80stastic

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

TOTP 20 OCT 1994

Posted on June 9, 2023 by 80stastic

Ah, now this one should write itself. The ‘golden mic’ host this week is the idiosyncratic Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker. He’ll give me plenty of material to comment on surely? Thinking back now though, just how big a name was Jarvis in the Autumn of 1994 and therefore how big a coup was it for TOTP to have lured him on to present the show? Well, I would suggest this was before Jarvis and his band went into the stratosphere off the back of the “Different Class” album and the “Common People” single which both appeared the following year and indeed it was 14 months before his bum wafting protest in the direction of Michael Jackson at the 1996 BRIT Awards but Pulp were certainly more famous than they had ever been in their career which was already into its 16th year by then. They’d finally gotten themselves two Top 40 hits and their 1994 album “His ‘n’ Hers” had gone Top 10 and been nominated for the Mercury Music Prize. So maybe not a household name but certainly well known enough to music fans and seeing as TOTP was the BBC’s flagship music show then it was an understandable if a bit of a leftfield choice.

P.S. After all of my musings above about how Jarvis came to be tonight’s host, here’s the ever reliable @TOTPFacts with the true story that I’ve just found. Why do I bother?!

This was the first of two #TOTP editions presented by Jarvis Cocker – his other being the "big Britpop battle" showdown between Blur and Oasis on 24 Aug 1995. Producer Ric Blaxill had been impressed by Jarvis' performance on Pop Quiz, broadcast on 2 July. https://t.co/41IsqnCBL4
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 2, 2023

Jarvis does seem ever so slightly nervous as he introduces himself (for the uninitiated) describing himself as lead singer of The Pulp. The Pulp Jarvis? You may have finally proved yourself to be the real deal but you didn’t need a definite article to do so. He also seems to be a little scared of timings and leaving any dead air lingering as he introduces the first act tonight Michelle Gayle and slips in an unnecessary “Here we go” at the last second. Nerves I guess. Anyway, Michelle’s record “Sweetness” is inside the Top 10 on its way to a peak of No 4 and she’s selling it well in this energetic performance. Michelle was married to footballer Mark Bright for 12 years making her one of a long line of pop stars who had relationships with players of the beautiful game. Going back as far as the 1950s you had England captain Billy Wright who was married to Joy Beverley of The Beverley Sisters pop group. Fast forward to the 90s and we saw Louise marry Liverpool midfielder Jamie Redknapp though their love proved not to be eternal with the couple divorcing in 2017. Perhaps though there is no bigger pop/football fusion than the ultimate 90s power couple David and Victoria Beckham. A Manchester United pin up and a Spice Girl? The papers and the magazines couldn’t get enough of them and despite rumours of an affair by Becks, they are still together four children and over 20 years later. Into the new millennium there was Shakira and Gerard Piqué, Ashley and Cheryl Cole and Perrie Edwards and Alex Oxlade- Chamberlain. Sadly only one of those couples are still together. Less sweetness, more sweet…well…less then.

Jarvis gets himself into a bit of a muddle with his next intro for Let Loose and their single “Seventeen”. The follow up to the surprisingly enduring “Crazy For You”, it didn’t have the same pop credentials of its predecessor and, on reflection, is quite an unremarkable pop song despite being written by Nik Kershaw who knew his way around a decent tune. Never mind all that though, what was Jarvis banging on about? Firstly, he introduces the watching audience to the show – wouldn’t he have been better doing that at the very top of the show rather than one song in? Then he tries to illicit some humour from the fact that Let Loose have gone straight into the charts at No 15 despite their song being called “Seventeen” before feigning confusion and then saying “Who’s Let Loose? Them!”. Sorry, where was the punchline in all that or have I missed something? For the record, “Seventeen” peaked at No 11 and was a rerelease having originally peaked at No 44 when first out earlier in the year.

Reacting to the title of the next song in the show, Jarvis starts on a “Don’t do drugs kids” warning with his tongue firmly inserted in his cheek. Within a year Pulp would release the single “Sorted For E’s & Wizz” which would cause all sorts of undeserved outrage in the tabloids. For now though, it was all about the booze and fags. “Cigarettes And Alcohol” was the fourth hit of 1994 for Oasis and their biggest so far peaking at No 7.

I once watched this interview below with Liam and Noel where the latter talked about how he’d not been sure initially about releasing a fourth single from debut album “Definitely Maybe” but when it placed higher in the charts than any of the others, he knew that the band were on to something big. It’s worth a watch. Noel talks about the accusations thrown at him about pinching the song’s guitar riff from “Get It On” by T-Rex (he didn’t give a shit unsurprisingly) and there’s also a nice insight into the way the band interacted with each other behind the scenes with Noel’s ‘Bonehead was a tutter’ tale. There was a time when I could have listened to Noel talk for ages but he seems to have turned into a reactionary, right-wing leaning arse of late. Who’d have thought it would be Liam that would turn out to be the more likeable one? By the way, Liam’s “Where’s the monkey?” comment was a reference to Michael Jackson’s chimp Bubbles. The talk of a fourth single off the album sounded too much to them like Jacko territory and his nine singles off “Thriller” or whatever it was and if they were going down that route then maybe they deserved a chimpanzee as a pet.

As for my opinion of “Cigarettes And Alcohol” as a song, yeah of course there’s the T-Rex similarity but I couldn’t ignore its power and I was in deep by then anyway. This seemed to be the point when the famous Liam Gallagher pronunciation of lyrics really kicked in with emphasis on words like ‘shine’ as ‘she-iiine’ and ‘aggravation’ as “aggra-vay -sheon’ which would lead to many a parody and impression

By the way, it strikes me that Noel wasn’t the first to borrow that guitar riff anyway (although he did recycle it again for the “Some Might Say” single). Nevertheless, Marc Bolan himself seemed to have been listening to “Little Queenie” by Chuck Berry when he wrote “Get It On”. Then there’s the likes of Thunder with “Dirty Love”, Robbie Williams with “Old Before I Die” and this by ex-Duran Duran guitarist Andy Taylor:

We had a support band on TOTP the other week who found fame (albeit it fleetingly) under their own steam in the shape of 2wo Third3 who had toured with East 17. Well, there’s another one tonight as it’s a case of anything East 17 can do, Take That can do better. Ultimate KAOS (as with 2wo Third3, another awful, awful name) had toured with the Manc boyband superstars and lo and behold found themselves in the charts themselves with their single “Some Girls” riding to No 9. This lot germinated in the mind of the ultimate arbiter on shit music Simon Cowell or rather he saw the seed of an idea that could be grown. You see, Ultimate KAOS started life as Chaos and they released a cover of Michael Jackson’s “Farewell My Summer Love” in 1992. When it flopped they were dropped by their record label but came to the attention of Cowell who picked them up, dusted them down, gave them a horrible new name and shoved them on tour with Take That.

Their debut single as Ultimate KAOS was “Some Girls” and it would prove to be their biggest of six UK Top 40 hits. It was clearly meant to sound like a 90s version of The Jackson 5 but it’s really not very good. Their song isn’t the biggest problem I have with them though. It’s the fact that their average age at the time of this TOTP performance was 14 with lead singer Haydon Eshun being just 9 and seeing them being screamed at by the studio audience which made for uncomfortable viewing. It wasn’t helped by Jarvis’s comment about them playing doctors and nurses in his intro. Eeeuuwww. Eshun would go onto appear on the West End in the Michael Jackson musical Thriller–Live and was also in Reborn In The USA as I mentioned in a recent post when discussing the aforementioned Michelle Gayle.

Now apparently the next act’s lead singer was greatly offended by Jarvis Cocker and his intro to his band, so much so that the latter had to reshoot it. In his first take he referred to INXS as ‘Inks’ – cheeky boy – but the version that went out still included him talking to a young lady in the studio audience and saying “Oh, so you prefer older men do you? Well, you might like the singer of this next group we’ve got coming on then…”. Ouch! At the time of the broadcast, Michael Hutchence was 34 whilst Jarvis himself was 31 so the latter’s comment about older men seem a bit barbed and uncalled for. He then compounds it by listing his most recent relationships in public – “he’s snogged Kylie and he’s now going out with the woman from the Brut advert” (Helena Christensen). All a bit intrusive no?

Anyway, it’s a second appearance by the Aussie rockers to perform “The Strangest Party (These Are The Times)”, a track to promote their first Best Of album. So what was the deal with the two people on four stilts that looked like human flies? Very odd especially the tongue action. A strange party indeed.

There’s only eight acts on tonight’s repeat as the BBC have edited out R. Kelly with his “She’s Got That Vibe” single (which would have followed INXS) after his conviction in 2022 for child pornography charges and three counts of enticing a minor. Needless to say, I won’t be discussing him any further than that.

If there was a female equivalent of the Oasis / Blur battle of Britpop, would it have been between Elastica and Sleeper? That’s probably a completely unfair, uninformed and oversimplified comparison (and there was probably no beef between them anyway) that I’ve drawn just because both bands had a high profile female lead singer but it’s out there now so I’m going with it. In my made up battle, I would have been in Sleeper’s corner I think. They appealed more to my pop sensibilities (I even saw them live) and, if I’m completely honest, I fancied Louise Werner more than Justine Frischmann. I know, I know; that doesn’t sound great but there it is. Not that I didn’t like Elastica at all – this song “Connection” (surely their best known is a tune alright) – but they always seemed a bit too…what? Intellectual? Intimidating? Something else beginning with ‘I’? Maybe it was as arbitrary a thing as me not happening to hear their album that much (despite me working in a record shop I should say so that’s a poor excuse really). Who knows? Clearly not me. Maybe I should revise my loyalties as they give a pretty good performance here and aren’t even put off by the fact that you can clearly see the stage set up for tonight’s headline act in one shot – a big blue neon sign spelling out his name seems slightly disrespectful to everyone else.

And so to that headline act. After all the success and fame in the 60s and early 70s, the hits dried up for Tom Jones. Not that he wasn’t busy. He played Las Vegas, had his own TV show This Is Tom Jones and toured extensively but maybe all that diversifying meant he took his eye off the ball when it came to chart success. He tried his luck with country music but the truth is that from 1972 to 1987, he only had three UK Top 40 hits which peaked at Nos 31, 36 and 40. And then from out of nowhere came…ahem…”The Boy From Nowhere”. Recorded for a concept album called “Matador” that would become a musical, it placed at No 2 on the charts and led to a revival of interest in Jones which culminated in a rerelease of “It’s Not Unusual” and a collaboration with the Art Of Noise on a version of Prince’s “Kiss”. Tom was suddenly hip. The spike in his commercial fortunes petered out though as the 80s ended. The first few years of the new decade saw just a couple of charity single cover versions as his only visits to the Top 40. By the end of the 90s though, another resurgence in popularity saw him top the album charts with his “Reload” project, a collection of cover versions recorded in collaboration with contemporary artists including Robbie Williams, The Cardigans and Stereophonics.

But before all that came a rather overlooked period in his career I feel which was “The Lead And How To Swing It” album and its hit single “If I Only Knew”. Although the former failed to shift huge units, the single was quite the banger but I never knew until now that it’s yet another cover. Originally recorded by experimental US rap group Rise Robots Rise, Sir Tom’s version was produced by the legend that is Trevor Horn and includes a melody that Jones came up with himself.

My wife loved Tom’s version and duly bought it and helped send it rather unexpectedly to No 11 though you rarely hear it on the radio these days. Clearly it was a precursor to the aforementioned “Reload” album and a definite indication that Tom wanted to try and remain current and valid rather than be known just for all those 60s hits. For that alone, he should be admired. Jones retains a huge presence and profile to this day. A coach on TV show The Voice UK, he released his last album “Surrounded By Time” in 2021 which topped the charts.

As for Jarvis’s input to Tom’s appearance here, I could have done without the staged handing back of a pair of knickers to a female member of the studio audience if I’m honest.

So who got the loudest screams? Tom Jones or Take That? What a show to have been in the audience for! The latter are there to perform their chart topper “Sure” and they do what is expected of them, whipping the crowd up into a frenzy by prancing and hopping around the stage. For some reason, Jason and Howard seem to be wearing their jackets inside out with the lining exposed whilst Gary is marked out as the leader of the gang with a leather jacket. This was the second of two weeks at No 1 so I’m guessing this will be the last we’ll see of them in these 1994 repeats. Not quite the stellar year for the band that 1993 was. They only released three singles and one of them somehow didn’t get to No 1. Still though, nice work if you could get it.

So how did Jarvis Cocker do on his debut as a presenter? I think I was a little disappointed on balance although I probably thought he was brilliant back in 1994. Yes, I’d rather him than Goodier or Mayo but I was expecting a little bit more. I’m probably very unfairly bringing 30 years perspective to my opinion that didn’t exist back then but if I had to grade him it would be could do better – C+.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Michelle Gayle	Sweetness	Nope
2	Let Loose	Seventeen	I did not
3	Oasis	Cigarettes And Alcohol	Not the single but I had the album. Didn’t we all?
4	Ultimate KAOS	Some Girls	Never happening
5	INXS	The Strangest Party (These Are The Times)	No
6	Elastica	Connection	Nah
7	Tom Jones	If I Only Knew	No but my wife did
8	Take That	Sure	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/m001mffj/top-of-the-pops-20101994

TOTP 13 OCT 1994

Posted on June 6, 2023 by 80stastic

Dearie me. The running order for this TOTP looks especially uninspiring. What am I going to say about this lot? Even Simon ‘Smug’ Mayo isn’t the presenter for me to throw the word equivalent of rotten apples at as it’s Mr Nice himself instead, the completely inoffensive Mark Goodier.

*Starts watching the show*

Woah! Stop right there! What am I looking at?! It’s as if Mark Goodier himself had just read my comments about him being incapable of being abused because he’s just too nice and said “Hold my beer!” because he’s had an image change and turned up as a dead ringer for Jazz Club host Louis ‘Nice’ Balfour from The Fast Show. What was he thinking?! This can’t have been deliberate on Goodier’s part to look like John Thomson’s character surely? Or is it just coincidence? Is it possible that Goodier may not have even seen the BBC’s new comedy series? It first aired on 27 September so maybe three episodes had gone out by the time this TOTP aired? Is it feasible that he missed them all and so had never laid eyes on the fictional Mr Balfour? Whatever the truth, there’s no denying the similarities.

Anyway, we start with Ant & Dec when they were still known as PJ & Duncan who I’m sure we’re on the show just the other week with “Let’s Get Ready To Rhumble” but are already back with a follow up called “If I Give You My Number”. This was their third consecutive UK Top 40 hit peaking at No 15. Their run of charting singles would extend to 13 in total if you only count those whilst they were an ongoing, active concern as a pop act (i.e. between 1993 and 1997). It’s 15 though if you count their 2002 World Cup song and a 2013 rerelease of the aforementioned “Let’s Get Ready To Rhumble”. That’s a lot of hits but how many could you name off the top of your head? Just “Rhumble” right? Don’t sweat it. I worked in record shops selling the damn things for the entirety of their pop career and I could only come up with two more than that – “Shout” and a cover of “Stepping Stone” made famous by The Monkees.

So what was “If I Give You My Number” like? Well it was somewhere on the spectrum of poor to shite clearly. It didn’t have the playground chant appeal of “Rhumble” but instead, in places, seemed like a poor attempt to rewrite “Jump” by Kris Kross. Given the what I always thought of as a manufactured confusion about which one was Ant and which one was Dec early in their TV career, were there signs of this being a genuine problem during their PJ & Duncan incarnation? Ant/PJ seemed to be cast as the one in a hat whilst Dec/Duncan was the one with the oh so mid 90s pair of curtains haircut. As Louis Balfour would say, “NICE”.

What better way to follow up two ex-Byker Grove stars rapping than with some bland Eurodance? As well as having a penchant for song titles which included the letter ‘U’ substituting for the word ‘you’ and the number ‘2’ for the word ‘to’ (“U Got 2 Know”, “U Got 2 Let The Music” and “U & Me”), Cappella now seemed to be branching out to corner the market in dance tracks with the word ‘Move’ in their title. “Move It Up” was their second hit of 1994 to follow this trend after “Move On Baby” earlier in the year. Look, I’m sorry but I really have had enough of Eurodance and I’m not sure I’ve got anything to say about Cappella…except…what’s the deal with the rapper guy sitting on a throne in this performance? The optics on it are rather jarring. A man sits in an elevated position on a symbol of power overlooking five women who seem to be cavorting about for his pleasure and entertainment whilst he appears displeased by their efforts. Who thought that was a good idea?

I’m wondering whether, by the mid 90s, Gloria Estefan was running out of ideas artistically speaking. I mean you could argue (if you were being extremely harsh) that she only ever had two anyway – the Latin flavoured, uptempo dance numbers (“Get On Your Feet”, “1-2-3”, “Rhythm Is Gonna Get You”) and the huge, schmaltzy ballads (“Anything For You”, “Don’t Wanna Lose You”, “Coming Out Of The Dark”). As I say, if you were being really harsh. However, by 1994 her last three albums had been a Greatest Hits, a Spanish language collection and a Christmas album. To complete the set, Gloria chose to record an album of cover versions, the ultimate sign that the creative well has run dry.

However, “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me” would prove to be a wise move by Gloria peaking at No 5 in the UK and selling 300,000 copies over here and 2 million in the US. Featuring covers of songs by the likes of Neil Sedaka, Elton John and Carole King. And Vicki Sue Robinson. Who? Well, she was an American actress and singer who’s biggest hit was the disco staple “Turn The Beat Around”. A Top 10 hit Stateside and on the track listing for many a disco compilation, it was never actually a hit in the UK. Gloria’s version would correct that when it peaked at No 21.

Before the next act, and in anticipation off the new No 1, we get a message from Take That from Belfast where they are on tour. It’s fairly inane stuff only made even noticeable by the fact that Robbie Williams sits with his back to camera for most of it presumably to make him look interesting…oh and to show off the fact that he’s had the figure ‘1’ shaved into the back of his head. How little did we know of the trauma to come for many a young teenage girl in just nine months time when Robbie would leave the band.

Right, this is all very odd. A record by Snap! that I don’t actually mind. “Welcome To Tomorrow (Are You Ready?)” wasn’t an in your face, bass pumping, klaxon blaring dance anthem like “The Power” but a lilting, whimsical tune that was actually melodic and almost charming. How had this happened? Well, yeah, obviously they’d gotten rid of rapper Turbo B. That seemed to be the crucial factor in the transformation. Like Cappella before them, Snap! seemed to be in the midst of a song title fetish that dictated that every single they released had to include some brackets somewhere. The single before this was called “Do You See The Light (Looking For)” and the one after it “The First The Last Eternity (Till The End)”. What was the point of them? Was it the Robbie Williams effect, trying to make them seem more exotic? There have been many an example of this practice down the years but perhaps two of the most irritating are “I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)” by George Michael and Aretha Franklin and “(Don’t You) Forget About Me” by Simple Minds. Just WHY?

Oh come on now! I believe this is the fourth appearance on the show by Lisa Loeb And Nine Stories with “Stay (I Missed You)” – BRACKETS! – which seems a bit over the top for a song that peaked at No 6. I mean it was in the Top 20 for six weeks, the Top 20 for nine and the Top 40 as a whole for thirteen so it had some legs I guess but four times on the show?! One was a live by satellite performance, one was the video and the other two were in the studio of which this one is just a repeat of the first time. Curiously, Goodier introduces it as “still a Top 10 record” which suggests it’s falling down the chart maybe? There’s no caption for it detailing its chart position so just what number was it at?

* Checks chart rundown*

So it was at No 8. Now given that the record stayed at No 8 for three weeks, it could be a non mover. I’ll check. Wait there…

*Checks chart for this week*

Yep. This was its second week of those three so definitely a non-mover. Historically, TOTP had a policy of only featuring records going up the chart plus the No 1. I can’t recall what the rule was about non-movers but clearly they were deemed still valid in 1994 by head producer Ric Blaxill. Surely this must be the last time on the show for this one though. Lisa, Go (I won’t miss you). BRACKETS!

A future No 1 incoming now as we get the video for Pato Banton and his cover of “Baby Come Back”. I should say Pato Banton featuring Ali and Robin Campbell of UB40 of course. As this will be No 1 soon enough, I think I’ll just leave these chart stats here for this post:

Topped UK singles chart for 4 weeks
Finished the year as the fourth best selling single of 1994 in the UK
Spent 10 weeks inside the Top 10
Spent 4 months on the Top 40
Actually started going back up the charts in week 15 of its chart life

Despite working in record shops for virtually the whole of the 90s, I quite often get tripped up in these reviews by songs or acts I’ve either erased from my memory banks or who had completely passed me by at the time. The next artist is an example of the latter circumstance but watching them back now, how on earth did I miss this uneven paving stone?

Apparently, 2wo Third3 (terrible, terrible name) were the brainchild of pop impresario/manager Tom Watkins whose artist roster also includes Pet Shop Boys and Bros in the 80s and East 17 in the 90s. His new creation were an openly gay four piece pop group – sort of like Bronski Beat but without the credibility and with a much cheesier sound. You’ll notice only three members on stage here though as the fourth member was the non-performing songwriter Richard Stannard who was nicknamed Biff and is represented by the cartoon character displayed behind the band. Well, East 17 had that dog logo – it must have been a thing with Watkins. Also a thing with him was style over content. 2wo Third3 was all about image and promotion – London design firm Form were employed to produce the group’s record sleeves and promotional material which included yellow rubber gloves (check the single glove the lead singer is wearing) and Biff plasters being sent out to fans and promoters. To help get their name (terrible as it was) out there, they supported East 17 on their 1994 world tour (of course they did).

All this promotion finally worked when, after their first two singles failed to crack the Top 40, they finally crowbarred their way in with “I Want The World”. I mean, it’s catchy and all and I’m guessing it went down a storm in gay clubs but it was never going to be anything more than a disposable, here today gone tomorrow pop tune. There is something captivating about their TOTP performance though. I’m not sure if it’s the Biff logo or the way the two keyboard players double up as dancers by deserting their instruments and coming to the front of the stage to bust some moves. Or is it the lead singer’s customised stool that allows him to tower above the studio audience? How very Julian Cope of him!

“I Want The World” peaked at No 20 whilst a follow up “I Want To Be Alone” (make your mind up!) made it to No 29 and that was it. An album was recorded but never released. Biff went on to write mega-hits for Spice Girls and 5ive (another terrible name) whilst the lead singer reappeared in 2007 as 4th Child (what was it with numbers in their names!). As for the other two, one went into music publishing and the other went back to being a plumber. Well, pop songs are all very well but who are you going to call when your toilet won’t flush eh?

The biggest name of the night makes an appearance now. Despite his huge success as part of The Police and a solo career that had delivered four massive selling albums (including two No 1s), when it came to singles, Sting was an underperformer – less sting, more minor skin irritation. Up to this point he’d never had a single even make the Top 10 let alone top the charts but “When We Dance” would finally provide him with one by peaking at No 9.

This was one of two new songs written to help promote a Greatest Hits album. “Fields Of Gold: The Best Of Sting 1984-1994” collected the singles from those four solo albums into a handy one stop shop and it was a big seller too. Triple platinum over here, double platinum in the US; it was official – Sting could shift albums. Those pesky singles though. Until “When We Dance”, his highest charting song was “Russians” which made No 12 in 1985 (I’m not counting his part in that trio with Bryan Adams and Rod Stewart on “All For Love” which made No 2). Even singles that still get played on the radio today and which you immediately associate with him like “If You Love Somebody Set Them Free” only made No 26.

Anyway, he finally got his Top 10 solo hit with “When We Dance” but I can think of loads of other Sting songs that are more deserving than this soporific, generic ballad. “Fortress Around Your Heart”, “Love Is The Seventh Wave”, “We’ll Be Together”…all more better tracks in my opinion. Mr Sumner had already done a very slow paced song with the word ‘dance’ in the title back in 1988 on his “…Nothing Like The Sun” album called “They Dance Alone”. Seems Sting liked a slow dance number.

Coincidentally, he collaborated the following year with the aforementioned Pato Banton on a cover of “Spirits In The Material World” for the Ace Ventura soundtrack. Inevitably with such a bad idea, it was awful. Sting obviously liked that sort of reggae hook up though as he would infamously make an album with Shaggy in 2018. He got away with it too – it went to No 9 in the charts.

And so to the new No 1 courtesy of Take That and we get an exclusive live performance of “Sure” from what I presume is their concert in Belfast from where they did their live message earlier in the show. Curiously though, it sounds and feels like a dress rehearsal – although we can see an audience there, we can’t hear them much. Maybe they were turned down in the mix by the sound people.

P.S. To say I was worried I wouldn’t have much to write about a fairly uninspiring line up, I seem to have written quite a bit. Go me!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	PJ & Duncan	If I Give You My Number	Of course not
2	Cappella	Move It up	Never happening
3	Gloria Estefan	Turn The Beat Around	Nope
4	Snap!	Welcome To Tomorrow (Are You Ready?)	Pleasant tune but no
5	Lisa Loeb And Nine Stories	Stay (I Missed You)	I did not
6	Pato Banton	Baby Come Back	Nah
7	2wo Third3	I Want The World	No
8	Sting	When We Dance	Another no
9	Take That	Sure	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/m001m6qq/top-of-the-pops-13101994

TOTP 06 OCT 1994

Posted on June 3, 2023 by 80stastic

We’ve got another ‘golden mic’ show as we enter October 1994 with guest presenters Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis. Having been ‘the other two’ in The Mary Whitehouse Experience alongside the first rock stars of comedy David Baddiel and Rob Newman, Punt and Dennis did go on to hugely successful careers in their own rights. Hugh Dennis is a regular on comedy panel shows and starred in long running BBC sitcom Outnumbered. Punt, who as I recall had to fend off multiple questions in interviews as to whether he was actually the son of Eric Idle of Monty Python fame due to their facial similarities, would pursue a career off camera as a script editor and screenwriter. In 1994, the first series of their own sketch show – The Imaginatively Titled Punt & Dennis Show – had just finished being broadcast so their public profile was possibly at its highest point, certainly as a double act anyway. As such, they were probably a good choice as guest hosts and TOTP head producer Ric Blaxill couldn’t have booked Baddiel and Newman instead as they weren’t speaking to each other by then (they wouldn’t be in each other’s company for another 24 years).

Anyway, that’s enough about the presenters, what about the music? Well, I’d talk about it if we had some but I’m not sure that the opening act meets the criteria to be defined as music. By Autumn 1994, the trend for reggaefied versions of old pop hits was so popular that just about every week the chart seemed to have a representative of the genre. In this Top 40 for example there’s Pato Banton and this guy, C.J. Lewis who’d already carved out two hits for himself with ragga covers of songs by The Searchers and Stevie Wonder. However, C.J. was after a third and turned to the 70s smash “Best Of My Love” by The Emotions to complete the hat-trick. Sticking to the formula, this was again a case of C.J. toasting his way through the verses with the chorus performed faithfully by vocalist Samantha Depasois. It really was a load of old tosh but C.J. got his wish and “Best Of My Love” became his third consecutive hit peaking at No 13.

When it came to original material though, the hits reduced in size dramatically before disappearing altogether. Subsequent singles “Dollars” and “R To The A” both peaked at No 34 and C.J. never returned to the Top 40 again. To paraphrase his namesake from the wonderful BBC comedy The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin, C.J. didn’t get where he is today without pinching other people’s songs and then bastardising them.

Is this a third studio appearance for Cyndi Lauper to perform her track “Hey Now (Girls Just Want To Have Fun)”? I think it is. As such, the TOTP producers have tried to shake things up a bit by having Cyndi arrive on stage by cadging a lift from one of the moveable studio cameras – you know, those huge ones that glide around on tracks to get smooth panoramic vistas? Yeah, those. It’s not a bad bit of staging actually. Cyndi then indulges in some hand shaking with the studio audience though I’m sure I detect some slight panic in her a couple of times as she struggles to free herself from an over enthusiastic audience member. They’re an appreciative crowd though who generate some large cheers for both Cyndi’s guitarist’s slide guitar work and for the star herself when she belts out a protracted long note. Talking of long, Cyndi’s career certainly has some length. She’s been at it for over 40 years now and just this year was announced as a nominee for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame though she didn’t make the cut, losing out to Kate Bush, Sheryl Crow and Missy Elliott.

By 1994, Madonna had been having hits for 10 years. So many of them in fact that this one – “Secret” – was her 35th consecutive Top 10 hit. As they’ve all come in the years that I’ve been blogging about TOTP repeats, that means I’ve probably had to write something about all of them. That’s a lot of words about Madonna. Do I have anything else left to say about her? Yeah, probably.

After the outrage and backlash she suffered from her “Erotica” album and Sex book project in 1992, it was time for Madonna to soften her image a bit and that meant a change of image. The Mistress Dita persona of “Erotica” gave way to a more classic ‘blonde bombshell’ look inspired by Hollywood actress Jean Harlow (whom had been one of those name checked on Madge’s “Vogue” single). Then there was her new album of which “Secret” was the lead single. Lyrically, “Bedtime Stories” explored themes of love as opposed to sex and musically it ventured into R&B and hip-hop to generally positive reviews. I must admit though to getting a bit lost (and dare I say it even bored) by Madonna at this point. I get that she wanted to keep evolving creatively as an artist but it all seemed a bit too knowing and contrived. “Secret” is very accomplished and well crafted but it just didn’t cut through with me.

Interesting to note though as a timepiece of the era, Madonna discussed the song on the internet (I had no idea what that even was in 1994) leaving an audio message for her fans and a snippet of the track online. It’s hard to comprehend in these times of 24hr online access to music platforms how exciting this must have been. To hear a song back then, you either had to catch it on the radio or a TV music show or actually go and buy your own copy. I guess you could tape it off the radio but that involved a certain amount of planning and commitment that you kids today wouldn’t understand. My god I’m an old fart.

OK, enough of my old man rants s here comes Michelle Gayle who’s just entered the Top 10 at No 9 on her way to a high of No 4 with “Sweetness”. In total, Michelle would rack up seven UK chart hits of which all bar one would make the Top 20.

However, it seems that Michelle wasn’t bothered about chart positions. During my research for this post (yeah, I do some!) I came across this clip of her during her stint on the 2003 ITV show Reborn In The USA. This was basically a travelling version of the X Factor but for fading pop stars who would compete with each other for audience votes in a different US city each week with the act getting the least being booted off. This video is of the four finalists Peter Cox (Go West), Tony Hadley (Spandau Ballet), Hayden Eshun (Ultimate Kaos) and Michelle discussing whether musical artists have a competitive streak. Tony was a definite ‘yes’ whilst Michelle just didn’t see it that way at all…

Go to 5:40

In direct contrast to Michelle’s view, in the early weeks of the show the competition between two of the participants became so acute that it spilled over into something else all together. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you one of the great TV spats. Give it up for Dollar Vs Sonia!

The live by satellite slot where artists performed against the backdrop of a well known landmark had given us perhaps its most memorable moment just the other week when Bon Jovi played “Always” with the stunning visual of the Niagara Falls behind them. Head producer Ric Blaxill wasn’t going to waste that bit of footage and so it gets another airing on this show.

Now I’ve had a (well documented) weakness for a bit of the Jovi in the past but I have to say that John’s lyrics are sometimes a bit obvious and cliched. In this one he sings about loving his baby forever and a day until the heavens burst but there are a couple of lines that made me think of something else completely. First there’s this…

It’s nothing but some feelings that this old dog kicked up
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Jon Bon Jovi
Always lyrics © Bon Jovi Publishing

And then this…

I’ve made mistakes, I’m just a man
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Jon Bon Jovi
Always lyrics © Bon Jovi Publishing

Dogs? Just a man? You know where I’m going don’t you?

Sometimes when writing this blog my synapses are firing and the words come easily. Sometimes they really don’t. This is one of those latter moments. I haven’t really got anything else to say about “Circle Of Life” by Elton John. Think man! Anything will do! Nobody’ll read it anyway let alone care. I’m writing this sat in a Costa Coffee shop listening to Arab Strap and inspiration is not striking.

*Looks at Elton’s discography in forlorn hope of sparking a kernel of an idea*

OK. Got something. How many soundtrack albums do you think Elton has written? Well, according to his discography it’s ten. TEN! How many could you name though? Yes, The Lion King obviously and it’s 2019 remake. How about Rocketman Elton’s biographical musical drama? Wikipedia counted it so that’s good enough for me. Billy Elliot: The Musical is on there of course. How about Gnomeo & Juliet though? Or Sherlock Gnomes? I’m afraid that they’re his as well (Why Elton? Why?). There’s also the musical based on Verdi’s Aida known rather pompously as “Elton John And Tim Rice’s Aida”, The Muse which was a late 90s comedy which I don’t recall at all and a DreamWorks Animation called The Road To El Dorado. Perhaps the most intriguing was his first which came out in 1971 for a film called Friends (nothing to do with the US sit com TV series). I have never heard of this film until now but apparently it received a Golden Globe nomination for Best English Language Foreign Film. Not knowing the film, I obviously wasn’t aware of Elton’s soundtrack album either but then it has never been released as a standalone CD since its initial vinyl release although its tracks are on the “Rare Masters” compilation album that was released in 1992. I’ve gone from nothing to say to far too much Elton John information haven’t I?

However, I’ve not said too much about tonight’s hosts Punt & Dennis since the top of the post so how are they doing? Well, I have to say I’m a bit disappointed but maybe it’s like looking back at the technology of the time; it seems underwhelming by today’s standards but was actually cutting edge at the time. Anyway, they’ve bought out the big guns for this next link as Hugh Dennis gets his own backstage set up to showcase perhaps the duo’s best known comedy character Mr Strange and his catchphrase “Milky milky”. Known for his love of milk (that had usually gone off) and with the manner of a Peeping Tom, he was a weird but memorable creation. Dennis had actually brought him out for the Elton John intro but I wanted to save commenting on that until he got his own little slot when introducing the next act who are Take That. Before he does that though, we get the revelation that Mr Strange doesn’t wash his pants. Of course he doesn’t. Anyway, onto the biggest teen sensation since the last one and Gary Barlow gives us his own little intro telling us how the band are on a 31 date tour before joining the rest of them for a run through of new single “Sure” whilst presumably on a break from rehearsals.

After previous single “Love Ain’t Here Anymore” had broken the group’s run of four consecutive No 1s by peaking at No 3, I’m guessing there was just a tiny bit of pressure on follow up “Sure” to ensure normal service had been resumed, especially as it was a brand new track. As it turned out, this super slick slice of pop-R&B would return the band to the top of the charts (a position they maintained for two weeks) but it seems to me that “Sure” is an almost forgotten No 1. The first taster of their third album “Nobody Else” which was released the following year, it got completely overshadowed by the other two singles released from it – “Back For Good” was so perfect a pop song that many refused to believe Barlow had written it and was actually the work of Bee Gee Barry Gibb whilst “Never Forget” got elevated to another level when it was released just as the news of the departure of Robbie Williams from the band broke.

I’m sure I read at the time that Gary Barlow believed that “Sure” was the best thing that the band had ever released and was disappointed that it only lasted for two weeks at the top of the charts. I think the gist of his gripe was that he thought that the song was good enough to have transcended the teen fan base and cut through to more adult record buyers. The irony is that those two subsequent singles probably did do that on some level. In a 2021 article in The Guardian, writer Alex Petridis ranked the best 20 Take That tracks. “Sure” came in at No 12 whilst “Never Forget” and “Back For Good” were put at No 3 and No 1 respectively. I think that’s probably about right.

As for the performance here, there’s been a couple of image changes since the last time the group were on TOTP. Robbie Williams has had all his hair shaved off and Howard Donald has started his metamorphosis into pop music’s equivalent of Chewbacca. Meanwhile their outfits seem to have been inspired by the Gerry Anderson show UFO and specifically the uniforms worn by the crew of the Skydiver craft. Blimey!

For all their massive profile and popularity, when it came to huge hit singles, INXS were no Take That. They only ever had one UK Top 10 hit despite having 18 Top 40 entries. I guess they were more of an albums band? Despite the lack of mega-selling singles, as was often the case with such bands, if you put all their medium sized hits together on one Best Of album it would sell like hotcakes. I’m thinking the likes of The Beautiful South and Crowded House who both had Greatest Hits albums that sold and sold despite not having a stack of high charting tracks to put on them. So it was with INXS as well whose first compilation album went platinum in the UK.

To help promote it came this new track “The Strangest Party (These Are The Times)” which was actually an old song left over from the “Full Moon, Dirty Hearts” sessions that didn’t make the cut for that album. It’s pretty standard INXS fare which is no bad thing but it’s certainly not one of their best. Whatever the calibre of the song though, any performance that features Michael Hutchence was always going to be billed as an ‘exclusive’ by the TOTP producers such was his star quality. “The Strangest Party (These Are The Times)” peaked at No 15 continuing that run of Top 10 avoiding hits.

Hugh Dennis brings out another character to introduce Whigfield who is in her fourth and final week at No 1. This time it’s Embarrassing Dad who threatens to do the “Saturday Night” dance. As I said before, I was a little underwhelmed by their whole shtick. As for Whiggy, as Dennis referred to her, “Saturday Night” would be the 2nd best selling single in the UK in 1994 only behind Wet Wet Wet. It was replaced at the top by *SPOILER ALERT* Take That’s “Sure” which for purposes of context was the 37th biggest seller of the year. Make of that what you will.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	C.J. Lewis	Best Of My Love	As if
2	Cyndi Lauper	Hey Now (Girls Just Want To Have Fun)	Not this nor the 1984 original
3	Madonna	Secret	Nah
4	Michelle Gayle	Sweetness	Nope
5	Bon Jovi	Always	Negative
6	Elton John	Circle Of Life	No
7	Take That	Sure	Sure didn’t
8	INXS	The Strangest Party (These Are The Times)	I did not
9	Whigfield	Saturday Night	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/m001m6qn/top-of-the-pops-06101994

TOTP 29 SEP 1994

Posted on May 31, 2023 by 80stastic

I haven’t revisited what was going on with me personally back then in these posts for a while so (and I know this is of minuscule interest to anybody but me) let’s correct that. Two days after this TOTP aired we moved flat. Me and my wife had been in our tiny South Manchester flat for nearly four years and had been happy there. So why move? Well, our landlord let it be known that he had a bigger flat becoming available and we thought we could do with a bit more space and best of all, it was only two doors down! Yes, we were moving from Flat 4, No 47 to Flat 2, No 43 on the same street! This was great as it meant there was no need to incur removal van costs. However, it didn’t eliminate the need to put everything in boxes the same as any other move and that’s a job nobody looks forward to. We asked some friends from out of town to come to stay in the new place meaning that they could also help with carrying the boxes. My mate Robin’s taxi turned up just as the last box went in. Brilliant timing! We weren’t the only ones moving on around this time. On the same day this TOTP went out, Chris Evans presented The Big Breakfast for the very last time after two years. The times they were a-changin’…

…unless you were 2 Unlimited of course. Three years on from their debut hit, they were still clogging up the charts with their brand of repetitive Eurodance beats. The standard criticism of the Dutch duo was that all their material sounded the same and that you would feel like you’d heard it all before. Well, in the case of “No One” that was literally true. It had already been on TOTP back in the Summer on the show that was broadcast on 16th June. Back then it was featured within the album chart slot as their album “Real Things” had just been released and gone to No 1. So what did I say about it in my review of that show?

*checks TOTP Rewind archive*

Well, I referred to the frightening prospect of it being on the show again as I mentioned that it would be released as a single eventually and lo and behold, my prediction came true. I also said that, despite all my earlier talk of their sound never deviating from their original concept, this one did sound slightly different, not quite having the usual 2 Unlimited ‘bpm urgency’. Which it doesn’t. Was that an improvement then? Not really. I stand by my earlier review. Every word of it.

Huge tune incoming though not necessarily a big seller in the UK. After the lilting melodies of “Linger” and the perfectly crafted, jangly pop of “Dreams”, I was completely wrong footed by The Cranberries’ next release “Zombie”. A densely heavy slice of grunge rock that wasn’t a million miles away from “Creep” by Radiohead, it included an almost pained vocal from Dolores O’Riordan. ‘Pained’ is probably an apt word as the song was written as a visceral outpouring from Dolores in reaction to the tragic events of the IRA bombings in Warrington in 1993. The band’s record label Island got cold feet about releasing the track as a single fearing a song about The Troubles would be too controversial and that would affect airplay and its chances of commercial success. However, it had gone down well with audiences when played live in its early form as “In Your Head” and Dolores would not be deterred. She was right too. Although it would only make No 14 over here, it was huge around the rest of the world going to No 1 in seven countries. The album it came from – “No Need To Argue” – was huge too racking up 17 million sales worldwide. The Cranberries were officially a big deal.

A future chart topper now as the trend for reggae-fied versions of classic oldies continues apace. “Baby Come Back” was originally a No 1 hit in 1968 for the ethnically diverse group The Equals who included a young Eddy Grant in their ranks. A cover version of it 26 years later came courtesy of Pato Banton who I’d never heard of but who’d worked with The Beat in the early 80s and had guested on the 1985 UB40 album “Baggariddim”. Oh yes, there was a connection with UB40 just as there had been for Bitty McLean and his chart career. That connection became even more apparent when Ali and Robin Campbell performed on “Baby Come Back” alongside Banton. They even had a credit on the single’s cover.

By the way, Pato was nothing to do with another, much more objectionable Banton – the Jamaican Dancehall artist Buju – who held some vile homophobic views in the 90s that he aired in his song “Boom Bye Bye”. It turns out that the name ‘Banton’ is a Jamaican slang term for someone who is a respected storyteller.

Anyway returning to “Baby Come Back”, the combination of the Campbell brothers vocals on the chorus and Pato’s toasted verses proved irresistible to record buyers and the single would go to No 1 for 4 weeks ending the year as the UK’s fourth best selling single of the year. As we’ll be seeing it plenty more in future episodes I’ll leave it there for now.

After the real thing earlier, here come an act whom I saw recently online described as the ‘2 Unlimited of ragga’ which seemed pretty on the money. Reel 2 Real featuring The Mad Stuntman (they even had a figure 2 in their name like Ray and Anita!) were onto their third hit of a very thin source material in “Can You Feel It?”. This wasn’t just money for old rope but money for pieces of string too short to be useful. Basically a man (The Mad Stuntman presumably) toasting while a woman occasionally sings “Can you feel it baby?”. Just awful. Total crud. Somehow it managed to scramble up the charts to No 13. What was wrong with people back in 1994?!

Now here’s a curious thing. A performance on TOTP that on the face of it seems to be not instigated by the need to promote something. “You Really Got Me” was The Kinks’ first hit and first No 1 in 1964. So why were the band performing the song on TOTP in 1994? Well, the official line was to commemorate the song’s 30th anniversary and that was it. How often though had this sort of event happened though? Never that I can recall. The Kinks (well, Ray and Dave Davies essentially) just appear slap bang in the middle of the show – there isn’t even any caption allocated to them about career sales or anything. Ray did do the message to camera bit at the top of the show but he just told us how TOTP was going to rock us to the bone. Checking their discography, they’d had a Greatest Hits album out in 1993 (“The Definitive Collection”) which was rereleased in 1996 with a TV ad campaign but this TOTP appearance falls between these two releases so it can’t be that can it?

*checks discography again*

Oh hang on. They released a live album four days after this TOTP aired and it was called “To The Bone”. That’s what Ray was referring to in his rather cryptic message at the start of the show! And…published two weeks before this appearance was Ray’s autobiography called X–Ray which explains his off script lines during the performance about having “seen the X-Ray”. And….hadn’t the BBC just launched TOTP2 featuring clips from the archive so maybe this performance was to (indirectly) push that show? All makes a bit more sense now.

The performance is half in black and white presumably to try and create a feeling of 1964 before it reverts to colour during Dave’s guitar solo. Not sure it works really to be honest. However, I do like the way that Ray treats it as a proper live gig by encouraging some audience participation with his goading question “Are you listening to me?”.

Right, what’s this? Well, it’s Eurodance behemoth Snap! but you’d be forgiven for not recognising them. Firstly, they’ve got a new singer called Summer (real name Paula Brown) but then they had previous in that department having already been through vocalists Penny Ford, Thea Austin and Niki Haris by this point. Rapper Turbo B was long gone by this stage. Secondly, and perhaps more to the point, their new single “Welcome To Tomorrow (Are You Ready?)” didn’t sound like them. It’s a much poppier almost lilting sound than something like “The Power” or “Rhythm Is A Dancer” which made their names on the club dancefloors before crossing over massively into the mainstream charts. This felt like they had purposely made a record that could just go straight to daytime radio.

The space age sci-fi video that we see here apparently took three months to make. Some of the spacecraft in it look a bit Blake’s 7 to me but then that’s probably unfair as I’m looking at it through 2023 eyes. Back in 1994, this probably looked, if not mind blowing, then very impressive. “Welcome To Tomorrow (Are You Ready?)” would peak at No 6 but they would only have one more UK Top 40 hit subsequently.

East 17 were never as big as they were in 1994. A double platinum album and four hit singles including the Christmas No 1? Nice work if you can get it! “Steam”, despite being the title track of said album, was the smallest of those hits but the fact that it peaked at No 7 shows how big the others were. After the lighter sound of previous single “Around The World”, this was a return to the sound that made their name – pop/rap with a bit of streetwise savvy heavy in the mix. Watching this performance back though, it all seems faintly ludicrous. They’ve all had skinhead haircuts (presumably to big up those street credentials) but the outfits they’ve got on kind of work against that. What exactly are they wearing? A leather hoody with leather baggy trousers and boots? Sorry lads, you just look silly. At least the staging of the performance was easy. A song called “Steam”? Just have a few jets of the stuff going off behind them occasionally. My old history teacher Mr Cooper who used to overly emphasise the word ‘steam’ when talking about steam power would have approved. STEAM power lads!

Now to a man who is surely only behind Keith Richards in the ‘How is he not dead yet?’ stakes. I remember the Shane MacGowan And The Popes era of the ex-Pogues frontman’s career but I couldn’t tell you about any of their material. And I certainly don’t recall the Johnny Depp connection! Listening to “This Woman’s Got Me Drinking” though, it’s as if Shane was attempting his version of Motörhead’s “Ace Of Spades”. It’s all snarled vocals aside a strident, propelling one chord riff but doesn’t quite pull it off for me. Would it have been a coup to get Johnny Depp in the studio at this time? Well, he’d been in films like Cry–Baby, Edward Scissorhands and What’s Eating Gilbert Grape by this point in his career so he was certainly a name but surely wasn’t as notorious and divisive a figure as he is today. I must admit to not really thinking of him as a musician but he’s contributed to works by the likes of Oasis, Iggy Pop, Aerosmith and Jeff Beck as well as Shane MacGowan.

It’s another week at the top for Whigfield, Now would you categorise “Saturday Night” as a novelty record? I think I could almost be persuaded. It’s the dance that went with it that’s tipping me over. Like “Macarena” by Los Del Río or “Gangnam Style” by PSY. Or maybe I’m being too harsh. After all, Whigfield did have more hits than just this one hit – five in all including a further couple of Top 10s so they were more of a pop act than just a song. Their final hit was an almost unforgivable cover of Wham!’s “Last Christmas” though so I think any credit they may have had is completely wiped out.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	2 Unlimited	No One	Never
2	The Cranberries	Zombie	No
3	Pat Banton with Ali and Robin Campbell	Baby Come Back	Negative
4	Reel 2 Real featuring The Mad Stuntman	Can You Feel It?	As if
5	The Kinks	You Really Got Me	Not released as a single in 1994 but I must have it on something
6	Snap!	Welcome To Tomorrow (Are You Ready?)	Nah
7	East 17	Steam	No but I had t a promo copy of the album from work. Sadly it had talky bits in between the tracks from Mark Goodier
8	Shane MacGowan And The Popes	This Woman’s Got Me Drinking	I did not
9	Whigfield	Saturday Night	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/m001m15z/top-of-the-pops-29091994

TOTP 22 SEP 1994

Posted on May 28, 2023 by 80stastic

There’s only three ‘new’ songs in this episode of TOTP so I’m going to have to try hard not to repeat myself in this post. Definitely not repeating himself is Gary Lineker who announced his retirement from playing football the day before this show aired. You never hear much about him these days do you? Ahem. Right, let’s get to it…

…and we start with what looks like a dance aerobics class. It’s actually a performance of “Rhythm Of The Night” by Corona but it involves an awful lot of kicks, knee lifts and lunges. I’m guessing the neon lights backdrop was to create a sense of night time/nightlife though I’m intrigued by the choice of the ‘Jazz Club’ one. Hardly seems in keeping with this Eurodance anthem does it? Louis Balfour would no doubt approve though.

Corona would have five more UK Top 40 hits including two inside the Top 10 but can anybody remember how any of them went? I’m willing to bet they sounded a lot like “Rhythm Of The Night” though.

With ex-EastEnder Sean Maguire having only just departed the charts after his recent hit single “Someone To Love” had turned him into a bona fide pop star, Michelle Gayle wasn’t waiting for a respectful amount of time to have passed before gatecrashing the charts herself faster than you can hum “doof, doof, de doof, doof, doof, doof”. Like Maguire, Michelle had left the soap from her role as Hattie Tavernier the previous Christmas but unlike Maguire, she’d already had a Top 40 hit a year earlier with debut single “Looking Up”. I’m not sure why her follow up “Sweetness” took so long to come out (EastEnders recording commitments maybe?) but it would prove worth the wait when it became her biggest hit peaking at No 4.

You could understand why. A breezy piece of R&B pop with a chorus that screamed ear worm, this was the peak of her music career. That’s not to say that she didn’t continue to have chart hits because she had another five though only one made the Top 10. “Sweetness” is surely her most well known track though. And let’s be fair, for an ex-EastEnder, its quality was maybe more than was expected – this was no “Anyone Can Fall In Love” or “Something Outa Nothing”. And yet Michelle, it seemed to me, never quite managed to shed her soap star past to the extent that people forgot about it and thought of her as a pop star first. Maybe the three years gap between albums didn’t help establish her credentials in the public consciousness? For whatever reason though, I have a soft spot for “Sweetness”, maybe because my wife liked it and that’s good enough for me.

Another ‘new’ song next though it has taken on a life of its own due to its origins. As with “Can You Feel The Love Tonight” before it, “Circle Of Life” was an Elton John composition for The Lion King film project and for me, was actually the better song. Maybe I’m biased as I’ve seen my son perform it as part of his musical theatre group live on stage but I think I’ve always had that opinion. So has Elton supposedly as he rarely plays “Can You Feel The Love Tonight” in concert but “Circle Of Life” has become a staple of his live set. The Oscars committee didn’t agree with me and Elton though and awarded the gong for Best Original Song to “Can You Feel The Love Tonight” in 1994 over “Circle Of Life”. I think the striking opening sung in Zulu helps to set it apart from its predecessor. If we’re talking about repeating ourselves though, surely there’s no more effective way of doing that than life within a circle?

So we’re back to the songs that have been on the show before with “We Are The Pigs” by Suede. However, somebody who hadn’t been on the show before was the band’s new guitarist Richard Oakes. With Bernard Butler having jumped ship a few weeks before, Oakes was drafted in as his replacement despite being only 17 at the time (he wasn’t 18 until 9 days after this TOTP aired) and that he’d been up against approximately 500 candidates for the job.

Now I think I might have a little personal insight into this story. I knew someone who was seeing Suede’s manager around this time and apparently Richard Oakes’ Mum was wanting quite a lot of input into her son’s career and this was becoming quite wearisome for said manager. To be fair to her, she was looking at the prospect of her 17 year old son plunging into the lifestyle of a famous indie rock band and all that entails so she was entitled to have some misgivings but apparently she was very forceful in getting her voice heard. Just to make us all feel ancient, I can reveal that Richard Oakes is now 46.

Incidentally, you don’t hear the word ‘swine’ used as an insult anymore do you? It was commonplace when my Dad was younger then I am now back in the 60s and 70s. Look at this for example:

It’s the last of the ‘new’ songs now and it’s by…Naomi Campbell?! The supermodel Naomi Campbell? I don’t remember this! When did this happen?! Well, September 1994 obviously but seriously, who remembers “Love And Tears”? You’re forgiven if you don’t as it only reached No 40 in the UK singles chart and the album it was taken from – “Baby Woman” – completely bombed over here. However, it was a huge success in Japan selling over one million copies there. The album was mocked and derided by our music press with its only legacy being the inspiration for the Naomi Awards, a parody of The Brit Awards; a musical equivalent of the Rotten Tomatoes employed by the film industry I guess. Run by music TV channel Music Choice, it named its award ceremony after Campbell whose contribution to the world of music were judged to be the gold standard for wretchedness. Seems a bit harsh. How bad was “Love And Tears” then?

*Watches TOTP performance*

Hmm. Well, my judgement would be that it’s as if AI had been around then and was asked to construct a soul/pop song and also to create one of the world’s most beautiful women to front it. There’s a bit of Kylie’s “Confide In Me” Eastern influences in the mix and is the melody reminiscent of “Proud” by Heather Small? It also kind of reminds me of the sound that would make All Saints famous a few years later but ultimately it’s a bit bland and without emotion. Coincidentally, the winner of the 2006 Worst British Solo Male Artist Naom Award was Lee Ryan of Blue who I’m pretty sure once recorded a track created by some song writing software as opposed to crafted by a person.

Campbell herself would cut a controversial figure in subsequent years with drug addiction problems, four convictions for assault and alleged contacts with deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

It’s all repeated songs from here on in starting with “Hey Now (Girls Just Want To Have Fun)” by Cyndi Lauper.

Obviously a reworking of her debut hit from 1984, that original recording was actually inspired by another song. Here’s @TOTPFacts with the details:

Initially, Lauper struggled to find the right style in which to record the song. Then, after she and her team talked about "Come On Eileen" by Dexys Midnight Runners, she suggested emulating that. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) May 19, 2023

Bassist Eric Bazilian: "I turned down the tempo knob on the drum machine, programmed in the same kick drum pattern as 'Come On Eileen', clicked on my guitar, and played that guitar riff. She started singing, and that was it." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) May 19, 2023

Interesting. Not as interesting as this though. The sound that “Come On Eileen” was based around (and indeed the whole style of the “Too-Rye-Aye” era of Dexys) was pinched from the group that Kevin Rowland’s former band mate Kevin ‘Al’ Archer founded called Blue Ox Babes and this track “What Does Anybody Ever Think About” in particular:

It’s that Niagara Falls performance next by Bon Jovi. This was the definitive take on head producer Ric Blaxill’s vision for the live by satellite slot of taking artists out of empty concert halls and have them perform against landmark backdrops. As dramatic panoramas go, the crashing waters of Niagara Falls was hard to top. The darkness of the night time setting only added to the event. Big tick for Ric. “Always” was the single promoting the band’s first Best Of album “Cross Road” which would prove to be the biggest selling album of the year in the UK.

It’s not just a repeat but a three-peat for Lisa Loeb And Nine Stories and their hit “Stay (I Missed You)”. After being in a satellite segue the first time and then the official promo video second time around, Lisa has finally made it into the studio in person to complete a TOTP hat-trick. She always seemed to be in the same attire when on screen, that being black top, skirt and woolly tights. It put me in mind of Tanita Tikaram who wore similar outfits when making TV appearances early in her career. Maybe it was a thing with female singers with alliteration in their names – you might even say it was a “Good Tradition”. Ahem.

Whigfield remains at No 1 with “Saturday Night”. There was, of course, no chance of Wet Wet Wet mounting a fight back to reclaim the top spot as they had deleted “Love Is All Around” meaning no more copies were being pressed so there was no product to meet demand (even if it still existed). Unlike some dance tunes of the era, the person we saw performing the song did actually sing on the recording although Sannie Carlson admitted to not being that much of a singer and that they had to do over 20 takes at getting her vocals right and in the end had to splice the best bits together. Now that really is repeating yourself.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Corona	Rhythm Of The Night	No
2	Michelle Gayle	Sweetness	I did not
3	Elton John	Circle Of Life	Nah
4	Suede	We Are The Pigs	Negative
5	Naomi Campbell	Love And Tears	Never
6	Cyndi Lauper	Hey Now (Girls Just Want To Have Fun)	Nope
7	Bon Jovi	Always	Didn’t happen
8	Lisa Loeb And Nine Stories	Stay (I Missed You)	It’s a no from me
9	Whigfield	Saturday Night	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/m001m15w/top-of-the-pops-22091994

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

Author: 80stastic

TOTP 08 DEC 1994

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TOTP 01 DEC 1994

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TOTP 24 NOV 1994

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TOTP 17 NOV 1994

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TOTP 27 OCT 1994

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TOTP 20 OCT 1994

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TOTP 13 OCT 1994

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TOTP 06 OCT 1994

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TOTP 29 SEP 1994

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TOTP 22 SEP 1994

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