, the really massive mainstream hits were mostly lowest common denominator awful. My usual barometer for this is the list of No 1 singles during the calendar year so let’s have a look at the class of 1994…

Chart date (week ending)	Song	Artist(s)
1 January	“Mr. Blobby“	Mr Blobby
8 January	“Twist and Shout“	Chaka Demus & Pliers featuring Jack Radics & Taxi Gang
15 January	“Twist and Shout“	Chaka Demus & Pliers featuring Jack Radics & Taxi Gang
22 January	“Things Can Only Get Better“	D:Ream
29 January
5 February
12 February
19 February	“Without You“	Mariah Carey
26 February
5 March
12 March
19 March	“Doop“	Doop
26 March
2 April
9 April	“Everything Changes“	Take That
16 April	“Everything Changes“	Take That
23 April	“The Most Beautiful Girl in the World“	Prince
30 April	“The Most Beautiful Girl in the World“	Prince
7 May	“The Real Thing “	Tony Di Bart
14 May	“Inside“	Stiltskin
21 May	“Come on You Reds“	Manchester United Football Squad
28 May	“Come on You Reds“	Manchester United Football Squad
4 June	“Love Is All Around“	Wet Wet Wet
11 June
18 June
25 June
2 July
9 July
16 July
23 July
30 July
6 August
13 August
20 August
27 August
3 September
10 September
17 September	“Saturday Night“	Whigfield
24 September
1 October
8 October
15 October	“Sure“	Take That
22 October	“Sure“	Take That
29 October	“Baby Come Back“	Pato Banton
5 November
12 November
19 November
26 November	“Let Me Be Your Fantasy“	Baby D
3 December	“Let Me Be Your Fantasy“	Baby D
10 December	“Stay Another Day“	East 17
17 December
24 December
31 December

Well, it’s not the greatest collection of chart toppers ever assembled is it? I think I would categorise them like this:

3 x boy bands – Take That (x2), East 17
1 x Levi’s advert soundtrack – Stiltskin
2 x reggae reworkings of old pop standards – Chaka Demus and Pliers, Pato Banton
1 x FA Cup final song – Manchester United Football Squad
2 x novelty record – Mr. Blobby, Doop
3 x dance records by complete unknowns – Tony Di Bart, Baby D, Whigfield
1 x dance record by relative* unknown – D:Ream *”Things Can Only Get Better” had been out before
2 x cover versions of a decades old ballads – Mariah Carey, Wet Wet Wet
1 x original yet very commercial track by legendary artist – Prince

I bought precisely none of them. It all seemed very retro and backwards looking. Four of the 16 titles were cover versions of songs more than 20 years old. The Levi’s advertising campaign team still had their hooks in the population with a song not even by a proper band getting to No 1. Yes, there were three dance chart toppers by new acts but Baby D soon ran out of steam and who really remembers Tony Di Bart? As for Whigfield, some might say “Saturday Night” should belong in the novelty record category alongside Doop. The anomaly of a football club having a No 1 was bizarre. OK, the England team topped the charts in 1990 with the help of New Order but I think there’s a different appeal for the national team. For a club side to do it? I guess it just showed the size of the Manchester United fanbase. It would never happen now manly because nobody releases Cup Final records anymore.

Now, if you discount Mr. Blobby as the previous Christmas No 1 which hangs over into the new year, the total of 15 was the second lowest of any year in the 90s. That, of course, was due to the 15 weeks reign by Wet Wet Wet at the top of the charts. Just three years on from the whole Bryan Adams debacle, another sales phenomenon happened but how? Well, the band were well established and had a fanbase anyway. Plus, the song in question was a ballad and was featured in one of the biggest films of the year. So, basically the same reasons as for Bryan Adams. We didn’t learn much did we?!

So, how did things look albums wise? A quick glance at the best sellers of the year tells a predictable story. Three of the Top 10 were Best Ofs (including the Top 2) whilst the rest of the Top 20 is made up of either rock royalty or mainstream acts that ticked all the right airplay boxes. Pink Floyd, Mariah Carey, Eternal all feature in the Top 10. It’s interesting to note that East 17 trounce Take That with the former at No 10 and the latter at No 22 which kind of upends the received wisdom about who was bigger. That’s the power of having the Christmas No 1 on your album I guess. A mention in dispatches should go to The Beautiful South with their collection “Carry On Up The Charts” ending the year in the runners up position whilst the enduring appeal of The Beatles saw their “Live At The BBC” album make the year end Top 10 despite only being released on 30 November. In a precursor to the following year’s Battle of Britpop, Blur’s “Parklife” comprehensively outsold “Definitely Maybe” by Oasis as it had a 4 months sales head start – the Manc lads may have lost that particular skirmish but they would win the sales war ultimately with their debut selling twice as many copies as “Parklife”.

Talking of Britpop, whether you lived it, liked it or hated it, 1994 seems to me to be the year it really started to gain momentum. Sure, you could make a persuasive argument that its origins lay in 1992 with the emergence of Suede but, in my opinion (and it’s just my opinion), it was this year that it properly gained traction. Not that Britpop was the only game in town. The UK public were still enamoured with nasty reggae versions of old pop songs and the Summer seemed interminably long with some very average songs hanging around the charts for weeks on end. However, the biggest hits weren’t the whole story. All the cool kids were getting into the likes of Portishead and this new thing called trip-hop (actually, when did that term start being used in common vernacular?). Massive Attack were still around and released their second album “Protection” this year.

What about TOTP though? After all, that’s what this blog is based around. 1994 was a year of huge change. Ric Blaxill replaced Stanley Appel as head producer and one by one removed the features of the latter’s ‘year zero’ revamp most notably presenters Tony Dortie and Mark Franklin. The Radio 1 DJs we’re back though most weeks it seemed to be the intensely annoying Simon Mayo in the hot seat. In addition though, one of Blaxill’s master strokes was to introduce the ‘golden mic’ slot where celebrity guests from the world of pop music, comedy and entertainment took over presenting duties temporarily. By February of 1995, it would be as if ‘year zero’ had never happened with a new logo, theme tune and title sequence introduced. 1994 also saw the BBC making use of its extensive archives to launch TOTP2 which featured retro performances from yesteryear. For a show based around the current charts and what was happening ‘now’, it was quite the extension of the brand. It would turn out to be a visionary move. Where once record companies would delete albums from their back catalogues routinely, these days there is a whole industry based around rereleased and super deluxe editions of ‘old’ music.

However, the new features have caused a couple of repeats to not be broadcast by BBC4 as they have included footage of Gary Glitter (both within a TOTP2 trailer and as guest presenter) and talking of songs we may have missed…

Hits We Missed

Dave Stewart – “Heart Of Stone”

Released: Sep ‘94

Chart peak: No 36

After Eurythmics went on what would become a near decade long sabbatical as the 90s began, it was Dave Stewart who was first to get some new material out in the marketplace via his Spiritual Cowboys group though, if you discount his collaboration on “Lily Was Here”* with Candy Dulfer, it was Annie Lennox who was first to taste proper success. Her debut album “Diva” shifted 7 million copies but then she was the singer and public face of the duo so I guess that was to be expected? And yet, Dave Stewart is a master musician with a streak of creativity running right through him so the chances of him not coming out with something good were always going to be slim.

*If we’re being completists, then we should make note of Stewart’s input to wife Siobhan Fahey’s group Shakespear’s Sister who had a No 1 in the form of “Stay” in 1992 I guess.

“Heart Of Stone” wasn’t the massive seller it could and should have been but it was perfect daytime playlist material. I’m wondering if it got a lot of airplay on the local commercial stations that covered Greater Manchester as it sold steadily in the Our Price in Piccadilly where I was working. It’s got a great funky disco feel and a hook so big that Peter Pan would have been intimidated by it. Was there also just a hint of Steely Dan about Dave’s guitar work?**

**Nearly 30 years later, Spandau Ballet’s Gary Kemp would find himself similarly influenced by Steely Dan on his 2021 track “Ahead Of The Game”.

The track, along with the rest of the album “Greetings From The Gutter”, was recorded at Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Lady Studios in New York with the lyrics to the single even referencing the fact:

Two weeks in electric lady land
Two weeks and that’s all for me
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: David Allan Stewart / Shara Nelson
Heart of Stone lyrics © Eligible Music Ltd., Warner/chappell Music Ltd

In short, it should have been a blockbuster Summer hit but the country was enthralled by the likes of Let Loose, Aswad and Big Mountain instead. What the hell was that all about?! Dave and Annie would eventually reunite as Eurythmics in 1999 for the “Peace” album.

The Proclaimers – “Let’s Get Married”

Released: Feb ‘94

Chart peak: No 21

I love The Proclaimers and I don’t care who knows it! They make great pop songs and I, for one, find their distinctive Scottish accents endearing. Right, now my cards are on the table, let’s talk specifics. By 1994, the Reid brothers hadn’t released an album for six years. They hadn’t released a single in four. I’m guessing that they took time out to start families? Anyway, suddenly they were beck with a new album “Hit The Highway” and lead single “Let’s Get Married” which, if you accept the theory that artists tend to write songs about their own experiences, would suggest that Craig and Charlie had spent the last four years concentrating on their private lives.

I love “Let’s Get Married”, their paean to matrimony. Maybe its appeal was that it seemed so out of kilter with the hedonistic culture of the 90s club scene whose music seemed to dominate much of the charts. Or maybe it was the fact that at the age of 25 when it was released, I’d already been married 3 and a half years that it resonated so much. Either way, there’s something joyful about its enthusiasm for wanting to commit to a partner and optimism for a good life together.

Apart from their tunes and voices, I’ve also always been impressed by the duo’s lyrics and “Let’s Get Married” was no exception. My favourite lines would be the one confirming that the brothers are dog not cat people:

Let’s get married
Hold hands when we walk in the park
All right, you can get a cat, just as long as it barks
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Charles Stobo Reid / Craig Morris Reid
Let’s Get Married lyrics © Warner Chappell Music, Inc

Plus, I always liked the confessional conversation bit in the middle eight:

When we’re old if they ask me,
“How do you define success?”
I’ll say, “You meet a woman
You fall in love
You ask her and
She says, ‘Yes.'”
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Charles Stobo Reid / Craig Morris Reid
Let’s Get Married lyrics © Warner Chappell Music, Inc

It’s not so much the words as the fact that when Craig sings the “How do you define success?” line, Charlie actually sings the question to his brother in the background with the lovely suffix ‘man’ to give it a personal touch. Genius.

The album did pretty well going Top 10 and achieving silver sales status despite the lack of a really big single on it. The equally excellent follow up “What Makes You Cry?” only made No 38 whilst third single “These Arms Of Mine” failed to get into the Top 40 at all. However, “Hit The Highway”s sales were significantly down on preceding album “Sunshine On Leith” and they wouldn’t release another album for 7 years (again I’m guessing a second wave of children were born to the brothers). They remain a touring and recording unit though. I’ve seen them a couple of times live and they didn’t disappoint.

Primal Scream – “Jailbird”

Released: Jun ‘94

Chart peak: No 29

One of my favourite albums of 1994 was “Give Out But Don’t Give Up” by Primal Scream. Often derided as their attempt to become The Rolling Stones, I ignored such barbs and loved its out and out bluesy rock sound. Lead single “Rocks” was a banger but so was the follow up “Jailbird” that was also the album’s opening track. Yes, accusations that it wasn’t that dissimilar to its predecessor were hard to refute and yes, there’s another song on the album titled “Call On Me” and that’s not a million miles away from sounding like “Jailbird”. So what? If you like a style of music, you’re going to want to hear it again and again. What’s that? What about all the times I’ve slagged off artists for just releasing the same song over and over again like 2 Unlimited? Well, that’s…erm…well, the thing is…that’s completely different! Anyway, there were other songs on the album that were nothing like those three – “Funky Jam” and the title track spring to mind.

In 2018, the band made available the original Memphis recordings made with the Muscle Shoals rhythm section that were rejected by Creation boss Alan McGee for sounding too flat. I must have a listen to them at some point as the reviews for the lost album were very positive.

Oasis – “Whatever”

Released: Dec ‘94

Chart peak: No 3

I was convinced that “Whatever” was going to be the Christmas No 1 based on the amount of copies we were selling of it in the Our Price store in Market Street, Manchester. We couldn’t get them out of the delivery boxes quick enough. Somehow though, they fell two places short and had to settle for No 3. After the T-Rex-ness of “Cigarettes And Alcohol”, the sublime melody of “Live Forever” and the slinky, meandering indie rock of “Supersonic” and “Shakermaker”, “Whatever” genuinely felt like something different and therefore took me by surprise. Hang on, they can do string laden ballads as well? WTF?! It felt like such a gigantic sound the first time I heard it – seriously epic and I loved it from the get go.

For the band’s detractors though, it was more evidence that they were unoriginal grifters, pinching other people’s ideas and peddling them as their own and as something completely new and different. How so? Well, there’s the middle eight that sounds suspiciously like “Strawberry Fields Forever” era Beatles and then the fact that “Whatever” was subject to a plagiarism lawsuit brought by Neil Innes of Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band / The Rutles / The Innes Book Of Records fame over its similarity to his track “How Sweet To Be An Idiot” which resulted in a songwriting credit for Innes being issued. I neither knew nor cared about any lawsuits though and was just enjoying the beauty of this standalone track. I especially liked the audience applause and cheers sound effect at the end which presumably inspired Supergrass to follow suit on their 1999 hit “Pumping On Your Stereo”.

We only missed this TOTP performance because of the issue of the aforementioned Gary Glitter and so also didn’t get to see again the beginnings of the Blur/Oasis rivalry that would reach its apex the following Summer with The Battle of Britpop. Guest presenter Damon Albarn is very nearly the subject of being given the finger by Noel Gallagher through the rather ridiculous sunflower prop as he introduces the “five pretty boys from Manchester”. Things would get much more ugly between the two parties.

Eddie Reader – “Patience Of Angels”

Released: Jun ‘94

Chart peak: No 33

I could never really get along with Fairground Attraction. I think I heard “Perfect” one too many times and I was done. However, even though my back had been turned in the opposite direction to the band, I couldn’t turn my ears away from the voice of Eddie Reader. After the group called it a day in 1990, Eddie would no doubt have been expected to go solo immediately but she turned a different corner by going into acting with a role in Scottish BBC comedy drama Your Cheatin’ Heart before returning to music. Debut solo album “Mirmama” was generally well received but failed to set the charts alight but by 1994 she’d moved from RCA to Blanco Y Negro for her sophomore eponymous follow up. Led by the single “Patience Of Angels”, it was much more successful going gold and peaking at No 4 in the charts. My wife bought the single (she’d been much more open to Fairground Attraction than me) but I can hear why. For a start, it was written by Boo Hewerdine who had been responsible for some of the best unknown pop songs of the 80s via his band The Bible (I defy anyone not to like “Graceland”). Secondly, Eddie really nails the vocals on it but effortlessly so.

Sadly, Eddie would never be bigger commercially than 1994. Diminishing returns set in but she continues to record (2009’s “Love Is The Way” is a great album) and play live. I saw her at the Beverley Folk Festival around 2010 and she was fabulous; her voice still spectacular and she was charmingly engaging with the audience. You might almost say ‘perfect’.

Hits That Never Were

Redd Kross – “Yesterday Once More”

Released: Sep ‘94

Chart peak: No 45

In 1994, I knew bugger all about Redd Kross. In fact, if I’d met them in a bar and they had introduced themselves as the band Kings X and I had spent the whole evening in their company, I would have had zero reason to doubt their professed identity. As I write this in 2023, I still know next to nothing about Redd Kross. However, what I do know is that in 1994, they contributed a track to a tribute album celebrating the work of The Carpenters and that I loved their version of “Yesterday Once More”. I loved it so much I bought it.

The album was called “If I Were A Carpenter” (clever) and featured ‘alternative’ artists like Shonen Knife, Babes In Toyland and American Music Club alongside a handful of artists who had gone on to achieve mainstream success like Sheryl Crow and The Cranberries. A single was released to promote the album and it was a double A-side. Joining Redd Kross were avant-garde rockers Sonic Youth with their version of “Superstar”. In my time at Our Price, I worked with loads of people who swore by Sonic Youth but I could never hear their appeal. Their Carpenters cover didn’t change my opinion and I must have only played their contribution to the album a couple of times ever. Redd Kross, on the other hand, I played the hell out of. Yes, it’s just a straight, rock through of a classic Carpenters melody but there was something about the soaring guitars and on point ‘rawk’ vocal that had me hooked.

There were two versions of the CD single released; a standard one but also a more limited one which also included The Carpenters originals – I got the latter. Why did it fail to chart? Well, I don’t think the album was an overwhelming success for a start, probably a bit too leftfield. I’m guessing any airplay the single got would have been for the Redd Kross track rather than the Sonic Youth one but which stations would have played it? Radio 1? Maybe in the more late night, specialist slots but I don’t remember it being played much in the daytime. Presumably, commercial radio would have been more likely to play The Carpenters originals? As I said earlier, I have no idea what happened to Redd Kross after they briefly showed up on my musical radar but they remain the architects of one of my favourite cover versions.

Echobelly – “Insomniac”

Released: Mar ‘94

Chart peak: No 47

Here’s a band who have a small but perfectly formed collection of singles which should have elicited more and much bigger hits than was the case. Come the 1995 TOTP repeats, we’ll be seeing a fair bit more of Echobelly as they stand toe to toe with the protagonists of Britpop (although no doubt, seemingly like everyone else associated with that particular movement, they would say that they weren’t). In 1994 though they only pierced the Top 40 once with “I Can’t Imagine The World Without Me” which made it to a humble No 39. Before that single though came non-hit “Insomniac” which was a wonderful example of tuneful indie pop with its slow burning verses leading into a bridge that promised a huge pay off which its soaring chorus duly delivered.

Presumably I heard the track whilst at work in the Our Price in Market Street, Manchester as parent album “Everyone’s Got One” was a sizeable success peaking at No 8 despite the lack of a big hit single. Quite why “Insomniac” didn’t make the grade is a mystery though. Everything about it is great right down to the laid back, understated outro. In fact, the band themselves should have been a much bigger deal. Led by the charismatic and intriguing Sonya Madan, they had all the ingredients but were waylaid at the height of their success when Sonya suffered a life threatening thyroid problem during a world tour. By the time they reconvened in 1997 for third album “Lustra”, Britpop was in its last vestiges and it sank almost without trace. The band are still together (just) although it’s mainly just Sonya and founding member Glenn Johansson these days and their last album was released six years ago in 2017.

Backbeat Band -“Please Mr Postman”

Released: May ‘94

Chart peak: No 69

I’ve included this one mainly so I can talk about the film Backbeat that came out in 1994. Although I’m no Beatles obsessive, like most* people I do love The Fab Four. I’m a particular sucker for their origin story. How exactly did they become four lads who shook the world?

*I know at least two people who can’t abide them.

I think my fascination started one night in the early 1981 when the film Birth Of The Beatles was aired by the BBC (presumably as a tribute to John Lennon weeks after his murder). It’s not a great film (although being made in 1979, it remains the only movie to document the rise the band whilst Lennon was still alive) but it introduced me to the names of Pete Best and Stu Sutcliffe and their roles in the legend of The Beatles. Fast forward to 1994 and my interest was rekindled by the film Backbeat. If I recall correctly, there were some free tickets for a premiere floating around in the Our Price store where I was working and so me and my wife attended at the cinema in Belle Vue, Manchester. I think there was a free brochure and pencil as we entered the screening (how exciting!). The film didn’t disappoint for me. As well as telling the story of the band’s beginnings (especially their time in Hamburg), it’s also an examination of the complicated three way relationship between Lennon, Sutcliffe and the latter’s lover Astrid Kirchherr. The performances by Ian Hart, Stephen Dorff and Sheryl Lee respectively are top notch. I’m sure Beatles super-fans will find fault with historical inaccuracies and examples of dramatic licence but I’m not really interested in those particular rabbit holes.

The soundtrack was performed by The Backbeat Band who were basically a supergroup comprising such names as Thurston Moore of the aforementioned Sonic Youth, Mike Mills of REM and nicest man in rock Dave Grohl of Nirvana and Foo Fighters. Two singles were released to promote the album – “Money (That’s What I Want)” and “Please Mr Postman” originally recorded by The Marvelettes and later covered by The Carpenters (Sonic Youth and The Carpenters again? I love it when a post comes together like that!). In 2011, a stage production of Backbeat opened at the Duke Of York’s Theatre in London and I saw that too. Like I said, I’m a sucker for the Beatles origin story.

Terry Hall – “Forever J”

Released: Aug ‘94

Chart peak: No 67

I didn’t comment at the time in December 2022 about the awful, untimely death of Terry Hall aged just 63 but I couldn’t let it pass completely without any reference to him. Highlighting his heavenly single “Forever J” from 1994 seems right though. Taken from his criminally overlooked album “Home” (it peaked at a risibly unjust No 95), it has that timeless quality of sounding familiar on even the first ever listen, like a theme tune from an old, black and white TV show.

That evocative quality runs throughout the album despite there being a number of collaborations with different songwriters present. XTC’s Andy Partridge, Ian Broudie of The Lightning Seeds, Nick Heyward and even Damon Albarn all contribute to tracks on it. The biggest songwriting partner though was Craig Gannon, very briefly the second guitarist in The Smiths who was once described by Morrissey as “undiscussable”. Hall’s relationship with Heyward was covered in an interview with the pair in the music industry trade paper Music Week around this time. As it featured two of our favourite artists, my wife and I cut it out and put it on the pinboard in our little Manchester flat where it stayed for years. Not sure whatever happened to it though.

Two further singles were released from “Home” including Terry’s own version of “Sense” which he recorded originally with The Lightning Seeds but it made no difference to the album’s fortunes. Three years later, the equally lovely second solo Terry Hall album appeared called “Laugh”, again written mostly with Craig Gannon” but with contributions by Stephen Duffy and Damon Albarn. I feel fortunate to have caught Terry doing a gig around this time. He was brilliantly sardonic and when he introduced the song “No No No”, some brave punter thought he could take on Terry by shouting out “Yes Yes Yes!”. The reply came back from the stage in that withering brogue “Ha Ha Ha”. Perfect. Terry Hall leaves us with an excellent legacy of songs from The Specials to Fun Boy Three to The Colourfield and beyond. RIP.

Ian McNabb – “Go Into The Light”

Released: Sep ‘94

Chart peak: No 66

Time for my regular name check for Ian McNabb in these Hits That Never Were slots. Pretty much every time I’ve had a McNabb or Icicle Works classic to feature that for unfathomable reasons were ignored by the record buying public. It really is insane that Ian’s sole journey into the UK Top 40 came in 1984 with “Love Is A Wonderful Colour”. By 1994, Mr McNabb was onto his second solo album (for context, his most recent “Nabby Road” came in 2022 and I think was his 18th!) which was the Mercury Music Prize nominated no less “Head Like A Rock”. Recorded in LA with Neil Young’s backing band Crazy Horse, it was and remains his highest charting album when it peaked at No 29. Its lead single was “You Must Be Prepared To Dream” which I was so impressed by that I even bought it but I’ve chosen the follow up “Go Into The Light” to spotlight here. This funky, squelching gospel ballad really should have been able to become a genuine Top 40 hit – I mean, it worked for Primal Scream and “Movin’ On Up”. Maybe that was the problem though; Bobby Gillespie and co got there first and McNabb was therefore seen as retreading old ground or worse, doing his best Primal Scream impression. Whatever. It’s a great track and that’s all that should count.

As with Terry Hall, I saw Ian live in 1994 in the Manchester Academy touring the album and I’m pretty sure members of Crazy Horse were on stage with him but I have a bit of a blind spot when it comes to Neil Young so I could be wrong. As I referenced earlier, McNabb is still recording and releasing music and seems to be permanently on tour, occasionally reactivating the Icicle Works brand though not with the original band members.

Their Season In The Sun

All-4-One

Almost the perfect one hit wonders (one massive No 1 and then nothing ever again), they spoilt it by not actually achieving that chart topper status when their hit “I Swear” was kept at No 2 for 7 consecutive weeks by Wet Wet Wet. Just to compound the the disappointment, they completely trashed the one hit wonder template by having a further solitary minor chart hit that got to No 33. Amateurs.

Big Mountain

Ooh. Inches wide! This lot went even closer to that perfect one hit wonder status. Just the one hit- a reggae-fied version of Peter Frampton’s “Baby, I Love Your Way” – but it also topped out at No 2 behind the Wets. Taken from the soundtrack to the ‘you-never-see-it-on-TV’ movie Reality Bites, it probably benefitted from the UK’s almost inexplicable fascination with reggae takes on pop classics in the early to mid 90s. Was nobody in charge of musical taste back then?!

D:Rream

This lot did manage to bag that No 1 that proved too elusive for the first two acts in this section but a succession of sizeable to middling hits put the kibosh on any classic one hit wonder status. Still, they were never bigger than in 1994 when “Things Can Only Get Better” bestrode the charts for 4 weeks in January. Even a reactivation in 1997 as the soundtrack to a successful Labour Party General Election campaign couldn’t stop them from being known as the band that once included Professor Brian Cox in their ranks.

Let Loose

Responsible for a well crafted but perfunctory pop song that hung around the charts all Summer and like the aforementioned All-4-One and Big Mountain, would surely have topped the charts but for Wet Wet Wet. Sadly for these pound shop heartthrobs, it turned out people liked that one song rather than them and they were unable to flog enough copies of their albums to lay any lasting pop foundations.

Lisa Loeb and Nine Stories

Winging into the charts with another hit from the soundtrack to Reality Bites, Lisa had a winning, girl-next-door charm and a pleasant tune that struck a chord with the record buying public on both sides of the Atlantic. Indeed, “Stay (I Missed You)” was a No 1 record in the US. Although she would never scale such heights again, Lisa has continued to make music, creating a catalogue of work that comprises 15 studio albums. She has recorded collections of children songs and a number of her tracks have been featured in TV shows and movies such as Legally Blonde and Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

Whigfield

And so to the act that succeeded where All-4-One, Big Mountain and Let Loose all failed. After 15 weeks, it was left to a Danish model and music student to topple “Love Is All Around”. After linking up with Italian producer Larry Pignagnoli and assuming a stage name based on one of her teachers, Whigfield (real name Sannie Charlotte Carlson) fronted one of the biggest (and possibly cheesiest) dance tunes of the decade. “Saturday Night” was a monster, the second biggest selling single in the UK of 1994 and even spawned its own dance. Despite a couple of further Top 10 hits, Whigfield couldn’t replicate the success of that single and within a year or so, it was all over, a cover of Wham!’s “Last Christmas”, their parting gift. We’ll always have that unwanted present of “”Saturday Night” though.

Last Words

Well, in conclusion I would say 1994 wasn’t as bad as 1993 but that’s a very low bar. Again, I don’t seem to have bought much music released this year; certainly not singles anyway. However, Oasis arrived to shake things up and would become a phenomenon in 1995 as Britpop went into hyperdrive. That’s my memory of 1995 as it stands. Fancy joining me to see if I was right or wrong?

Disclaimer

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree

TOTP 08 DEC 1994

Posted on June 29, 2023 by 80stastic

Christmas is coming but the charts aren’t full of facts. The Top 40 announced on the Sunday before this TOTP contained incorrect information. Apparently there were some Woolworths shops that couldn’t retrieve their sales data to send to chart compilers Millward Brown so the tech guys were deployed to extract it. This they did except it was the wrong data. They just duplicated the Friday sales figures instead of Saturday’s and by the time the mistake was noticed it was too late as the Top 40 had been published and announced on Radio 1. Millward Brown chose to style it out by retrospectively compiling the correct chart but it was never made available to the public other than by using it as the basis for the ‘last week’ positions for the following week’s chart. It must have played havoc with the minds of all the Top 40 ~~nerds~~ devotees out there. TOTP decided to go with the chart that Radio 1 had initially announced rather than the revised one but in the end, the cock up hadn’t made that much difference to many records with only minor adjustments of a place or two being required – I think the biggest was that Mariah Carey should have been at No 5 rather than No 6.

Anyway, none of the above is mentioned by guest presenter Neneh Cherry who is the holder of the ‘golden mic’ chalice this week. Neneh had been back in the charts of course in a big way in 1994 alongside Youssou N’Dour on “7 Seconds” but even so, I’m not sure that she had the pull that she would have had 5 years previously. Still, she had a nice delivery style and brought a certain amount of credibility to proceedings. Her first job is to introduce the opening act who is Whigfield who had the unenviable task of trying to follow up a massive selling debut single somehow. And how do you do that? As we have seen so many times in the course of these TOTP repeats, you take the original record, add a few minor changes, give it a different song title and release it all over again. Listen to the banking track on “Another Day” – exactly the same as “Saturday Night”. To try and fool the record buying public into purchasing a single they’d already bought once, the producer behind the Whigfield brand – one Larry Pignagnoli – mixed things up by stealing the groove from Mungo Jerry’s 1970 No 1 “In The Summertime” (main Mungo Ray Dorset would receive a writing credit ultimately). It’s all very unsatisfactory and underhand really but it got Whigfield a Top 10 hit just in time for the Christmas party season. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – nice work if you can get it.

Of course, party dance tunes wasn’t the only way to bag yourself a Christmas hit. A nice ballad was also a strong and proven strategy. Many an artist had pulled off the trick of coming out with a ‘slowie’ in contrast to their previous material over the years – Wet Wet Wet (“Angel Eyes”), The Christians (“Ideal World”) and Bros (“Cat Among The Pigeons”) from the late 80s spring to mind but I’m sure there’s loads more examples. Not impervious to this idea were PJ & Duncan whose previous hits had all been uptempo examples of their brand of pop rap but the fifth single from their album “Psyche” and their fourth hit of the year broke that mould. I guess with a title like “Eternal Love” we shouldn’t have been surprised. Aimed squarely at the teenage girl’s market, it’s as wet and drippy as a poor quality nappy. Do you think this was their attempt at following in LL Cool J’s footsteps when he slowed things down for his hit “I Need Love”?

At this fledgling stage of their career, there were still a few things the duo had to sort out and come to a decision on. Firstly, PJ / Ant’s hat – what was that all about?! So that we could tell them apart?! I’m not sure how long this style affectation lasted but at some point it was ditched. Another style decision that was yet to be resolved was actually more of a staging conundrum. Who should stand where. These days, the fact that Ant stands to the left and Dec the right as we look at our TV screens (in reverse for them of course) is well established but it’s the other way round in this performance and I think it has been like that for every TOTP appearance so far. I wonder when and why they changed it? Is there some sort of feng shui consultant but for people whose services you can call upon?

Next up it’s the familiar video for Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” after the The Ronnettes pastiche promo last time. Presumably it wasn’t that familiar back in 1994 though. You can’t avoid it now, so immeshed is it in our festive culture. You could just as easily make a case for a game of Mariah-geddon as Wham-a-geddon. In fact, so ubiquitous is the track that I think the fact that she did a whole album of Christmas songs is almost overlooked. Can you name any of the other tracks on that “Merry Christmas” album without either owning it or looking it up?

Apparently, there were other singles lifted from it (either for commercial release or promotional purposes) though not in the UK I believe. In other territories, “Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town” and “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) both charted but I’m fairly confident in saying that if you were to hear those songs played on radio in this country it would be the Bruce Springsteen and Darlene Love versions. Despite being No 1 in certain countries, the album only managed a peak of No 32 in the UK. Still, it’s all about that song isn’t it and it’s so far generated $80 million in royalties.

The first TOTP appearance next of a boy band that would last the decade and beyond despite the most inauspicious of beginnings. Boyzone were put together by Louis Walsh (who later found fame himself as a judge on TV shows X Factor and Popstars) with the direct intention of forming an Irish Take That (who were themselves put together by Nigel Martin-Smith to be a British New Kids On The Block). After auditioning 300 hopefuls, an initial six-piece outfit was established and they appeared on Irish talk show The Late Late Show in late 1993 to do…erm…this:

So when I said inauspicious beginnings earlier, what I actually meant was perhaps the most mortifying, ignominious debacle ever witnessed on TV. Sheesh! What were they thinking?! What was Louis Walsh thinking?! Was anybody thinking?! Despite that…whatever it was…the group weren’t killed stone dead by it and somehow got signed by Polygram. There were casualties though. Two of the original line up were ditched and were replaced by Mikey Graham who joined Roman Keating, Stephen Gately, Shane Lynch and Keith Duffy for the release of their debut single, a cover of the Frankie Valli And The Four Seasons / The Spinners hit “Working My Way Back To You” which was a success on the Irish chart but nowhere else. That was all the impetus they needed though and another cover of “Love Me For A Reason” (made famous by The Osmonds) would make them bona fide chart stars when it made No 2 over Christmas in the UK singles chart.

Watching this TOTP performance back, it’s clear that some drastic styling had gone on since that turn on The Late Late Show. They’ve all been kitted out with suits and super wide collar shirts to create a sense of unity and their dancing has been stripped back to a few synchronised arm movements and sidesteps. No more freestyle workouts for these boys. It just about hangs together well enough to deliver the song. They would go on to have another fifteen hit singles before the decade was out including six No 1s and six No 2s. The time of Boyzone (not Boys’ Own Neneh) was upon us.

Gloria Estefan does U2? Of course not – it’s not the same song at all although their similar titles could cause confusion I guess. Gloria’s hit is a cover of the 50s song “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me” taken from her album of the same name. U2, on the other hand, contributed a song to the soundtrack of the movie Batman Forever called “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me”. Hope that clarifies everything.

Gloria’s single did surprisingly well for her just missing out on the Top 10 by one place and thereby becoming her biggest hit since “Megamix / Miami Hit Mix” made No 8 promoting her Best Of album two years prior. You had to go back to 1989 and “Don’t Wanna Lose You” for her previous Top 10 hit. Maybe it was the Christmas factor that allowed Gloria to hit big with a familiar if not well known love song? She would never have such a high placing single in the UK charts again though she has continued to release albums up to the present day with the last being 2022’s Christmas collection. What with Gloria and Mariah both having done Christmas albums, all we need now is one from Madonna for a full set. Or maybe we don’t…need a Madonna Christmas album that is.

Now here’s EYC following the same game plan as PJ & Duncan earlier in that they’re ditching their usual high tempo mix of pop and R&B for a slow smoocher for the Christmas market. “One More Chance” was all sighs and harmonies but very little in the way substance or indeed a tune. In short, it was a stinker.

PJ & Duncan weren’t the only influence on the trio though. They must have been watching Boyzone in rehearsals with their shirts and suits and decided that they wanted a piece of that action. Are they morning suits they’re wearing?! They also seem to have pinched some of Ronan and co’s stripped back dance moves but then completely blow the whole effect by attempting to outdo them with the addition of a totally incongruous accessory. What were the white gloves all about? They look like snooker referees on the pull! Utter nonsense. Talk about “Snooker Loopy”! Brave heart though as I think this lousy lot have just one more hit single in them and then their table will have been cleared.

Cliff Richard is no stranger to a duet. He’s performed alongside the likes of Sarah Brightman, Elton John, Van Morrison, Olivia Newton John, Cilla Black and this guy – Phil Everly and not just once but twice. Back in 1983, Cliff and Phil took “She Means Nothing To Me” to No 9 in the UK charts. I didn’t mind it actually although obviously I never let anyone at school know this. Fast forward 11 years and the two were reunited for a curious collaboration. How so? Well, there was nothing particularly odd about their choice of song; “All I Have To Do Is Dream” had been a No 1 for The Everly Brothers in 1958 so it was a song Phil had been performing for over 35 years. Cliff meanwhile had his first hit “Move It” in the very same year so was a contemporary of Phil’s and would of course know the song. Cliff was promoting a Best Of collection for Christmas in 1994 called “The Hit List” which rounded up all his highest charting singles to date (those that went Top 5 or higher) but curiously also included one that only made No 15. “Miss You Nights” was a hit in 1976 but was included on “The Hit List” as it was a fan favourite.

“So what?” you may ask. Well, a remix of “Miss You Nights” was released as a single to promote the album which seems an unexpected choice of song given the nature of the album’s track listing criteria. That wasn’t all though. It was released as a double A-side single with a live version of “All I Have To Do Is Dream” which wasn’t on the album at all! OK, then maybe it was on an album by Phil Everly and it was promoting that? Not according to my research – his last solo album had been in 1983. There was a 105 track Everly Brothers box set released in 1994 but surely that would have been for super fans and completists only. I can’t believe the Cliff/Phil single was anything to do with that. So what was the rationale behind its release? Yes, obviously Christmas was on the way and Cliff had absolutely cornered the Christmas singles market in recent years but did his record company EMI really think he could garner another festive No 1 with this? In the end, it scampered up the charts to No 14 so nowhere near replicating the success of “Mistletoe And Wine” or “Saviour’s Day”. Phil never released another solo single after this whilst Cliff would return in 1995 with his musical project Heathcliff which he conceived, starred in and allowed him to release an album of songs from.

Next up is “the very attractive Jimmy Nail” according to Neneh Cherry. Jimmy’s transition from Oz in Auf Wiedersehen Pet, who was an extremely likeable character but hardly a pin up, to the sleek, some may say chiselled, pop star/actor we see here was quite a thing. Obviously he’d lost quite a bit of weight since he first appeared on our screens but was it also something to do with the more endearing roles we were seeing him perform in Spender and Crocodile Shoes? I think it’s a possibility.

Talking of roles, a reader reminded me in reply to a previous post where I wondered whatever happened to Jimmy that as well as the two shows mentioned above, he was also kept busy with a third and fourth series of Auf Wiedersehen Pet in 2002 and 2004 respectively and two hour long episodes called Au Revoir that were broadcast in the Christmas of 2004. As for “Crocodile Shoes” the single, was at its chart peak of No 4 this week; a significant success though I don’t think it ever really had a chance of being the Christmas No 1.

East 17 are No 1 with “Stay Another Day” and will remain there for 5 weeks to become the festive chart topper as well. As I recall, the Christmas chart was actually announced on the TOTP broadcast on the big day itself and I was convinced that Oasis would pip both East 17 and Mariah Carey to the crown with their standalone single “Whatever”. They seemed to have timed its release just right with it being available for the first time just the week before and with the buzz about the band reaching boiling point and judging by the amounts we were selling if it in the Our Price store in Market Street, Manchester, it seemed like a shoo-in to me. I was amazed when they were announced at No 3 and cried foul, stating something didn’t smell right. However, there were no such stories of rigging in the papers and media. I clearly was letting my Oasis tinted glasses cloud my judgement.

The Walthamstow boys were rightly crowned the Kings of Christmas and their song has gone into the great cannon of festive tunes. Although we get another studio appearance here, there were actually two promo videos made for the single though I only remember seeing one of them at the time. I assume they were made at the same time but the one I saw back in 1994 was the one of the bend seen laying down the track in a recording studio. The one that we now see every December of the band in oversized, white fur trimmed parkas shot in black and white floating about in a snow storm shocked me when I first saw it as it was many years after 1994 and I’d long since left working in record shops behind. How could I have missed seeing it in all those intervening years?

And that’s a wrap for 1994 here at TOTP Rewind. The shows broadcast on the 15th and 22nd December were pulled from the BBC4 repeats schedule as they both featured Gary Glitter. I’ve checked the running order for those shows though and we’re not missing much. Rednex, Mighty Morph’n Power Rangers, Celine Dion, Zig & Zag…it couldn’t be much worse. They did show the Christmas Day edition hosted by Take That (obviously) but it didn’t feature any hits I hadn’t already commented on and so I’m not regurgitating all that again. I will do my own review of 1994 post (the epilogue) as usual though.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Whigfield	Another Day	As if
2	PJ & Duncan	Eternal Love	Infernal racket more like! No!
3	Mariah Carey	All I Want For Christmas Is You	Nope
4	Boyzone	Love Me For A Reason	No
5	Gloria Estefan	Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me	Nah
6	EYC	One More Chance	No chance more like!
7	Cliff Richard & Phil Everly	All I Have To Do Is Dream	Didn’t happen
8	Jimmy Nail	Crocodile Shoes	I did not
9	East 17	Stay Another Day	And no

Disclaimer

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001mwfx/top-of-the-pops-08121994

TOTP 01 DEC 1994

Posted on June 26, 2023 by 80stastic

Christmas is coming but that hasn’t encouraged TOTP to go the full festive hog and have Santa Claus as a guest presenter in the ‘golden mic’ slot. They might not have the fella with the big white beard on the show but they have got someone with a huge blonde wig. Paul O’Grady’s drag queen character Lily Savage had been around the live circuits and doing residencies at various gay pubs in London since the early 80s but by 1994 was starting to break through into mainstream entertainment. The live tours took in bigger venues and would result in VHS releases. TV and film work was also starting to come through but a presenting slot on the BBC’s flagship music show before the watershed was maybe Lily’s biggest gig yet at the time. Chat shows and panel games would follow but as the new millennium dawned, O’Grady effectively retired the character and it is testament to the appeal of his own personality that in the second half of his career, before his untimely death earlier this year, that he managed to overshadow his drag queen alter ego. I’m sure head producer Ric Blaxill would have been chuffed with the coup of landing O’Grady/Savage. Just the sort of booking to shake up the old format.

We start with an artist who, if not exactly shaking things up, was quietly going about subverting some of the established norms of the traditional TOTP performance. Watching this Sophie B. Hawkins appearance back, the word that comes to mind is ‘kooky’ I think. If I’m remembering correctly, the last time she was on the show to perform her single “Right Beside You”, she had a bongo drum permanently attached to her and a bicycle positioned next to her on stage for no discernible reason. This time, for the follow up “Don’t Don’t Tell Me No”, she’s got a Wintery park bench scene set up and she starts her performance by striding around it purposefully in a circle. It looks a bit batty but I’m just hoping it was genuine and not staged.

As for the song, it’s a lot more poppy than I was expecting with a sweet, catchy hook but sadly for Sophie, it would get no further than No 36 despite this exposure. She would have one more UK Top 40 hit before leaving her record company Sony in a dispute about artistic integrity. She continued to release music on her own label Trumpet Swan Productions and in 2013 appeared in cult US sitcom Community as herself.

In the time I’ve been writing this TOTP blog, I must have covered a dozen or so singles by Roxette stretching back to 1989 but even by the fag end of 1994, they still weren’t quite done with releasing their brand of catchy, soft rock/pop. However, by this point, their spell over the UK record buying public, if not broken was seriously starting to lose its potency. “Run To You” (nothing to do with Bryan Adams) was the duo’s fourth single of that calendar year and yet none of them had hit higher than No 14. This track was never going to reverse that trend. It’s pleasant enough with a jaunty chorus but, at the risk of sounding like my Dad when I was 14 or 15, they pretty much all sounded the same by this point.

“RunTo You” was the fourth single released from their “Crash! Boom! Bang!” album and peaked at No 27. Rather hopefully a fifth was released in the new year and it failed to make the Top 40 at all which I think was the first time that had happened that decade. Maybe spying that the writing was on the wall, a Best Of album was released in 1995 – the magnificently titled “Don’t Bore Us, Get To The Chorus” – which made No 5 in the UK but which did nothing in America where they’d had a clutch of No 1s just a few years earlier. The hits didn’t quite end here – they had a couple more before the 90s were through but their imperial phase had, to paraphrase one of their songs, faded like a flower.

It’s sobering to reflect that two people in this clip died before their time. Paul O’Grady was only 67 whilst Marie Fredriksson was just 61 when they passed away.

And one of the most fiercely anticipated tracks in the history of music (or something) finally drops (except nobody would have said ‘dropped’ meaning ‘released’ back in 1994). After almost five years of pretty much nothing (the last new material had been the “One Love” single in the Summer of 1990), The Stone Roses were officially back. So long had they been away following a protracted legal case to free themselves from their contract with the label Silvertone that the band had taken on an almost mythical persona – would they ever make another album? If they did, would it be any good? Were they actually still even a band? “Love Spreads” gave us the answer and then some. Their first release for Geffen Records (home to rock heavyweights Guns N’ Roses and Aerosmith), this was a humdinger of a tune. A heavy, blues rock out, this was no jangly guitar piece like “Waterfall” or “She Bangs The Drums”. It was a huge sound that seemed to resonate even after the last note had played. That it would become the band’s highest charting single ever was never in doubt and it duly fulfilled its destiny when it crashed into the Top 3 at No 2.

However, I seem to recall that even that wasn’t seen as quite good enough. For a band that had generated such headlines and prose to be written about them and that were responsible for a debut album that had been lauded as almost perfect and untouchable, surely they should be No 1? That sense of nearly but not quite would haunt the release of the album as well. “Second Coming” was released on the Monday after this TOTP aired to much hype and razzmatazz. Just about every record retailer in the land opened early to deal with the expected rush with some even opting for a then rare midnight kick off. Even though we were a mainstream Our Price store, we were slap bang in the middle of Manchester city centre and so had to open early – I think we went for something like 7 as opposed to our usual 9. The album was on display everywhere in store and blasting out of the shop stereo. We only had one person come into the store before we would have opened anyway. She came to the counter oblivious of the Stone Roses vibe going on around her and asked for some gift vouchers! I had to rush upstairs and get her some as we hadn’t even reconciled them from the previous day’s takings yet. What a non-event! That seemed to set the tone for the album as a whole for me. Yes, it sold but not in the numbers that had been predicted (it made No 4 in the charts) and received mix reviews from the critics. Even with nearly 30 years of perspective and opportunities for revisiting, I’m not sure that it has lost that sense of disappointment. I quite liked it though and do own a copy. Me plus Shaun from Shaun Of The Dead made two people at least. I don’t think anything sums up the general reaction to “Second Coming” as succinctly as this scene from the film:

Now does Lily Savage go a bit too far in her intro for Erasure here? After confessing that they are her favourite band, as the music swells up and the cheering of the studio audience starts, does she shout “Andy, sit on me!”? Hmm. Sounds like it. Anyway, as I’ve said before, by 1994 I’d lost track of Erasure. Before then I could have had a good stab at naming all their singles (possibly in order) from their imperial phase but somehow I just fell off the Erasure wagon around this time. Consequently this third single from their album “I Say I Say I Say” – “ I Love Saturday” – must have passed me by completely as I don’t know it at all. Having finally listened to it, whilst it’s no banger along the lines of “Sometimes” or “A Little Respect”, it’s a well constructed, likeable pop song…but that’s it. No more no less. Maybe that’s the reason it didn’t strike a chord with me as it just didn’t stand out enough. That’s based on just one listen though so maybe it grows on you with repeated hearings?

I’m not sure what the deal is with the fruit machines set – something to do with Saturday nights in the pub? Still, it did make me smile which put me in mind of a staple of kids TV during my childhood Tiswas which, of course, stood for ‘This Is Saturday, Watch And Smile’. “I Love Saturday” peaked at No 20, the lowest chart position of any of their standard single releases since the first three singles from their debut album “Wonderland” failed to make the Top 40 between 1985 and 1986. That imperial phase really was coming to an end.

A future No 1 incoming now and one which would spend 7 weeks atop the charts. Not only that but it would stay on the Top 40 for a whopping 25 weeks, 17 of which were spent inside the Top 10. Its appearance on TOTP here already marked its fourth week inside the Top 40 and it had sat outside that exalted company for 3 weeks prior to that. Its run to the summit would take 13 weeks (16 if you count those 3 outside the Top 40) which was the slowest consecutive climb to No 1 in chart history at the time. Impressed? What about when I tell you the record in question was “Think Twice” by Celine Dion? Still impressed? Ah, musical snobbery strikes again. Or not if you are a fan of the artist or record I guess. Whatever your opinion of Celine or her song, its chart life was astonishing. Look at these positions:

30 – 28 – 22 – 20 – 9 – 8 – 5 – 6 – 4 – 2 – 2 – 2 – 1 – 1 – 1 – 1 – 1 – 1 – 1 – 3 – 4 – 12 – 17 – 22 – 34

Maybe it’s because Celine herself recorded a version of “The Power Of Love” by Jennifer Rush that it’s put me in mind of that 1985 chart topper. Although, its ascent to the top was much quicker than that of “Think Twice” once inside the Top 40, it took 17 weeks to get to No 1 including an amazing 13 outside the Top 40.

OK, that’s an awful lot of chart positions and stats so I’ll leave it at that for the moment considering we’ll be seeing this one in the near future and for weeks on end…except to say that must have been the most boring live by satellite performance of all time, if indeed that’s what it was. Just looks like a standard promo video to me.

From one diva to another now as we see the first of two songs on the same show that continue to be played every Christmas nearly 30 years later. A diva at Christmas? It can only be Mariah Carey and it is, of course, with “All I Want For Christmas Is You”. Despite its ubiquity every December, the single didn’t make it to the top of the charts on its first release having to make do with the No 2 position instead although it did become a No 1 record in 2020. Not sure that chart had as much gravitas to it as its 1994 counterpart though. By doing so though, it broke the record for the amount of weeks inside the Top 40 before getting to the top of the charts with a tally of 104 (non-consecutive) some 26 years after it was first released. Have that Celine Dion!

In my head, the race for the 1994 Christmas No 1 was between East 17 and Oasis with Mariah Carey a bit of an afterthought. At the denouement though, she ended up splitting the pair with the street urchins of Walthamstow taking the crown with the Burnage boys having to settle with the bronze medal.

Now if you’re thinking that this doesn’t look like the video for “All I Want For Christmas Is You” that you’re used to seeing every year then you’d be right. Where’s the scenes of Mariah messing about on a snowy mountainside? Where’s the Christmas tree she decorates and the rather creepy Santa Claus figure (actually her then husband and CEO of Sony Music Tommy Mottola)? Well, the video shown here on TOTP was an alternate promo shot in black and white with Mariah getting to cosplay at being a Ronette. Seems to me it pretty much rips off the plot of the video for “Chain Reaction” by Diana Ross. Anyway, was this really the live by satellite performance that TOTP make it out to be? Again, it just looks like they’re showing a video to me. This is the second time this show they’ve tried this on after Celine Dion earlier. “All I Want For Christmas Is You” has sold 12 million copies in the US alone and earned $80 million in royalties.

Oh what’s this drivel?! The bloody Power Rangers?! FFS! The 90s were blighted by shit records generated by extraordinarily popular (for a while) children’s TV series, films or cultural phenomenons. The start of the decade saw a chart topper based on the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles courtesy of Partners In Kryme whilst 1992 saw the WWF Superstars forearm smash their way into the Top 5 with “Slam Jam”. The following year the Christmas horrors of Mr. Blobby were visited on us with his pile of crap song and now…this! The Mighty Morph’n Power Rangers was a US children’s TV show that premiered in 1993 and made its way onto UK screens via GMTV and became a runaway success and spawned the must have toys for Christmas that year. As I wasn’t the target market for Power Rangers, the whole thing kind of passed me by. However, I had to endure it years later as my son watched it during a brief phase. It’s the one of the most bonkers things I’ve ever seen. Really tacky looking with cheap production values (presumably due to a low budget), it was a hotchpotch of stock footage from a Japanese show supplemented by additional scenes shot in America. The ‘monsters’ are just ludicrous looking whilst the ‘actors’ playing the Power Rangers were absolutely dire. How did this nonsense take off?

The single – “Power Rangers” – was suitably atrocious. Essentially just the show’s theme tune, if you compare it to some of its Gerry Anderson counterparts from the 60s like Thunderbirds or Stingray…well, there is no comparison. Just horrible and presumably was just bought by children. I think the whole thing was suitably lampooned on an episode of Friends:

And so to the second of those Christmas tunes and this one would be the festive No 1. As with the debate over whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie, “Stay Another Day” by East 17 also divides opinion as to whether it’s a true Christmas song or not. In 2017, a YouGov poll asked if respondents agreed that it was, indeed, a Christmas song. 29% agreed, 34% disagreed and 37% didn’t know. Hardly definitive then. For what it’s worth, I think it is. When the “Steam” album came out and we played it instore, “Stay Another Day” immediately stood out as a potential Christmas hit – it’s got bloody sleigh bells on it for Chrissakes! Obviously though, there is another side to the track. Written by Tony Mortimer about the suicide of his brother, it was based around the premise of what would you do if you had one more day with a loved one. However you view “Stay Another Day”, what can’t be disputed is that it was certainly a huge departure from their usual sound for the band. It was a risk worth taking though. It sold over a million copies in the UK and the repeat royalties on it must be enormous – it’s played to death every December. Somebody (Tony Mortimer?) has a nice little pension pot out of that 4 minute pop song. If you compare “Stay Another Day” to the first time their erstwhile rivals Take That changed tempo to a ballad in “A Million Love Songs”, I think East 17 are clear winners.

It wouldn’t get any better or bigger for Tony, Brian and…erm…the other two after this. Sure they carried on having hits until the end of the decade but none as huge as this and the original line up would not be intact come the new millennium with more comings and goings than The Sugababes. “Stay Another Day” though, having entered the canon of Christmas songs, has ensured that their name will not be forgotten even if they’re only remembered for that one song.

Baby D remain at No 1 with “Let Me Be Your Fantasy” as we enter December but surely nobody thought that they were realistic contenders to be the Christmas chart topper. Now that would have been a turn up for the books – an out and out dance tune as the festive No 1. The UK had experienced a fair few novelty records at the pinnacle of the charts come 25th December – Benny Hill, St Winifred’s School Choir, Renée And Renato, Mr. Blobby etc – but Baby D wasn’t a novelty act more an artist from a specific genre of music. In fact, the only dance records to be No 1 at Christmas that I can think of are “Rockabye” by Clean Bandit and, at a push, “Sound Of The Underground” by Girls Aloud. Given the domination of LadBaby in recent years, maybe it’ll be a long time before we see the like again.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Sophie B. Hawkins	Don’t Don’t Tell Me No	Erm..no. Sorry Sophie
2	Roxette	Run To You	Nope
3	The Stone Roses	Love Spreads	Not the single but I have the album
4	Erasure	I Love Saturday	Nah
5	Celine Dion	Think Twice	As if
6	Mariah Carey	All I Want For Christmas Is You	No
7	The Mighty Morph’n Power Rangers	Power Rangers	Ha! No
8	East 17	Stay Another Day	I did not
9	Baby D	Let Me Be Your Fantasy	And no

Disclaimer

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001mwfr/top-of-the-pops-01121994

TOTP 24 NOV 1994

Posted on June 22, 2023 by 80stastic

It’s a busy a show this one with eight of the nine songs on it making their debut. Only the No 1 record had we seen before. The effect of the machinations of the Christmas release schedules I guess. We’re back to the Radio 1 DJs as host after last week’s ‘golden mic’ slot was filled by Michelle Gayle and thank god it’s not Simon Mayo but the dull yet much less irritating Mark Goodier in the chair.

We start with a band who I had forgotten had so many hits and therefore so many TOTP appearances though sadly for them, this would be their final one in the studio. It was quite a run though. Ten consecutive Top 40 singles up to this point (they had a further two minor ones subsequently) between June 1991 and November 1994 though only one made the Top 10. Who am I talking about? Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine obviously though their success was anything but obvious. A pair of not especially attractive grebos playing a brand of indie power pop with clever clever lyrics? It doesn’t sound like the template for guaranteed commercial triumph and yet they were brilliant and a welcome breath of fresh air to some of the crud clogging up the charts during their own tenure there. “Let’s Get Tattoos” was the lead single from their fifth studio album “Worry Bomb” and would get to No 30 whilst the album would peak at No 9.

Apparently the semi naked male dancers that we see here are also in the promo video and their gyrations and thrusts illicit the desired response from the studio audience but I’m guessing their inclusion here is to make some sort of ironic comment about how pop music was being promoted? Or they were sending themselves up with the most unlikely backing they could think up? Whatever the reason, you would have thought that they would have found some guys with actual tattoos given the title of their song wouldn’t you? I can’t see any across those four torsos. Maybe they weren’t as ubiquitous back then as they are today? In fact when did the world become obsessed with tattoos? Maybe I should add the word ‘visionary’ to that earlier description of mine of Jim Bob and Fruitbat?

Whatever happened to Jimmy Nail? From 1984 to the end of the 90s, he was a colossus of the entertainment world. The star of ratings gobbling TV shows like Auf Wiedersehen, Pet and Spender whilst simultaneously having a career as a pop star with huge hits like “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore” and “Ain’t No Doubt”, the guy was everywhere. By the time 1994 was coming to an end, he was on to his next successful project which combined both worlds. Crocodile Shoes was a TV series that told the story of a Newcastle factory worker who becomes a county and western star with Nail not only in the starring role but also writing it. It ran for two series and thirteen episodes finishing in 1996.

Nail also wrote half the songs on the album that accompanied the series with Prefab Sprout’s Paddy McAloon also contributing three tracks. Off the back of the success of the show, the album was also a runaway sales monster becoming the Christmas No 2 album that year. That’s some units shifted right there. The title track was the lead single and the biggest hit (No 4) from the album as well as being the theme tune to the series. I have to say that I don’t mind Nail and his rather acquired taste voice but “Crocodile Shoes” never really appealed to me that much, being a bit too maudlin for my ears. The follow up, “Cowboy Dreams” written by the aforementioned McAloon, is a great tune though. Maybe if I’d actually watched the show (which I somehow managed to miss despite having liked his previous projects), I might have had more fondness for it.

After the second series finished (which gave rise to a second album of tunes from the show), Nail moved into films with a role in Evita (alongside Madonna) and then returned to more familiar territory with the movie Still Crazy about a fictional 70s rock band (clearly based on the Pink Floyd story) in which he played bassist Les Wickes. It’s not a bad little film although some of the performances by the likes of Bill Nighy and Timothy Spall are a bit hammy. In the meantime, Nail kept recording music with an album called “Big River” coming between the Crocodile Shoes soundtracks and an album called “Tadpoles In A Jar” in 1999 as well as a Best Of called “The Nail File” in 1997.

And then…well, if not nothing then very little. There was one final album in 2001 and that was it for the musical arm of his career and acting wise, he just seemed to stop working. He played a character called Clayface the Goblin (no seriously) in something called The 10th Kingdom in 2000 and then only resurfaced eight years later with a show I don’t know at all called Parents Of The Band which he co-created and starred in. The only trace of him since then was his stint in Sting’s musical The Last Ship on Broadway in 2014. I hope the guy’s OK these days. His Wikipedia entry under the section Personal Life just says he has two children, lives in London and supports Newcastle United but then doesn’t everyone from Newcastle?

We all know “We Have All The Time In The World” by Louis Armstrong from the 1969 James Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (the one with George Lazenby as 007) but it didn’t actually become a hit until 25 years later when it was used in a Guinness advert. And yet I can’t recall this rerelease at all despite it going all the way to No 3 and being tipped for the Christmas No 1 spot at one point. To be honest, I barely remember the advert despite it being very stylish and classic looking. The ‘surfer’ ad with the horses bursting from waves? Absolutely – it’s iconic. That bloke doing weird dancing whilst waiting for his pint to settle? Of course and selling bucket loads of that “Guaglione” mambo tune? This one though that was named “Infinity” by the ad agency? Nope.

Obviously the record company couldn’t use the actual Guinness advert to promote the single so this hastily cobbled together looking promo had to do instead. Some of the imagery used where the film is in black and white with splashes of over exaggerated colour as a counterpoint seems to me to have echoes of the girl in the red coat sequence from the Schindler’s List film that came out this year which seems an odd choice given the subject matter of that movie. Maybe it was coincidence. The little girl in the video looks like Mara Wilson from the Matilda film though I don’t think it is. Talking of coincidence though, the woman who played Miss Honey in Matilda was also in Schindler’s List. I’m going off on a tangent now though. Back to Satchmo and predictably, a Greatest Hits album was released called “The Pure Genius Of Louis Armstrong: We Have All The Time In The World” after the success of the single. Never missed a trick did they these record companies?

Right who’s this? New Atlantic/U4EA featuring Berri? WHO?! My research tells me that there was a hit called “I Know” in 1992 by New Atlantic but I can’t recall it (and I probably reviewed it as well) but it seems this was the same people (a duo from Southport as it goes). So that’s the introductions done but this whole thing is completely confusing to me. Firstly, this dance version of “Sunshine After The Rain” (originally a hit for Elkie Brooks in 1977) probably isn’t the single that people remember as being a hit around the mid-90s. There was another release of the track the following year which was credited just to Berri and somehow that subtle change of marketing turned it from a No 26 hit in 1994 to a No 4 hit in 1995. The other reason that I find this hit troublesome is that I always conflate it with “Sunshine On A Rainy Day” from 1991 by Zoë. You know what? I’m going to give my poor brain a break and just leave this one at that until it does a Carly Simon and comes around again in the 1995 BBC4 TOTP repeats.

Here’s another hit I don’t remember and to be fair to the artist who is routinely accused of making music that all just sounds the same, this one is slightly different so you might have thought it would have stuck out in my memory cells but no. Sorry Jay Kay.

Yes, it’s Jamiroquai who are performing live by satellite from a rooftop somewhere in Paris. Now the main thing that I’m taking from this ‘exclusive’ is how badly executed it is. What’s the most famous landmark in Paris? The Eiffel Tower yeah? Has to be. So when they set up this location shoot, presumably somebody asked if the Eiffel Tower can be seen in the background? “Yes” would have come the reply. Surely the conversation should then have gone “Great! Position the cameras so that it’s in shot the whole time while Jay Kay is singing” shouldn’t it? That would have been a perfect example of head producer Ric Blaxill’s vision for this slot as demonstrated by Bon Jovi performing against a backdrop of Niagara Falls recently. Instead, one of the most instantly recognisable structures in the world spends most of the time tantalisingly just out of sight. What a wasted opportunity!

For the record, “Half The Man” was the second single from sophomore album “The Return Of The Space Cowboy” and peaked at No 15. However, if you want a record about not being the man you used to be, may I respectfully suggest this instead:

I seem to spend a lot of time writing the words “I don’t remember this” in my blog despite the fact I spent the time they were in the charts working in a mainstream record shop and here I go again but how the hell do I not remember this one. Or rather this video. When I think about the emergence of Kylie Minogue from the shackles of her Stock, Aitken and Waterman past as a serious dance artist, the two things that come to mind are her No 2 single “Confide In Me” and that she was signed to trendy dance label Deconstruction. I don’t recall any of the follow up singles of which “Put Yourself In My Place” was the first. I can only conclude that I can’t have caught this particular TOTP that showed Kylie’s video for the song in which she goes nude. Intentionally an homage to the famous scene in 1968 sci-fi film Barbarella starring Jane Fonda, it probably loses sight of its primary function which is to promote the song but instead it created more of a story about itself. Maybe the director was working on the adage any promotion is good promotion.

The song itself is pretty good, a slick piece of pop balladry that Kylie’s traditionally criticised vocals suit perfectly. It probably deserved better than a peak of No 11 and certainly deserved better than being overshadowed by its infamous video.

To say that Sinéad O’Connor is such a recognisable name in the world of music, her collection of Top 40 singles is rather small. This one, “Thank You For Hearing Me”, was only her fifth under her name alone since her debut hit “Mandinka” in 1988 and the only subsequent chart entries she had were as a featured artist on records by the likes of Ian Brown, Shane MacGowan and Massive Attack. Somehow though, she seems to have clocked up a fair few TOTP appearances in 1994. I think this might be the third. There was one for her song from the soundtrack to In The Name Of The Father which didn’t end up being a hit and then wasn’t she on the other week in the album chart slot doing “Fire On Babylon” from her “Universal Mother” album? I think she was. This one though was for a bona fide Top 40 song when “Thank You For Hearing Me” peaked at No 13 as the official lead single from the album. It was a deserved hit as well. A hypnotic, almost hymnal composition; this was the kind of material that suited her voice perfectly and was a good vehicle to get people talking about her talents again rather than her sometimes controversial antics.

Four days before this TOTP aired, ex The Byrds and Crosby, Stills And Nash member David Crosby was not having a good time. He’d been in hospital having a seven hour liver transplant operation. Happily, it was successful and he lived for just under another 30 years before his death earlier in 2023 aged 81. One of his co-members of that California supergroup, Stephen Stills, was presumably having a better time of it as his 1970 solo hit “Love The One You’re With” was having a bit of a revival courtesy of Luther Vandross who had recorded it for his covers album “Songs” and released it as a single. He’d recently been in the charts with a cover of Lionel Richie’s “Endless Love” as a duet with Mariah Carey of course. Having got used to not being on stage on his own, he’s recruited a huge choir to back him on his performance here. It all kind of sits together pretty well but it didn’t win over the UK record buying public and it peaked at a lowly No 31. Mind you that was six places higher than the Stephen Stills original (it was a much bigger hit in the US) and a whopping sixteen places higher than the cover by Bucks Fizz in 1986. The follow up to the surprise, career reviving “New Beginning (Mamba Seyra)”, its lack of success was seen as the final nail in the coffin of their time as chart stars and they never returned to the UK Top 40 again.

Pato Banton’s time at the top of the charts has come to an end as Baby D takes over for a two week stint with “Let Me Be Your Fantasy”. Now, a quick listen to the lyrics of this one should be enough to get a handle on what the song is about. Apparently nobody at the BBC was listening otherwise there would have surely have been a “We Call It Acieed” style furore. It’s essentially a musical exaltation of the effects of the drug ecstasy. Check these lyrics out:

Come take a trip to my wonderland
Let’s spread our wings and fly away
Lotions of love flow through your hands
See visions, colours everyday
Let me feel your warm embrace
Release the colours in your mind

Songwriters: Floyd Dyce
Let Me Be Your Fantasy lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Bucks Music Group, The Royalty Network Inc., Warner Chappell Music, Inc

The track uses words like ‘trip’, ‘higher’ and, in one line, even the word ‘ecstasy’. Good job Mike Read had long since left the BBC.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine	Let’s Get Tattoos	I didn’t…buy the record or get a tattoo
2	Jimmy Nail	Crocodile Shoes	Nah
3	Louis Armstrong	We Have All The Time In The World	No
4	New Atlantic/U4EA featuring Berri	Sunshine After The Rain	Negative
5	Jamiroquai	Half The Man	Nope
6	Kylie Minogue	Put Yourself In My Place	I did not
7	Sinéad O’Connor	Thank You For Hearing Me	It’s a no from me
8	Luther Vandross	Love The One You’re With	Not for me thanks
9	Baby D	Let Me Be Your Fantasy	And no

Disclaimer

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001mnym/top-of-the-pops-24111994

TOTP 17 NOV 1994

Posted on June 16, 2023 by 80stastic

Woah! Hold on a minute! What happened to November?! Yes, we’ve time jumped and missed the shows broadcast on the 3rd and 10th of that month. Why? Well, they feature R.Kelly and Gary Glitter who, given the charges brought against them and subsequent convictions in later years, have been removed from the schedules on the grounds of sensitivity. I’ve checked online archives to see what we missed and can report that they were presented by Kylie Minogue (dammit!) and Bruno Brookes (meh) and featured a fair few hits that we’d already seen so no loss there but also performances by the likes of Terrorvision (“Alice, What’s The Matter”), Eternal (“Oh Baby I”) and The Beautiful South (“One Last Love Song”). I guess we’ll all have our opinions on whether missing these is a shame or a relief.

There was certainly relief in my work life at this time. After spending five months working at the Our Price store in Piccadilly, Manchester where I’d pretty much hated every minute, I’d got a return move back down the road to the Market Street store from where I’d come. I think I’d made it clear to area management that I wasn’t happy a few times and they finally took pity on me and arranged a transfer for me. I can’t remember the exact details of the move in terms of who went where on the managerial merry-go-round but what I do recall is that the Sunday before I started back at Market Street on the Monday morning, me and my wife went to see an Elvis Costello gig at the Manchester Opera House which was a great distraction from my nerves of starting over again at Market Street. Yes, I’d pushed for a move and yes I knew the store as this would be my third time working there but I was moving right up against Christmas and I hadn’t done one there since I was a sales assistant in 1991. I needn’t have worried – it would turn out to be one of the smoothest Christmases I ever worked. However, I would be on my travels again in the new year as the store closed down and was sold.

In more nationwide news, on the Saturday after this TOTP aired, the UK’s first National Lottery draw took place. Years behind other countries who’d had such a scheme in place for years, it seems strange now to imagine that there was a time when the UK didn’t. These days, of course, there all sorts of different draws and games for us to pursue the dream of phenomenal wealth but in 1994, this was a huge deal. As I recall there was a deluge of advertising and promotion for the lottery and it seemed like everyone you knew was going to buy a ticket. It became a national obsession. I remember a work colleague being absolutely convinced that the number 1 would come up and so was definitely going to choose it as one of his six numbers (it didn’t come up). I’m pretty sure my wife and I bought a ticket and like everyone else – except the seven lucky winners who shared a jackpot of just under £6 million – won bugger all.

The fact that most of us are never going to win a substantial amount didn’t stop the notion of the lottery from becoming completely embedded in our culture. Workplace syndicates became commonplace. Certainly at one of the Our Prices that I worked in, someone was always allotted the task of doing the lottery for the whole shop. It was a horrible responsibility; there would always be a somebody who didn’t have the money to chip in their pound so then you were into the issue of whether another person would put in for them and keeping a tally of who had paid and who still owed. The real dilemma though was the idealogical one of what would happen if the syndicate won; should the person who hadn’t put in that week and technically hadn’t bought a ticket share in the spoils? One of my managers used to refer to putting into the lottery syndicate as ‘sanity money’ – what if you were the only member of staff who hadn’t bothered and then the syndicate won big and all gave up working at the shop and you were the only person there on Monday morning? It was a persuasive argument.

That’s quite a lengthy intro and I haven’t even started on the music yet! Tonight’s ‘golden mic’ host is Michelle Gayle who just the other week was performing her hit “Sweetness” on the show. That’s some clever diversifying right there. Opening tonight are M People who are still in their imperial phase with new single “Sight For Sore Eyes” being the sixth of eight consecutive Top 10 hits for the group. It was also the lead single from their third album “Bizarre Fruit” which had been released on the Monday before this TOTP aired. In fact, so confident were they in their success continuing that they would re-issue the album with a slight re-jigging of the tracks (their version of “Itchycoo Park by the Small Faces was added) and doubled it up with an extra CD of live versions and remixes, called it “Bizarre Fruit II” and sold it all over again! “Sight For Sore Eyes” was the opening track on both albums though and you can hear why. It’s a strong song even if it sticks to the successful M People template a tad too much – parts of it sound like they’d just rewritten “Moving On Up” – with Heather Small’s powerhouse vocals to the fore. Has there ever been a singer with such a misnomer as Heather who possesses one of the biggest voices around.

Now I wasn’t the only one moving on around this time and like my transfer to Market Street, Suede’s was also born out of a period of unhappiness. After the breakdown of the working relationship between Brett Anderson and Bernard Butler had resulted in the latter’s departure earlier in the year, the band had moved quickly to recruit 17 year old Richard Oakes to help take the band forward. Their sophomore album “Dog Man Star” was released in the October and it’s perhaps no surprise that, given its difficult gestation (aside from the issues within the Anderson/Butler axis, Brett was also deep into a drug habit) that it was a heavy, dark record with themes of tragedy and self loathing. And yet, in amongst the gloom was the song that Brett regards as Suede’s best ever. “The Wild Ones” was the second single taken from the album and really should have been a bigger hit than its No 18 peak. Maybe it just got caught up in the busy pre-Christmas release schedules? An epic ballad recounting the tale of a withering romance, it was at turns dramatic yet not histrionic and full of passion and melody. Brett says he’d been listening to artists like Scott Walker and Jacques Brel at the time of writing it and was named after the Marlon Brando film The Wild One. Yet for all those stated influences, the very first line of the lyrics is straight out of the Roxy Music songbook:

There’s a song playing
On the radio
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Brett Anderson / Bernard Butler
The Wild Ones lyrics © Kobalt Music Services Ltd Kms

Change just one word and you’ve got the chorus of “Oh Yeah”. Later on, there seems a line that is almost pinched verbatim from the Pet Shop Boys:

Running with the dogs today
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Brett Anderson / Bernard Butler
The Wild Ones lyrics © Kobalt Music Services Ltd Kms

Again, change one word and it’s the hook from “Suburbia”. I’m not criticising – surely there’s an element of soaking up influences (either consciously or subconsciously) attached to every songwriter but those two lines did leap out at me.

Suede would release just one single in 1995 (a third from “Dog Man Star” called “New Generation”) and then they would retreat and regroup for 18 months before returning in 1996 with the massive selling and much more mainstream album “Trash”.

Ah, it’s another of those dance floor bangers (or something). We started 1994 with a rerelease of a dance track that would shoot to No 1 and we end the year (just about) with another one. “Let Me Be Your Fantasy” by Baby D was originally released in 1992 when it peaked at a lowly No 76. It remained popular in the clubs though and a rerelease saw it catapulted to the top of the charts for two weeks in November 1994. Now, I certainly had no idea about this at the time but my reaction had I known this bit of music trivia would have been the same as it is now that I do know and that is “No f*****g way!”. What am I talking about? The fact that Baby D was formed by Production House Records which itself was set up by one Phil Fearon who, if you know your 80s music, you will remember as fronting Galaxy who had hits with “Dancing Tight”, “What Do I Do”, “Everybody’s Laughing” and “I Can Prove It”. Yeah, that Phil Fearon! I know! Who would have thought the man behind those fairly lame pop hits would be responsible for what is widely regarded as one of biggest dance anthems ever. Indeed, one of the reasons “Let Me Be Your Fantasy” was even rereleased was because a poll of listeners to Kiss FM ranked it as their favourite tune of all time. Baby D herself (as in the vocalist) was Phil Fearon’s wife Dee Galdes-Fearon who had been one of the two women in Galaxy with him. Talk about keeping it in the family!

The track was presumably recorded with one eye on crossing over into the mainstream – that would explain the huge shout-a-long chorus that made it stand out from every other break beat house tune. I can imagine many a clubber hollering it at the top of their voices on the dance floor at the time (though not myself of course). One person who did give a rousing rendition of said chorus was a guy called Al who was the housemate of my friend Robin. They lived together for a while in Ruislip Manor in the London Borough of Hillingdon, West London. It’s towards the end of the Metropolitan line, zone 6 – miles from central London and a bugger to get back to from basically anywhere. One night, Al had been out on the lash and had managed to find his way home in the early hours of the morning. He crashed in through the front door waking Robin up in the process who came to the top of the stairs to see what was going on. The sight that met his eyes was Al, off his tits, shouting “Let Me Be Your Fantasy” before passing out and collapsing onto the hall floor. I think Robin’s comment was “Good work, sir” and indeed, it was a fine effort by Al, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Baby D will be at No 1 soon enough and for two weeks but, even with just a short amount of time to go until Christmas, it was never going to hold on to claim the position of festive chart topper.

Just as “The Wild Ones” is Brett Anderson’s favourite Suede song then “End Of A Century” has a shot at being one of my favourite tracks by Blur. I think they were really getting into their stride with this one. More melodic and subtle than the brashness of the in-yer-face “Parklife”, it was the fourth and final single from that album. Damon Albarn is on record as saying it was the wrong choice of track for a single and they should have opted for “This Is A Low” instead. However, as much as I like that song (and it is superior in nearly every way), in terms of radio play, I think “End Of A Century” is much more suited as a single. Just my opinion.

I think I was won over with this one from the opening two lines:

She says, “There’s ants in the carpet”
The dirty little monsters, eating all the morsels, just pickin’ up the rubbish
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Damon Albarn / Graham Leslie Coxon / Alexander Rowntree David / Alexander James Steven
End of a Century lyrics © Warner/chappell Music Ltd, Kobalt Music Services Ltd Kms, Sony Music Publishing (uk) Ltd

Excellent stuff. As far as I can work out, the rest of the song seems to be about how a relationship can fall into a malaise when routine and the mundane are allowed to dominate and that even an event like the then forthcoming new millennium won’t make any difference just because said relationship is now in a new century. I think.

I’m guessing the brass player dressed as a pearly king was a tongue in cheek addition by the band, playing up to their Britishness which the album (and its success) was perceived to be based upon. I think The Jam may have beaten them to it by a few years though:

Never mind that Four Weddings And A Funeral was the top grossing film in the UK in 1994, surely one of the most significant of the year (Schindler’s List aside) was Pulp Fiction. Quentin Tarantino’s highly stylised crime story set new standards for the use of the phrase ‘cultural phenomenon’. Its lines of dialogue have passed into common vernacular and its disruption of the convention of narrative showed that storytelling doesn’t have to be linear (it surely influenced the Christopher Nolan directed Memento from 2000).

Then there was its soundtrack which would go three times platinum in the UK. Breaking with tradition, the film didn’t have a conventional score but instead featured songs from genres such as rock ‘n’ roll, surf music, pop and soul. One of those tracks was a cover of Neil Diamond’s “Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon” by American alternative rockers Urge Overkill. Formed in Chicago in 1986, their contribution to Tarantino’s soundtrack was surely their defining moment. Did I know this was originally by Neil Diamond at the time? No but it sounded so familiar even after just the first listen that I was pretty sure it wasn’t an original composition. To appreciate Urge Overkill’s version though, I think you need to listen to Neil Diamond’s. Now, they’re not a million miles apart but there’s something eerie and haunting about Urge Overkill’s interpretation that’s actually quite affecting. However, despite this TOTP appearance, they never got any higher than this week’s peak of No 37.

Looking at their Wikipedia entry, their roll call of band members is quite astonishing; not just because of how many names there are on it but also the nature of said names. Admittedly, some look like nicknames but check out some of these nomenclatures:

Nash Kato
Nils St. Cyr
Chris Frantisak
Grumpy “Crabnar”
Carnitas
Watt
Jack ‘The Jaguar’
Kriss Bataille
Onassis Rowan
Chuck Treece
Burf ‘Sandbag’ Agnew (my favourite)

However, watching this performance, if the lead singer had shown his hippy hair to be a wig and revealed himself as Christopher Walken, I wouldn’t have been surprised.

As we near Christmas (in 1994), there’s the inevitable glut of Best Of / Greatest Hits albums being released. Look at this list of artists that had such a product out around this time:

INXS
Bon Jovi
Chris Rea
Sade
Aerosmith
Sting
The Beautiful South

You can add to that New Order whose Best Of album was perhaps the most obvious of the year. Why? Well, they’d only recorded one album for new label London Records (1993’s “Republic”) and yet there were already stories emanating from within the band’s camp that relations were faltering and that there was no sign of them recording together again any time soon. Given that, it’s understandable that London wanted to do something with their new charges back catalogue and so a compilation album was always likely. However, there already was such an album in existence. 1987 had seen the band release their retrospective “Substance”, spearheaded by a new track called “True Faith”. Both the album and single were big successes with the former going platinum and the latter becoming their then highest charting single at No 4. I don’t suppose that was going to dissuade London from maximising profit on their act though and so a second Best Of was released four days after this TOTP aired.

Curiously titled “(the best of)” – no brackets, no points- and with the band’s name styled as NewOrder (all one word), its chart peak of No 4 showed there was still lots of appetite for the band out there. Like “Substance”, it was promoted by “True Faith” (albeit a remix officially titled “True Faith -94”). Unlike “Substance”, its track listing had some omissions. Where was “Temptation” and “Confusion” and why had they gone with the 1988 remix of “Blue Monday” instead of the original? I’m guessing it was the band’s decision rather than the label’s as, owing to never having signed a formal contract with Factory Records, they owned the rights to their songs and not Factory so when the latter went bankrupt nothing really changed copyright wise? Oh, I don’t know I’m not a music industry lawyer. What I do know is that the ‘94 version of “True Faith” peaked at No 9, that I can’t really tell the difference between that and its 1987 counterpart and that the accompanying video still looked great seven years on. The following year, a collection of remixes was released called “The Rest Of New Order” that did include versions of “Temptation” and “Confusion” and that was pretty much it from the band until the new millennium dawned.

Here’s a first view of an artist that I must admit a fondness for and although she has sold 50 million albums worldwide, won nine Grammys and was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame just this year, I’m never quite sure that she gets the credit she deserves. I suppose she must be respected by the industry given the final accolade on that list.

I’m talking about Sheryl Crow who is really the musical equivalent of Jamie Vardy in that success came to her at a relatively late age in the same way that Vardy’s elite football career did (he didn’t play in the Premier League until he was 27). Crow was even older at 32 when this single – “All I Wanna Do” was a hit. She’d been at it for years before this breakthrough though. She’d sang on commercial jingles for McDonalds and then toured as a backing vocalist for Michael Jackson no less on his Bad tour as well as recording backing vocals for Stevie Wonder, Barbara Carlisle and Don Henley. An aborted attempt at laying down her debut album meant that she returned to the drawing board before joining a songwriting collective who would help write songs for her actual debut LP “Tuesday Night Music Club”.

“All I Wanna Do” was the fourth single released from the album but the first to break through on any meaningful level in both the UK and US. In the former it would peak at No 4 which in the pre-Xmas rush was quite the achievement for a new artist whilst it stayed at No 2 for six weeks in the latter. You can hear why I think. A rambling yet joyous tune with a hopeful message and a killer hook in the chorus well delivered by Sheryl. It was, rather lazily, compared to “Stuck In The Middle With You” by Stealers Wheel but that does make a rather nice link with an earlier act on tonight’s show as that 1973 hit featured heavily in the Quentin Tarantino film Reservoir Dogs.

As I recall, “All I Wanna Do” attracted masses of airplay but despite its success, subsequent singles failed to scale its heights and it wasn’t until “If It Makes You Happy” and “Everyday Is A Winding Road” from her eponymous sophomore album that she would become a chart regular on these shores. As for this performance, Sheryl sells the song well and I like the fact that a fake bar has been set up to reflect some of its lyrics. A good effort all round.

From one solo female artist in the first flush of success to one who had been a household name since 1978. However, Kate Bush’s run of chart hits was coming to an end and it would take an American sci-fi drama series to reverse that trend in spectacular style 28 years on. Back in 1994 though, “And So Is Love” was, rather surprisingly, released as the fourth single from an album that had already been out for a year. Rather unsurprisingly then, it would peak at a lowly No 26 and would be Kate’s last single release for 11 years.

Apparently the guitar parts on “And So Is Love” were played by Eric Clapton (who dated Sheryl Crow for a while in the 90s) but it puts me in mind more of “Brothers In Arms” by Dire Straits. In truth though, the song is hardly there at all – it’s all trademark Bush breathy vocals and has an ethereal feel to it but it just sort of exists without really doing anything or going anywhere. I’m kind of surprised that it warranted an appearance on the show but I guess head producer Ric Blaxill was trying to restore the reputation of TOTP with huge, grandstanding gestures of having massive names appear and Kate Bush certainly fell into that category. As Michelle Gayle pointed out in her intro, it was Kate’s first time in the TOTP studio for nine years and would turn out to be her last. She would release two albums of new material since the turn of the Millennium and also a “Director’s Cut” album of remixes of tracks from “The Sensual World” and “The Red Shoes” projects before that rejuvenation of “Running Up That Hill (Deal With God)”. Who saw that coming? I suppose Stranger Things have happened.

Despite the two missed shows, Pato Banton is still No 1 with “Baby Come Back” though this would be its final week at the top. It’s the video again – did Pato ever get to perform his hit in the TOTP studio? I know he was there one week but he only got briefly interviewed by the presenter and gave the rather weak excuse that Ali and Robin Campbell of UB40 weren’t available and so he couldn’t do the song without them. Ah well.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	M People	Sight For Sore Eyes	No
2	Suede	The Wild Ones	Liked it, didn’t buy it
3	Baby D	Let Me Be Your Fantasy	Nope
4	Blur	End Of A Century	Not the single but I had the album
5	Urge Overkill	Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon	No but I had the Pulp Fiction soundtrack
6	New Order	True Faith – 94	No, nor the Best Of album but I had the Substance compilation
7	Sheryl Crow	All I Wanna Do	No but my wife did
8	Kate Bush	And So Is Love	No but my wife had The Red Shoes album it came from
9	Pato Banton	Baby Come Back	Nah

Disclaimer

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001mnyk/top-of-the-pops-17111994

TOTP 27 OCT 1994

Posted on June 13, 2023 by 80stastic

No, no, no, no, NO! Not Simon Mayo again! I can’t. I just can’t. I can’t deal with his smugness and tone deaf belief against all perceivable reality that he is somehow funny and entertaining. I can’t talk about every cringeworthy line he utters in this show – it’ll break me. Just know that he was as unfunny as ever. Jarvis Cocker had it right at the end of last week’s show when the guest presenter wrapped up his stint by saying “Try and watch next week, Simon Mayo will be presenting though”. He might as well have said “Try and watch next week, Simon Mayo will be presenting though so, you know, you’ll have to put up with that gobshite”. I’ll say no more about him…in this post anyway.

I also don’t have much to say about the opening act who are Snap! and are on the show for the third time with their single “Welcome To Tomorrow (Are You Ready?)”, hence why I’ve run out of any meaningful comment on them. What I have said before is that I didn’t mind the Turbo B-less version of the group and preferred this lighter sound that the new line up had brought with it. What I wasn’t sure about though was the staging of this TOTP performance. It looked like every expense had been spared when it came to the set. What is that backdrop meant to be depicting? Some sort of strange new world or planet? Was that an attempt at making a connection (however remote) with the song title? And then what the hell was that computer graphic of a moving target glitter ball all about? It all looked amateurish and crap frankly. Even Simon Mayo’s remark about it afterwards is justified but I’m not talking about him so I couldn’t possibly comment about his…erm…comment. The cumulative effect is that it reduced an act who had already scored two memorable UK No 1s that decade so far to looking like Eurodance also rans. If rhythm was a dancer, you had to be serious about it didn’t you?

You know that thing where an artist is so well known for just one song that it almost comes as a surprise that they ever released anything else? I think we might have another example of it in China Black. During the Summer of 1994, “Searching” had been such a big hit for this duo (7 weeks in the Top 20, 13 in the Top 40) that it was always going to be a struggle to follow it up. Follow it up they did though with a track called “Stars” that stuck to the template of its predecessor so closely that if it had been a race, you would have needed a photo finish to distinguish between the runners. Some more reggae influenced, radio friendly pop music? Certainly – we’ve got lots of that in stock. “Stars” though couldn’t replicate the success of “Searching” when it peaked at No 19. They did manage two further chart hits in 1995 but neither got near to breaching the Top 10.

*Other examples include The Boo Radleys, Aqua and Doctor And The Medics who all had further chart hits but which were overshadowed by “Wake Up Boo!”, “Barbie Girl” and “Spirit In The Sky” respectively.

I’ve said before here and in my 80s blog that I never really caught the boat going to Pink Floyd island. I mean, I can appreciate the majestic aural landscapes of “Dark Side Of The Moon” and the video for “Another Brick In The Wall” was a (scary) part of my childhood but they always seemed a bit over indulgent and that they were posh boys noodling to me. By 1994, my opinion hadn’t changed that much and certainly hadn’t been affected by the release of “The Division Bell” album. However, it did give them something that they were not renowned for – two consecutive Top 40 singles. After Runrig soundalike tune “Take It Back” had charted earlier in the year, “High Hopes” would meet its title by securing a chart peak of No 26.

Nothing to do with that song about ants and rubber tree plants popularised by Frank Sinatra, this was a mournful, heavy density rock ballad that spoke of the band’s days growing up in Cambridge when things all seemed much simpler. Now I can appreciate that sentiment much more now as a middle-aged man of 55 than I could as a 26 year old back in 1994 – hell, this blog is all about nostalgia – but it still sounds too doom laden to me. Built around a constant ringing church bell (the clanging chimes of doom anyone?), it’s very epic and cinematic (I can imagine it working well in a film) but I couldn’t listen to it over and over I don’t think. It would be the last new material released by the band for 20 years.

My resistance to berating Simon Mayo has lasted three songs because I can’t let this one go. After the Pink Floyd video finishes, he glibly announces “And that’s Pink Floyd who are currently on tour with The Scaffold as support but then you probably knew that”. What was he on about? He was referring to a near tragedy that happened on the first night of 14 dates played by the band at Earl’s Court. Early in the concert, a scaffolding stand (block 9) holding 1,200 fans collapsed throwing hundreds of people 20 feet to the ground. 96 were injured with 36 needing hospital treatment. And that was considered a suitable topic by Mayo for a throwaway line that he clearly thought showed how clever he was. A total and utter bellend.

Another of those artists now that could be added to that list of acts who are so well known for one hit that you forgot they released anything else. Rozalla burst onto the scene in 1991 with “Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good)” but could you name any of her other songs? I couldn’t and I’ve probably written about them in this blog! Anyway, this one was called “You Never Love The Same Way Twice”. The music press at the time saw this as a return to form for Rozalla after a couple of previous missteps but it sounds rather lacklustre and uneventful to me. She seemed to have restyled herself as Gabrielle at this point with her short hair stuck flat to her head. I guess she never had the same hairstyle twice.

Sting is back in the studio for a performance of his “When We Dance” single. A new track to promote his Best Of album, it would be his biggest ever solo hit peaking at No 9. He’s on the double bass this week bringing back memories of that video for “Every Breath You Take”:

As ever, there’s a story behind its appearance and also as ever, @TOTPFacts has the details:

That is not just a prop – Sting used to play double bass in a trad jazz band called the Riverside Men before The Police. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 2, 2023

Sting would return with the second new track called “This Cowboy Song” to support that Best Of album in the new year and it featured this week’s No 1 artist. He went on to release a further two studio albums by the end of the decade bringing the number he recorded in the 90s to four. Whatever you think about him, you can’t deny he’s prolific.

Seriously?! A third outing for the Niagara Falls performance of “Always” by Bon Jovi?! In the show’s defence, the single was experiencing a resurgence of sales and was going back up the charts. It had already peaked at No 2 once and dropped down a couple of places but had just moved from No 4 to No 3 this week on its way to a second peak of No 2 where it stayed for a further two weeks. That’s an awful lot of number twos! Ahem.

There’s actually a Bon Jovi tribute act called Bon Jovi Always but then there’s also, confusingly, one called Always Bon Jovi. Hmm. Then there’s Bon Giovi, The Bon Jovi Experience, Born Jovi and Non Jovi. I think my favourite though is Wrong Jovi which might appeal to my friend Robin, who, on hearing the news that my son had discovered the song “Livin’ On A Prayer” and liked it, said that this was like pissing from the top of a multi-story car park – wrong on so many levels.

After being less than impressed with the line up so far in tonight’s show, here’s somebody interesting at last. I didn’t pick up on Green Day immediately but I probably should have. A US punk three piece but who also knew about melody, I’d completely missed their major label debut album “Dookie” when it was released in the February of 1994. I think I first became aware of them in the August when I had to cover at the Our Price store in Rochdale where I used to work and an ex-colleague of mine called Emma said to me “Haven’t you heard the Green Day album? Don’t you know Basket Case?”. I hadn’t and I didn’t. Emma was into quite extreme stuff like the Riot grrrl movement and industrial artists like Meat Beat Manifesto so I assumed Green Day might be similar but I was completely wrong. And yet I ignored them for quite some time until “Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)” which was a song so brilliant that it was un-ignorable. Back in 1994 though, “Welcome To Paradise” was a No 20 hit and initially appeared on their independently released 1991 album “Kerplunk” but was re-recorded for “Dookie” and it races along convincingly and knocks everything else on the show into a cocked hat. For me though, their 2004 album “American Idiot” is their pinnacle; indeed so huge was it that it outgrew the album format and morphed into a musical. The band’s legacy includes 90 million record sales worldwide, 20 Grammy nominations (5 of which were won) and being voted as the best punk rock band of all time by Rolling Stone magazine.

I used to work with someone in York who was completely obsessed with lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong or, more accurately his looks. The only look I’m going to comment on though is the classic three person band line up of guitar, bass and drums that Green Day had which gives me a fond memory of The Jam. They’ve been acknowledged as having influenced the likes of Fall Out Boy, Sum 41 and Blink-182 though I think I would add Northern Irish punk rockers Ash to that list.

It’s time for the album chart feature now but as with many a track that is showcased in this slot, it would ultimately end up being released as a single and will be appear on a future TOTP down the line. This week’s incumbent is “Let It Rain” by East 17 from the album “Steam”. Despite not matching the chart topping status of their debut “Walthamstow”, “Steam” actually sold twice the amount of copies of its predecessor. I guess the power of a Christmas No 1 shouldn’t be underestimated.

We’re getting ahead of ourselves though (mind you so were East 17). For now, “Steam” had only been out for a couple of weeks but qualified for a spot on TOTP by being at No 4 in the album chart. However, instead of highlighting “Stay Another Day” (their label London Records must have known they would be releasing it for the Christmas market shortly), “Let It Rain” was chosen and it would eventually be released as a single as the follow up to its more famous chart topper. It’s not one of their best by any standard. The intro by Tony Mortimer is quite something though triggering memories of The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown’s “Fire” or maybe Spinal Tap’s “Stonehenge” even.

It’s Sting’s mate Pato Banton now and he’s the new No 1 after deposing Take That after just two weeks. However, he advises Mayo in a pre-song chat that he can’t perform “Baby Come Back” as Robin and Ali Campbell (or the ‘UB guys’ as Pato refers to them) aren’t available so it’s the promo video again this week. It’s split into colour and black and white sections with the latter reserved for Robin and Ali who are portrayed as pop stars performing on a music show in the 60s (hence the black and white tint). Are they meant to be someone akin to The Righteous Brothers because they come across more like Robson and Jerome to me.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Snap!	Welcome To Tomorrow (Are You Ready?)	Nope
2	China Black	Stars	Nah
3	Pink Floyd	High Hopes	No
4	Rozalla	You Never Love The Same Way Twice	I did not
5	Sting	When We Dance	Negative
6	Bon Jovi	Always	Robin would be proud of me – no
7	Green Day	Welcome To Paradise	It’s another no
8	East 17	Let It Rain	Didn’t happen
9	Pato Banton	Baby Come Back	And no

Disclaimer

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001mffl/top-of-the-pops-27101994