80stastic

TOTP 26 AUG 1993

Posted on October 9, 2022 by 80stastic

August and indeed the Summer of 1993 is coming to an end and so is something else – my time at the Our Price store in Rochdale. After an immensely enjoyable twelve months as Assistant Manager there, the powers that be wanted to move me. In theory, I should have been pleased about this. It was a transfer to a much bigger store at Stockport which, though not a promotion, reflected well on how area management viewed me. Plus, Stockport was a much shorter commute than schleping all the way over to Rochdale. I didn’t want to go though. I really liked the team where I was and the size of the shop was manageable with a great profile in the town. The move to Stockport would prove to be a short-lived one but that’s enough about my personal circumstances; what about the music?

Well, we start with some Therapy? who someone in the TOTP production team must have really liked as they seemed to be on the show regularly in 1993. I think this is their third studio appearance already which isn’t bad going for a noisy rock band on prime time TV. This single is “Opal Mantra” which was nothing to do with those 70s sweets Opal Fruits that became Statburst but rather a pun on the name of the German sports car model Opel Manta. I didn’t pay much attention to Therapy? at the time but listening back to them what I’ve noticed is that they always seem to have too many words in their lyrics to fit in with the tune. Probably just me of course but anyway.

As far as I can tell this was a stand alone single prior to the release of their fourth studio album “Troublegum” the following year although bizarrely the two singles released before “Opel Mantra” both made it onto the album.

Now here’s a song that always reminds me of late Summer/ early Autumn 1993 whenever I hear it except if I was to hear the original version of it, I probably wouldn’t recognise it at all. “Right Here” was first released by SWV (Sisters With Voices) back in 1992 but only in America. Despite being a hit on the R&B chart, it made little impression on the Billboard Hot 100.

A US No 1 record later in “Weak” and the track was given another chance but this time with an added sample from another song – “Human Nature” by Michael Jackson. And so it came to pass that the version we would all come to know was rechristened as “Right Here (Human Nature Remix)”. Who’s idea was it to mash up SWV and Jacko? Well, it was credited to Teddy Riley but weren’t there some bootleg copies in existence well before the official release creating a buzz around the track?

“Human Nature” was, of course, from Jackson’s “Thriller” album and was one of the seven singles taken from it in 1983. Curiously though, it was never given a UK release back then so would it have been less well known in the UK? If true, it makes SWV’s hit even more impressive but I think it’s a difficult idea to sell that the biggest album of all time contains tracks that some countries were oblivious to. It went fifteen times platinum in the UK after all.

“Right Here (Human Nature Remix)” would rise to No 3 in the UK – easily their biggest hit over here – and would only be kept off the top spot in the US by another artist also on this TOTP.

From Sisters With Voices to The Sisters Of Mercy (do you think that was deliberate by the show’s producers?) who are in the studio with their latest single “Under The Gun”. Not only was this their latest single but as we stand in October 2022, it is also the band’s last single. Yes, incredibly, despite the band being an going concern to this day, they have not released any new material since this track which was to promote their second Greatest Hits album “A Slight Case Of Overbombing”. I think I’ve discussed this before but this situation arose out of a dispute with their label EastWest who eventually agreed to receive the final two albums owed by the band according to their contract via the Andrew Eldritch vehicle SSV (almost another link with SWV). Allegedly standing for Screw Shareholder Value, the albums were made with industrial sonic pioneers Xmas Deutschland’s Peter Bellendir and were largely unlistenable loops of Eldritch’s verbal musings. Despite being free of EastWest since 1997, no new Sisters Of Mercy product has been forthcoming.

As for “Under The Gun”, apparently that’s Terri Nunn up there with Eldritch. Yeah, the two-tone haired singer from Berlin of “Take My Breath Away” fame. She looked a bit different seven years on from that global hit but you can hear her influence all over this track. In fact it’s pretty good up until the point where Eldritch does his…’thing’ whatever that is (a Goth rap?). I’ve always considered Eldritch a bizarre yet intriguing figure and found myself wondering what he looks like today. So I Googled him. His Wikipedia picture suggests that he has now gone bald but he still retains those sunglasses that project an air of otherworldliness. I once sat on a train from Sunderland to Newcastle around 1987 next to a bald man wearing shades dressed in black who had a tape recorder with him and for the entire journey played a tape out loud that the whole carriage could hear that was of demonic chanting, blood curdling screams and general devil worship. I was too freaked out to say anything to him but he did turn it off when the guard checked his ticket only to turn it back on once he had left.

Anyway, back to Eldritch though who has tried to distance himself and the band from accusations of gothness and is on record as stating:

“I’m constantly confronted by representatives of popular culture who are far more goth than we, yet I have only to wear black socks to be stigmatised as the demon overlord.”
“Sisters – VirginNet Interview”. Thesistersofmercy.com. Archived from the original on 20 August 2001

“Under The Gun” peaked at No 19.

Next the point where it looked like Ace Of Base might not be the next big pop sensation that was suggested by their monster No 1 “All That She Wants” earlier in the year. So big was that single that it spent sixteen weeks on the charts and was still selling so well that the follow up “Wheel Of Fortune” had its release delayed. I’m guessing that their label London Records would have been hoping for and indeed maybe expecting a bigger chart hit than the No 20 peak achieved here. The outlook would get worse when the title track to their album “Happy Nation” would barely dint the Top 40 when released in November. Luckily for label and band but decidedly unluckily for music fans, that trend was reversed spectacularly in 1994 when they got to No 2 with “The Sign”.

I have to admit to not knowing how this one went and after watching this TOTP performance, I’m still not sure. The very definition of lightweight, it barely registers at all. And those nasally, whiny vocals are the musical equivalent of fingernails being scraped down a blackboard! As for the prop that was the wheel of fortune in the background…talk about lacklustre! It just has some random numbers around the edge. Why weren’t the coloured segments filled in with what you could win?! It didn’t look like it even had the flicker thing that determines which segment you’ve landed on once the spinning has stopped. Bah!

And so to that much trumpeted (by host Tony Dortie if nobody else) song by Meatloaf. Who would have thought that in a year dominated by Eurodance crud and a trend for ragga/dancehall tunes that the biggest selling single of the year would belong to the Loaf. I mean, it’s not as if he had a brilliant track record for massive hit singles in the UK. His last Top 10 hit had been “Dead Ringer For Love” in 1981 and of the eleven singles released after that until this point, only three had made the Top 40 and none of those had managed a position higher than No 17. Yes, of course “Bat Out Of Hell” was one of the biggest selling albums in history but that was already fifteen years old by 1993. A Meatloaf revival was not on the cards.

Hang on though! “Bat Out Of Hell” you say. What if we did…I don’t know…”Bat Out Of Hell II” to help revive his fortunes? Presumably that’s a close approximation of what long standing songwriting partner Jim Steinman said about Meatloaf in 1993. Yes, a return to the original hit formula (not that much of his other stuff sounded any different) was the order of the day and so it came to pass that “Bat Out Of Hell II: Back Into Hell” would make Marvin Lee Aday a huge star all over again. The first single from the project was “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)” continuing a long line of ludicrous song titles that occur regularly in Meatloaf’s back catalogue. There’s something odd here though as despite this preview on TOTP on a show in August, as far as I can tell the single wasn’t released until October and after the album was released in September. That can’t be right can it?

Anyway, I think I’ll leave it there for now as this will be at No 1 soon enough and for seven (!) weeks so I’ll just leave it with RIP Meatloaf for now.

We’re back to multiple Breakers again this week after just two in the last show and we start with Lenny Kravitz and a third single from his “Are You Gonna Go My Way” album called “Heaven Help”. This is yet again another song I don’t recall even though it made the charts to the tune of No 20. Some of the music press described it as showing Kravitz’s soul influences specifically Curtis Mayfield and Isley Brothers and I can hear why. It’s got a nice feel to it and I’m guessing it got decent daytime airplay at the time. I should probably check out the album. After all, I did but his previous one “Mama Said”.

OK so I’m aware there was a rap/hip-hop outfit called Onyx but that was/is the extent of my knowledge. Until now. Hailing from Queens, New York City, they were formed by Fredro Starr (yes I had to double take on that name as well!), Sonny Seeza and Big DS. This single (“Slam”) would make No 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 – not just the R&B chart, the mainstream chart – quite remarkable for a rap record. It’s also widely regarded as being responsible for introducing slam dancing or moshing to hip-hop as per the promo video. Wait, didn’t House Of Pain already do that with “Jump Around?”

Anyway, Wikipedia tells me that they were notable for loud screaming, aggression, fighting with each other and then these two characteristics which look slightly odd in the written word…rapping with grimy voices and bald head fashion. What?! Surely grime wasn’t a musical genre back then so what were grimy voices exactly? And bald head fashion…? To be honest, if I wanted to listen to a record called “Slam” then I’d go for this…

Yes, there were two Joey Lawrence singles that charted in the UK unbelievably. After “Nothin’ My Love Can’t Fix” came “I Can’t Help Myself” – his song titles were a little egocentric. This one could easily be the template for every Backstreet Boys song ever which is fine if you like that sort of thing I guess but it obviously did nothing for me.

“I Can’t Help Myself” peaked at No 27.

Almost under the radar, Terence Trent D’arby was having quite a year in 1993 on the sly. Nothing like the impact of 1987/88 when he burst into the pop world fully formed from nowhere to both critical and commercial success but quite a year all the same. After looking like he had wrecked his musical career with the poorly received sophomore album “Neither Fish Nor Flesh”, to manage to resurrect himself as a chart act again was quite a feat. The “Symphony Or Damn” album went Top 10 and would produce four hit singles of which “She Kissed Me” was the third. Those singles peaked at:

14 – 14 – 16 – 18

Like I said, not the remarkable success of those early years but he was consistent. Given the quality of the 1993 singles, they probably should have been bigger hits, “She Kissed Me” being a case in point. Slick and with a killer chorus, it also showcased his diversity given how different it was to previous single “Delicate”. As with Lenny Kravitz earlier, maybe I should investigate the TTD back catalogue further although I don’t think I’ll start with the aforementioned “Neither Fish Nor Flesh”.

I think this is the first and only cover version on this TOTP after what seemed like an endless conveyor belt of them recently. Just like Kim Wilde’s treatment of “If I Can’t Have You” the other week, this one is also of a song from the soundtrack of Saturday Night Fever. Tina Turner’s take on The Trammps’ “Disco Inferno” featured in another film also – Tina’s biopic What’s Love Got To Do With It. It certainly suits Tina’s raspy vocal and I think she does a decent job with it. I wonder though if her record company had faith in the track’s chart potential as they made the B-side “I Don’t Wanna Fight” which was her previous hit from just a few weeks before. That was a standard record company practice as I recall to try and insure against a flop record. It worked (kind of) as “Disco Inferno” made No 12.

Bit of a big deal next as we get Mariah Carey in the studio. She was already a superstar in America after a string of No 1 singles and although UK record buyers hadn’t embraced her quite as keenly, this was still a big exclusive. I’m not sure if she had her reputation as a diva at this point but if she was a bit of a nightmare off camera, I wonder how she manifested it? Her tour riders are renowned for some explicit demands like hotel rooms having temperatures of precisely 75 degrees, being festooned with eight (not seven or nine) tall leafy plants and kitted out with Joe Malone candles (and certainly none of those Gwyneth Paltrow mucky scent ones)

To be fair to Mariah, she seems quite low key in this performance of “Dreamlover” with a dress down wardrobe and a discreet trio of backing singers. She holds back on the vocals as well until the very last few notes when she gives her pipes an airing. Somehow this TOTP appearance only managed to nudge the single up one place to a high of No 9 but it went to No 1 in the US keeping the aforementioned SWV off top spot.

Freddie Mercury’s reign at the top of the charts is over and he has been replaced by Culture Beat and their “Mr. Vain” single. Was this the peak of Eurodance or its nadir? More irritating than “No Limits” by 2 Unlimited or even better than Snap!’s “Rhythm Is A Dancer”? The man behind Culture Beat was German DJ and producer Torsten Fenslau who tragically died in a car crash aged 29 barely two months after this TOTP aired.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Therapy?	Opal Mantra	No
2	SWV	Right Here (Human Nature Remix)	Nope
3	The Sisters Of Mercy	Under The Gun	I did not
4	Ace Of Base	Wheel Of Fortune	As if
5	Meatloaf	I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)	I’d do anything for music but I wouldn’t buy that
6	Lenny Kravitz	Heaven Help	Negative
7	Onyx	Slam	Nah
8	Joey Lawrence	I Can’t Help Myself	I had no such problems with restraint when it came to not buying this record
9	Terence Trent D’arby	She Kissed Me	Good song, didn’t buy it
10	Tina Turner	Disco Inferno	Disco Infer-NO
11	Mariah Carey	Dreamlover	Sorry Mariah, it’s a no
12	Culture Beat	Mr. Vain	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/m001crzw/top-of-the-pops-26081993

TOTP 19 AUG 1993

Posted on October 5, 2022 by 80stastic

After weeks of cramming twelve or even thirteen acts into the show’s running order, the TOTP producers have taken pity on my sorry ass and given me just ten to review for this episode and four of those have been on before. This is music to my ears as I’m running behind schedule in banging these posts out.

We start with a band not seen on the show since the 80s I’m guessing whose appearance here would be a valedictory one as far as TOTP was concerned. The Pogues had been in a state of flux for most of the decade before 1993 turned up a hit for them out of the blue. After Shane MacGowan was fired in 1991 for finally breaking the patience of the rest of the band after one too many binge drinking sessions, Joe Strummer stepped in to take over on vocals before founding member Spider Stacy took on the job full time. They released a cover of “Honky Tonk Wonen” by the Rolling Stones the following year but it failed to make the Top 40. I recall my huge Pogues fan Our Price manager at the time playing the single as soon as it came out of the delivery box on the morning of release and then being very disappointed approximately three and a half minutes later.

Spider Stacy was still in post as the band reconvened to record the “Waiting For Herb” album from which “Tuesday Morning” was the lead single. It’s a decent tune and knocks spots off most of its chart contemporaries but with the greatest will in the world, it’s no “Sally MacLennane” and Spider is no Shane.

The Pogues split in 1996 before reuniting j 2001 and disbanding for the final time in 2014.

As with one of the shows the other week, TOTP is suddenly taken over by UB40 and associates as first we get the video for their latest single “Higher Ground” which accompanies the 40-11 chart rundown and then we get their mate Bitty McLean in the studio. I’m not sure if I’m surprised or not by the chart statistic that “Higher Ground” is their first Top 10 hit written by themselves since the appropriately entitled “Sing Our Own Song” in 1986. Well, they did do a lot of cover versions you know.

The video is pretty dull stuff with the band performing against some sort of industrial wasteland intercut with clips of amongst other things a trapeze artist (higher ground?). As with most UB40 promos, the whole thing seems to be carried by Ali Campbell’s cheeky grin.

On with the nitty gritty and that little ditty from Bitty. Now I thought that Bitty Mclean‘s “It Keeps Rainin’ (Tears From My Eyes)” was a bit shitty (OK I’ll stop now!) but plenty disagreed with me as he was up to No 3 on his way to a peak of No 2. It was also a massive hit globally going to No 1 in the Netherlands and New Zealand where it topped the charts for seven weeks. Bitty’s dance moves were something to behold. He swayed and staggered about waving his arms as if drunk and looking like he might topple backwards at any moment. Very Shane MacGowan.

Despite his seven UK Top 40 hits, I wonder if anyone really remembers Bitty these days or has his nickname been usurped by this recurring sketch from Little Britain?

What do you get if you combine London Boys’ dance moves and Peter Andre’s sense of style? This confident looking bloke apparently who is fronting an act called Aftershock and their single “Slave To The Vibe”. I have zero recollection of either Mr. Aftershock (whoever he was) or his track but then he’s not helped in his quest for immortality by the work of the TOTP cameraman. He makes a right hash of filming his dance moves that surely would have sealed his place in musical posterity had he actually managed to capture them. Sadly, he manages to focus on everything but the front man and even when he does turn the camera on him, a studio audience member’s head totally obscures the shot! I can’t find a clip of the performance so you’ll have to take my word for it.

Apparently it was on the soundtrack to erotic thriller Sliver alongside the aforementioned UB40’s “(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With You” but I’ve never seen that so there’s another reason I don’t remember it.

Just the two Breakers this week (which explains the reduced amount of acts in the show). I’m guessing there was just a lack of new entries / high climbing records this week? Anyway, the first Breaker is basically a mini- episode of Rock Family Trees. The Breeders began life as an outlet for the writings of Pixies bassist Kim Deal who was unsatisfied with the direction of the band. Whilst touring with Throwing Muses, she got their guitarist Tanya Donnelly on board with the project and they produced a demo which got them a deal with 4AD Records to whom both their current bands were already signed.

Debut album “Pod” was not commercially successful but did receive the kudos of being named by Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain as one of his favourite records ever. An EP called “Safari” was then recorded before Donelly departed the project to form Belly who were also signed to 4AD and who would hit with their single “Feed The Tree”. Deal recruited her sister Kelley to replace Donelly even though she couldn’t actually play guitar at that point and they recorded the album “Last Splash” from which “Cannonball” was the lead single.

A staple of every indie nightclub DJ’s record box, I myself even cut some rug to it at Fifth Avenue in Manchester occasionally. Its blistering, staccato rhythms and distorted vocals imbued it with a full-force power that felt like it could peel the skin off your face. A truly breathtaking record in every sense. The best ever record to only achieve a peak of No 40? Quite possibly.

One of the biggest selling singles of the year in America next. Mariah Carey had always been a sales phenomenon in the US with her first five singles all going to No 1 over there. This side of the pond, we were a bit more lukewarm in our reception. The highest position achieved by any of those singles in the UK was No 9. History was to repeat itself with the release of “Dreamlover”, the lead single from her third studio album “Music Box”. Yet another No 1 in America, it would top out at No 9 over here.

It was perfect for daytime radio – light but not lightweight, bouncy but not bumpy, it also saw Mariah ease off on that (in)famous vocal range. It also allowed her to pursue her interest in hip-hop via the employment of producer Dave Hall who had worked on Mary J. Bilge’s “What’s The 411?” album. The fluffy, feel-good video was a perfect visual vehicle for the track and I always picture Mariah in her checked shirt cavorting about in a field of hay when I hear the track but that’s enough of that!

Could this be the final time we see Tasmin Archer on TOTP? Quite possibly. A superstar in the making with her No 1 “Sleeping Satellite” less than a year before, she had already been relegated to an also ran come August 1993. “Arienne” was the fourth hit from her debut album “Great Expectations” but was also the worst performing as each release peaked lower down the charts than its predecessor. I always thought this was a more obvious follow up to “Sleeping Satellite” than actual second single “In Your Care” and had record company EMI gone that route then surely it would have landed higher than its No 30 peak here.

I quite liked it but maybe that was due to its similarities to “Carrie Anne” by the marvellous Hollies – Tasmin totally nicks their phrasing for her song. Taking of that name, have you ever met anyone called Arienne before? You’re doing well if you have. Between 1880 and 2020, only 428 babies were named Arienne in the US making it the 18,714th most popular name of all time. As for Tasmin, she would return to the UK Top 40 one more time when her “Shipbuilding” EP of Elvis Costello covers just sneaked in during 1994.

To Miami Beach now for a satellite link up with the Bee Gees who are in the charts with their “Paying The Price Of Love” single. The more I listen to this one, the more excruciating it sounds. Unlike Mariah Carey who toned down her high pitched vocals for “Dreamlover”, Barry Gibb has turned the falsetto-meter up to a spine tingling, Spinal Tap-esque 11. I’m sure there were bits of it that only our dog could hear. And those outfits they were wearing! The Bee Gees made very little sense sartorially or sonically outside of the disco era.

WHO?! You may well ask. Their/his (?) name was Sinclair and the song was “Ain’t No Casanova” and that’s about all their is to know about this whole minuscule footnote of chart history. There’s very little else out there online. As with Tasmin Archer borrowing heavily from The Hollies for her hit “Arienne”, so Sinclair seemed to have revisited a previous chart hit for inspiration. Remember “Casanova” by Levert from 1987? The very first line of that song is ‘I ain’t much on Casanova’. I mean come on!

Sinclair’s record plugger must have either done a hell of a job or just got lucky to get a slot on TOTP when the record had only entered the chart at No 37. In any other week it surely would have been a Breaker? The appearance helped it to a peak of No 28 and then…nothing. Probably for the best.

Another week at the top for Freddie Mercury and “Living On My Own” and yet another artist on the show that had a remarkable vocal after Mariah Carey and Barry Gibb. Who had the biggest vocal range though? Well, Classic FM published an article this year where they compared the voices of artists from Prince to Pavarotti and Bowie to Bocelli. Freddie Mercury comes in with an impressive 4 octave F2 to E6 range with Barry Gibb just behind him on 3.4 but Mariah Carey topped them all being able to go from F2 to G7, a span of 5 octaves. Ouch! Cease is the word!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	The Pogues	Tuesday Morning	Nope
2	UB40	Higher Ground	No
3	Bitty McLean	“It Keeps Rainin’ (Tears From My Eyes)”	Never
4	Aftershock	Slave To The Vibe	Not my vibe at all
5	The Breeders	Cannonball	I must have it on something surely
6	Mariah Carey	Dreamlover	Nah
7	Tasmin Archer	Arienne	I did not
8	Bee Gees	Paying The Price Of Love	Wasn’t ever happening
9	Sinclair	Ain’t No Casanova	Negative
10	Freddie Mercury	Living On My Own	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/m001cjqx/top-of-the-pops-19081993

TOTP 12 AUG 1993

Posted on October 2, 2022 by 80stastic

If it’s mid August then it must be the start of the new football season and 1993 was no different. I didn’t have high hopes for my beloved Chelsea for the 1993/94 season after the previous year’s bucketload of mid table mediocrity but on the day this TOTP aired, we signed Gavin Peacock for 1.2 million from Newcastle United which I was excited about. Gavin would prove to be an instant hit by scoring on his debut two days later. However, Chelsea lost the game and it would prove to be another season of highs and lows characterised by our getting to the FA Cup final for the first time in 24 years and then losing it 0-4. Crushing. I wonder how many highs and lows there’ll be in this TOTP?

We start with a massive low. What the Barney Rubble was going on here?! I thought we might have managed to get away with just a short glimpse of Green Jellÿ when they appeared in the Breakers with their first and biggest hit “Three Little Pigs”. No such luck as they have made themselves available to open this show with their new single “Anarchy In The UK”. Their take on the Sex Pistols’ punk classic is, as my friend Robin would say, like pissing from the roof of a multi story car park – wrong on so many levels.

First of all, don’t arse about with “Anarchy In The UK”. Whatever you may think of the Pistols’ debut single, you can’t deny its place in (punk) rock history. Secondly, if you are going to mess with it, at least retain Johnny Rotten’s iconic (albeit phonically incorrect) phrasing. It’s “I am an anti-Christ, I am an anar-kaist”. Who are you Mr Green Jellÿ to correct Johnny Rotten? Thirdly, this whole Flintstones thing had already been done before by The Screaming Blue Messiahs with their 1988 Top 30 hit “I Wanna Be A Flintstone”. Hardly original. Fourthly, the costumes. Obviously that’s meant to be Fred and Barney but who’s the third one meant to be? Bam-Bam? Just crap. Oh and was it really wise to accessorise Barney’s costume with a skinhead look and ‘Oi’ on the side of his head given some of the links to white nationalist groups like the National Front the movement was perceived to have. Finally, it had zero musical value but worse than that even, it wasn’t funny. At all.

Rather predictably the song would make it onto the soundtrack to the 1994 live action movie The Flintstones alongside that Screaming Blue Messiahs track and “(Meet) The Flintstones” by The B-52s who renamed themselves The BC-52s for the release. How we laughed.

Another low now as we return to that horrible sub genre of dance music, the reworking of pop songs as dance floor fillers. There was a lot of this sort of nonsense around this time from the likes of Undercover and Rage and now here was Sarah Washington with a danced up version of “I Will Always Love You”. What a nasty thing this was and totally unnecessary. Whitney Houston’s version of the Dolly Parton classic had been No 1 for ten weeks between Dec ‘92 and Feb ‘93. Did we really need to hear another version of it so soon?

Apparently we did as Sarah Washington’s version made No 12. She attempted to repeat the trick with her follow up, a dance version of George Michael’s “Careless Whisper” but fortunately that didn’t make the Top 40. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of this movement as 1995 saw Nicki French go Top 5 with a danced up version of Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse Of The Heart”. Oh the horror.

It’s a hat-trick of lows as we get “River Of Dreams” by Billy Joel. I said last time this was on the show that it’s one of Billy’s worst ever compositions and I haven’t changed my mind in the meanwhile. Of course, that’s just my humble opinion and others may have a different take. Someone who definitely did was Peter from Spearfish, South Dakota who had this to say on the songfacts.com website:

I think God was really speaking to Billy Joel but Billy Joel decided to ignore God and it’s his own fault if he ends up in hell but you never know
https://www.songfacts.com/facts/billy-joel/the-river-of-dreams

Gulp! Well, Billy does include some biblical references in the song and he does consider himself an atheist so maybe those sorts of comments were always going to happen.

“River Of Dreams” peaked at No 3.

Dear God! I think we’ve hit the lowest of the lows as we encounter Bad Boys Inc. Inevitably, given the rise to the top of Take That, boy bands were springing up left, right and centre in the 90s. Bad Boys Inc were one of the first of these pretenders to cling onto their coat tails hitting immediately with debut single “Don’t Talk About Love”. The work of evil pop mastermind Ian Levine, who himself had produced Take That’s first three singles, they went down the same promotion route as Gary Barlow and co doing nightclub PAs to get their name out there. They also seemed to have adopted their dance moves and stage set up with the lead singer doing all the vocal lifting and the other three just…well…dancing. The song is the usual teeny bop by numbers fare but really they didn’t have anything to make them stand out and certainly nothing to rival Take That. They had one hit wonder written all over them and yet they notched up six chart hits in total including one Top 10! Even their name was terrible. Was it meant to channel some of that other boy band that were the actual rivals to Take That at the time East 17? Bad Boys Inc? Bad Boys Stink more like.

As Kevin Rowland once sang, “Let’s Get This Straight From The Start”. Yes, “Mr Vain” by Culture Beat does sound like Snap!’s “Rhythm Is A Dancer”. There are more similarities though. Both songs went to No 1 in the UK and both were made by German Eurodance acts. There always been a couple of things I never understood about “Mr. Vain” though. Who was ‘Mr. Raider’ as referenced in the lyrics and why does female vocalist Tania Evans insist on being called ‘Mr. Vain’?

Some Breakers now and we start with Ice Cube (an ice breaker?) and “Check Yo Self”. The man behind many of the lyrics on legendary NWA album “Straight Outta Compton”, Ice Cube had left the band acrimoniously in 1989 and was already onto his third solo album by this point. “The Predator” was a No 1 record in America selling 193,000 copies in its first week. This track was the third single to be released from it and gave Ice Cube his second consecutive UK Top 40 hit after “It Was A Good Day” when it peaked at No 36.

As host Tony Dortie says in his intro, the track heavily borrows from the mother of all rap tunes “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel. Widely recognised as the song that took rap into the mainstream, its influence can also be found in work by artists like Genesis (the laugh in “Mama”) and Robbie Williams (the “it’s like a jungle” line in “Millennium”).

This next one literally only exists for me on this 30 seconds clip. I can’t recall it at all from 1993 and I can’t find anything much about the act online in 2022. To be fair, their name doesn’t aid an internet search – what did I expect to find if I put Ali And Frazier into Google? Whoever they were/are, their song was a cover of the Althea And Donna 1978 classic “Uptown Top Ranking”. Not a straight cover though you understand. This was 1993 so they ragga-fied it with a rap and tried to update the sound by including that horrible sax parp from recent No 1 “All That She Wants” by Ace Of Base. There’s also a hint of “That’s The Way (I Like It)” by KC And The Sunshine Band. Just…why?

Like Althea and Donna, “Uptown Top Ranking” was Ali and Frazier’s only hit when it peaked at No 33. Unlike Althea and Donna, nobody remembers the musical version of Ali and Frazier.

Whatever you may think of Jay Kay, he was ahead of his time when it came to green issues. He was the funk version of Julian “Salt Water” Lennon. “Emergency On Planet Earth” was the title track of Jamiroquai’s debut album and also the third track to be released from it as a single. Sonically, it was very much in the same vein as it’s two predecessors but somehow I think I liked it better than those other tracks. The sci-fi themed video stands up pretty well although it’s dated by the inclusion of a public pay phone.

This would be the last time we’d see Jamiroquai for a whole year bar a re-release of debut flop single “When You Gonna Learn”. When they did return, it was with “Space Cowboy” which sounded the same as everything else they’d released.

Talking of debut singles being re-released, here’s “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong” by Spin Doctors. Originally out in October of 1992, it made No 17 on the US charts but it wasn’t released over here until “Two Princes” had been a hit. I’d forgotten what a nifty tune this is. Some great slap bass playing and a searing guitar riff make for a great groove (man!). It should have been a bigger hit than its No 23 peak.

Songwriter and lead vocalist Chris Barron was initially subjected to accusations of misogyny due to the song’s lyrics (the opening line is “It’s been a whole lot easier since the bitch left town”) with many assuming it was written about an ex-girlfriend but it was actually about a toxic relationship with his stepmother. “The song is really about life being short so we should all be nice to one other” he told Sky magazine in an interview.

The track would turn up on Sesame Street in 1995 as “Little Miss Count Along”. There’s no bigger accolade.

Finally! A song on a ragga tip in 1993 that I didn’t mind! I refer to Apache Indian and his song “Boom Shack-A-Lak” which was a track from his “Nuff Vibes EP”. Inevitably, people made comparisons with it and Shaggy’s “Oh Carolina” and Apache Indian (real name Steven Kapur) himself references this in the BBC documentary Top Of The Pops – The Story Of 1993. He admits that he was influenced by the likes of the Shaggy, Chaka Demus and Pliers etc who were releasing reggae style songs with a 60s pop twist to them and so thought he’d have a brash at that himself. His breakthrough hit from earlier in the year “Arranged Marriage” had been nothing like “Boom Shack-A-Lak” (a made up word with a similar meaning to ‘Wagwan’ Kapur says in the documentary) with its Bhangra rhythms and instrumentation but he could see where the money trail was going and duly followed.

Cautious not to appear to be treading on his buddy Shaggy’s toes, he played him the track and just about asked his permission to release it. Being the magnanimous fellow he is, Shaggy wasn’t at all bothered that Kapur appeared to be “nicking his shit” (to quote Shaggy) and the rest was history. Easily Apache Indian’s biggest hit, it went to No 5 in the UK and has been used extensively in film such as the Dumb And Dumber movies and Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (surely they should have used a song by Shaggy?!). It sounds like it should have been included in one of the Austin Powers movies but as far as I can tell it wasn’t used.

I’m guessing hopes were high in the offices of Aswad and Yazz’s record labels for the rejuvenating powers of this cover version of Ace’s “How Long”. With both artists’ careers in need of a shot in the arm, surely a reggaed-up take on an airplay classic would do the trick? ‘No!’ was the resounding answer from the record buying public as despite this TOTP appearance, it got no higher than its peak this week of No 31. Yazz looks pretty different to her “The Only Way Is Up” heyday with her short peroxide blonde cut replaced by a longer hairdo tied up at the back. When she went to get that short crop, her hairdresser looked at her cascading tresses and said ‘How long?’. I’ll get me coat.

Take That are dethroned at the top of the charts as Freddie Mercury takes over with “Living On My Own”. I just didn’t get this. To me, it’s a nothing song that probably deserved no more than its chart high of No 50 when originally released in 1985. OK, you could make a case for a surge in record sales when an artist dies but in Freddie’s case that was back in 1991, one year and 263 days before this song made it to No 1. There had already been two Freddie solo singles released posthumously and neither got anywhere near the top of the charts so why this one? Was it to do with the No More Brothers remix? Well, whatever the record had, it would turn out to be the last ever entry for Freddie as a solo artist in the UK Top 40 singles chart.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Green Jellÿ	Anarchy In The UK	Never!
2	Sarah Washington	I Will Always Love You	No chance
3	Billy Joel	River Of Dreams	Not likely
4	Bad Boys Inc	Don’t Talk About Love	NO!
5	Culture Beat	Mr. Vain	I did not
6	Ice Cube	Check Yo Self	No
7	Ali And Frazier	Uptown Top Ranking	I’d rather get punched in the face
8	Jamiroquai	Emergency On Planet Earth	No but my wife had the album
9	Spin Doctors	Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong	No but maybe I should have
10	Apache Indian	Boom Shack-A-Lak	It was fun but no
11	Aswad / Yazz	How Long	Too long – no
12	Freddie Mercury	Living On My Own	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/m001cjqv/top-of-the-pops-12081993

TOTP 05 AUG 1993

Posted on September 28, 2022 by 80stastic

I started the previous post talking about the poor state of the BBC’s musical output in 1993 and the landscape altering changes that were coming to both Radio 1 and TOTP. Well, one of them has just happened ahead of schedule. Radio 1 DJ and pretty much the embodiment of the comedy characters Smashie and Nicey Dave Lee Travis resigned on air three days after this TOTP aired. Apparently he was due to leave the station in ten weeks time anyway when his contract ran out but so irate was the ‘Hairy Cornflake’ about what was going on in the corridors of power at the station that he chose to have his own little private or rather very public moment of venting.

“…and I really want to put the record straight at this point and I thought you ought to know – changes are being made here which go against my principles and I just cannot agree with them”
“Profile: Dave Lee Travis”. Aircheck Tracker. Archived from the original on 22 October 2009. Retrieved 13 November 2008.

DLT was referring to the changes being ushered in by new controller in waiting Matthew Bannister that would lead to a massive overhaul of the station and its presenters. Simon Bates, Gary Davies, Alan Freeman, Bob Harris and Paul Gambaccini would follow him out of the door soon after. Eventually even Steve Wright whom Bannister had put on the breakfast show slot would resign* ushering in the era of the self styled saviour of Radio 1 Chris Evans. Heaven help us.

*Writing this coincidentally on the day of Steve Wright’s last ever afternoon show on Radio 2

TOTP would undergo its own major transformation a few months on from the comings and goings at Radio 1 but for the moment it was business as usual. Let’s see who was doing the rounds this week…

Well, there’s Juliet Roberts opening the show with her single “Caught In The Middle” for starters. Long before this hit, Juliet had a gig on a TV show called Rockschool. Nothing to do with Jack Black, it was a BBC programme that ran for four years and showed viewers techniques for making rock and pop music using guitar, keyboards, bass, drums etc.

I don’t remember this at all but by the comments against some of the clips on YouTube, the 80s kids loved it. It did have some pretty big names appear on the show such as Gary Moore, Vince Clarke, The Communards and Midge Ure. The presenters were pretty wooden but they were good musicians. Guitarist Deirdre Cartwright in the thumbnail below had been in a band called Painted Lady who would go on to become Girlschool. Play the opening song in the clip below. It sounds like prog-poppers It Bites who knew their way around a tune or two…

The clip below features Juliet (1:56) talking about singing styles. She also co-hosted a Channel 4 show called Solid Soul that was basically a retooling of America’s Soul Train.

All that work in front of the camera should have made her TOTP appearance here a doddle. She looks pretty confident for sure and nice to see an almost totally female backing band behind her (I think the drummer is a bloke). The 1993 trend of the tall hat started by Linda Perry of 4 Non Blondes carries on with Juliet’s choice of headgear. Top (hat) stuff.

What on earth is going on here?! Daniel O’Donnell on TOTP?! At a time when Matthew Bannister was lurking the corridors of Radio 1 on a dinosaur hunt to turn the station back to its original raison d’être of being for ‘young listeners’, what was the natural successor to Val Doonican doing on the BBC’s prime time pop music show?! Bizarre doesn’t begin to cover it. Even host Mark Franklin sounds surprised when he introduces him.

Look, I know Daniel O’Donnell has a massively loyal fan base who swear by him and he wasn’t doing any harm by giving them what they wanted to hear but in terms of the symbiosis between the BBC’s two main musical arms, it seemed like an outlier at best. To put it into context, it wouldn’t be long before Radio 1 Head of Production Trevor Dann would ban Status Quo records from being played on the station.

“Whatever Happened To Old Fashioned Love” was only O’Donnell’s fourth single release and he would only ever release eighteen in a fourteen year period fifteen of which would make the UK Top 40. Albums were a different matter altogether. Check out these numbers:

Studio albums: 38
Compilation albums: 13
Live albums: 4

Wow! That’s a lot of Daniel O’Donnell! Big props by the way to the floor managers for this show for getting the studio audience to scream at Daniel as if he was a member of Take That.

The Madonna video for “Rain” again?! This is the third time in four weeks! And it was a non-mover this week (albeit within the Top 10)! Overkill much? It would get no higher despite all this exposure. I said in a recent post that you only had to look at the fact that all five singles from the “Erotica” album made the Top 10 in the UK as evidence that she was still current, popular and relevant at this time. However, what I didn’t say was that four of them (the four consecutive releases after the title track) failed to make the Top 5, the first time that had ever happened. She wouldn’t have another No 1 record until “Frozen” five years later.

One place higher than Madonna we find Urban Cookie Collective with “The Key The Secret” and unlike her Madgesty, they are on the up. Their ride up the charts so far has been as follows:

40 – 29 – 20 – 11 – 6

They would rise to No 2 the following week where they would stay for two weeks kept off the top spot by Freddie Mercury. It would then spend the next three weeks inside the Top 10 and a further three inside the Top 40 before finally dropping out.

The other day the tweet below appeared on my timeline:

Mental note to oneself – when in office don’t randomly pipe up ‘I’ve got the secret’ when someone says, ‘I’ve got the key.’ It leads to confused looks and questions about what secret you know. Not everyone has song lyrics from 1993 still playing in their head.
— Lucy Mitchell (@LucyMitchAuth) September 27, 2022

The replies to Lucy’s tweet showed that there were loads of us with similar lines from songs that we pull out automatically given the correct prompt. Mine and my wife’s include “(Hey You) The Rock Steady Crew” by Rock Steady Crew and “Fresh” by Kool And The Gang. Within the replies to Lucy’s tweet, someone managed to get in another 1993 reference:

At a wedding once and a bridesmaid stands to do a reading entitled ‘What is Love?’ To which my husband whispers ‘baby don’t hurt me’ I don’t think our row heard any of the reading
— Bronagh (@BristowBronagh) September 28, 2022

The well worn tale of soap star to pop idol has another chapter. How many had already made that transformation by August 1993? Well, off the top of my head there’s Kylie and Jason obviously, Kylie’s sister Dannii, Craig McLachlan, Stefan Dennis (!) and that’s just from Neighbours. If we look closer to home, we find perhaps where this whole phenomenon began with another resident of the aforementioned Albert Square. Seven years prior to this, Anita Dobson took “Anyone Can Fall In Love” into the Top 5 starting a flurry of EastEnders chancing their arms as pop sensations. Nick Berry, Letitia Dean and Paul Medford, Sophie Lawrence all had hits of varying size whilst there were also some feeble failures from the likes of Tom Watt and Peter Dean. None of them though seemed to have the credibility that Michelle Gayle had.

She’d been on our screens as Hattie Tavernier for over three years by this point but left Albert Square to pursue a pop career full time. Her debut single was “Looking Up” and it was no crappy cover version designed to deliver a one-off hit. I could imagine someone like Dina Carroll, Kim Appleby or even Louise post Eternal performing it. An uplifting, catchy chorus aligned with a well placed one word sample (‘Rejoice!’), it sounded current and relevant and well…on the money for 1993. Michelle herself displays no signs of imposter syndrome in her confident TOTP turn but then this wasn’t her debut musical performance…

Go to 18:25

Fresh ‘n’ Fly there wrekkin’ the mike (PSYCHE!). “Looking Up” made No 11 (not quite the Top 3 that host Mark Franklin predicted then) and its success was enough to convince Michelle and her label RCA that she should quit EastEnders to be a full time pop star. She would go on to have seven Top 40 hits (including her most well known tune “Sweetness”) and recorded two albums before leaving RCA to sign with EMI where she was the victim of an artist rostering reshuffle and never released any recordings with them. She has returned to music periodically with a second place finish in 2003’s Reborn In The USA retro music contest and even had a go at Eurovision in 2008.

They’ve dropped the number of Breakers from five to four this week (thank god!) and we start with a collaboration between two artists at either end of the alphabet. Aswad and Yazz were at school together Mark Franklin tells us and they looked each other up again to record a cover of Ace’s 1975 hit “How Long”. We’ve seen the cover version as career revitaliser strategy countless times before but both Aswad and Yazz’s fortunes certainly needed a tonic in 1993. Neither had managed a hit in three years and in the case of Yazz especiall, her career was a mess. After the huge success of “The Only Way Is Up” and the “Wanted” album at the end of the 80s, she’d record two albums for two different labels neither of which was released. “How Long” was the lead single from her third LP attempt that did see the light of day but “One On One” disappeared without trace leaving only that Ace cover to remind us of Yazz’s name. It would be her final chart hit when it peaked at No 31. Aswad though would score a Top 5 hit with “Shine” the following year. They were in the news for tragic reasons recently when founding member Drummie Zeb died aged just 62.

Next a huge dance hit from The Goodmen or is it The Good Men or is it Chocolate Puma or even Zki & Dobre? Confused? Well, these were just a few of the names that Dutch DJ and production duo René ter Horst and Gaston Steenkist went by. Not names that roll off the tongue naturally – that may explain the aliases. If their real names aren’t familiar then their tune “Give It Up” surely is to anybody frequenting the club scene around this time as it was huge. An African rhythm combined with that regimented drum sound was ubiquitous and led to it being a global hit especially in the US where it topped the dance chart. So massive was it that it crossed over into the mainstream and became a No 5 hit on the UK Top 40. Given its success, it’s rather surprising that it was never shown on TOTP again. Maybe they didn’t know what to do with it. Its impact led to it being sampled two years later by Simply Red for their No 1 hit “Fairground” but let’s not go there eh?

Talking of No 1 records, here comes a future one courtesy of Culture Beat and “Mr Vain”. This lot were yet more Eurodance chart botherers and as they will be chart toppers shortly, I’ll keep my comments about them in this brief Breakers appearance…well…brief. Here’s a nice little bit of pop trivia for now though. “Mr Vain” was the first record to got o No 1 in the UK that wasn’t released on 7’’ vinyl.

Bon Jovi complete this week’s Breakers with the fourth single from their “Keep The Faith” album. Was “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” just a rewrite of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”? Bit harsh but then the band have incorporated the Stones song into their composition when performing it live so there must be some similarities structure wise. The black and white promo video features a number of scenes clearly meant as a tribute to / stolen directly from A Hard Day’s Night and also Jim Morrison’s grave in Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris. I went there once and there are some incredible figures from history buried within it. Chopin, Edith Piaf, Marcel Proust, Oscar Wilde…and yet all anybody seemed interested in was the singer of The Doors. I saw many hand made signs saying ‘This way to Jim’ and at his actual grave, someone had laid not flowers but a nicely rolled joint. It’s what he would have wanted.

“I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” peaked at No 17.

This week’s live by satellite performance is by UB40 and comes from the Garden State Arts Centre, New Jersey. It’s another pointless exercise as the only camera angle we get is of the band performing “Higher Ground” on a two level stage. Completely dull. Also completely dull was their song which was the second single from the “Promises And Lies” album.

This was a very commercially successful time for UB40. As Mark Franklin says, they’d just had a No 1 single in “(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With You” and the album was also a chart topper. By my reckoning, this was also the last really successful era of the band. There had been a few during their career – the heady days of their politically powerful first hits like “One In Ten”, their covers period of “Labour Of Love” and “Red Red Wine”, the chart topping collaboration with Chrissie Hynde on “I’ve Got You Babe” and then this 1993 spell. “Higher Ground” was a bit of a stinker though.

This episode of TOTP became ‘The UB40 Show’ by be end of it with Ali Campbell introducing the next act who was actually one of their mates. Bitty McLean was a tape operator at the band’s recording studio originally – the reggae Rick Astley then – before being promoted to co-producer and engineer for them. He even provided backing vocals for some of the “Promises And Lies” album. His debut single was a cover of a 1961 Fats Domino tune “It Keeps Rainin” which he retitled “It Keeps Rainin’ (Tears From My Eyes)” presumably much to the annoyance of the TOTP graphics team.

I hated this as it was just more evidence to me of what a terrible year for music 1993 was turning out to be. Plastic reggae with a ragga style shout out at the start of it just to jump on that bandwagon. Horrible. As always, I was in the minority and the record soared to No 2 in the charts. Bitty would have a total of seven UK Top 40 hits.

A fourth and final week at the top of the heap for Take That with “Pray”. They needn’t have worried though as it was the first of eight No 1 singles in the first part of their career. They will be back in a few weeks with “Relight My Fire” accompanied by the dreadful Lulu.

dsfghjk

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Juliet Roberts	Caught In The Middle	Nope
2	Daniel O’Donnell	Whatever Happened To Old Fashioned Love	As if
3	Madonna	Rain	No
4	Urban Cookie Collective	The Key The Secret	I did not
5	Michelle Gayle	Looking Up	Negative
6	Aswad and Yazz	How Long	Nah
7	The Goodmen	Give It Up	No thanks
8	Culture Beat	Mr Vain	Never happening
9	Bon Jovi	I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead	No but I had a promo copy of the Keep The Faith album
10	UB40	Higher Ground	I did not
11	Bitty McLean	It Keeps Rainin’ (Tears From My Eyes)	Just awful – no
12	Take That	Pray	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/m001c94b/top-of-the-pops-05081993

TOTP 29 JUL 1993

Posted on September 24, 2022 by 80stastic

It’s late July 1993 and the BBC’s musical output has gone stale. The seismic changes of the TOTP ‘year zero’ revamp happened twenty-two months ago and many are no longer with us most obviously the majority of the slew of new presenters that were introduced. In fact, the only two remaining are Mark Franklin and Tony Dortie who have been presenting solo on alternate weeks since October 1992. The show’s audience has plateaued at a level of 6.5 million which was less than it was attracting pre the revamp.

Meanwhile, over at Radio 1, whilst it seems like the ‘Smashie And Nicey’ image propagated by the likes of Simon Bates, Dave Lee Travis and Gary Davies will carry on forever, change is a-comin’. The era of Matthew Bannister as controller of Radio 1 is nearly upon us and he will action a root and branch transformation that will strip away the old, rotting wood. The culture of change would prove to be contagious. Within months, TOTP would also change head producer and the incoming Ric Blaxill would reverse most of the ‘year zero’ changes. For now though, it was the calm before the storm. Let’s see who was afloat before the sea of change appeared over the horizon…

We start with an act that was having some success under the current regime but who would flourish under the new. “Unforgiven” was D:Ream’s third of four consecutive Top 40 hits in 1993 though none would get any higher than No 19. Solid but not spectacular. Come early 1994 though they would go off like a rocket with the re-release of “Things Can Only Get Better” soaring to No 1.

Like most people I’m guessing, I don’t remember “Unforgiven” but on listening back to it, I was pleasantly surprised. It’s OK. A bit more grit to it than their most famous tune, the most impressive part of it is the bridge into the chorus which Peter Cunnah almost growls – quite the feat in a dance record. Linda Perry from 4 Non Blondes seems to have started a trend for tall hat wearing given the millinery of one of the backing singers. Where will it all end? Well, I’ll tell you where it won’t end – with me making the almost obligatory reference to Professor Brian Cox on keyboards…oh shit.

“Unforgiven” peaked at No 29.

“Show Me Love” by Robin S was not just one of the biggest dance tunes of 1993 but of the whole decade and beyond. How do you follow a hit line that? Easy! Just release virtually the same song again but change its title. “Luv 4 Luv” is “Show Me Love”, not just sonically but linguistically with the same three syllable title and chorus but with a slight change of spelling. Money for old rope? This was, to reference the film maker Stanley Kubrick, money for pieces of string too short to be useful*. Even Tony Dortie can’t resist a jibe by stating tongue-in-cheek that it’s “nothing like her first single”.

*Kubrick was a massive hoarder and when his family were sorting through his estate after his death, they found a box labelled ‘pieces of string too short to be useful’. His archives now reside at the London College of Communication .

Amazingly, enough people bought the single to send it to No 11 in the UK charts. I don’t get this. Presumably if a punter liked it enough to buy “Luv 4 Luv” then said punter must have felt the same about “Show Me Love” and also bought that so essentially you have the same record twice. Surely there can’t have been people who only bought “Luv 4 Luv”?! “I wasn’t bothered about “Show Me Love” but this new one by Robin S is great and I must have it”…said no-one ever.

When Freddie Mercury died in November 1991, Queen’s most iconic song “Bohemian Rhapsody” was rereleased and almost inevitably became that year’s Xmas No 1. Four months later, The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert for AIDS Awareness took place at Wembley Stadium with the remaining members of Queen all involved. Such was Freddie’s popularity though, there was still a clamour for his recordings and so the band’s label raided his back catalogue as a solo artist. For a name as big as Freddie’s, there wasn’t actually that much solo work to raid. He only recorded two studio albums (and one of those was the “Barcelona” collaboration with Montserrat Caballé) plus the standalone single “The Great Pretender”, a couple of tracks for the Dave Clark musical Time and “Love Kills” from Giorgio Moroder’s restoration of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. That didn’t stop Parlophone coming up with the unimaginatively titled “The Freddie Mercury Album” compilation in 1992 which included elements of all those recording projects. That album had already seen the release of “In My Defence” from Time and a rerelease for the aforementioned “The Great Pretender” which had both charted.

What came next though, nearly two years after Freddie’s death, was a surprise. A posthumous No1 record with a single that had stumbled to a peak of No 50 when originally released eight years prior? How did that happen? Well, it was all down to a team of remixers called The No More Brothers who took the track “Living On My Own” which had been on Freddie’s 1985 solo debut album “Mr Bad Guy” and that 1992 compilation and turned it into a dance hit. A chart topper all over Europe including the UK, it was a sales sensation. Me though, I didn’t get it. I hadn’t been aware of the 1985 original but this 1993 version didn’t make me want to seek it out. It just sounded so bland and I hated the lines ‘Dee do de de, Dee do de de, I don’t have no time for no monkey business”. What?! Written down, the first part looks like a script for a Harry Enfield’s The Scousers sketch whilst the monkey business bit was just hackneyed. How was this a No 1 record? The video is the same one used for the 1985 release and uses footage of Freddie’s 39th birthday party in Munich where he recorded the “Mr Bad Guy” album.

The general perception amongst the fanbase of Manic Street Preachers is that their second album “Gold Against The Soul” is also their worst. There is also an agreed opinion that the one stand out track on it is “La Tristesse Durera” which was released as its second single. I disagree on both counts. I love this album and though “La Tristesse Durera” is a fabulous track, it’s not my favourite from it. That honour switches between “Roses In The Hospital” and “Life Becoming A Landslide” on a regular basis.

Actually, I need to correct myself here and give the song its full title which is “La Tristesse Durera (Scream To A Sigh)”. No brackets, no points. I make this clarification not just for the sake of accuracy nor to be a pedant but to highlight a peculiar oddity about the track that has a tie in with another song I love that has brackets in the title. For some reason, when released in the US, the the song’s title was changed to “Scream To Sigh (La Tristesse Durera)”. Why? I have no idea but nearly a decade earlier, The Icicle Works’ single “Birds Fly (Whisper To A Scream)” had its title changed to “Whisper To A Scream (Birds Fly)” for the US market. What was it about US record labels and brackets and the word ‘scream’?

As for the performance here, would there have been outrage at Nicky Wire wearing a dress? There shouldn’t have been. It’s not as if we hadn’t seen it before. There was Bowie on the cover of his “The Man Who Sold The World” album and that bloke from Mud who wore one on the actual show.

“La Tristesse Durera (Whisper To A Scream)” peaked at No 22.

“Live from the Dominion Theatre in London’s West End…” Don’t get too excited it’s just Craig McLachlan in a revival of Grease the Musical and I have to say that, based on this short clip of “You’re The One That I Want” he doesn’t seem too convincing as Danny Zuko. Maybe it’s his curly hair, or his average singing voice or maybe it’s just that he’s not John Travolta which is not his fault of course. Debbie Gibson on the other hand belts it out and wears that iconic leather outfit well.

As Tony Dortie says, the cast included Shane Richie who played the role of Kenickie but as for him being “very funny” – if he performed anything like he did when on 3–2–1 in 1987…Perhaps he should have changed his name to Shame Richie…

Five Breakers again this week (bastards!) starting with Juliet Roberts and “Caught In The Middle”. I had no idea at the time but this wasn’t Juliet’s first Top 40 record – she was the vocalist on “It’s Over” by Funk Masters way back in 1983. She then joined smooth jazzers Working Week whose single “I Thought I’d Never See You Again” I quite liked though nobody else seemed to much when it peaked at No 80. Fast forward eight years and Juliet finally had a hit in her own right.

There’s a couple of parallels between Juliet and Shara Nelson who was on the show the other week. Both were having success under their own names after supplying the vocals for other artists (Shara sang on Massive Attack’s “Unfinished Sympathy”) and both were on the Cooltempo label. Also like Shara, Juliet’s solo career seemed to peter out rather. “Caught In The Middle” made No 24 though a David Morales remix the following year peaked ten places higher. A couple more Top 20 singles followed before the decade was out but that didn’t translate into album sales with her debut long player “Natural Thing” only making No 65. She continues to be in demand as a backing singer though.

The first of two huge stars now who are experiencing a drop off in singles sales as their latest offerings fail to tempt UK record buyers. After her last single “That’s The Way Love Goes” went to No 2 over here, Janet Jackson might have expected the follow up to perform similarly. It didn’t. “If” was the second single from her “Janet” album which I thought was meant to be a more smooth, sensual sounding soul record but this single could have been on the more strident previous album “Rhythm Nation 1814” with its hard beats and rock guitar riff. Yes, the lyrics aligned with the album’s sexual theme touching on fantasy and voyeurism but sonically it was nothing like the previous single.

The video plays on the voyeurism subject with scenes involving touch screen monitors and web cams, seemingly jumping on the bandwagon of Sliver, the erotic thriller starring Sharon Stone that was popular at the time. Maybe the racy video worked against the single’s commercial potential – was it too racy for anything other than a short Breaker spot on TOTP? Whatever the reason, “If” only made it to No 14 in the UK.

Oh crap! It’s “River Of Dreams” by Billy Joel. Now I like Billy and some of his back catalogue (especially the earlier stuff) is great. Even his last album prior to this (“Storm Front”) had some good singles on it. This track though rivalled “Uptown Girl” for sheer, undiluted awfulness. The title track off his only studio album of the 90s and the last to be comprised of pop songs*, it was and remains shockingly bad.

*His 2001 set “Fantasies & Delusions” contained only classical compositions.

Not everyone agreed with my assessment though. It was a huge global hit and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Record of the Year for 1994 losing out to, by coincidence, the next artist to feature on the Breakers. Why couldn’t I stand it? It was just so twee and I hated that harmonised intro that goes “In the middle of the…I go walking in the…”. I think ultimately though it reminds me of a time when I wasn’t that happy at work but that’s for a post in the near future.

Long after I’d finished working in record shops and stopped listening to Radio 1, I found myself at the radio home for the newly middle aged and listening to Terry Wogan’s breakfast show and he used to play this constantly. It nearly broke me.

“River Of Dreams” peaked at No 3.

Now to that second artist (alongside Janet Jackson) suffering an unexpected downturn in sales of their latest single and also the winner of that 1994 Grammy for Record of the Year. “Run To You” was the fourth single released by Whitney Houston from The Bodyguard soundtrack and was basically a retread of the third single “I Have Nothing” in that they were both towering ballads executed with precision by Whitney over a shiny production. So similar were they that Natalie Cole performed a medley of them at the 1993 Academy Awards (I’m guessing Whitney was indisposed).

Presumably due to the fact that the so many people already had the song due to buying the soundtrack album, “Run To You” failed to work itself into a sprint up the charts peaking at No 15 in the UK and No 31 in the US.

The video looks a bit crap by today’s high CGI standards with Whitney running against a backdrop of clouds although maybe it was a homage to the film of the aforementioned Grease when Danny and Sandy’s car takes off into the sky and they fly off into the clouds?

Neither “Run To You” nor Janet Jackson’s “If” were shown in full on TOTP which you maybe wouldn’t have expected for two such huge names.

Another huge name who had already had her video shown in full on the show is the final Breaker this week. Madonna is up to No 7 with “Rain” from her “Erotica” album. The tickets Tony Dortie refers to are for the two concert dates in September that Madonna played at Wembley Stadium as part of her The Girlie Show world tour.

“Rain” ended the first act of the show and was interspersed with “Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me)” by The Temptations and “Singin’ In The Rain”. Want to hear it? Here you go but having sat through the whole thing myself, I must warn you that you won’t get these 9 minutes and 48 seconds of your life back…

Back in the studio we find Dannii Minogue performing her rendition of Melba Moore’s “This Is It”. You know I said earlier about Juliet Roberts being an in demand backing singer after her solo career ended? Well, she must have been moonlighting back in 1993 as she provided backing vocals on Dannii’s previous single to “This Is It” which was called “Love’s On Every Corner”.

Twenty years after she had a hit with “This Is It”, the track supplied the title for a Best Of Dannii album which included a duet with sister Kylie of the ABBA standard “The Winner Takes It All” – I wonder which of the two of them that was then?

“This Is It” peaked at No 10.

There’s only one Bee Gees song I remember from 1993 and it ain’t this one. “For Whom The Bell Tolls” was a surprise Top 5 hit over Xmas that year that just seemed to keep on selling even when you thought it must have run out of steam. “Paying The Price Of Love” though? Nah, I’ve got nothing. Their previous hit to this had been the shameless rewrite of “Chain Reaction” that was “Secret Love” in 1991. Did this one sound like any of their other songs? A slight hint of “You Win Again” maybe? Maybe not.

Barry Gibbs’ falsetto here is quite remarkable. That’s not a compliment though – a better descriptor would be ridiculous. I know it works somehow on most of their back catalogue especially their disco era peak but taken in isolation it’s quite mad. If he turned up on a talent show like The Voice for example and did that, would the judges turn around or would they look at each other and break out into a fit of uncontrollable giggling? What if they did turn around and then saw his mane of hair?! I can only really think of Barry Gibb and Queen’s Brian May that have always maintained the same hairstyle throughout their careers. Honourable mentions should also go to Rod Stewart and Paul Weller for sustaining comedy haircuts but they have tweaked them down the years.

“Paying The Price Of Love” peaked at No 23.

You can’t really argue with Tony Dortie’s assessment that Take That were “simply the biggest pop band in the UK” at this time as “Pray” notches up a third week at No 1. The boys are back in the studio this week and what I’m noticing from this performance is the clear division of hairstyles between them (and yes, I know I seem to be obsessed with pop star barnets yet again this week). Mark, Howard and Robbie all have that classic mid 90s long at the the sides curtains style while Jason and Gary have a more classic crew cut. I think I know which has aged the better.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	D:Ream	Unforgiven	Nope
2	Robin S	Luv 4 Luv	Never
3	Freddie Mercury	Living On My Own	I did not
4	Manic Street Preachers	La Tristesse Durera (Scream To A Sigh)	Not the single but I had the album
5	Craig McLachlan and Debbie Gibson	You’re The One That I Want	No
6	Juliet Roberts	Caught In the Middle	Negative
7	Janet Jackson	If	Nah
8	Billy Joel	River Of Dreams	Hell no!
9	Whitney Houston	Run To You	No thanks
10	Madonna	Rain	It’s a no
11	Dannii Minogue	This Is It	No it isn’t
12	Bee Gees	Paying The Price Of Love	I didn’t pay the price
13	Take That	Pray	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/m001c948/top-of-the-pops-29071993

TOTP 22 JUL 1993

Posted on September 21, 2022 by 80stastic

Look, I know that TOTP producer Stanley Appel couldn’t possibly have known that twenty-nine years on from deciding the running orders for these shows that I would be writing a review of each one and that the more acts that he shoehorned into thirty minutes, the more words I would have to write but damn! These TOTP repeats are killing me. This edition has thirteen acts on it. Thirteen! Bastards! Right then. No time for an intro about what else was happening in the world to form a theme for the post. As Duckie said in Pretty In Pink, “Let’s plow”…

The voice and co-writer of “Unfinished Sympathy” begins the show as Shara Nelson starts “Down That Road” of being a solo artist. She looked fair set to become a huge star as well. With her fly Massive Attack credentials and being signed to Cooltempo Records (home of Carleen Anderson, Arrested Development, The Brand New Heavies and…erm…Kenny Thomas), she had credibility as well as a decent debut tune. She also had a Mercury Music Prize nominated album in “What Silence Knows” which would furnish her with four Top 40 hits. Yet somehow that huge career that seemed inevitable got away from her. Second album “Friendly Fire” performed poorly and then she rather disappeared for a bit before resurfacing to collaborate with the likes of producer and DJ Charles ‘Presence’ Webster.

“Down That Road” managed to combine some cool vibes with a crossover appeal that would see it gain plenty of daytime airplay. It was also one of those records that had a tiny but crucial instrumental hook that lodged itself in your brain – that little sax parp after Shara sings the word ‘road’ in the chorus (see also the final strum of Billy Duffy’s guitar in the riff to “She Sells Sanctuary”).

Something I wasn’t aware of though was that DJ Pete Tong obtained a restraining order against Shara in 2011 following her 12 month community order and community service sentence for harassment of Tong and his wife! Blimey! She really shouldn’t have gone down that road.

“Down That Road” peaked at No 19.

Roxette are next with their highest ever chart entry as “Almost Unreal” crashes into the Top 10 at No 7. It’s their first time back there since “Joyride” made No 4 two years previously but they shouldn’t have got carried away with themselves as it will also be their very last time there in the UK and the song itself was almost universally panned by critics. Even the band themselves didn’t like it stating in the liner notes to their 1995 Greatest Hits album “Don’t Bore Us, Get to the Chorus!” that “if you wanted to make a parody of Roxette, it would probably sound something like this”. Erm, no. This is how a parody of Roxette sounds..

Anyway, “Almost Unreal” was from the film Super Mario Bros which I’ve never seen but I’m led to believe stank out every cinema it played in around the world. Just like Roxette not liking their song from it, the film’s star Bob Hoskins was even more scathing about the actual movie.

“The worst thing I ever did? Super Mario Brothers. It was a fuckin’ nightmare. The whole experience was a nightmare. It had a husband-and-wife team directing, whose arrogance had been mistaken for talent. After so many weeks their own agent told them to get off the set! Fuckin’ nightmare. Fuckin’ idiots.”
Hattenstone, Simon (August 3, 2007). “The Method? Living it out? Cobblers!”. The Guardian.

The song was originally intended for the film Hocus Pocus hence the lyric “I love when you do that hocus pocus to me” but was pulled at the last minute and transferred to the Super Mario Bros project. The soundtrack featured an eclectic collection of artists from Megadeth to Charles and Eddie to Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch via Us3 (more of whom later).

Host Mark Franklin gives what must be one of the most underwhelming introductions in TOTP history. “Here’s a song that’s done well gradually” he tells us. Gradually?! You couldn’t have gone with “Here’s a song that’s climbing the charts” or “Here’s a song that’s finally getting the recognition it deserves” Mark? Anyway, the record is “The Key The Secret” by Urban Cookie Collective.

Now to be fair to Franklin, the single did take a while to climb the charts and had quite the gestation period. It was released in its original format on the tiny Unheard Records label but when a remix of it sent clubbers rushing to their nearest dance floor, it was given a bigger push on Pulse 8. Even then, radio was resistant to its crossover appeal but when it finally entered the Top 40, they couldn’t cock a deaf ‘un (as my Dad might say) any longer. It would go on to rise as high as No 2 and become one of the biggest dance tunes of the decade.

The hanging gold key in the background to this performance has a nativity play scenery feel to it but then apparently the song was written about taking magic mushrooms so maybe it looked better if you were under the influence.

For my money, OMD have one of the best back catalogue’s of Top 40 hits out there. By 1993 though, I’d lost sight of them completely to the extent that this single – “Dream Of Me (Based On Love’s Theme)” passed me by completely. The second of three singles released from the patchy “Liberator” album, it was structured around the 1974 US No 1 “Love’s Theme” by Barry White’s The Love Unlimited Orchestra. I was only five when the original was a hit but didn’t Gary Davies use it to soundtrack ‘The Sloppy Bit’ of his Radio 1 show? I think he did.

Anyway, back to OMD and whilst I can appreciate the idea of what Andy McCluskey was trying to do with the track, I’m not entirely sure he pulls it off. Supposedly the single version is different from its album counterpart with the Barry White samples stripped out but I’m not sure that I can tell the difference having listened to both. Whichever version it is on TOTP, at least the slower bpm of the track has toned down McCluskey’s legendary wiggy dancing.

OMD would only return to the UK Top 40 one more time in 1996 with the rather lovely “Walking On The Milky Way”.

The Breakers are the reason that there’s thirteen songs on tonight’s show as there’s five of them! The first three are all dance tunes starting with “Take A Free Fall” by Dance 2 Trance.

This was the follow up to “Power Of American Natives” but I couldn’t really care less about that. What’s intriguing me about this track is the guy in the video zooming about on some sort of flying Minecraft piece. The look of it reminded me of something and I finally remembered what it was…

Go to 2:33

It’s all about the record labels tonight. After name checking Cooltempo earlier here comes an act that you can’t talk about without mentioning the legendary record label that they were on. Us3 were all about Blue Note Records the American jazz label which released recordings by everybody from Miles Davis to Art Blakey to Horace Silver (and yes I only know those names from the jazz section of every Our Price store I ever worked in). Not only were they signed to the label but their debut album “Hand On The Torch” only featured samples from tracks that were released by Blue Note. Even their name came from an album produced by Alfred Lion, the founder of Blue Note Records. They were totally committed.

“Tukka Yoot’s Riddim” was the jazz-rappers’ first chart hit when it peaked at No 34 (btw another song that Mark Franklin described using the word ‘gradually’ – “this song’s getting there gradually” he says) but I reckon most people know them for their hit “Cantaloop” which was their biggest chart placing when it was rereleased after this single and made No 23. I must admit to sometimse confusing them with the similarly named Oui 3 who were their chart peers.

And another dance tune! This one is from techno ravers N–Joi and their “The Drumstruck EP”. This was their belated follow up to “Live In Manchester EP” that was a No 12 hit in February of 1992. It all sounds like a load of bleeps to me. Much more interesting is that one of the guys in N-Joi was called Mark Franklin! How did TOTP host Mark Franklin not comment on this in his intro?!

“The Drumstruck EP” peaked at No 33.

Around 1992/93 was the time in REM’s career when they did the whole Michael Jackson thing. I don’t mean they bought a chimpanzee and called it Bubbles though. No. They were releasing loads of tracks from their latest album as singles. “Nightswimming” was the fifth of six singles to come off the “Automatic For The People” album and like its immediate predecessor “Everybody Hurts”, it was quite the melancholic number. Based around Mike Mills’s memorable piano melody and not much else, it remains a beautiful piece of music. It was recorded at the same studio where Derek And The Dominos laid down “Layla” with Mills playing the same piano that was used in its famous coda.

In my head, this was only released as a limited edition 10” but I can’t find anything to substantiate that online and in any case, that would have severely limited its chart potential so maybe I just imagined it.

“Nightswimming” peaked at No 27.

Just what we all needed. A retread of a Grease song by an ex-Neighbours soap star. We’d been in similar territory just two years before when Jason Donovan took “Any Dream Will Do” to No 1 when the single was released to promote the soundtrack to the West End version of Joseph And The Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat he was starring in. In 1993, it was the turn of Jason’s Neighbours pal Craig McLachlan to advertise the West End show he was in which was Grease via the track “You’re The One That I Want” with 80s popster Debbie Gibson.

Look, one of my abiding childhood memories is that of the Summer of 1978 when the film version of Grease was everywhere and you couldn’t escape from John Travolta and Olivia Newton John so I have a great affection for the songs from it but if you were going to buy any of its music then surely you’d go for the film soundtrack and not the 1993 London Cast Recording album? From Craig and Debbie’s perspectives, it was probably a good career move as both of their time as a pop star was coming to an end and I’m sure they were great in the show but this all seemed a tad unnecessary.

After that little Grease interlude, we’re back onto the dance music as Utah Saints graduate from being a Breaker last week to appearing in the studio this with “I Want You”.

I’d liked their other singles up to this point but this one was rather lost on me possibly because it didn’t employ a vocal sample like its predecessors with the band’s Jez Willis provided the vocals instead. I can think of at least two other songs called “I Want You” I’d rather listen to. Firstly there’s the Inspiral Carpets / Mark E Smith collaboration from 1994:

Then there this wonderfully atmospheric track from Elvis Costello’s 1986 album called “Blood And Chocolate”…

OK, so this show has been dominated by dance singles of various hues but I do think that Stanley Appel’s stewardship of TOTP did try and reflect other musical genres. The other week they had The Levellers on and now here’s another band who would have been considered outside of the mainstream. So much so that this was the band’s first (and I’m guessing last) ever appearance in the TOTP studio. The Waterboys though were on a roll (for them) with a second consecutive Top 40 hit in “Glastonbury Song”.

The follow up to “The Return Of Pan”, it was the second single from their “Dream Harder” album which was seen as possessing a much harder rock sound than previously heard form them but it came at a cost causing those old musical differences to splinter the existing line up. Mike Scott was left as the only true member of the band and the album was completed with session musicians. The next logical step was for Scott to go full solo and he did do with the next two releases put out under his own name.

He certainly looks like a solo act in this performance as everything centres around him and his floppy, red hat. In fact, the headgear, the long hair and being sat permanently at his keyboards, he reminds me a bit of Gilbert O’Sullivan in his 70s heyday. The song’s not bad actually and possibly the most radio friendly since “The Whole Of The Moon”. Oh and apparently, The Waterboys have had more members than the aforementioned Mark E. Smith’s The Fall. No really.

Talking of ‘aforementioned’ people, here’s Jason Donovan. I know, I can’t believe he had another TOTP appearance in him but this really was the last knockings of his pop career. In fact, this must be his final time on the show. How do I know? Because this single “All Around The World” didn’t even make the Top 40 and he didn’t release another single until 2007 and the show finished in 2006. The song really is a stinker, just awful. Talk about going out on a low. Jason has found gainful employment though and is now fronting an advertising campaign for the People’s Postcode Lottery.

Take That still hold the No 1 spot with “Pray”. We get the video this week and it’s basically just the lads getting their pecs out with chests being bared roughly every five seconds. It was pure titillation for their army of teenage girl fans. At least they didn’t get the jelly out like they did for their very first single “Do What U Like”. Small mercies and all that.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Shara Nelson	Down That Road	No but my wife had the album
2	Roxette	Almost Unreal	No
3	Urban Cookie Collective	The Key The Secret	Nope
4	OMD	Dream Of Me (Based On Love’s Theme)	Not but I have its on a Greatest Hits album I think
5	Dance 2 Trance	Take A Free Fall	Negative
6	Us3	Tukka Yoot’s Riddim	Nah
7	N-Joi	The Drumstuck EP	Never happening
8	REM	Nightswimming	No but I had their album
9	Craig McLachlan and Debbie Gibson	You’re The One That I Want	As if
10	Utah Saints	I Want You	But I didn’t want you
11	The Waterboys	Glastonbury Song	I did not
12	Jason Donovan	All Around The World	Ha! Of course not
13	Take That	Pray	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/m001c1qs/top-of-the-pops-22071993

TOTP 15 JUL 1993

Posted on September 17, 2022 by 80stastic

The day after this TOTP aired, Jurassic Park opened in UK cinemas. A ground breaking film both in terms of box office receipts and its revolutionary use of CGI, it’s hard to explain to people who weren’t there at the time quite what a big deal this film was. The hype and sense of excitement around it was palpable. I was working in the Rochdale Our Price at the time and there was only one other record shop in the town. The manager of it used to come into our store all the time and I recall him telling me that he’d been to see Jurassic Park the night before and how blown away he’d been by it. He specifically went on and on about the scene where the T-Rex has a torch light shined in its face and the pupil in its eye dilates. Like I said, it’s hard to explain now how advanced the film seemed to an audience like me who had been brought up on the special effects of Ray Harryhausen in the likes of Jason And The Argonauts and Clash Of The Titans. Of course, that original film spawned a whole franchise with the latest film coming out just this year. I wonder if any of the artists on this TOTP could be described as dinosaurs back in 1993?

I don’t think Dannii Minogue would have qualified as a dinosaur back in 1993. She was still only two years into her fledgling pop career. However, things weren’t going quite as well as they had been in 1991 for Dannii. After scoring two Top 10 successes and a couple of Top 20 singles from her debut album, the hits had dried up rather. Her version of The Jacksons’ “Show You The Way To Go” had spluttered to a high of No 30 whilst follow up “Love’s On Every Corner” had missed the Top 40 altogether. However, 1993 afforded an ideal opportunity for Dannii to kickstart her career as a disco revival was in full swing. Now bearing in mind that she’d already scored a disco styled hit with a version of Stacy Lattisaw’s 1980 hit “Jump To The Beat”, it made perfect sense for Ms Minogue to go there again and so she did with a cover of Melba Moore’s 1976 hit “This Is It”. It did the job too easily being the biggest of the five singles taken from her sophomore album “Get Into You” when it peaked at No 10. The album itself though bombed, vastly underperforming when it peaked at No 52 after her debut “Love And Kisses” had gone Top 10. It would be another ten years before she would return there with “Neon Nights”.

Dannii gives her usual energetic performance to sell the song backed with some equally perky dancers though why they have a backdrop of a sprawling metropolis lit up at night and some palm trees I don’t know. Even more confusing is what Dannii’s then fiancé is doing on the show. Host Tony Dortie introduces him at the end of the song with news of the couple’s impending nuptials. Julian McMahon was his name and he met Dannii on the set of Home And Away. According to Wikipedia, he appeared in the video for “This Is It” but sadly their marriage only lasted eighteen months. It can’t have been his dance moves that first attracted Dannii – in his brief time on screen here he looks like a pissed uncle at a wedding and even after the song has stopped continues to bob up and down like a pigeon’s head when walking. All very odd.

Ah, Tony Dortie has joined me on the Jurassic Park references. “We’ve got no dinosaurs on the show tonight, just Paul Weller’s prehistoric haircut” he chortles to himself. Blimey! If he thought the 1993 version of Weller’s barnet was bad, what would he have made if its current incarnation?

Anyway, this felt like the point in Weller’s solo career where he achieved full lift off. His debut solo album had reminded people of his abilities as a songwriter after it had looked like the 90s might just pass him by. However it was his second album “Wild Wood” which would go platinum in the UK and show that Weller was a force still to be reckoned with. It’s worth remembering that he was only 35 at the time so we shouldn’t have been surprised at his re-emergence and that reports of his musical death were greatly exaggerated.

“Sunflower” was the lead single from the album and I’d forgotten what a strong song it is. It whipcracks away with a spiky rhythm and rapier like guitar riff – mesmerising stuff. It reminds me in parts of a song that Weller himself covered whilst in The Jam – “Big Bird” by Eddie Floyd.

The simple yet effective video with its quick cutaways and a camera revolving around Weller imbues it with even more urgency and energy. “Sunflower” peaked at No 16. It should have been higher.

OK, no real dinosaur connections with 4 Non Blondes other than to say on the soundtrack to Wayne’s World 2, the running order has “Out There” by Dinosaur Jr. followed immediately by “Mary’s House” by – yes – 4 Non Blondes. Tenuous I know.

I can’t find a clip of this particular performance of “What’s Up?” so I have had to use one from a previous week but Linda Perry has swapped her rastacap style headgear for something that Slash might have worn. It hasn’t affected her vocals though as she belts the song out. Whatever you thought of the song (and many didn’t like it), Linda had some pipes on her. Her performance here has echoes of Shakespear’s Sister “Stay” in that Perry has a touch of Siobahn Fahey about her. Not her voice as I’d have to say that is superior to the ex-Banana’s (sorry Siobahn!) but for her twisted, almost demonic delivery especially when she opens her eyes wide amongst all that eye shadow.

Now there’s some I’m sure who would have been happy to describe Deacon Blue in 1993 as dinosaurs (not me obviously). How did they fit into a dance obsessed chart with their well crafted pop songs about hardship, hope and heartbreak? Well, the truth is that they did try to fit in with fourth studio album “Whatever You Say, Say Nothing” being co-produced by legendary dance DJ Paul Oakenfold (somebody I once worked with told me I looked like Oakenfold – I don’t). This new musical direction received mixed reviews and commercially underperformed compared to all three of its predecessors.

Now I would count myself as a fan of the band and have a few of their records but I really don’t remember a fourth single from “Whatever You Say, Say Nothing” but here it is. “Hang Your Head” was the lead song of a four track EP and was very un- Deacon Blue like with its driving beat and rock guitar licks – it was no “Dignity” – but actually it sounds OK to me. Not enough of the wonderful Lorraine McIntosh in this performance though.

A Best Of album came out the following year but the band split after that before reforming five years later. They continue to record and perform live with their last album being as recent as 2021.

This week’s Breakers start with Jon Secada who’s chart career wasn’t quite extinct in 1993 but surely that dinosaur-destroying asteroid was on its way. Having scored an unlikely Top 5 hit with “Just Another Day” the previous year, Jon stalked another hit raptor like and came up with a trio of them though none got any higher than No 23. This one, “Do You Really Want Me”, was the last of them and from the few seconds afforded it on the show sounded like a lost squawking seagull. Where’s an asteroid when you need one?

Ah, now. Here’s an interesting one and an example how quickly the pop world can turn. Back in 1991, Jesus Jones bestrode the charts T-Rex* like, the dominant species of the Top 40. Then that aforementioned asteroid hit in the form of the music press who decided that the band had been the inkies’ darlings for long enough and that they were crap after all.

*I’m meaning the dinosaur here but I guess my point would also work with Marc Bolan’s band.

To their eternal credit, the band carried on regardless and are still together today. Back in 1993 though, “Zeroes And Ones” was the final single to be lifted from their “Perverse” album and would prove to be their last ever UK Top 40 hit. It also provides the title for an upcoming Best Of album due out in October 2022. As for the track itself, it’s pretty standard Jesus Jones fare and I must admit it passed me by at the time.

Also on the end of a music press backlash were Blur who had experienced a slump after the success of debut album “Leisure” and a poorly received US tour. Unlike Jesus Jones though, Blur were able to evolve from their dinosaur state to become one of the 90s (and beyond’s) biggest bands. Enabling that leap from the thrills of “Leisure” to the glories of “Parklife” was inbetweener “Modern Life Is Rubbish”* from which “Chemical World” was the second single to be released. Although it didn’t pull up any trees at the time sales wise, it has retrospectively been labelled as one of the defining albums of Britpop with its Small Faces and The Kinks influences and lyrics that spoke of the experience of British life.

Immediately though, it didn’t appear as if Blur’s fortunes had been reversed. These were the chart peaks for every single release since “There’s No Other Way” made the Top 10 in 1991 until “Girls And Boys” did the same in 1994:

24 – 32 – 28 – 28 – 26

“Chemical World” was responsible for the penultimate entry in that sequence but it probably deserved better. If Paul Weller would come to be seen as one of the Godfathers of Britpop then Blur (alongside Oasis of course, where else would they be?) were its pin up boys. Blur’s and our own worlds would look very different just twelve months later.

*I actually picked up the “Modern Life Is Rubbish” album whilst on holiday in New York. Naturally it was in the bargain bin.

Being a musical dinosaur was the last thing that you could accuse Utah Saints of in 1993. They were at the cutting edge of making groundbreaking, mainstream dance music with their penchant for sampling pop records from the likes of Eurythmics and Kate Bush and repurposing them. However, after three consecutive Top 10 hits, was the writing on the wall for them when fourth single “I Want You” only made No 25? All of them came from their eponymous debut album but apart from a couple of stand alone singles, there was nothing then until 2000 – the equivalent of the Jurassic period (56 million years) in the world of pop.

Why did “I Want You” fail? Well, maybe sampling thrash metal band Slayer’s “War Ensemble” was just a little too niche to secure the band a fourth massive crossover hit. Just a thought.

Like Jesus Jones and Blur before him, Kenny Thomas was facing the challenge of following up on initial success with more hit-worthy material. Even host Tony Dortie talks about the soul crooner being under pressure to do so in his intro. “Stay” was the song that was chosen to relaunch Kenny but unlike the aforementioned Shakespear’s Sister and their track, it wasn’t a resounding success peaking at No 22.

Kenny’s music left me cold at the best of times but this one made me fell like I was locked in a freezer. Sorry Kenny but if this song was a scene from Jurassic Park, it would have been the bit where the guests on the island take a tour in those electric vehicles and none of the dinosaurs appear prompting the two kids to say “I don’t see anything. Do you see anything? There’s nothing there.”

Now, in much the same way that the dinosaurs were wiped off the surface of the earth by that asteroid, the next act seem to have been expunged from the history of 90s music in that you hardly hear them mentioned at all nowadays. In 1993 though, Oui 3 were bona fide chart stars with three Top 40 singles to their name. OK, none of them got any higher than No 17 and two of them were actually the same song (one single was re-released eight months after it initially came out) but that’s three chart hits all the same. That re-release was their Buffalo Springfield sampling song “For What It’s Worth” which, as he told us in his intro, was Tony Dortie’s favourite single of the year to that point. What he didn’t tell us was the name of Oui 3’s new hit which was “Break From The Old Routine”. Bet their record label weren’t too impressed by that. Schoolboy error Tony!

I liked both singles and my wife enjoyed them so much she bought their album “Oui Love You”. Not many other people did though as it peaked at No 39. A second album was never released and after one final minor hit (“Facts Of Life” – No 38) and a couple of stand alone singles that flopped, it was all over – Oui 3 were no(n) more. What I hadn’t realised until now was that one of the band was Blair Booth who was one third of late 80s collaboration Terry, Blair and Anouchka featuring Terry Hall and who were responsible for the marvellous non-hit “Missing”:

Oui 3 though were nothing like Terry, Blair and Anouchka, coming on, as they did, like Stereo MC’s cooler, more laid back cousin. The rapping was on point (though I’m no judge of what makes a good rapper to be fair) and they had what I can only describe as some good grooves. I would have been interested to see what that second album would have sounded like.

Despite having been around for the best part of a decade by 1993, Madonna was nowhere near being a dinosaur what with all the controversy over her “Erotica” album making her still seem exciting and contemporary. Fast forward to 2022, and Madge is plodding around the music landscape like a ponderous brontosaurus desperately seeking ~~Susan~~ validation that she is still relevant.

Anyway, “Rain” was her latest single and the last to be released in the UK from “Erotica”. I’ve said before that when I first heard the album that was the track that stood out to me as a potential hit single. I was right as well but it took a while. As it turned out it would make No 7 meaning that all five of the singles from “Erotica” made the Top 10 over here. Well, there was the evidence if you needed any that Madonna wasn’t a dinosaur back then.

Compared to the other singles, “Rain” felt like it didn’t really belong on the album. It was in many ways a very standard, though lushly produced, big ballad. The lyrics are based around that well worn literary (and indeed cinematic) metaphor of rain being a cleansing agent and washing away previous sorrows to be followed by the sunshine and redeeming warmth of a new love. Or are they? This was a track from “Erotica” remember so were lines like “I feel it…It’s coming…Rain…Feel it on my fingertips” actually referring to something rather more sexual? Does the video give us any clues? Well, it’s much safer than something like “Justify My Love” being a sort of film within a film with the plot depicting Madonna as the star of a promo being directed by composer Ryuichi Sakamoto no less. There is a scene of her kissing a man behind a glass screen while water falls but it’s pretty tame stuff. What do I know though as it won two MTV Video Awards for Best Art Direction and Best Cinematography.

Take That are straight in at No 1 with “Pray”. Straight in! To think just a couple of years before when Gary Barlow popped into the Our Price store in Market Street, Manchester where I was working, my colleague Craig followed him round the shop floor mouthing “nobody buys your records” behind his back!

To say that the group were very much seen as five individuals with each one having a devoted fan base (I’m guessing!), what comes across in the performance here is that the other four very much look like Barlow’s backing dancers. The lead vocals were shared out more equally over subsequent releases. As I recall, Mark Owen took centre stage on “Babe”, Robbie Williams did “Everything Changes” and Howard Donald got the job on “Never Forget”. Did Jason Orange ever get a go to show us his vocal talents? I’m not sure he ever did. No wonder the poor lad ended up leaving the band.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Dannii Minogue	This Is It	Not likely
2	Paul Weller	Sunflower	No but I had the Wild Wood album
3	4 Non Blondes	What’s Up?	No but I found a copy of their album behind a filing cabinet when shutting down the Our Price in Market Street, Manchester
4	Deacon Blue	Hang Your Head	No
5	Jon Secada	Do You Really Want Me	As if
6	Jesus Jones	Zeroes And Ones	Nope
7	Blur	Chemical World	No but I had the album Modern Life Is Rubbish
8	Utah Saints	I Want You	I didn’t actually
9	Kenny Thomas	Stay	Never happening
10	Oui 3	Break From The Old Routine	No but my wife had their album
11	Madonna	Rain	Nah
12	Take That	Pray	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/m001c1qq/top-of-the-pops-15071993

TOTP 08 JUL 1993

Posted on September 15, 2022 by 80stastic

On the day this TOTP aired, and presumably straight after it finished, Phil Mitchell got married for the first time in Eastenders. His wife was a Romanian refugee called Nadia with the object of the nuptials being to get her a visa so she could stay in the UK. As soon as she was married, she went off with her boyfriend. Fast forward 29 years and Phil is about to get married for the fifth time to Kat Slater but as with his first wedding, it doesn’t go to plan. I wonder how many of the songs on tonight’s TOTP could apply to Phil’s love life?

A perfect start with “What Is Love” by Haddaway! Does Phil know? I doubt it. How about Haddaway? Did he have any inkling? He probably didn’t care as he was up to No 2 in the charts and onto his third TOTP appearance. Piece of piss this pop star lark he probably thought after ditching his career in the navy (presumably he said “sod this for a game of sailors”). So easy did he find bagging a hit that he did it again…and again…and again. His debut album would give him three further Top 10 hits though I couldn’t have named any without checking his discography. So effortless was Haddaway’s rise to fame that he didn’t even bother to name his album properly instead just calling it “The Album”. A bit like Daryl Dixon from The Walking Dead calling his dog ‘dog’ then. I once found myself in Xanadu nightclub in Rochdale where I was working and being surrounded by punters dancing to Haddaway was a bit like being on the set of The Walking Dead in retrospect.

Phil Mitchell must have proclaimed “Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love” to one of his many wives down the years in that rasping voice of his. Taylor Dayne wasn’t one of them though as she’s never married Wikipedia tells me though she does look a little bit like the character Chrissie Watts (played by Tracy-Ann Oberman) who was married to Dirty Den and indeed murdered him. Hmm. I seem to have gone down a rather bleak rabbit hole there. I’m sure Taylor, on the other hand, is as sweet as popcorn….

Yes, after a career that took in acing, Broadway and pop stardom, the younger generation will know Taylor as Popcorn from The Masked Singer. Back in 1993 though she was promoting her “Soul Dancing” album via her cover of Barry White’s “Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love Babe” though it failed to cut through like her “Tell It To My Heart” debut that went double platinum in the States. She did however continue to have hits on the US Dance chart into the new millennium.

“Will You Be There?” Phil Mitchell might have been thinking to himself this week as he stood in church waiting for a very late Kat Slater to arrive. Michael Jackson must have been asking himself “Will you be a hit?” seeing as this was the eighth single to be taken from his 1991 (yes that’s 1991!) album “Dangerous”. He needn’t have worried as it made No 9 making Jackson the first artist to have an album generate eight consecutive Top 20 hits (it would have been eight consecutive Top 10 hits but for “Jam” peaking at No 13).

I thought I didn’t know how this one went but on hearing it back, it does sound familiar. It’s got a very gospel feel to it while the melody puts me in mind of “Lean On Me” by Bill Withers. However, it was another song that sounded similar which caused Jacko some legal problems when Italian songwriter Albano Carrisi launched a plagiarism suit claiming “Will You Be There” copied his composition “The Swans Of Balaka”. The claim was ultimately rejected.

Unbelievably, a ninth single – the prophetically entitled “Gone Too Soon” – was released from “Dangerous” nearly two years to the day since the album came out. That was a step too far though and it struggled to a peak of No 33 in the UK.

And the 1993 disco revival is still going strong. After Taylor Dayne covering Barry White earlier comes Kim Wilde who has recorded a cover of Yvonne Elliman’s 1978 hit “If I Can’t Have You”. Why? Well, it’s to promote her Best Of album “The Singles Collection 1981-93”. Kim, of course, had history when it came to cover versions to help restore former glories. In 1986, she did a version of “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” by The Supremes to revive a career that was stalling. That proved to be a master stroke as it went to No 1 in the US and No 2 over here. “If I Can’t Have You” wasn’t quite the same success though it did supply her biggest hit since “Four Letter Word” in 1988 by peaking at No 12. It would also be her last ever UK Top 40 hit which presumably means this is also Kim’s final ever TOTP appearance (sob!). That Best Of album performed pretty well though going gold in the UK and just missing the Top 10.

What? An Eastenders connection? Oh well, didn’t Alfie Moon say to Kat the other night something to the effect of “If I can’t have you, I don’t want nobody baby”.

It’s Chaka Demus & Pliers now for what I think is the third time in the show with “Tease Me”. I think I’ve had enough of this one now Mr. TOTP producer! In his intro, host Mark Franklin states that 50% of this week’s Top 10 are live in the TOTP studio and I can’t help thinking that maybe CD & P were fitted into the running order just so that the show could make that claim. In fairness though, they had just moved up a place to a peak of No 3 so no doubt that’s how their inclusion would have been justified. After all, “Tease Me” was a hit all over the world but nowhere bigger than in the UK where it sold 400,000 copies.

I’m struggling to get a Phil Mitchell reference in for this one although surely he must have used a pair of pliers during a car repair down The Arches at some point down the years?

I’m giving myself a break from Eastenders references for the Breakers mainly because none of them lend themselves to the soap or Phil Mitchell at all. I mean, where’s the connection with U.S.U.R.A. and “Sweat”? These were the people who brought us “Open Your Mind” on the achingly trendy Deconstruction label and this was the follow up. Not being a dancehead, this did nothing for me (neither did its predecessor) though I understand it was a big hit in the clubs. “Sweat” peaked at No 29.

Now a guy who was a breakthrough success in 1991 but whom we hadn’t heard from since. Back in those 1991 posts, I admitted to an irrational hatred of Kenny Thomas back in the day, an opinion I had to modify on account of Kenny being a stand up, decent guy according to all sources.

My view of his music remained the same though – I wasn’t a fan and so I’m pretty sure that the thought of a second album of songs from him wouldn’t have had me counting down the days until its release date. “Wait For Me” was that album and its lead single was “Stay”. As Mark Franklin says in his intro, it was a cover though he doesn’t advise us who did the original so I did the detective work and tracked it down. I’m still none the wiser though even with the answer in front of me. It was the title track of a 1986 album by US R&B group The Controllers but only made No 77 in the UK charts. I have no idea about any of the content of the previous sentence.

“Stay” was all about the number two. It peaked at No 22 for two weeks.

AC/DC have come up many a time during these TOTP repeats and I’ve never really known what to say about them as I just don’t really get them at all. The throaty vocals of Brian Johnson, the misogynistic undertones of the lyrics and Angus Young’s schoolboy uniform stage outfits; none of it appealed to me. And yet there are people who I know and like who swear by the band.

Anyway, the end is nigh for AC/DC/TOTP as “Big Gun” is their penultimate UK Top 40 hit. Taken from the soundtrack to Last Action Hero, it made No 23. I’ve never seen the film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger but from reading the plot on Wikipedia it sounds like a stinker. I can appreciate there was an attempt to do something different with the action genre but it sounds like one of those movies where the kids are smarter than the adults which I’m not a fan of. The soundtrack is a who’s who of hard rock featuring Anthrax, Aerosmith and Alice In Chains alongside AC/DC and that’s just the ‘A’s.

Is this the first time we’ve seen The Levellers on TOTP? Well, yes and no. It is the first time we’ve seen them in these BBC4 repeats but not the first time that they appeared on the show. That was on 21st May 1992 when they appeared live by satellite from Paris performing “15 Years” but we didn’t get to see that repeat due to it being presented by Adrian Rose who refused to give permission for shows he featured in being re-broadcast. The band wouldn’t appear in the TOTP studio until 1995 when they performed “Hope Street”.

Back in 1993 though the band had just released their third and eponymous studio album and although they have retrospectively voiced their dislike of it, commercially it was their then best performing album peaking at No 2. In fact, The Levellers were on their way to the apex of their popularity which was displayed in a very visual way when they headlined Glastonbury in 1994 in front of 300,000 people.

The lead single from “The Levellers” album was “Belaruse” and it would start a bizarre run of chart placings which would see four of their next six single releases peak at No 12. Listening to it now, the hard drumming intro really reminds me of “Funeral Pyre” by The Jam.

The first of three songs that have been on the show before now starting with M People and “One Night In Heaven”. By the way, I can’t find the clips from this particular show so have had to use previous performance’s instead. Heather Small might be glad I have as there seems to be a curious tinny effect on her vocals as if the microphone isn’t working properly. She seems slightly uncomfortable up there as if she’s aware there’s a problem but it’s too late to do anything about it so she’s just going with it. Maybe it’s just because I’m playing it back through my phone.

“One Night In Heaven” peaked at No 6.

Stand aside Kim Wilde, here’s a true disco legend. Yes, you did a nice job with your cover of “If I Can’t Have You” but this is the Queen of Disco herself, Gloria Gaynor.

Look, I don’t need to tell you about “I Will Survive” though what I will say is that it’s been covered over a hundred times but maybe one of the more obscure versions is this from the Puppini Sisters who I caught live in a tiny venue in Hull that was completely oversold to the point that it really didn’t feel safe so I left early. Yes, I did survive.

Oh and one final Phil Mitchell/Eastenders reference – Phil has of course survived many a drama on the soap none more so than in the 2001 ‘Who Shot Phil?’ storyline when he survived being gunned down by ex-girlfriend Lisa.

It’s a final week at the top for Gabrielle with “Dreams”. Little did we all know that it would take seven years for her to get back to the top of the heap when her Bob Dylan sampling hit “Rise” made it to No 1 in early 2000. Not that there weren’t any hits in between of course. She clocked up nine Top 40 hits in the intervening years including five Top Tenners. The hits didn’t stop with “Rise” either with a further three Top 10 entries occurring in the subsequent 12 months. That’s sixteen hit singles in total plus seven charting albums (including a No 1). Maybe Gabrielle doesn’t get the credit she deserves?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Haddaway	What Is Love	Hadaway and shite!
2	Taylor Dayne	Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love	No
3	Michael Jackson	Will You Be There?	No I won’t be and indeed wasn’t
4	Kim Wilde	If I Can’t Have You	Nope
5	Chaka Demus & Pliers	Tease Me	Never happening
6	U.S.U.R.A.	Sweat	Negative
7	Kenny Thomas	Stay	As if
8	AC/DC	Big Gun	Big log more like – no
9	The Levellers	Belaruse	Nah
10	M People	One Night In Heaven	No but my wife had the album
11	Gloria Gaynor	I Will Survive (Phil Kelsey remix)	I did not
12	Gabrielle	Dreams	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/m001btp2/top-of-the-pops-08071993

TOTP 01 JUL 1993

Posted on September 13, 2022 by 80stastic

I seem to have spent a lot of time recently talking about 90s American sitcoms. There was Cheers and its memorable theme tune one week and then Blossom the next thanks to tonight’s opening act. There’s a connection to yet another one on this show as well but we’ll come to that in due course. For now, it’s that Blossom star Joey Lawrence who is in the studio to get teenage girls’ hearts racing as he performs “Nothin’ My Love Can’t Fix”. I suppose there was a tradition of young male US teen idols making a splash in the UK that proceeded Joey. I’m thinking David Cassidy, Donny Osmond, Michael Jackson of course…OK, I’m not making a case that Lawrence had anywhere near the success of those guys but maybe we shouldn’t have been surprised that he did translate over here. Good looking lad, de jour pop tune, hit TV show to his name. Look if Leif Garrett and Glenn Medeiros could have huge hits over here why not Joey Lawrence?

Looking through his film and TV credits, he seems to have played characters called Joe or Joey six times. Talk about being typecast. Still, he sells his song well enough here though his sleeveless leather jacket (very “Bad Boys” era Wham!) seems a bit dated and I’d have to say that Blossom herself had the better dance moves…

It’s ~~Debbie~~ Deborah Harry’s birthday so host Tony Dortie tells us. She was 48 then which makes her 77 now! I suddenly feel older than usual and I feel ancient most of the time anyway. We get her video for “I Can See Clearly” tonight after that nonsense with the magician in the studio the other week which sees her cavorting around in a field at night during a storm complete with lightning strikes. Not sure how that would help her see clearly unless the video director was using the illumination from the lightning as a metaphor? As for that song title, do you think she deliberately left the word ‘now’ off despite the chorus including it just so people wouldn’t think she’d done a Johnny Nash cover?

“I Can See Clearly” peaked at No 23 and remains her last UK solo hit.

Well, what a disappointment! After the sparkling and sprightly tune that was “Regret”, New Order followed it up with the completely dreary “Ruined In A Day”. The intro promises so much more but then it just flatlines as soon as Bernard’s vocals come in. Sometimes Sumner’s lo-fi singing is the perfect foil for the track but here it’s just a drone. Surely there must have been better options on their “Republic” album than this for a single? Yes, yes there was as the third single from it, “World (The Price Of Love)”, was a much better choice which makes you wonder why they didn’t just go with that instead seeing as they released it anyway.

“Ruined In A Day” peaked at No 22.

The first of two women in very large hats on the show tonight next as we get a 90s take on a70s disco classic. I think she’s called Yvonne Shelton and the guys behind her are Barry Jamieson and Jon Sutton. Together they were Evolution and, mixing in the same circles as A Guy Called Gerald and 808 State, they would go on to be huge names in the world of dance music, known for creativity and innovation working with the likes of UNKLE, Sasha and Jon Digweed. There doesn’t seem to be anything very innovative about adding some Italian House piano to Chic’s “Everybody Dance” to me though. Hadn’t we seen this sort of trick dozens of times before already in the dance era? We all have to start somewhere I suppose. Oh and Yvonne? Worzel Gummidge says he wants his hat back.

Four Breakers again this week (seriously, 1993 TOTP – give me a break won’t you!) and we start with The Smashing Pumpkins and “Cherub Rock”. To say I spent almost the entire 90s working in record shops, I seem to have ignored many a band who others swear by. These Chicago indie rockers are a case in point. Even today, I probably only know about three Smashing Pumpkins songs most notably “Tonight, Tonight” their highest charting UK single. This track passed me by completely though I do recognise the cover of the album it came from (“Siamese Dream”) so I must have sold a few copies.

Weren’t they a bit like a US version of The The (who I do like)? Not in musical style so much as in the structure of the band which is basically Billy Corgan as The The is essentially Matt Johnson? Apologies if I’m outraging any Pumpkins fans here but in my defence, I don’t really know what I’m talking about!

Billy Idol on the other hand I do know something of though not so much this period of his career. The Billy Idol I knew about was the 1984-85 vintage when the UK finally welcomed his style of rock with reactivated singles “White Wedding” and “Rebel Yell” finally becoming Top 10 hits alongside his more toned down side as shown on “Eyes Without A Face”. I kept tabs on him through 1986’s “Whiplash Smile” album and again with more re-released hits in the late 80s like “Mony Mony” and “Hot In The City” to promote his “Vital Idol” Best Of.

As the 90s dawned though, I lost sight of him. “Charmed Life” passed me by and then came 1993’s “Cyberpunk”. A concept album no less (no really) which was inspired by Billy’s desire to embrace emerging technology and the digital world in order to create music. Idol combined this with his interest in the sci-fi sub genre of cyberpunk following a comment by a journalist about an electronic muscle stimulator on his leg which was part of his recovery process after a motorcycle accident. The album included spoken word narratives between tracks and was created in Idol’s home studio on his Mackintosh computer.

Reaction to the album amongst critics was overwhelmingly negative but I wonder if there’s some snobbery at play. David Bowie’s 1999 interview with Jeremy Paxman about the role the internet would play in our future lives has seen him lauded as a visionary retrospectively. Rightly so of course.

However, shouldn’t Billy be afforded a bit more credibility for his own observations six years prior to Bowie’s?

“Shock To The System” was the album’s lead single written about the Los Angeles riots of 1992 with a video that seemed to be a mash up of Judge Dredd meets Robocop. Despite the kudos I’ve given Billy above, it’s a poor song which explains its peak at No 30 in the UK charts.

After Brian May and Cozy Powell stank the studio out last week, here’s another rock royalty amalgamation – Whitesnake’s David Coverdale and Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page together on a single called “Take Me For A Little While”. I called Brian and Cozy hoary old rockers in the last post but Tony Dortie refers to David and Jimmy as “two dinosaurs of rock” in his intro. I’m not sure which is the bigger insult.

As with The Smashing Pumpkins earlier, I remember selling the “Coverdale-Page” album due to its plain but distinctive cover and we sold a lot of it quickly as all the rock fans of Rochdale where I was working made a trip to their local Our Price to pick up a copy of this imagination pricking collaboration. I don’t remember it being played in the shop though and therefore I don’t know this track at all. I never got the boat going to Led Zeppelin island and my knowledge of Whitesnake is limited so I’m not the best judge of its merits but I don’t think I’ll be playing it again. I’d rather have Robert Plant and his “29 Palms” I think.

Taylor Dayne? What “Tell It To My Heart” Taylor Dayne? Her? In 1993? Wow! I had totally forgotten this! Well, in the intervening eight years since her last UK hit, Taylor had scored a US No 1 record with “Love Will Lead You Back” which stiffed over here so when she presented Arista label president Clive David with her third album, he suggested she cover the old Barry White hit “Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love, Babe” to boost its chances. Whereas Debbie Harry earlier had knocked off the word ‘now’ from her “I Can See Clearly” single to ensure it wasn’t confused with the Johnny Nash song, Taylor removed the word ‘Babe’ from her song even though it was actually a cover version. Hardly the best way to “Prove Your Love” of the original (see what I did there?).

Anyway, Taylor’s version of “Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love” was produced by C+C Music Factory’s Clivillés and Cole and was a US dance chart No 1 and made a respectable No 14 over here.

Time for that second big hatted lady on the show now and she’s singing a song that will always transport me straight back to 1993 – “What’s Up?” by 4 Non Blondes. It’s one of those records that would become more well known than the band who made it (see also “Take My Breath Away” by Berlin and “(I Just) Died In Your Arms” by Cutting Crew). It’s also a song that, like it’s chart peer “Two Princes” by Spin Doctors, very much seems to divide opinion. Some seem to love it whilst others can’t abide it. I’m a bit more in the middle – I think it’s a good song but it probably suffered from bring overplayed on the radio. So much airplay did it receive that punters were asking for it before it had entered the Top 40. I recall we ordered a few copies in to see how it went (we didn’t normally buy in non chart singles) and they did indeed go straight away. The buyers at Head Office must have got wind and scaled out loads of it across the chain and…hey presto! With copies actually available in the shops, a huge hit ensued. It went to No 1 all over Europe (though No 2 in the UK) and would make the band almost perfect one hit wonders – one huge hit then nothing followed by the band splitting up. I say ‘almost’ as there was a follow up single called “Spaceman” but it tanked although their album “Bigger, Better, Faster, More!” did well going to No 4 in the UK.

Eighteen months after 4 Non Blondes had been and gone I was helping to shut down the Our Price store in Market Street, Manchester as the company had sold the unit. I was clearing out the manager’s office and when moving a filing cabinet, found a CD of “Bigger, Better, Faster, More!” behind it. I took it home as I didn’t know what else to do with it (all the shop’s other stock had already been disposed of) but I’ve no idea where it is now.

Oh and that connection to another US sitcom that I mentioned earlier? Well, the woman in the big hat belting out “What’s Up?” is Linda Perry who was married to Sara Gilbert for five years and who is Sara Gilbert? She’s the actress who played Darlene Conner in Roseanne.

Tony Dortie had a bit of a thing for Jade didn’t he? “Now it’s time for me to break out into a hot sweat” he brazenly tells us as he introduces their live by satellite performance from Los Angeles. “I Wanna Love You” was actually the trio’s debut single in the US but which was released in the UK off the back of the success of “Don’t Walk Away”. Maybe it’s just the similarity of song title but it sounds very much like Color Me Badd’s “I Wanna Sex You Up” to me. It’s almost as if “I Wanna Love You” is the clean version of that 1991 hit with the word ‘sex’ being replaced by the more wholesome ‘love’. At least there’s some extra content to this satellite performance with some pre-recorded shots of the group arriving at a venue before we get the standard fare of the track being sung in some soulless setting.

“I Wanna Love You” peaked at No 13 in the UK.

Next the moment that Dortie has been bigging up all show – Take That are in the studio! “Pray” was the first of their twelve (twelve!) No 1 singles of which eight came within the group’s first incarnation up to 1996. Those eight chart toppers were almost consecutive with only “Love Ain’t Here Anymore” breaking the sequence halfway through when it peaked at No 3. They’re impressive figures whatever your opinion of Take That. I did have an opinion though and it was that “Pray” was really lame and throwaway. Yes, it has that gospel feel chorus (pray geddit?) but compared to their high octane rendering of “Could It Be Magic” for example, it seemed so pedestrian.

As for their performance here, well it didn’t need to be anything special to sell the record and it wasn’t. An obvious gospel choir in the background and some twisty – turning dancing from the lads whilst Gary Barlow (now minus his peroxide blonde hair – a true non-blonde as it were) does the actual singing. It was all very underwhelming but then I guess I wasn’t the group’s target audience to be fair.

Gabrielle gets a second week at No 1 with “Dreams” and in 2023 she’s touring to commemorate its 30 years anniversary! I feel very old for the second time in this post. She’s even coming to my current home of Hull. Will I be going to see her? Dream on.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Joey Lawrence	Nothin’ My Love Can’t Fix	Never happening
2	Deborah Harry	I Can See Clearly	No it was poor fare
3	New Order	Ruined In A Day	See 2 above
4	Evolution	Everybody Dance	No
5	The Smashing Pumpkins	Cherub Rock	Nah
6	Billy Idol	Shock To The System	Nope
7	David Coverdale & Jimmy Page	Take Me For A Little While	I did not
8	Taylor Dayne	Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love	Negative
9	4 Non Blondes	What’s Up?	No but I had that found CD of the album for a while
10	Jade	I Wanna Love You	It’s a no
11	Take That	Pray	Of course not
12	Gabrielle	Dreams	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/m001btp0/top-of-the-pops-01071993

TOTP 24 JUN 1993

Posted on September 12, 2022 by 80stastic

1993 is not one of my favourite years for music. That’s based on my memory and what I’ve seen on these TOTP repeats from this year so far but I would have to say that the singles chart was pretty eclectic. I’ve moaned and moaned about the proliferation of Eurodance tunes on the show but a glance at the running order for this episode paints a different picture. Yes, there are what you would term dance acts but there’s also some old timers like Rod Stewart and Brian May plus Gloria Gaynor makes her bow in the 1993 disco revival. There’s a boy band (sort of) plus there’s even some actual decent music courtesy of one of Scotland’s finest bands. Oh and Joey Lawrence is on as well. There has to be some utter tripe on or how would we know it’s still 1993?

We start with one of those dance acts but it’s a homegrown one as opposed to being imported from Europe. For me, this was the moment when M People became a proper big deal. Yes, they’d already cracked the Top 10 with a remix of “How Can I Love You More” earlier in the year but that track had topped and tailed debut album “Northern Soul” by being the first and last single released from it. What we had now was new material from a traditionally difficult second album. How would the public receive it? As it happened, they made “One Night In Heaven” the band’s biggest hit to date by sending it to No 6 in the charts giving them a second consecutive major smash and thereby continuing a run of eight singles that would all make the Top 10. It was official – M People would be sticking around for a while.

That second album was of course “Elegant Slumming” that would go triple platinum in the UK and produce another three hit singles after “One Night In Heaven”. It was also, memorably, the winner of the Mercury Music Prize in 1994. Mike Pickering had hit upon a successful formula of dance music which had enough beats to satisfy the bpm addicts and enough melody to appeal to the less hardcore dance heads. As an aside, I had a lecturer when I was a Polytechnic student called Mike Pickering but we all called him Mick Prick. No idea why. He seemed like a decent sort.

Before the next act, we have to address host Mark Franklin’s hair. What’s he done to it? Where’s his usual bouncy quiff gone? He’s plastered it all down to his head! I guess it does look very 1993 or is it jazz club?

Somebody else having hair issues is the next artist, the aforementioned Rod Stewart. I’m sure you’ve all seen this as it’s been doing the rounds but just in case…

Fuck sake 😂 https://t.co/53wGzX0wSr
— Sir Rod Stewart (@rodstewart) August 31, 2022

Heh. Anyway, Rod was back in the charts with a cover of Van Morrison’s “Have I Told You Lately”. He’d recorded it for his 1991 “Vagabond Heart” album but this live version was taken from his “Unplugged…And Seated” album recorded as part of the MTV Unplugged series. That format was already well established in music fans’ minds with artists such as Paul McCartney, Mariah Carey and Eric Clapton having released albums under its banner recently. Even so, I was still slightly surprised at the success of Rod’s MTV album which went to No 2 and was platinum selling. As for his performance of “Have I Told You Lately” here, it’s all a bit much with Rod over emoting all over the place and then there’s that weird bit in the middle where a woman in the audience gives him a bunch of flowers and then rushes off past the camera and seemingly out of the venue. What was that all about? Now if she’d have handed him a hairbrush, that might have made some sense.

“Have I Told You Lately” peaked at No 5.

Next to the (sort of) boy band and so far I’d say that East 17 had done a good job of becoming the anti- Take That. However, the decision to release a cover of “West End Girls” by Pet Shop Boys was a complete misstep. What was the thinking around this? Were record label London concerned that last single “Slow It Down” had failed to make the Top 10 and so released a cover to ensure a hit? If so, it was a strategy that was not a complete success as the East End boys version of “West End Girls” peaked at No 11. Somebody suggested on Twitter that it was down to their manager Tom Watkins who was trying to restart a working relationship with former clients Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe after they had separated at the end of the 80s. Whatever the truth, it was a calculated decision as the original pressings of their album “Walthamstow” didn’t include “West End Girls”. It was re-released with it added on in the wake of the single charting and we had to withdraw all the old copies from sale in the Our Price I was working in.

It’s just such a stiff, unconvincing cover not helped by the performance here which is just a lot of twirling around and jumping about on stage. All except for John Hendy. Were the other three trying to tell John something? He always seemed to be the one left to his own devices when the band appeared on TOTP. He was relegated to the back of the stage noodling on a bass guitar when they performed “Deep” and sat on a sofa idling away at a keyboard for “Slow It Down”. He’s back on the bass again here whilst Brian, Terry and Tony are doing their thing out front. I’m surprised that he’s not kicking in chairs and knocking down tables in frustration. Ahem.

Number One in the World! Except it’s not. It’s No 6 in the chart this week on its way to a high of No 3 for Chaka Demus and Pliers and “Tease Me”. It’s another of those live by satellite performances (New York this week) which might just be in a room next door to the TOTP studio for all we know. It’s literally an empty setting other than a light pattern projected onto the blank walls. Seriously, what was the point?

I find it hard to discuss Chaka Demus and Pliers without finding them completely ridiculous because of that tool-related name. I’m sure there was a scene in the 90s sitcom 2point4 Children where the Belinda Lang character asks her teenage daughter what she’s listening to and when the answer comes back as Chaka Demus and Pliers, it’s the foundation for a whole litany of jokes. So what was the story behind that moniker? Here’s @TOTPFacts with the details:

Pliers explains his moniker: "I first got the name… when I was in the studio recording a song for a DJ in Jamaica who was like, ‘You sound like [Jamaican reggae singer] Pinchers, so shouldn’t you be called Pliers?' He was really excited about it…" #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) September 2, 2022

"I was never really interested in being called Pliers. So when they went on and renamed me Pliers anyway, I wasn’t happy… It wasn’t until the record came out that I realised they’d changed it! But because it had already been done I just went with it." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) September 2, 2022

So now you know.

Four Breakers again this week. I wish they would give this up. Really elongates these reviews unnecessarily. Most of them we never see again anyway. Ho hum.

SWV are the first of the four with their single “Weak”. The UK was still resisting the charms of the Sisters With Voices unlike in the US where this song was No 1 for two weeks and sold a million copies. By contrast, it stiffed at No 33 over here. It wasn’t until the “Right Here/Human Nature” mash up single came out a few weeks later that we decided we quite liked them after all.

And so we arrive at the time of Joey Lawrence. Who? Well, he was one of the stars of an American sitcom called Blossom that had been picked up by Channel 4 over here and was based around the title character played by Mayim Bialik. The premise of the show was of a family of three kids and their Dad dealing with their mother/wife leaving them. Lawrence played middle child Joey, a sports jock (to use the American vernacular) who wasn’t blessed with great intelligence but fancied himself as ‘one for the ladies’ and was given a catchphrase of “Woah!”. He was a sort of prototype Joey from Friends I guess. The show actually had far more depth to it than Lawrence’s character suggests. Firstly, it centred around a female lead which was not the norm at the time but it was also the atypical comedy themes that it dealt with such as sexual assault, Blossom’s first period and drug abuse (Blossom’s elder brother Tony was a recovering alcoholic and drug addict).

It was a decent watch and indeed me and my wife did tune in to it regularly when it was broadcast on Fridays I think. Bialik would go on to star in The Big Bang Theory whilst Lawrence starred in Melissa & Joey for four seasons. That’s not what concerns us here though. No. We have to address Lawrence’s music career which began whilst he was just 16 with the single “Nothin’ My Love Can’t Fix”. Actors becoming pop stars was nothing new of course – we’d had a plethora of them in recent years mainly from the Aussie soap Neighbours but supposedly music was always Joey’s first love and he co-write this tune. It was a bit Bobby Brown-lite sounding to me (and I wasn’t a fan of the full fat flavour in the first place) and did he get a “Woah oh oh” into the chorus to play up to his character’s catchphrase?

Thankfully Joey Lawrence mania never really took off (although there was one young female customer in the Altrincham Our Price that I ended up working in who was a bit obsessed) and the whole thing was done by the end of the year. For the record though, “Nothin’ My Love Can’t Fix” peaked at No 13.

And now for some ‘proper’ music though I have to admit I wasn’t an early adopter of Teenage Fanclub. Even though they were on to their fourth album (“Thirteen”) by 1993, they seemed to have eluded my radar which must have been on the blink as their brand of jangly power pop was right up my street. “Radio” was the lead single from that album and would become their second Top 40 hit after the previous years “What You You Do To Me” (how had I missed that single?!).

To me, they always seem more recognised for their influence and legacy than their commercial deeds and indeed were described by Kurt Cobain as the best band in the world in 1992 when they toured with Nirvana. I’ve since become a convert and “My Uptight Life” from their “Howdy!” album is one of my favourite ever tunes. Alas, I fear they won’t make their full TOTP appearance until the 1997 repeats come around.

“Radio” peaked at No 31.

Ah shit! More Shabba Ranks? Really?! Yes, if we thought he only had one song in “Mr Loverman” then we were wrong for here he is back again with “What’cha Gonna Do”. This was another collaboration, this time with Queen Latifah following his hit “Housecall” with Maxi Priest. You know what? Sod this for a game of darts. What am I gonna do Shabba? I’m moving straight on. “Laters!” as Tony Dortie might say.

Right what’s next? Oh come on! This wasn’t what the kids wanted in 1993 surely? Some hoary old rock from some hoary old rockers? I speak of Brian May and Cozy Powell who, having been a Breaker last week, are in the studio this time to perform “Resurrection”. This sounds horrible. Can I just get away with skipping this one as well? No? You want some more content? OK – here’s host Mark Franklin no less with some trivia:

Yeah, not a particularly good one for me I agree. Bit of trivia ahead of TX for those who enjoy it. Bryan May’s backing singer on this performance is Shelley Preston who replaced Jay Aston in Bucks Fizz in 1985.
— Mark Franklin (@MarkFranklin123) September 2, 2022

Now away with you all!

I’m gathering some speed now so look out anybody who gets in my way! Oh, it’s alright as it’s Gloria Gaynor – she’ll survive (ahem). Yes, inevitably given the disco revival of 1993, Gloria Gaynor has entered the fray with a Phil Kelsey remix of her 1979 No 1 and subsequent gay / feminist anthem, “I Will Survive”. This was always going to happen wasn’t it? There is an interesting back story to this track though. Gloria had lost her ‘Queen of Disco’ crown to the emerging Donna Summer and so was looking for a hit to reclaim it. “Substitute” was chosen as the song to relaunch her. It had originally been recorded by The Righteous Brothers but had been a recent massive hit for South African all-girl group Clout (one of the best records of the 70s – fact!). Needing a B-side, songwriters Dino Fekaris and Freddie Perren supplied “I Will Survive” which Gloria loved but which her label Polydor didn’t and “Substitute” was released as the A-side.

When it failed to do the business, Gloria persuaded club DJs to flip the record and it eventually became a favourite at New York superclub Studio 54. Meanwhile, Boston disco radio DJ Jack King was also playing “I Will Survive” and this combined promotion would convince Polydor to re-release the single with “I Will Survive” on the A-side. The rest is history.

The 1993 remix though is awful with a horrible Chicago House backing installed for no apparent reason other than bandwagon jumping. It would rise to No 5 and a Very Best Of album was put out on the back of its success. Gloria’s vocal in this performance is effortless though I could have done without the audience sing-a-long that she encourages towards the end.

Oh God! Mark Franklin hasn’t just restyled his hair – he’s added an earring aswell! That camera angle of the back of his head which shows it in full effect was surely planned?! Anyway, Mark is back on screen to introduce Alexander O’Neal who is in the studio to promote his latest single “In The Middle” which was the second track to be lifted from his “Love Makes No Sense” album. A whole studio appearance seems a bit like overkill for a single that only got to No 32 and was a follow up to the album’s title track and lead single which only made No 26. Things didn’t get any better for Alexander who only returned to the UK Top 40 once more in 1996 with the No 38 hit “Let’s Get Together”.

Gabrielle is the new No 1 with “Dreams” though it’s hardly a surprise given its entry last week at No 2. The TOTP producers have decided that Gabrielle is a classy performer and adorned the stage with white drapes for some reason to make that point. As with Gloria Gaynor earlier, I could do without the metronomic clapping from the studio audience. At the end of the song, we get something which I don’t think we’ve seen since the early days of the ‘year zero’ revamp where Mark Franklin joins Gabrielle on stage for a little chat to ask when her album is out. It’s still cringey and still a bad idea. Maybe he just wanted to get more screen time for his earring?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	M People	One Night In Heaven	No but my wife had the album
2	Rod Stewart	Have I Told You Lately	Nah
3	East 17	West End Girls	See 1 above
4	Chaka Demus and Pliers	Tease Me	Not likely
5	SWV	Weak	No
6	Joey Lawrence	Nothin’ My Love Can’t Fix	As if
7	Teenage Fanclub	Radio	No to my shame
8	Shabba Ranks and Queen Latifah	What’cha Gonna Do?	Not buy it obviously
9	Brian May and Cozy Powell	Resurrection	I say again, “Away with you!”
10	Gloria Gaynor	I Will Survive	Nope
11	Alexander O’Neal	In The Middle	Never happening
12	Gabrielle	Dreams	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/m001bm8v/top-of-the-pops-24061993

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

Author: 80stastic

TOTP 26 AUG 1993

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TOTP 24 JUN 1993

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