80stastic

TOTP 10 FEB 1994

Posted on February 3, 2023 by 80stastic

We’re still just about in sync with the BBC4 TOTP repeats which means it’s coming up to Valentine’s Day both in 2023 and 1994. Does that mean there’ll be a load of love songs on this show as the big day approaches? Were record companies that cynical back then? Let’s find out…

We start with a combination that hadn’t been seen on the show since the fag end of the 80s. D Mob and Cathy Dennis first collaborated in 1989 on “C’mon And Get My Love” and achieved a chart peak of No 15. D Mob had already caused some sensationalist tabloid headlines a year earlier with thejr banned hit single “We Call It Acieed” whilst Cathy became a major star in her own right in 1991 with four Top 40 hits and a No 3 album. Since then though, Cathy’s chart trajectory had hit a downturn with none of the three singles taken from her second album “Into The Skyline” piercing the Top 20. As for D Mob, they’d barely released anything this decade so far which I guess explains their absence from the charts. Either way, it was probably advantageous to both parties for another joint project and it arrived in the form of this song “Why” that was actually the second track on that sophomore album of Cathy’s. Yet again, this was another track that has evaded permanent residence in my memory banks. I’m not surprised as it’s not as immediate as “C’mon And Get My Love” though it did manage a high of No 23.

Cathy has clearly had an image change. Her loose, cascading curls have been replaced by a short, spiky crop and her catsuit of two years before by a full length dress. By the time of her final studio album release “Am I The Kinda Girl”, she’d got a sort of overgrown bob. Why am I talking about Cathy Dennis’s various hairstyles? Yes, you’ve guessed it – I’m desperately filling as I’ve very little else to say about this one apart from the following: this was D Mob’s last ever Top 40 hit whilst Cathy managed two more one of which was a cover of The Kinks’ “Waterloo Sunset”.

If you Google ‘when did Britpop start?’, the answer you mostly get is 1993 (and that it ended in 1997). Yet if you ask the question in a different way like ‘what was the first Britpop song?’ then you get the answer “The Drowners” by Suede which came out in 1992. Suede is also the answer to the question ‘who were the first Britpop band?’. Then there’s that Select magazine cover of Brett Anderson superimposed over a Union Jack with the tag line ‘Yanks go home!’. That issue came out in April 1993. Well, Suede are on this TOTP later so does that mean Britpop was in full flow already by this point?

What about the claims of Blur though? Journalist John Harris pinpoints their “Popscene” single alongside “The Drowners” as the very start of Britpop. Their 1992 tour of America supposedly sparked Damon Albarn’s resentment of US culture and his desire to big up its British counterpart. One person straddled both the Suede and Blur camps whilst also creating her own personal chapter of Britpop. Here she is being interviewed by the aforementioned John Harris…

Look, many cleverer people than me have written millions of words about Britpop so I’m not going to carry on with my own essay about its origins here but…Justine Frischmann and Elastica were certainly right in amongst it and were actually having hits far earlier in the whole story than I remember. Interestingly in his intro, the returning Radio 1 DJ Mark Goodier refers to Elastica as “a brilliant indie band” so no mention of Britpop there. “Line Up” was the band’s second single after their debut “Stutter” had peaked at No 80. However, that single had been limited to a pressing run of 1,500 copies so it was never going to be a big hit but it did create a buzz around the band and whetted the appetite of fans to create a demand for their music meaning that, when their second single was made more widely available, it shot into the Top 40. Fellow centre-of-Britpop Camden dwellers Menswear would do a similar thing by performing debut single “I’ll Manage Somehow” on TOTP before it was even released.

As for Elastica’s sound, it certainly stood out back in early 1994. Crunching guitars and almost off key riffs that sounded like a mad, hypnotic tune bewitching the pop kids with Justine cast as some sort of indie Pied Piper of Hamelin inculcating them to “line up in line”. Justine herself made quite the splash of course with her androgynous looks and style, coming on like Marcella Detroit’s younger and hipper sister.

“Line Up” would make No 20 paving the way for the band’s most well known tune “Connection” to be released in the October. Their debut eponymous album didn’t appear until March 1995 which is probably why my brain was deceiving me into thinking that they didn’t turn up until much later than they actually did. That album would go to No 1 and be the fastest selling debut at that point since…well, Oasis’s “Definitely Maybe” just the year before but it was still quite the achievement. A second album wouldn’t appear until 2000 by which point Britpop felt like ancient history. The band split in 2001 and Frischmann relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area to become an artist.

Finally a song with the word ‘love’ in its title as Valentine’s Day approaches but it’s hardly a big, slushy ballad. “A Deeper Love” was first a hit in 1992 for Clivillés And Cole, the guys behind C+C Music Factory but it was covered two years later by the Queen of Soul herself Aretha Franklin to promote her collection album “Greatest Hits: 1980-1994”. Though you can’t deny Aretha’s legacy, I’m not entirely convinced that she had that many hits between those years.

*checks her discography

Hmm. The results are in. In the UK, Aretha had four Top 40 hits, three of them with other artists.

1985 – “Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves” with Eurythmics – No 9
1986 – “Who’s Zoomin’ Who – No 11
1986 – “I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)” with George Michael – No 1
1989 – “It Isn’t, It Wasn’t, It Ain’t Never Gonna Be” with Whitney Houston – No 29

Ok, the chart positions aren’t too bad (including a chart topper) but four in fourteen years is hardly prolific and just one of those totally solo. “A Deeper Love” would bring it up to a five when it went straight into the charts at No 5 which was also its peak. It was a better set of results in America where her “Who’s Zoomin’ Who” album alone supplied four hit singles including the rather good “Freeway Of Love” which bombed over here. Hit statuses were reversed for “A Deeper Love” which only made No 63 in the US. As we can see from the single’s video, it also featured in the film Sister Act 2: Back In The Habit. The Clivillés And Cole original did nothing for me though it is widely regarded as a bit of a House classic. I wasn’t struck by Aretha’s version either though you can’t deny her excellent vocals on it.

Right, does this count as a love song? I’m not sure. I am certain though that The Cranberries were one of the breakthrough acts of 1994 despite having been in existence since 1989. For many, of course, The Cranberries were Dolores O’Riordan in the same way that Debbie Harry was Blondie. Completely unfair but that’s perceptions for you. To be honest though, everything changed for the band when Dolores walked into their rehearsal room in Limerick in 1990. Given a sheet of chord progressions by band founder Noel Hogan, she returned within a week with lyrics and melodies which would form the basis of “Linger”. Known then as The Cranberry Saw Us, they trod the usual path of demos and gigs before eventually signing with Island Records in 1991. A few aborted recording sessions and a sacked manager later, they finally released their major label debut single “Dreams” in 1992. Despite critical acclaim it failed to chart and nor did the follow up, the initial release of “Linger” in February 1993. A turning point was reached when they supported Suede (them again!) on a tour and gained the attention of MTV who put their singles on heavy rotation. “Linger” would become a huge US hit going to No 8 in the Billboard Hot 100. Such success couldn’t be ignored back home and “Linger” duly got a rerelease in early 1994 when it peaked at No 14. I have to admit that I thought it got much higher in the charts than that given it seemed to be constantly on the radio but then none of their nine UK chart hits made the Top 10. They did however, sell a lot of albums. Their debut “Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?” went to No 1 over here and went five times platinum in the States. These were huge numbers.

As a song, “Linger” is a bit of a belter. That soft, lullaby-like intro before the swirling strings swoop in and Dolores sings in that distinctive Irish brogue. It was always going to be a hit; it just took a while for the stars to align – maybe there was a bit of cloud cover about during that first release. It had that quality of feeling accomplished yet also somehow organic despite the lush production. It was a perfect example of shimmering pop/rock. Oh and Sting, that’s how you write a great song that features the lyrics ‘wrapped around your finger’ as opposed to the turgid nonsense you released in 1983.

The success of “Linger” meant demand for the album that had already been out for a year suddenly snowballed and I’m guessing that it was temporarily withdrawn by Island and then re-promoted as was the way back then. “Dreams” would also get a rerelease and become a hit this time around when it peaked at No 27. They would end 1994 with a second multi platinum selling album in “No Need To Argue”. Tragically Dolores O’Riordan would die aged 46 by accidental drowning following excessive intoxication by alcohol.

The early to mid 90s saw many a female R&B solo artist in the UK charts. Des’ree, Toni Braxton, Oleta Adams, Karyn White, Aaliyah and there are two more of them on the show tonight starting with Carleen Anderson. The former vocalist with the Young Disciples of “Apparently Nothin’” fame was no longer a follower but a leader as she started out on her solo career. Mark Goodier has already stolen the James Brown reference in his intro but what he didn’t say was that in addition to Carleen’s Mum having been in the Godfather of Soul’s touring band that he was also Carleen’s godfather.

Anyway, with that musical tidbit out of the way, let’s return to Carleen herself and if I wasn’t sure that “Linger” was a love song then her debut single surely wasn’t with a title like “Nervous Breakdown”. Now I was aware of Carleen Anderson as I worked in a record shop so if nothing else I knew what the cover of her album looked like but not how it sounded. Listening to this back now though I was pleasantly surprised…until that horrible bit where a god awful jazz intervention is triggered by the singing of the word ‘breakdown’. Just horrible. The guitarist up there on stage with Carleen looks like the spit of Outspan from the film The Commitments while the saxophonist could be Dean from the same film after he’d had his ‘jazz haircut’. “Nervous Breakdown” made No 27 and was the first of four tracks lifted from her album “True Spirit” that were Top 40 chart hits.

There’s no Breakers this week as that slot is reserved for a montage of acts that have been nominated for the 1994 BRIT Awards which took place at the Alexandra Palace on Valentine’s Day itself. The event was hosted by Elton John and RuPaul with performances including Take That doing that Beatles medley, Van Morrison and Shane MacGowan duetting on “Have I Told You Lately” and of course Elton and RuPaul with a rendition of “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart”. You can look up who won what yourselves as I’m not going to list them all here.

The second of those female R&B solo artists now and like Carleen Anderson before her, she made her name initially as the vocalist in a successful band. Shara Nelson was, of course, the voice behind the Massive Attack hits “Unfinished Sympathy” and “Safe From Harm”. By 1993, she’d embarked on her own solo career scoring hits with “Down That Road” and “One Goodbye In Ten” and a hit album in “What Silence Knows”. “Uptight” was the third single taken from that album and as with Carleen’s song, the title of the single is not really very Valentine’s Day orientated but it’s a jolly, upbeat number though the chorus does rather disappoint. It feels like it’s building up to this killer hook that never really materialises.

On that song title still, Sahara’s track was absolutely nothing to do with the Stevie Wonder song of the same name. That wasn’t the case though with “Step Out” by Oasis. The B-side to “Don’t Look Back In Anger” was so based on “Uptight (Everything’s Alright)” that Stevie got 10% of the single’s royalties.

And so we arrive at the band described by host Mark Goodier as “one of the most talked about British bands of the last year” and to be fair, nearly 30 years on, I’ve spent a great deal of this post referring to them before we even get to their appearance. Suede were, of course, making huge headlines in the music press at this time but they seemed to have a premonition of what was coming over the hill like a monster (to paraphrase The Automatic) and decided they would quite like to sidestep it. I speak of Britpop obviously and how Suede always seemed determined to distance themselves from the movement and plough their own furrow. After the runaway success of their eponymous debut album, instead of just repeating that formula, they released a sophomore album in “Dog Man Star” that provoked divided reactions. Rolling Stone magazine described it as:

“one of the most pretentious albums ever released by a major label”^[
Sheffield, Rob (2004). “London Suede”. In Brackett, Nathan; Hoard, Christian (eds.). The New Rolling Stone Album Guide (4th ed.). Simon & Schuster. pp. 493–94. ISBN 0-7432-0169-8

Other critics labelled it overblown and self indulgent. However, it has a special place in the hearts of the fanbase in much the same way that Manic Street Preachers’ defiantly uncommercial third album “The Holy Bible” regularly tops fan polls as their best. In terms of the chronology of Suede’s album releases, from a music business point of view, it might have made more sense to have swapped hit laden third album “Coming Up” with “Dog Man Star”. Wet Wet Wet followed a similar trajectory when releasing the mature but less commercial “Holding Back The River” album as the follow up to “Popped In Souled Out” when the more logical move was to have come up with third album “High On The Happy Side” in its place. Still, you have to allow artists their integrity and creative freedom to write as they wish and this is what Brett Anderson and Bernard Butler did on “Stay Together”. This track didn’t actually appear on “Dog Man Star” so was it a stand alone release to maintain the band’s profile during the 18 months between albums? Whatever the reason it was the last Suede single released whilst Butler was still in the band before he defected after his relationship with Anderson broke down. He quit shortly after this TOTP with his final Suede gig coming just two days after it aired.

Apparently the band have distanced themselves from the track (maybe the reason it doesn’t appear on “Dog Man Star”) but it did provide them with their highest ever chart placing (equal with 1996’s “Trash”) of No 3. An epic song clocking in at 8:29 uncut (the radio edit was halved to 4:19), it was written while Butler’s father was dying of cancer. It’s instantly recognisable as Suede and I always like the way Brett sang the word ‘skyscrapers’ in the chorus and he looks cool as f**k in this performance. Bernard on the other hand…I do like Butler though and own pretty much all of his material released post Suede. The performance by him and David McAlmont of “Yes” on Later…with Jools Holland is one of my favourite ever.

It’s a fourth and final week at the top for D:Ream and “Things Can Only Get Better”. The success of the song would see a rerelease for another of their singles that had already been a hit as a Perfecto remix of “U R The Best Thing” became the follow up reaching No 4 in March and eclipsing its 1993 release by 15 places. Their album “D:Ream On Vol. 1” would also benefit from the gargantuan success of “Things Can Only Get Better” going to a high of No 5.

They’re still doing that end of show montage thing which this week is soundtracked by “Pale Movie” by Saint Etienne.

This was the lead single from their third album “Tiger Bay” and it would make No 28 in the UK charts. Yet again this was another tune that passed me by but it’s a pleasant little ditty with Spanish guitars and some lovely, ethereal vocals from Sarah Cracknell. As with much of their stuff, it puts me in mind of this…

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	D Mob / Cathy Dennis	Why	Nah
2	Elastica	Line Up	I didn’t
3	Aretha Franklin	A Deeper Love	Nope
4	The Cranberries	Linger	Should have but didn’t
5	Carleen Anderson	Nervous Breakdown	No
6	Shara Nelson	Uptight	Negative
7	Suede	Stay Together	Thought I may have but no
8	D:Ream	Things Can Only Get Better	It’s another no
9	Saint Etienne	Pale Movie	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/m001hhh1/top-of-the-pops-10021994

TOTP 03 FEB 1994

Posted on January 31, 2023 by 80stastic

We have arrived in February 1994 in our journey through the TOTP archives and it’s a case of “as you were” as Liam Gallagher might say. The ‘year zero’ revamp is dead, gone, finished, no more- it is an ex-revamp. Well, there’s still a few remnants of it hanging around as we’ll see but even those last few traces will be swept away by the new broom of incoming producer Ric Blaxill. The title sequence, logo and theme tune were all still the same but they would be stripped away and replaced in 1995 along with the installation of a new set. The first major change that we see is the return of the Radio 1 DJs to presenting duties who were last seen in September 1991. Tony Dortie and Mark Franklin (the last two standing of the wave of ‘year zero’ new faces) were not retained by Blaxill who wanted to re-establish the link between the show and Radio 1. First back in the host seat is Simon Mayo whose intro refers to the two institutions being back in bed together and going to be fertile which seems a totally unnecessary remark. I could never get on board with Mayo; something about his smugness that put me off. Oh, and his record of campaigning for terrible songs like “Kinky Boots” and “Donald Where’s Your Troosers?” to become chart hits.

Anyway, the new era kicks off with a record that must have passed me by at the time. After making her name in 1991 with one of the decade’s biggest dance anthems in “Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good)”, Rozalla had rather gone missing in the intervening years. Her previous three single releases had all failed to chart and so when it came to releasing her second album (and first for new record label Epic), a hit was definitely required. And when you need a hit…you know what comes next. Yes, a cover version was sought out. Back in 1976, Philly Soulsters The O’Jays of “Back Stabbers” and “Love Train” fame had a No 13 hit in the UK called “I Love Music” and it was that track that was chosen to reset Rozalla’s career.

On reflection, whilst certainly a safe step, it also seemed like a backward one with Rozalla being repositioned as yet another singer trying to eke out a hit with a 70s cover à la Dannii Minogue or someone. Hadn’t she been seen as the princess of techno rave anthems or something? At least a bit more cutting edge than this anyway? I mean, it gave her a hit (No 18) but in terms of re-establishing her in people’s minds it seemed to be a short term fix. Her sophomore album which included “I Love Music” did absolutely nothing (despite some decent press reviews) peaking at No 138 in the UK. Somebody on her team also thought it was a good idea to restyle her which I don’t think helped. Gone were the space cadet type spangly jackets and hair tied up look and in their place was a vampy image with long, sleek hair and a sheer black dress. It was a misplaced notion. Rozalla would have a few more minor hits during the 90s but tellingly one of them was a remix of “Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good)”.

Now here is a proper tune! I’d always struggled a bit with The Charlatans up to this point. Yes, “The Only One I Know” was a decent song but the rest of it hadn’t engaged me as much as I thought it would. For me though, this was the point where they really started to hit their stride. Great hit after great hit would emerge over the mid to late 90s – “Just Lookin’”, “Just When You’re Thinkin’ Things Over”, “How High” and “North Country Boy” spring to mind – but it seemed to start with “Can’t Get Out Of Bed”.

Nothing to do with Matt Bianco’s debut hit of a decade earlier, this was the lead single from their third album “Up To Our Hips”. Although Tim Burgess has acquired National Treasure status for his album Listening Party project which helped to keep us sane during the pandemic, I wonder if his band get the plaudits they deserve sometimes. Just ~~looking~~ lookin’ at their discography alone shows that they had three No 1 albums (plus two No 2s) – I’m not sure that gets talked about enough for a start. “Up To Our Hips” would go Top 10 beginning the process of restoring the band’s status which seemed to take a dip when sophomore effort “Between 10th And 11th” failed to make the Top 20.

“Can’t Get Out Of Bed” seemed to have much more melody to it than their previous work to me and, in keeping with its title, an almost lazy style to it as if Tim was really having to force himself to get the lyrics out. It was also utterly joyous. Yes, his vocals in this performance aren’t strictly the best technically but some of the best singers aren’t but are perfect for the music they make (see also the aforementioned Liam Gallagher). The single probably should have done better than it’s No 24 peak but, nevertheless, the alarm clock was ringing – we were on notice of great things to come.

I’m a bit confused about the timeline surrounding this next act’s release history. I’d ignored Red Hot Chili Peppers throughout the 80s – no, not ignored but barely been aware of them and their first four albums is a more accurate description. The release of their “Blood Sugar Sex Magik” album in 1991 brought them into the mainstream though. Produced by Def Jam co-founder Rick Rubin, it rowed back on their metal/funk tendencies whilst promoted a more melodic sound. This was none more evident than on “Under The Bridge” which clogged up US radio playlists for months and rose all the way to No 2 on the Billboard Hot 100.

However, the album’s lead single was “Give It Away” which showed that the band could still kick ass. The song has an almost face-blistering power, propelled by Flea’s frenetic bass line and John Frusciante’s funk guitar riffs. Add in Anthony Kiedis’ imploring vocals and it’s impossible to ignore. Here’s where my confusion comes in though. “Give It Away” was released in September 1991 so what was it doing in the UK charts in 1994? To add to the confusion, “Under The Bridge” which was the second single taken from the album was originally released in March of 1992 but I’m sure that was also in our Top 40 in 1994 because I bought it (it has a version of “Give It Away” on it called ‘In Progress’). So what gives? Well, I’ve pieced together a theory but I’m no Chili Peppers aficionado so it could easily be bulls**t. Here goes though. As far as I can tell, “Give It Away” was definitely originally released in 1991 but either did absolutely nothing over here or wasn’t actually made available in this country. I can see US and Europe versions of the single listed on the Discogs website but not a specific UK one. “Under The Bridge” definitely got a UK release though as it made No 26 here in March 1992. In the September of that year, just to confuse matters, a Best Of compilation called “What Hits!?” was released consisting of tracks from their first four albums recorded for EMI (“Blood Sugar Sex Majik” was their first for Warners). However, EMI were allowed to choose one track to include on the album recorded for Warners so naturally they chose “Under The Bridge” as their biggest hit. It made for a very lopsided and confusing collection album. John Frusciante left the band after “Blood Sugar Sex Majik” whilst Anthony Kiedis relapsed into drug use. The combination of these two things meant a delay to the recording of next studio album “One Hot Minute”. To fill that gap and to appease the fan base, a compilation box set was released called (rather unimaginatively) “Live Rare Remix Box” which did what it said on the tin. The box set included three different versions of “Give It Away” so I’m guessing that the track was re-released to help promote it. When that became a Top 10 hit in the UK, “Under The Bridge” was also re-released which was the single I bought and this time it made No 13. Phew!

I guess we have to mention the video shown here for “Give It Away”. Credited with helping to break the band commercially, rather ridiculously, Warners were scared it might be too weird, arty and out there for MTV and mainstream audiences. The opposite was true. Shot entirely in black and white in the desert with the band painted silver, wearing reflective outfits and cavorting about in a frenzy, it is a dazzling and exceptional piece of work from French director Stéphane Sednaoui.

“Now I know I’m not employed for my musical taste but this is going to be a No 1 record” Simon Mayo confidently informs us when introducing the next artist. Who is he talking about? Why, Wendy Moten of course. Not quite a one hit wonder (she had a No 35 follow up), she definitely did not have a No 1 record though as her single “Come In Out Of The Rain” peaked at No 8. Simon ‘Nostradamus’ Mayo at it again there.

As far as I can tell, this was originally released in 1992 in the US but only got its chance in the UK in early 1994. For reasons of a lack of time and unlike with Red Hot Chili Peppers, I’m not going to go into the whys and wherefores about all of that though. Suffice to say, the song is a big slushy ballad that I could imagine Dina Carroll or even Diana Ross singing.

My main memory of Wendy Moten though is that one of my colleagues (Vicky I think) at the Our Price store in Market Street, Manchester wanted a move to London and so we arranged a transfer for her to one of the soul/dance specialist stores down there. When I spoke to her on the work phone after she had moved and asked her how it was going she told me how different an environment it was. To illustrate that, she said she hadn’t yet heard the “Parklife” album by Blur that was everywhere but she’d heard the Wendy Moten album in full in the shop stereo loads of times. As my Mum says, if we all liked the same thing, the world would be a very boring place.

Who’s this fella? Joe Roberts? Sounds like somebody your Dad would know? I’m not sure I know him though. What’s his song called? “Lover”? Nope, I’ve got nothing. Hang on; did he do one called “Jessie”?

*checks internet*

Nah, that was a guy called Joshua Kadison apparently. Well, I’ve got nothing then. My research tells me his partner is Melanie Williams who was the singer with Sub Sub of “Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use)” fame. They even made a record together – a cover of The Stylistics’ “ You Are Everything” – in 1995. After that the trail goes cold. Maybe he could have tried to make himself more intriguing by just going by the name Joe (like Madonna or Adele). Ah shit, somebody already beat him to it didn’t they? That bloke who did “I’m In Luv” who was on the show the other week. Hard luck Mr Roberts.

They’ve retained the Breakers under the new regime and they kick off with “Perpetual Dawn” by The Orb. This was yet another re-release following Red Hot Chili Peppers earlier and indeed following The Orb themselves as their previous hit at the end of 1993 “Little Fluffy Clouds” had itself been a reissue. “Perpetual Dawn” was originally released in 1991 from their debut album “The Orb’s Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld” and had peaked at No 61. Presumably, also like the Chili Peppers, the strategy here was to retain profile in between albums (there were three years between “U.F.Orb” and “Orbus Terrarum”) and as the “Little Fluffy Clouds” rerelease had worked so well, another old track was shoved out. The track has a dub reggae feel to it and sounds a bit like The Prodigy to my uncultured ears. It peaked the second time at No 18.

New-age was all the rage in early 1994. After the return of Enigma last week, here was a French act called Deep Forest with their track “Sweet Lullaby”. A major hit all round Europe over the previous year, it was time for the UK to experience its ethnic ambient rhythms – could the re-emergence of Enigma have played a part in their record company’s scheduling decision?

As with Enigma’s concurrent hit which was based around an Amis chant recorded by a Taiwan folk duo, “Sweet Lullaby” was similarly structured around an indigenous lullaby from the Solomon Islands. Also like Enigma, it made for a haunting, affecting piece of music. The single went to No 10 whilst their eponymous debut album also sold steadily and was nominated for a Grammy for Best World Music album in 1994. According to founding member Éric Mouquet, the name Deep Forest came from combining Deep Purple with rain forest. I guess ‘Purple Rain’ had already gone.

The final Breaker comes from a German Eurodance act called Bass Bumpers. I know, WHO? Well, their track was called “The Music’s Got Me!” which peaked at No 25 and which I don’t recall at all but that’s not really their claim to fame anyway. In 2005, they were responsible for the heinous musical crime that was the Crazy Frog version of “Axel F”. I KNOW!

A taste of things to come perhaps now. I’ve criticised the ‘live by satellite’ section many times before in this blog as being completely pointless with the majority of acts set in empty concert halls and completely undermining the whole concept of an ‘exclusive’ performance. New producer Ric Blaxill kept the slot but wanted to make it an event again by having artists perform against the backdrop of a famous/interesting landmark, building or structure. So, show No1 of the new regime have Gin Blossoms at the original London Bridge in Arizona. Here’s @TOTPFacts with the history lesson…

That bridge in the background is London Bridge in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. It features exterior granite blocks from the bridge across the Thames which was built in 1831 ("New London Bridge"). #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 27, 2023

By the '60s, surveys showed that London Bridge was sinking about an inch every eight years, so it was decided to replace it. In 1968 it was bought from the City of London by entrepreneur Robert P McCulloch for $2,460,000. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 27, 2023

10,000 tons of granite blocks were shipped via the Panama Canal to California, then trucked to Arizona, where they were used to face a new, steel-reinforced concrete structure up to the task of supporting modern-day traffic. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 27, 2023

Interesting stuff but what about the band? Well, Gin Blossoms we’re actually from Arizona and had done the usual band stuff of constant gigging in a clapped out van and released their debut album “Dusted” on a small independent label. They were then picked up by a major in A&M and they re-recorded half of the songs on “Dusted” to form the basis of their second album “New Miserable Experience”. It sold unremarkably until the album’s third single “Hey Jealously” picked up airplay and became a No 25 hit in the US. Off the back of it, the album would eventually go four times platinum over there. It couldn’t replicate those sales in the UK but we bought into “Hey Jealousy” enough to make it a No 24 hit. The song has a tragic backstory. Guitarist Doug Hopkins who wrote it about wanting to get back with his girlfriend was kicked out of the band by A&M due to his alcoholism and unreliability before the song was a hit. Unable to deal with its subsequent success, he committed suicide in December 1993. There were rumours of a potential biopic of Hopkins’ life being made starring Ethan Hawke but it turned out that they were, in fact, just rumours.

One film that the band did have ties to was Empire Records for which they contributed a song to its soundtrack. Set in a US record store, I should have loved this as I spent pretty much the whole of the 90s working for Our Price. However, I found it to be completely dull and self indulgent with unlikeable characters. It bombed at the box office but has since become a cult hit. Maybe I should give it another go…

…maybe not. Anyway, I quite liked “Hey Jealousy” with its jangling guitars and catchy melody. However, I do always confuse Gin Blossoms with Gigolo Aunts who had a similar sounding band name and a similar sounding hit record at a similar time…

One of the year’s biggest hits next as Mariah Carey takes on “Without You”. I guess if anyone had the vocal range to tackle this monster of a pop song it was her. Her version would crash straight in at No 1 and be there for four weeks.

Whilst mostly known as a Harry Nilsson song before Mariah got hold of it, it was actually written by Pete Ham and Tom Evans of the band Badfinger who recorded it for their 1970 album “No Dice”. Badfinger, of course, had a strong connection with The Beatles. They recorded five albums for Apple and one of their biggest hits – “Come And Get It” – was written and produced by Paul McCartney. I quite like what I’ve heard of the band -“No Matter What” is a great power pop song – but they are one of the most tragic bands in musical history. In an unbelievably grim coincidence, like Gin Blossoms, their story was also touched by the awful shadow of suicide. After Apple folded, the band spiralled into a tumult of litigation, unpaid royalties and bankruptcy. It took its toll in an awful way. Pete Ham committed suicide in 1975 after his relationship with business manager Stan Polley went bad and Ham faced financial ruin. Then in 1983, Tom Evans also took his own life after falling out with band member Joey Molland over royalties for “Without You” the previous evening.

D:Ream remain rooted to the top spot with “Things Can Only Get Better”. Simon ‘Smug’ Mayo can’t resist making a political comment referring to it as John Major’s favourite song currently. At the time, as in 2023, the Conservatives were miles behind Labour in the polls and Major was embroiled in a row with opposition leader John Smith over the sale of the Rover Group. Things would actually get worse not better for Major four days after this TOTP aired when Tory MP Stephen Milligan was found dead at his home having died of asphyxiation presumed to be the result of an auto-erotic sex practice.

God this show has been remarkably bleak and miserable in terms of back stories. Is there anything that can raise the spirits before it closes? Well, there’s one final tune to come as it seems Blaxill made another immediate change by restoring the play out song that had been missing since the ‘year zero’ revamp. So what’s the first artist to fill this slot? The Flavour? Never heard of them! It’s hardly surprising as they never actually had a hit record. This single – “No Matter What You Do (I’m Gonna Get With You)” only made it to No 81. It was rereleased a year later and got to No 79. It wasn’t helped in its chart endeavours by Blaxill only seeing fit for it to be played for about twenty seconds and not showing their video (presuming they had one). Instead we get clips of all the artists that had been in the show we’d just seen. Not especially effective use of a slot. In fairness, it was a crap song (like a cheap version of the aforementioned Sub Sub) and unlike the Badfinger track called “No Matter What”, I didn’t like The Flavour’s…erm…flavour at all.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Rozalla	I Love Music	I do too but not this!
2	The Charlatans	Can’t Get Out Of Bed	Not the single but I have it on their Melting Pot Best Of
3	Red Hot Chili Peppers	Give It Away	No but I had a version of it on that re-release of Under The Bridge that I did buy
4	Wendy Moten	Come In Out Of The Rain	Nah
5	Joe Roberts	Lover	I did not
6	The Orb	Perpetual Dawn	Nope
7	Deep Forest	Sweet Lullaby	No
8	Bass Bumpers	The Music’s Got Me	Negative
9	Gin Blossoms	Hey Jealousy	Liked it, didn’t buy it
10	Mariah Carey	Without You	It’s a no
11	D:Ream	Things Can Only Get Better	And another no
12	The Flavour	No Matter What You Do (I’m Gonna Get With You)	What do you think?

Disclaimer

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

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

TOTP 27 JAN 1994

Posted on January 27, 2023 by 80stastic

We’ve reached another milestone here at TOTP Rewind. It’s not the fact that following host Tony Dortie’s departure from the show last time, this week it’s the turn of Mark Franklin to bow out after fifty nine appearances. No, it’s much more seismic than that. This is my 200th post for TOTP Rewind the 90s! In fact, by my calculations, in a few weeks I’ll be clocking up my 500th if you add the posts on the 80s blog to that figure! A huge thank you to anyone who has ever taken the trouble to read any of them.

Back to Mark Franklin and his final show though and as ever, he was presiding over a right mixed bag of artists and tunes starting with some rock. “What a rocky way to start the show” trills Franklin (just in case the watching millions were unfamiliar with the concept of rock music) as he introduces Therapy? performing their latest single “Nowhere”. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; this lot seemed to pass me by somewhat. It’s not that they didn’t make a good sound it’s just I didn’t really hear much of their stuff either on the radio or on the stereo system of the record shops I was working in. I might not know much of their music but I have to admire their work rate. 15 studio albums in 27 years is prolific. Add 31 singles and 5 EPs to that and you have a huge back catalogue.

“Nowhere” was the lead single from the fourth of those albums and the second on major label A&M and would see them at the peak of their commercial powers with it hitting the UK Top 5. Listening to “Nowhere” today, it’s not bad though it does rely heavily on a repeated riff. The CD single of “Nowhere” included some cover versions including “C. C. Rider” (as made famous by Elvis Presley), “Breaking The Law” (Judas Priest) and this classic from The Stranglers…

Guitarist and vocalist Andy Cairns is a big fan of my beloved Chelsea and the way our season is currently going, we could both do with some therapy.

The Top 40 countdown for Mark Franklin’s final show is soundtracked by Depeche Mode and their single “In Your Room”. In my head, there’s a very clear dividing line in the band’s career and that occurs in 1986 and the release of the “Black Celebration” album. Their back catalogue in their first five years is full of gloriously catchy synth pop tunes that culminated in the release of their first Best Of album in October 1985 (which I had). Their material from then on always seemed to me much darker and the pop kid in me sometimes struggled with it. With the passing of time though can come a new perspective and I have to say that the run of eight singles released from their first two albums of the 90s is remarkable in the consistency of their quality. Look at this list:

Personal Jesus
Enjoy The Silence
Policy Of Truth
World In My Eyes
I Feel You
Walking In My Shoes
Condemnation
In Your Room

Wow! Some of them (like “In Your Room”) hadn’t registered with me at the time but discovering them through these old TOTP repeats has been a welcome side effect to accompany all the nostalgia. Depeche Mode have a new album out in March and have vowed to continue despite the tragic passing of Andy Fletcher last year.

It’s that Joe fella up next with his debut single “I’m In Luv”. The performance here, or more specifically, the puffa jackets on display prompted many a ‘won’t feel the benefit’ comment on Twitter. Joe’s rapper mate does a passable impression of Shabba Ranks with his shout outs which is not to be encouraged in my book. Joe has maintained quite the career in the music business releasing 13 studio albums and 30 singles so far. He is also a record producer having remixed for the likes of Barry White and Tina Turner and has been a guest vocalist with names such as Brandy and Mariah Carey. Not your ‘average Joe’ then.

It’s hard to imagine now but there was a time when Celine Dion wasn’t seen (in this country at least) as the multi-platinum selling ‘Queen of the Power Ballads’ and was just the singer who had a hit with the bizarrely named Peabo Bryson with that song from Beauty And The Beast. Or even the woman who won the Eurovision Song Contest for Switzerland in 1988. The turning point was obviously her having a big hit and what do you do when you need a career firing hit? You record a cover version. Of course you do. You’ve got to get the song choice right though. It needs to be something that’s well known but which isn’t so definitive that you’d be mad to take it on. Did Celine get it right with “The Power Of Love” by Jennifer Rush? Well, yes and no. ‘Yes’ from the point of view that it did give her a first major UK hit when it powered its way to No 4 but also ‘No’ as I would suggest that despite that, the song is still associated most strongly with Jennifer Rush. The original was the UK’s biggest selling single of 1985, the ninth biggest selling of the decade and made Rush the first female artist to have a million selling single over here. Maybe I’m being unfair on Celine. After all, if it’s just about sales then she could point to the fact that her version topped the charts in the US, Canada and Australia, was the eighth biggest selling single of 1994 in America and shifted a total of 900,000 units. And yet…surely “The Power Of Love” isn’t the song that springs to kind first when you mention Celine’s name. That must be that ghastly ballad from Titanic mustn’t it? I can’t believe I’m tying myself up in knots over a debate about Celine Dion and Jennifer Rush! Suffice to say, off the back of her cover, the former went on to have a huge career including a No 1 a few months after this with “Think Twice”.

This is starting to look like a very strange show for Mark Franklin to bow out on. There seems little cohesion to the running order as it jumps around wildly from genre to genre. Hard rock, R&B, power ballads and now country music in the form of Garth Brooks. No doubt the outgoing TOTP producer Stanley Appel would point to the show’s diverse make up. Anyway, back to Garth and he’s put together a performance of his single “The Red Strokes” for us from Nashville and you can’t get more country than that! He’s even recorded a little intro for it which is giving me strong Ed Winchester from The Fast Show vibes…

Garth has also forgotten to wear his Stetson hat for the performance (amateur!) but that’s nothing to the change of image he affected five years later for his “Garth Brooks in…the Life of Chris Gaines” project. This was an ill advised attempt to push the country/ rock music boundaries even further than Brooks already had when he assumed the persona of a fictitious rock star (the titular Gaines). Intended for a film that was never made, Garth released an album of rock songs as Gaines anyway and even promoted it in character.

The album actually sold well but the whole concept has since been derided retrospectively. Brooks probably deserves some credit for having the cojones to try something different though. After all, Bowie’s various incarnations are lauded to the high heavens; the less said about Bono’s The Fly/Mirrorball Man/MacPhisto alter egos the better though.

Just the two Breakers this week starting with…“Hyperactive!” by Thomas Dolby? A song that had already been a No 17 hit exactly ten years previous? Why? It was the old Greatest Hits trick in action again. Although Dolby had actually achieved his first UK Top 40 hits since “Hyperactive!” just two years before in “Close But No Cigar” (No 22) and “I Love You Goodbye” (No 36), the parent album “Astronauts & Heretics” had disappointed commercially. Presumably that’s why his record company EMI thought it was time to raid his back catalogue to try and increase their Dolby revenue streams.

“Retrospectacle – The Best Of Thomas Dolby” was released in the February of 1994 with “Hyperactive!” given a re-release to spearhead the promotion campaign. The CD singles included some remixes of early Dolby classics like “Dissidents” and “Windpower” which no doubt piqued the completist tendencies of his fanbase and may explain “Hyperactive!” making No 23 a second time around. I’ll have reviewed this track when it was a hit initially in my TOTP 80s blog so I’m not going to go through it again. However, I will admit to once giving a rendition of it (with my colleague Mel) to a dumbfounded office of co-workers including the “Tell me about your childhood” opening line.

The second Breaker sees the return of Enigma. The new-age hitmakers who took Gregorian chanting to the top of the charts in 1991 were back but this time they’d replaced monks with some tribal chanting. “Return To Innocence” was the lead single from second album “The Cross Of Changes” which, though not as successful as their debut “MCMXC a.D.”, would still sell 600,090 copies in the UK alone and go to No 1 in our charts.

The track sampled a recording of an Amis chant called “Elders’ Drinking Song” performed by Taiwan husband and wife folk duo Difang and Igay Duana who would end up suing Enigma founder Michael Cretu for unauthorised use of their music. Cretu settled out of court stating that he thought the recording was in the public domain. It also has a more traditional song structure than their most famous hit “Sadeness (Part I)” with vocals added by German pop star Sandra. Listening back to it now, if you take the chanting out, it kind of sounds like a Savage Garden song. That comment, of course, just goes to confirm that the song was all about the chanting.

All of the singles taken from “The Cross Of Changes” had rather pretentious sounding titles suggesting that they somehow might slip you the answer to everything once heard…

Return To Innocence
The Eyes Of Truth
Age of Loneliness
Out From The Deep

Pseuds! Anyway, the Benjamin Button style video (directed by Julian Temple) of the old fella in the orchard passing away and seeing his life flash before him in reverse is quite affecting and definitely added something to the track helping it to a UK chart high of No 3.

Oh and one last thing, remember last week when Tony Dortie made one final gaff on his last ever show by referring to D:Ream’s lead singer as Peter Cornelius rather than his actual name of Peter Cunnah? Well, it turns out that one of the guys behind Enigma was called…yep…Peter Cornelius! Right name, wrong show Tony!

The UK record buying public had an almost dysfunctional relationship with Richard Marx through the 80s and 90s. His debut album was a gigantic success in America but was almost completely ignored over here. Two US No 1 singles failed to even make the Top 40 but then the country suddenly buckled and sent rather wimpy ballad “Right Here Waiting” to No 2. We then immediately reverted to ignoring him for the rest of the decade. Come 1992 though, we decided we quite liked the creepy, story-telling single “Hazard” and it made the Top 3. Marx then settled down into a pattern of middling hits for the next two years before finally being beaten into submission by the UK’s collective refusal to look his way. Given that admittedly glib description of his chart fortunes and that we are in 1994 here at TOTP Rewind, it’s no surprise that we encounter him here with one of those final, medium sized hits in “Now And Forever”. The lead single from his “Paid Vacation” album, it would peak at No 13. It’s a gentle, almost acoustic (except for the sizeable string section behind him in this performance) ballad that was written about his relationship with then wife Cynthia Rhodes.

Marx is of the opinion that the hardest part of songwriting for him is coming up with lyrics that aren’t clichéd. He hasn’t got a problem with hackneyed song titles though. He says this of “Now And Forever”:

“I don’t mind a generic title, as long as the lyrics within it are unique…There are probably 600-700 songs in the world called ‘Now and Forever,’ but there’s not one line of lyric in that song that’s like anything else.”
https://www.songfacts.com/facts/richard-marx/now-and-forever

Hmm. Without wanting to get all Ed Byrne dissecting Alanis Morissette about it, let’s have a look at some of the lyrics then. Here’s the first verse and chorus:

Whenever I’m weary
From the battles that rage in my head
You make sense of madness
When my sanity hangs by a thread
I lose my way but still you seem to understand
Now and forever
I will be your man
Writer/s: Richard Marx
Publisher: BMG Rights Management, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner Chappell Music, Inc.

Hmm. Well, for a start, every line rhymes with the next one, a pretty conventional song writing style I would wager and is Richard seriously trying to claim that nobody has ever written the line ‘I will be your man’ before?! George Michael just about did with Wham! for a start. And all that stuff about being weary and losing my way? It’s hardly an original concept is it? Here’s some more:

Until the day the ocean doesn’t touch the sand
Now and forever
I will be your man
Now and forever
I will be
Your man
Writer/s: Richard Marx
Publisher: BMG Rights Management, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner Chappell Music, Inc.

Oceans and sand? Oh come on Marx! You can’t be serious! Listen, by all accounts Richard is a decent bloke – he took on Piers Morgan for not going far enough in calling out Donald Trump’s extremism and helped Korean Air flight attendants pacify an unruly, possibly drunk passenger while he and his wife were aboard a flight bound from Hanoi to Seoul. Admirable stuff but his songwriting claims? Nah.

Wait! What?! After country, R&B, power ballads, new-age ambient, hard rock and soft rock, we now get some boogie rock on Mark Franklin’s last TOTP gig? The poor lad having to deal with a show in the middle of an identity crisis! I really don’t recall ZZ Top having UK Top 40 hits as late as 1994 (a good decade after their commercial heyday) but here they are with “Pincushion”and like Franklin, I think it must be their last ever appearance. This came from an album called “Antenna” and would make a respectable No 15 on our charts. This one sounds like all of their other stuff to me and whilst I don’t mind some of the ZZ Top hits, I would never describe myself as a fan. Sadly, bassist Dusty Hill (on the left here) died in 2021 at the age of 72.

D:Ream remain at the top of the charts with “Things Can Only Get Better”. It’s the video this week but it’s just a run through of the song taken from a live gig (possibly supporting Take That?). It’s been edited into an annoying stop-motion style but even so, I still can’t spot Professor Brian Cox on keyboards. In his final outro at the show’s end, unlike Tony Dortie last week, Mark Franklin makes no mention of the fact that he’s leaving the show though he does state that Radio 1’s Simon Mayo is in the hot seat next week. Franklin always seemed like a safe pair of hands to me – not the most exciting but a competent presenter. I’m not really looking forward to the return of the likes of Mayo, Nicky Campbell and (ugh!) Bruno Brookes!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Therapy?	Nowhere	Nope
2	Depeche Mode	In Your Room	No but it’s a great track
3	Joe	I’m In Luv	Nah
4	Celine Dion	The Power Of Love	As if
5	Garth Brooks	The Red Strokes	I did not
6	Thomas Dolby	Hyperactive!	No but my wife has The Flat Earth album it came from
7	Enigma	Return To Innocence	No
8	Richard Marx	Now And Forever	It’s a no from me
9	ZZ Top	Pincushion	Uh-uh
10	D:Ream	Things Can Only Get Better	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/m001h88t/top-of-the-pops-27011994

TOTP 20 JAN 1994

Posted on January 24, 2023 by 80stastic

And so the party is finally over. Not the TOTP party as the grand old show will carry on for another twelve and a half years from this point. No, it’s the end of the line for presenter Tony Dortie whose innings finishes after 57 shows stretching back to the 3rd October 1991. So who pulled the plug on Dortie? Well, presumably it was incoming new producer Ric Blaxill who replaced ‘year zero’ innovator Stanley Appel and decided to shake things up by…erm…getting some of those old Radio 1 DJs back in on presenting duties. That hardly sounds like a creative genius teeming with new ideas at work does it? To be fair to Blaxill, he did come up with some other plans to overhaul the show including the ‘golden mic’ where TV celebrities, pop stars and comedians were invited to present the show. Curiously, this change seems to already be in place before Dortie has left the building as he is joined on his final show by Def Leppard’s Joe Elliot as co-host. I presumed initially that this was just to introduce his own band’s video but he does get extra presenting duties later on in the show. The subsequent show would be Dortie’s presenting partner Mark Franklin’s last appearance. The times they were a-changin’…

…talking of which, we start the show with a tune that seemed out of time. It was now nearly four years since Inspiral Carpets burst into our lives as part of the ‘Madchester’ scene and whilst that movement had withered whilst main protagonists The Stone Roses were still missing presumed disbanded and the Happy Mondays having self destructed, these Oldham lads had carved themselves out a little niche which revolved around Clint Boon’s farfisa electronic organ and its swirling 60s retro sounds. By 1994 though, they were coming to the end of their initial incarnation and that year’s “Devil Hopping” would be their last album for twenty years after being dropped by Mute Records. The lead single from it was “Saturn 5” which seems to borrow a fair bit from “Telstar” by The Tornados. Yes, I know that 1962 No 1 transatlantic hit was an instrumental track but it was named after the Telstar communications satellite that was launched into orbit that year. Similarly, “Saturn 5” was named after the space rocket that launched all the Apollo missions. Then there’s the almost distorted, futuristic (back in 1962!) organ sound on “Telstar” which “Saturn 5” isn’t a million light years away from.

According to Boon, the song is about hope and achieving your ambitions. Here’s @TOTPFacts with an explanation of that Rockette lyric:

"Jerry wants to be a rockette" explained: "Jerry is my wife's auntie. She always wanted to be a Radio City Rockette, and now she is one! The song's about optimism and ambition." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 20, 2023

I went to New York for the very first time in 1994 and me and my wife did the Radio City Hall tour and met a Rockette. It was a a bizarre experience. Anyway, some of the other lyrics refer to the assassination of JFK (“the lifeless corpse of President 35”) and his grieving wife Jackie Onassis (“the lady crying by his side is the most beautiful woman alive”) and Boon’s mother-in-law going on a first date with her husband in a Ford Mustang (“Lady take a ride on a Zeke 64”). In my head, I’d made the line “An Eagle lands” into a reference to 1970s sci-fi series Space 1999 whose spacecrafts were called ‘Eagles’. Either that or the Eagle comic and its space captain hero Dan Dare. Both theories kind of fit with the space theme but further research on my part suggests it’s more probably to do with the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University where JFK learned to fly and whose nickname is ‘Eagles’. Regardless of its subject matter, I liked “Saturn 5” and its incongruousness with the rest of the charts. Yes, it was a bit formulaic – my work colleague Justin remarked on first hearing it “Ah, there’s the distinctive organ” – but it was well constructed and had charm as well as hooks. It would make No 20 on the chart while the album went to No10.

I saw singer Tim Hingley years later as a solo artist at tiny venue Fibbers whilst I was living in York. Can’t remember if he played “Saturn 5” though. I also caught Clint Boon do a DJ set of ‘Manchester’ tunes as a warm up for a Happy Mondays gig a few years ago. That really was money for old rope.

And so to that first Joe Elliott intro which, rather obviously, is for his own band. He actually does a decent job and seems much more at ease than an over excited Dortie. They do have some decent banter (note banter not ‘bants’) as Tony chides Joe for his Sheffield United shirt who responds with with “Hold your tongue philistine Spurs freak”. Nice comeback!

As for Def Leppard’s cover of The Sweet’s “Action”, I pretty much said everything I had to say about it in the last post. Erm…OK, did they do any other cover versions?

*checks internet*

They’ve done loads! Some are obvious like T. Rex, Bowie and Thin Lizzy but some less so. How about these? “Rock On” by David Essex and…No! “Personal Jesus” by Depeche Mode?! I’ve got to hear this…

…well, it doesn’t eclipse Johnny Cash’s take on it but it’s not bad I’ll admit. I suppose that’s testament to how much of a great song it is. “Action” peaked at No 14 but Def Leppard returned with their equal biggest hit ever in 1995 with “When Love And Hate Collide” which peaked at No 2 matching the high of 1992’s “Let’s Get Rocked”.

Here’s something a bit different. Tori Amos might be an acquired taste and suffer from continual accusations of being a Kate Bush wannabe but I’ve always quite liked her. I’m pretty sure we even had her first album “Little Earthquakes” at some point. It sold respectably and steadily but 1994 saw her up the ante with the release of sophomore album “Under The Pink” which went to the top of the charts. The lead single was “Cornflake Girl” which would give Tori her highest charting single by far at that point when it peaked at No 4. I said in the last post that I was surprised that Toni Braxton’s “Breathe Again” was such a big hit and “Cornflake Girl” also falls into that category. Nothing to do with the quality of the song – it’s a great track – but because it felt like such an outlier in the charts. A haunting piece with a striking melody that allows Tori’s otherworldly vocals to flourish, it sounded like nothing else in the Top 40 at the time (and no smart arse remarks about Kate Bush not having a single out that month!).

The song has some dark origins. Here’s @TOTPFacts again:

"Cornflake Girl" is about female genital mutilation, which Amos was discussing with a friend. "We were talking about the fact that the women are betrayed, by a grandmother, a mother, an older sister – that the women you trust the most are taking you into this butchery.." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 20, 2023

Out of this discussion came the song’s title which was a name that Tori and her peers would use growing up to describe girls who would hurt you despite a close relationship. On a lighter note, Amos appeared in an advert for a Kellogg’s cereal in 1984 but apparently that was nothing to do with her writing the song.

Interestingly, Billy Bragg also name checks the phrase on a track called “Body Of Water” on his 1991 album “Don’t Try This At Home”.

Summer could take a hint
Seeing you in a floral print
Oh to become a pearl
In the wordy world of the cornflake girl
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Billy Bragg / Philip Douglas Wigg
Body of Water lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Chappell Music, Inc

In an unlikely turn of events, as I was checking my Tori Amos facts for this post, I discovered that she is a very close friend of the author Neil Gaiman who is actually godfather to her daughter. The book literally next to me on the coffee table as I read that information? The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman.

For me though, the one thing that always comes to mind when I hear “Cornflake Girl” is this TV theme for a show that always seemed to be on the late night schedules growing up in the Central ITV region…

Talking of cover versions as we were before about Def Leppard, Tori has quite a few in her live set lists. I think my favourite is this unlikely coming together of styles…

Oh come on! Still with Haddaway in 1994? Surely he was a one year phenomenon? Sadly, he’s still knocking about with his “I Miss You” single. Everything about this performance is just odd, from Haddaway’s cringeworthy spoken intro to the presence of the woman on stage with him? Quite why was she there? She spends the first part of the song sat on a chair looking miserable. I’ve not seen someone look so upset in a pop song since that woman in the video for Eddy Grant’s 1982 No 1 “I Don’t Wanna Dance” when she’s left fuming on the beach whilst Eddy noodles around on his guitar whilst sat on an unlikely floating platform in the sea.

Back in 1994, the woman on stage with Haddaway finally gets up to wander around a bit before miming some “ooh, woohs” backing vocals. Is that why she was there all along? For that? It really wasn’t worth it. “I Miss You” peaked at No 9.

As with Def Leppard earlier, here’s another of last week’s Breakers getting a full spin on the show. Toni Braxton gets the live by satellite treatment to perform her “Breathe Again” hit. They’ve plonked her on a stool sat between two candelabras on the stage of the Apollo Theatre, New York where she belts out her song…to nobody. They even have a shot from behind Toni facing the empty theatre and its non existent audience just in case anyone was under the misconception that somebody (anybody) was actually there. Madness. I hope Ric Blaxill got rid of this nonsense when he took over the TOTP reins and resuscitated the show. Hey, maybe he made it breathe again! I’ll get me coat.

Four Breakers this week starting with some bloke called Joe (just Joe) who I hardly remember and couldn’t tell you anything about before reading up on him but who somehow managed to have ten UK Top 40 hits the last of which came some ten years on from this, his debut single, “I’m In Luv”. Tony Dortie is clearly giving zero f***s seeing as he’s been given the chop and this is is final appearance as he says the following in his intro “…I know it’s politically incorrect to say so but there’s some mighty fine ladies in this video”. Well! Tone had some previous with this sort of thing dropping similar comments about Jade, En Vogue etc during his time on the show. He also says that Joe “…at last gives us the missing note between hip hop and R&B…”. Wasn’t that called New Jack Swing?

A genuine sales phenomenon next as Garth Brooks makes his first TOTP appearance. No. Really. Check these stats out from @TOTPFacts

In the USA, Garth Brooks is the only artist to have released nine albums that achieved diamond status by selling over 10 million copies (surpassing the Beatles' previous record of six). #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 20, 2023

Garth Brooks has also been certified as the best-selling solo artist when it comes to albums in the USA – ahead of Elvis Presley. As of 13 January 2023, Brooks is on 157 million, with Presley at 146.5 million. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 20, 2023

Told you. It was an unlikely occurrence though for a country artist. Or was it? Certainly in the UK, that genre had traditionally struggled to gain a foot hold commercially but in the US? I’m thinking there was a much bigger market and appetite for country music. Randy Travis, Willie Nelson, Reba McEntire, Dwight Yoakam, George Strait and loads more artists had huge careers over there as country acts. However, Troyal Garth Brooks (that’s his actual name! Troyal!) was somehow different. His melting pot of country with elements of rock and pop allowed him to crossover into the mainstream markets and he did so like nobody before him. We’d resisted in the UK for the early part of the decade despite promotion by his record company of his albums like “Ropin’ The Wind”, “No Fences” and “The Chase” but we finally caved to his fifth one “In Pieces” which rose to No 2 in our charts. The single from it that broke the dam was “The Red Strokes” – (actually a double A-side with “Ain’t Going Down (‘Til The Sun Comes Up)”) – a pleasant but unremarkable ballad to my ears and the biggest of only three UK hit singles which peaked at No 13. Hold onto your Stetson though as we’ll be seeing more of Garth Brooks on the next show.

I’d totally forgotten about the final single from Depeche Mode’s “Songs Of Faith And Devotion” album. “In Your Room” was a powerful slab of gloom rock in line with the rest of the album which was influenced by the emergence of grunge. Despite the album having been out for nearly a year by this point and despite it being the fourth track released from it, “”In Your Room” still went Top 10 displaying the loyalty and purchasing power of the band’s fanbase.

The video references much of the band’s past work with homages to “Strangelove”, “Personal Jesus” and “Enjoy The Silence” amongst others. There’s also a heavy David Lynch vibe with scenes of bondage set against the red curtain drapes reminding me of both Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet. The band themselves were in turmoil at this point with Dave Gahan struggling with his heroin addiction whilst the single would be the last to feature Alan Wilder who left the group after the completion of the album. We would not see them again for four years when they returned with “Ultra”.

Well, I suppose this was totally inevitable. Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown had been married for eighteen months when they decided they needed to record a song together to further publicly display their love for each other. I’m surprised it took that long. “Something In Common” was the chosen track but if they were expecting a gigantic hit off the back of them joining forces, it didn’t quite happen. A No 16 peak was all it could achieve over here whilst it also failed to make the Top 10 in the US. How come? I mean, Whitney was on a very hot streak with the success of The Bodyguard whilst Brown’s 1992 album “Bobby” had gone double platinum. Maybe the song was just no good? It’s uptempo and probably right on the New Jack Swing zeitgeist but it doesn’t live long in the memory. Seriously, how far down the list would you have to go when naming Whitney or Bobby Brown songs before you got to “Something In Common”?

Joe Elliott is back to do a link for the next artist who is Phil Collins. How many times was Phil on TOTP as a solo artist doing a mournful ballad? I don’t know and I’m not about to count but I’m pretty sure he did what he does whilst performing “Everyday” on every appearance; that Everyman, shuffling turn whilst wearing oversized, casual clothes to create the impression that he’s only turned up at the studio to sing a song whilst he’s waiting for the first coat of creosote to dry on his garden fence before applying the second. I’m not buying it Phil nor indeed any of your records. “Everyday” peaked at No 15.

They’ve done it! D:Ream are No1 with “Things Can Only Get Better” a year after it originally peaked at No 24. Despite it being his last ever TOTP show, Tony Dortie still has one last presenting gaff in him when he refers to their lead singer Peter Cunnah as ‘Pete Cornelius’! Watching Pete perform here in his trademark checked suit, I can’t help but notice that there’s an element of Robbie Williams about his performance. All that energetic cavorting and arm waving and a desperation to make everything about him on stage. Well, D:Ream had just been on tour with Take That at the time so maybe he did indeed learn from the master!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Inspiral Carpets	Saturn 5	No but I have it on a Best Of CD of theirs
2	Def Leppard	Action	Nah
3	Tori Amos	Cornflake Girl	Liked it, didn’t buy it
4	Haddaway	I Miss You	…but I don’t miss you. No
5	Toni Braxton	Breathe Again	Nope
6	Joe	I’m In Luv	I’m not – no
7	Garth Brooks	The Red Strokes	No
8	Depeche Mode	In Your Room	I did not
9	Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown	Something In Common	Negative
10	Phil Collins	Everyday	Never!
11	D:Ream	Things Can Only Get Better	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/m001h88r/top-of-the-pops-20011994

TOTP 13 JAN 1994

Posted on January 20, 2023 by 80stastic

Christmas and New Year are now distant memories – not just in 2023 but in 1994 where we currently find ourselves in the BBC4 TOTP repeats schedule. The charts have pretty much evacuated from their bowels all that Christmas stodge and some new songs are cleansing the Top 40. Well, I say cleanse but there are still some rotten tunes stinking the place out. Oh well, nose pegs at the ready then as we go again..,

We start with the previous year’s Eurodance sensation Culture Beat who are back with a third consecutive hit in “Anything”. There’s no let up in the formula here – they couldn’t have mixed things up with a ballad? – as Jay Supreme performs a high speed rap workout while vocalist Tania Evans chips in with a chorus including lyrics that seem to suggest desperation to please a (potential) partner. I’d like to think such themes were not prevalent today but toxic masculinity is on the increase with hateful figures like Andrew Tate generating headlines. I’m probably reading far too much into it but seeing Tania sing those words does jar a bit. On closer examination of the lyrics online, Jay Supreme seems to be having similar relationship problems where nothing he does, says or wears is good enough for his other half but he’s rapping so fast nobody can decipher what he’s on about. “Anything” was at its chart peak of No 5 already. They would never return to the Top 10.

Get those nose pegs ready as here’s a bona fide toilet bowel dweller in the form of “All For Love” by Bryan Adams, Rod Stewart and Sting. This was proper dog shit, baked for the latest cinematic take on the Alexandre Dumas novel The Three Musketeers. I recall there being a big buzz about the film starring Charlie Sheen, Kiefer Sutherland, Oliver Platt and Chris O’Donnell in the titular roles and I, myself, duly went to see it. Sadly, like its song, it was no good, without merit and, in short, a stinker. There was something very cynical about casting Sheen and Sutherland together to reunite them in some sort of 17th century cousin to their Brat Pack western Young Guns (indeed, some reviewers christened the film ‘Young Swords’). This was just one of a long list of film adaptations of the famous story – I had no idea there were that many – but I’d take the cartoon from my childhood from The Banana Splits TV show over any of them.

Back to that song though and its protagonists were probably more of an unholy trinity than they were The Three Musketeers for many. Certainly there are a fair few musical crimes that can be levelled at Adams, Stewart and Sting individually (though some of all three’s back catalogue stands up to scrutiny) but this collective effort really is a low point. It probably sounded like a good idea in theory – three massive mainstream stars (the musketeers) record a song that borrows its title from the main characters’ motto (‘All for one and one for all’) but the actual song is such a dirge that it can’t fail but to reek. Composed by Bry and his go to songwriting partner Robert ‘Mutt’ Lange, who was also responsible for that other Adams turd “Please Forgive Me”, it really is an awful record. The film did decent business though and so the single was a huge hit off the back of it going to No 1 in the US and around the world though its peak of No 2 in the UK meant it wasn’t quite a case of all for one and one for all.

“All For Love” isn’t the only Three Musketeers inspired pop song though. “You’ve Got Everything Now” from the eponymous debut album by The Smiths features the line “I’ve seen you smile but I’ve never really heard you laugh” and borrows from a narrative description of the musketeer Athos

He was very taciturn, this worthy signor. Be it understood we are speaking of Athos. During the five or six years that he had lived in the strictest intimacy with his companions, Porthos and Aramis, they could remember having often seen him smile, but had never heard him laugh.
— Chapter 7, The Interior of the Musketeers, The Three Musketeers Project Gutenberg.

Proving that it’s not a total clean sweep of new songs in the charts, here’s K7 with “Come Baby Come”. Released in mid December back in ‘93, it would spend a giant sixteen weeks on the charts peaking at No 3. Despite the single’s success, K7 didn’t sustain. Indeed, if you Google K7 these days you will find an entry for him but behind results for an independent music label, a brand of power washer and alongside anti virus software.

What’s this? A Ce Ce Peniston hit that isn’t “Finally”? Well, there’s actually a few of them but to me they all sound like inferior re-writes of “Finally” including this one called “I’m In The Mood”. Nothing to do with The Nolans’ biggest hit but the lead single from her second album called “Thought ‘Ya Knew”. According to reviews at the time, this was meant to have a bit of a jazz slant to it but I’m not sure I can hear it. The single actually did OK chart wise making No 16 but the parent album, unlike her debut “Finally” which went Top 10, floundered to a high of No 31. I have to say that I don’t recall anything of this stage of Ce Ce’s career but she carried on gamely throughout the 90s releasing two more albums before the end of the decade to little reception before scoring one final hit in 1997 with a cover of Jocelyn Brown’s “Somebody Else’s Guy”.

How can I have forgotten about this?! The The on TOTP and I’ve erased it from my memory banks?! What was going on in my life at the time to have dislodged this from a special place in my grey matter?! So many questions but surely the biggest of the lot should be why isn’t Matt Johnson routinely lauded as a national treasure?! I first became aware of his genius in 1983 when I heard “Uncertain Smile”. Then I saw the striking artwork on the single’s cover in WH Smith and, even as a 15 year old pop kid, knew something special was going on here. By the time I was a Poly student, I had the first album “Soul Mining” in pride of place in my cassette collection to make me look…well, I’d have maybe said ‘trendy’ back then but probably I meant non mainstream (even though I hopelessly was).

The album also included the singles “Perfect” and “This Is The Day” and it was the latter of those two which was chosen as the main track on the “Dis-Infected EP”. Remodelled as “That Was The Day”, it was backed up by a take on the title track of 1986 album “Infected” plus remixes of two tracks from the most recent album at the time, 1992’s “Dusk”. Presumably this EP was released to maintain profile in between albums (Johnson’s album of Hank Williams cover versions – “Hanky Panky” – didn’t appear until 1995) and its No 17 peak would make it The The’s biggest ever hit just eclipsing 1989’s “The Beat(en) Generation”.

Coming after Culture Beat, K7 and Ce Ce Peniston in the running order, this incarnation of The The looks every bit the outlier on TOTP. Matt, for all his genius, never looked like a pop star bless him whilst the minimal set up of a keyboard player and a guy on harmonica were at odds with all the synchronised dance moves, rapping and general party atmosphere of the acts before. And thank God for that.

“This Is The Day” was covered in 2011 by Manic Street Preachers to promote their third compilation album “National Treasures – The Complete Singles” thus affording Matt Johnson a sliver of that national treasure status he so richly deserves.

Three Breakers this week starting with “Everyday” by Phil Collins. I don’t remember this at all and there’s a case to be made that I just count my blessings and leave it at that. The reviewer in me won’t allow that though (Damn you!) so I’m going in for a listen – this isn’t going to end well is it?

*manages two and a half minutes before switching off*

Well, it was, as I suspected, not worth the effort. According to Wikipedia, Phil played every musical part on this track which means it was him that ripped of Bruce Hornsby for the piano intro. After that it drifts off into predictable Collins territory with a melancholic melody and lyrics so rank and hackneyed that there should be a law against this form of song composition. Phil bangs on about being knocked off his feet and the fire inside him and his life being worth nothing without the object of his affections…turn it in mate! I can imagine it being used in a lame rom com movie starring Paul Rudd and Jennifer Anniston to soundtrack the bit where the film’s couple have broken up. Nice work for Phil but all rather cynical.

The song was the second single from his “Both Sides” album and though making a respectable chart high of No 15, possibly didn’t allay record company fears after lead single “Both Sides Of The Story” underperformed.

The era of Toni Braxton is upon us. A huge star straight off the bat in the US where “Another Sad Love Song” went Top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100, that single stalled on initial release over here meaning that “Breathe Again” would become her first UK Top 40 hit. And what a hit! It would eventually peak at No 2 over here which seemed like a slight case of overachievement for an R&B ballad. Clearly the song had something that set it apart from the other examples of the genre we had seen. It did ebb and flow quite nicely and Braxton could clearly deliver the required vocal. Even so, I for one was slightly taken aback by its popularity.

“Another Sad Love Song” was rereleased in this country in the wake of the success of “Breathe Again” and this time was a hit making No 15. However, Toni really came into her own in 1996 when she had another No 2 hit record in “Un-break My Heart”, a single that sold and sold and sold, spending nineteen weeks in total on the charts.

The final Breaker is a cover of a glam rock hit from the 70s courtesy of Def Leppard. Having taken five years to record a follow up to the multi platinum selling “Hysteria” album, these lads were not exactly prolific. “Adrenalize” had been a success but not on the same level as its predecessor and another studio album wouldn’t arrive until 1996. So, how to fill the gap? With a compilation album of course. However, Def Leppard wanted to give something back to the fans that was not just a boring Best Of that would just mean the completists forking out for tracks they already owned so they came up with “Retro Active”, an album of touched up B-sides and unreleased recordings from the band’s vaults. There were also a couple of cover versions including Mick Ronson’s “Only After Dark” and this one, a 1975 Top 20 hit from The Sweet called “Action”. I didn’t think I knew this song but having given both versions a spin, it did ring some bells in the deepest corners of my mind.

Is it just me or do The Sweet not get the recognition they deserve? Whenever glam rock gets mentioned, it seems that the first names to crop up are T-Rex, Slade, Wizzard and even Roxy Music (nobody can talk about Gary Glitter anymore for obvious reasons). Do The Sweet get overlooked slightly? In their early 70s heyday, they tore up the charts with songs like “Ballroom Blitz”, “Teenage Rampage” and “Block Buster!” clocking up ten Top 10 hits including a No 1 and five (!) No 2s making them one of the unluckiest bands ever. By the time of “Action” though, the hits were drying up. This would be one of their last with only a change of musical direction giving them one final Top Tenner with “Love Is Like Oxygen” in 1978.

Def Leppard do a decent version of “Action” though the original is easily better. After the almost philanthropic act of the “Retro Active” release, the band went and released a proper Best Of anyway in 1995 called “Vault: Def Leppard Greatest Hits (1980-1995) which became another platinum seller. It’s all about the Benjamins at the end of the day isn’t it?

Back in the studio we find Eternal who are consolidating on the success of debut single “Stay” with another mid tempo soul/pop track called “Save Our Love”. The buzz around this lot was still very vibrant coming out of Christmas and so another hit was almost guaranteed. “Save Our Love” duly did the business going Top 10 though falling short of the No 4 peak of its predecessor by four places. For me, this follow up was nowhere near as strong as their opener. Sure it was radio friendly with a shiny production but it didn’t have the nuance of “Stay”. It all felt a bit too straightforward – Eternal by numbers. Talking of numbers, the group still had its full complement of them at this stage but by the following year, Louise Redknapp (Nurding as was) would have left the group. She, along with her band mates, were kept busy in 1994 though releasing five singles and promoting their debut album “Always And Forever”.

I’m not sure what the petrol station vibe is all about for this performance. Can’t think of many other artists who have channeled it. Billy Joel was a mechanic in a garage for “Uptown Girl” wasn’t he so not quite the same. Oh yes though – mechanics or more specifically Mike And The Mechanics who used an image of a gas pump attendant asleep on some tyres next to his pump as the cover of their Best Of album entitled “Hits” in 1996. By the way, those combat trousers that Eternal are wearing were all the rage in 1994. I think I even had some. No doubt we’ll be seeing more examples of their popularity in future repeats.

The reggae Rick Astley next as studio tape operator/ tea boy turned pop star Bitty McLean is back with another hit. After the No 2 success of his debut single “It Keeps Rainin’ (Tears From My Eyes)”, it looked as though Bitty’s career was over almost immediately when follow up single “Pass It On” steadfastly refused to do so and stalled at No 35. However, here he was back with another hit in “Here I Stand” that would ultimately make No 10 despite being awful. It was another cover version (originally released by Justin Hinds And The Dominoes in 1967) but Bitty makes it sound completely tuneless in his rendition. I really didn’t get the appeal of Bitty and his music but I’m sure that he’s a lovely chap all the same!

It’s a second week at the top for Chaka Demus And Pliers with their version of “Twist And Shout” despite heavy competition from D:Ream who are up to No 2 this week. Apparently, “Twist And Shout” was selling less at the top of the charts than it was when lodged at No 3 at Christmas. The vagaries of the post festive season sales slump and all that.

There are, of course, many different versions of “Twist And Shout”. Here’s one from Bruce Springsteen which segues into “La Lamba”…

I’m sure I heard a story about the recording of The Beatles’ first album in which “Twist And Shout” wasn’t going to be included on it but a journalist told them that they should record “La Bamba” as he’d heard them do it live and it sounded great. The band responded that they didn’t play “La Bamba” in concert but realised the press guy was talking about “Twist And Shout” which they did perform live and that’s how it got onto the album. This is surely the definitive version of the song…

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Culture Beat	Anything	Never happening
2	Bryan Adams / Rod Stewart / Sting	All For Love	NO!
3	K7	Come Baby Come	I did not
4	Ce Ce Peniston	I’m In The Mood	Nah
5	The The	Dis-Infected EP	No but I had the Soul Mining album which includes lead track This Is The Day
6	Phil Collins	Everyday	Double NO!
7	Toni Braxton	Breathe Again	Nope
8	Def Leppard	Action	Negative
9	Eternal	Save Our Love	It’s a no
10	Bitty McLean	Here I Stand	Never!
11	Chaka Demus And Pliers	Twist And Shout	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/m001h027/top-of-the-pops-13011994

TOTP 06 JAN 1994

Posted on January 16, 2023 by 80stastic

1993 has finally done one and we are into a new year at last! After that previous 12 months, things can only get better (ahem). Or not. By my reckoning, just about now back then, I’d have been having a rather heated discussion with my Area Manager at Our Price about me being moved yet again for the third time in four months. I wasn’t best pleased. I’d not enjoyed the transfer to a bigger store at Stockport and was relieved to end up being shifted to the much smaller unit in Altrincham for Christmas. I’d liked it so much there that my wife and I had even started looking at flats there for a potential move from our base of the previous three years in South Manchester. Sadly, we we’re getting way ahead of ourselves. As soon as New Year was over, I was informed that I was to be transferred over to the Market Street store in Manchester where I’d started as a Christmas temp just over three years before. I had reservations about going back as there were still some people working there from my previous incarnation and I suppose I wondered how I would be received returning in a management position. That and the fact that I felt like I’d had my fair share of moves recently and this was just taking the piss. Despite my protestations I had to go, not least because it was in my contract that I could be made to so that was that. What was that about things could only get better…?

So after at least two fairly lame attempts by myself to tee this up in my intro, here’s the first act on TOTP of 1994…with a song from 1993! Yes, it probably gets forgotten due to how big a hit “Things Can Only Get Better” by D:Ream was this time around but it had already been a middling sized hit exactly twelve months before when it peaked at No 24. So why the re-release? Well, D:Ream had bagged themselves quite the support slot for a tour by the biggest boy band in the country meaning their exposure to the record buying public was massively enhanced. A Take That endorsement was certainly a ringing one when it came to the cash tills. The 1994 re-release would go on to sell 600,000 copies.

It wasn’t just a re-release though as it was also a remix. The original release didn’t include the gospel style a cappella intro that was reinstated for the 1994 version which had much more of a pop feel to it as opposed to the more club orientated original. Suddenly there was a buzz about the song again. Perhaps the timing of the release date was a factor with it being New Year and that renewed hope that people have that this will be a better year than the one before, new year resolutions and all that. Whatever it was, the timing, the sound, the record company marketing, it became one of those records that we were all told would be a huge hit and so it duly was. It went straight in at No 10, then No 2 and then topped the charts for four weeks. It spent nine weeks inside the Top 10 and fourteen in the Top 40 altogether. It was a monster.

Whatever its legacy – and the revisionists seem to have decided it was cheesy probably not helped by its 1997 General Election connections – you can’t deny its positivity. Peter Cunnah gives a decent vocal and does a good job of selling it (despite his horrible checked suits) though I never liked its M People style, sax parping middle eight which always seemed a bit incongruous. We’ll be seeing and hearing plenty more of this tune in future TOTP repeats so I’ll leave it there for now.

Dinah Carroll is next starting the year as she finished the last – with a huge hit record. “The Perfect Year” is up to No 5, possibly benefiting, like D:Ream before it, from New Year good vibes given its title and lyrics. As the single is at its peak this week, I’m guessing this could be the last we’ll see of Dina for over two and a half years as she would not release any new material until late September 1996. I feel almost bereft after all the times she’s appeared in the show in the previous twelve months! 1993 really was her (ahem) perfect year with four hit singles and a huge selling album in “So Close”.

Not that 1994 didn’t have any highlights for Dina. She was named Best Female Artist at the BRIT Awards in February whilst her album continued to sell steadily throughout the year and was shortlisted for the Mercury Music Prize. She also played a sell out tour in December. Then…nothing. She took some time out after suffering from burnout and then record label contract wrangles delayed the release of her new album. By the time it came out, Britpop had happened and the musical landscape had changed. “Only Human” sold well enough but Dina was never as big as she was during her initial flush of success.

Just like “The Perfect Year”, here’s another record that had been around the charts for a while by this point and was also inside the Top 5. Whereas Dina Carroll was never as successful again as she was in 1993, you could make a similar claim for East 17 in 1994. Not only did “It’s Alright” reach No 3 ultimately to become their highest charting hit at that time, not only did they follow it up with another No 3 single and a No 7, not only did they release double platinum selling sophomore album “Steam” but they also notched up their first and only chart topping single which was also the year’s Christmas No 1. Phew! Breathe it in boys!

Now there’s a few things to be said about this TOTP performance not in the least Brian Harvey’s hat which was presumably the inspiration for the 1998 hit by The Tamperer featuring Mya with its lyrics “What’s she gonna look like with a chimney on her?”. Secondly, what on earth was it that Terry Coldwell (geezer to the immediate left of Brian Harvey) was bringing to the party here? He just stands there sort of shuffling about. He’s shown up by everyone else on stage – Harvey as lead vocalist obviously, Tony Mortimer on piano and with his rap half way through and even the fourth guy who just noodles about on his bass guitar. Terry, it’s really not alright mate.

What’s going on here then? Why were The Mission in the charts in 1994 with a single that had already been a No 12 hit in 1988? There’s no great mystery really. It was to promote a Best Of album called “Sum And Substance” with the single in question being “Tower Of Strength”. I once spent an afternoon wandering around the record shops of York with my friend Robin who was looking for a Best Of album by The Mission (it may have even been “Sum And Substance”). Why did it take a whole afternoon? Because Robin wasn’t prepared to pay more than £5 for it. He was probably right to be so exacting on reflection.

Anyway, just like D:Ream earlier, this was not just a rerelease but a remix done by producer de jour Youth though fat lot of good that did the band as it stalled at No 33. Perhaps trying to rewrite Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” wasn’t the best career move after all.

P.S. I’m not sure what Tony ‘Friend of East 17” Dortie was on about in his intro exhorting us to listen to the bass sound on “Tower Of Strength”. What bass?

It may be a new year but the Breakers are still with us starting with “Whoomp! (There It Is)” by Tag Team. I could have sworn this was a hit later in the decade than this?

*checks Tag Team discography

Well, that didn’t take long as “Whoomp! (There It Is)” is pretty much their only claim to fame. However, the story of the track is a long one. So, do I need to do a deep dive for a Breaker that we’ll never see in full and only made No 34 on the UK Top 40? I do? You’re all cruel and heartless! OK, to answer my earlier question. This was its only appearance in our charts so it wasn’t a hit in subsequent years via a rerelease or something so that was just my memory playing tricks on me. In my defence though, the song has a life well beyond it chart stats having been used multiple times in TV adverts and on film soundtracks – it was actually remade as “Addams Family (Whoomp!)” for Addams Family Values.

Let’s begin at the beginning though. It started out as a very raunchy rap by an act called 95 South and was entitled “Whoot! There It Is” which led to accusations that they were subsequently ripped off by Tag Team. The latter’s story via DC The Brain Supreme (real name Cecil Glenn! No – really) is that he came up with it while DJing in a strip club in Atlanta with the phrase “Whoomp! There it is” referring to a stripper’s…ahem…derrière. The reaction to the track in the club was off the scale and so DC and his partner Steve Rolln set about getting themselves a record deal. Having signed up to the Bellmark label, a sanitised version which played down the sexual references was released and, appealing to a more mainstream audience than a strip club’s clientele, it went nuclear rising to No 2 in the US Billboard Hot 100. Tag Team were an overnight sensation but they hadn’t cleared the sampled they used in the track by Italian electro/disco group Kano who sued the label’s asses causing them to go bankrupt. The track lived on though being used at baseball games to soundtrack a home run leading to the duo doing half time shows (in my naivety, I originally thought the song was something to do with WWF Wrestling rather than strip clubs – maybe I was just ahead of my time). However, they couldn’t replicate the success of “Whoomp! (There It Is)” and they fell on hard times. DC went back to DJing in clubs whilst Rolln did time for drug offences.

And still their track refused to die and resurfaced in the 2003 film Elf and 2004’s Shark Tale. Sadly for Tag Team, they’d signed their publishing rights away with the Bellmark deal and so only got a writer’s credit. And yet still the song wouldn’t go away. It was used in an AT&T / iPhone advert, an ice cream campaign (“Scoop! There It is”) and a nappy commercial (“Poop! There It Is”). It was even parodied by Beavis and Butt-head (“Whoomp! There’s My Butt”). So, quite the story. You wanted it, whoomp….there it is!

From a song with, as Limahl once sang, a never ending story to one which hardly got past page one. “Time Of Our Lives” by Alison Limerick anyone? I have to admit to only being able to name one of Alison’s songs and it isn’t this one. Surely most people’s go to Limerick tune is “Where Love Lives”? I mean, it was released four times in total being a hit twice (No 27 in 1991 and No 9 in 1996). This one though was taken from her second album “With A Twist” and could only make No 36. Possibly because the record label we’re after a bigger hit than that, Alison followed it up with a cover of “Love Come Down” by Evelyn ‘Champagne’ King. That also peaked at No 36. Oh.

There was a young singer called Limerick

Who tried many times to have a hit

Sadly for her, there’s only one that was heard

It was the four times released “Where Love Lives”

The first hit now for a band who were embarking on a run of twelve consecutive Top 40 hits throughout the course of the decade. Despite spending the whole of the 90s working in record shops, I had no idea they had that many. I’m talking about West Yorkshire rockers Terrorvision who I never quite got to grips with but had a few decent tunes and deserve a better legacy than just that “Tequila” song.

“My House” was actually a rerelease of the second single to be taken from their debut album “Formaldehyde” and the scheduling of it was curious. Why? Well, it was reissued just a few weeks before the lead single from their second album came out. Surely their record company would have wanted to clear the calendar for new material or did they think the band needed a bona fide chart hit behind them before releasing anything else? Either way, it seemed to work. The rerelease of “My House” made No 29 and second album “How To Make Friends And Influence People” was a Top 20 hit (by contrast, “Formaldehyde” had only just scratched the Top 75). That album would generate five Top 40 singles whose chart position’s demonstrated the consistency of the band’s material and their growing fanbase. Check these figures out:

21 – 25 – 25 – 24 – 22

This solid foundation paved the way for ever bigger singles including a No 10 (“Bad Actress”) and a No 5 (“Perseverance”) before the ultimate high of a No 2 with “Tequila”. In my book, this added them to the list of artists who’s biggest hit is far from their best (see also The Boo Radleys, The Stranglers, Suzanne Vega and fellow West Yorkshire rockers Embrace). Lead singer Tony Wright became a bit of a celebrity durging the band’s heyday appearing several times on Never Mind The Buzzcocks and even guest presenting an episode of TOTP.

WHO?! DJ Duke?! Never heard of him! Apparently this guy’s real name is Ken Duke and he had DJ’d in some of the world’s biggest clubs before releasing his own music. His biggest crossover hit was this one “Blow Your Whistle” which seems essentially to be a house beat, a vocal sample saying ‘Blow your whistle’ and indeed some whistles being blown. Apparently Duke went on to work with such names as Junior Vasquez and Felix Da Housecat whilst also going by a slew of other monikers himself such as Roxy Breaks and Underground Attorney. Talking of names, I had art teacher by the name of Kenny Dukes and I would rather be back in his art class aged 11 than have to listen to “Blow Your Whistle” again which somehow made No 15 in the charts.

Next up are Wet Wet Wet but don’t panic as it’s not that single that they released in 1994. “Cold, Cold Heart” (not a cover of Midge Ure’s 1991 hit) was the second new track recorded for their first ever Best Of album “End Of Part One: Their Greatest Hits” which had been a big seller over Christmas. The song features on an uncredited French speaking female as demonstrated visually by the inclusion of a scantily clad woman from the promo video at the start of this performance. Her spoken word intro puts me in mind of “Je T’Aime Moi Non Plus” – Wet Wet Wet do Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg the latter of whom was responsible for one of the most excruciating moments in the history of TV…

Ahem. Anyway, back to Wet Wet Wet and their song which is the wrong side of tedious for me. It never gets goings and even if it did, it wouldn’t know where it wanted to go. No wonder the TOTP producers tried to liven it up with the inclusion of the French lady. Her appearance certainly prompted some reaction on Twitter leading to a rather unfortunate mishearing of one of the song’s lyrics by a user by the name of J.A.Y…

More to the point, why is Marti Pellow singing about "the rectum torn apart"? pic.twitter.com/cSCGciorf0
— J.A.Y. (@DronedLove) January 13, 2023

“Cold, Cold Heart” peaked at No 20 but their next hit was just a tad more successful…

Well this is weird! As part of the celebrations that were taking place in this year to commemorate TOTP’s 30th anniversary, the producers were raiding the archive for some classic clips. So what have they chosen for this first show of the year? Bowie with his arm around Mick Ronson’s shoulder for “Starman”? Mud and that “Tiger Feet” dance? Boy George’s’ gender bending first TOTP appearance? No, they’ve gone for Pan’s People dancing to “Mama’s Pearl” by Jackson 5, a No 25 hit from 1971! Never mind one for the Dads, it must have been one for the Grandads by 1994!

Now, those of us of a certain age will remember Pan’s People, the all female dance troupe that performed routines to hits of the day from 1968 to 1976. Watching them back today, their choreography seems not exactly innocent but…loose? Loose as in not tight and not anything to do with sexual innuendo. Basically, not highly synchronised like we would see today with every individual’s move in precise time with everybody else’s. The classic Pan’s People line up would become celebrities in their own right with the likes of Babs, Cherry, Dee Dee etc becoming household names. I’m sure there’s a scene in an episode of Porridge where Fletch name checks Babs. Eventually the troupe would splinter and be replaced by Ruby Slipper, then Legs and Co and finally Zoo before the whole concept of a specific slot for dancers was ditched in 1983.

We have a new No 1 for the start of a new year and it’s knocked Mr. Blobby off the top spot for which it deserves our thanks. It also holds the distinction of being the 700th No 1 record since the charts started being compiled. For context, the 600th came in 1987 and was “China In Your Hand” by T’Pau. On a personal level though, I didn’t like the Chaka Demus And Pliers version of “Twist And Shout” at all and it seemed to me that it was only at No 1 as it took advantage of the traditional post Christmas sales slump to jump to the top of the charts. That said, it did manage to cling on to its crown the following week before succumbing to D:Ream. It was all down hill commercially for Chaka Demus And Pliers after this. They did manage three more UK Top 40 hits though none got any higher than No 19. Their final two single releases were also cover versions – Robert Palmer’s “Every Kinda People” and “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” by The Police. Good grief!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	D:Ream	Things Can Only Get Better	I did not
2	Dina Carroll	The Perfect Year	Nope
3	East 17	It’s Alright	I did! I did!
4	The Mission	Tower Of Strength	No but my friend Robin bought their Best Of
5	Tag Team	Whoomp! (There It Is)	Nah
6	Alison Limerick	Time Of Our Lives	No
7	Terrorvision	My House	It’s a no
8	DJ Duke	Blow Your Whistle	You can stick your whistle up your arse mate!
9	Wet Wet Wet	Cold, Cold Heart	Negative
10	Jackson 5 / Pan’s People	Mama’s Pearl	N/A
11	Chaka Demus And Pliers	Twist & Shout	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/m001h025/top-of-the-pops-06011994

TOTP 1994 – the prologue

Posted on January 11, 2023 by 80stastic

1994 had to be better than 1993 didn’t it? Well, I’m not promising better but it was certainly a year of change on many fronts. Politically, the groundwork for a huge, landscape altering transformation was laid. Arising out of tragic circumstances after Labour Party leader John Smith died suddenly in May, the country were introduced to Tony Blair who would become the new leader of the opposition in July. Three years later, he would glide into No 10 off the back of a landslide General Election win ending eighteen years of Tory rule. Also in May came another landscape altering event but this time in a very literal, physical sense when the Channel Tunnel officially opened.

Culturally, there was a seismic event on the 14th January when Channel 4 aired the episode of Brookside featuring that kiss. The intimate moment between characters Beth Jordache and Margaret Clemence was the first lesbian kiss ever shown on pre-watershed British television. Possibly generating less explosive headlines but undoubtedly causing a change to the fabric of UK society was the creation of the National Lottery whose first ever draw took place on Nov 19. How many people’s lives have been transformed (for better or worse) by a big lottery win in the subsequent twenty nine years?

In the world of sport, the nation had to endure a World Cup without England after the national team failed to qualify under the stewardship of the vilified Graham Taylor. On a personal level though, 1994 saw my beloved Chelsea reach their first FA Cup final since 1970 which I was very excited about. Sadly, it ended in tears at a rain-soaked Wembley as we lost 0-4 to Manchester United.

This is a music blog though so what was happening sonically this year. Well, as with everything else, the winds of change were blowing. A band from Manchester emerged who would dominate the charts and scene for the rest of the decade. Their debut single was released in April peaking at No 31. By the end of the year, they were the name on everyone’s lips and were unlucky not to bag themselves the Christmas No 1. Counteracting the Oasis effect (you knew who I was and talking about right?) came the year’s biggest selling single which was about as mainstream and safe as could be and brought back memories/nightmares of Bryan Adams from three years earlier when Wet Wet Wet went to No 1 for fifteen weeks with their cover of “Love Is All Around”.

Albums wise, the year’s two biggest sellers were both Best Ofs courtesy of two bands who couldn’t be more contrasting. Bon Jovi claimed the year’s best selling album title with their “Cross Road” collection but just behind them were The Beautiful South with their “Carry On Up The Charts” retrospective which would go five times platinum by the Summer of 1995 prompting the claim that one in seven British households owned a copy. 1994 saw the return of Pink Floyd whose “The Division Bell” went to No 1 and was the year’s fifth biggest seller. Elsewhere in the Top 10 there were huge albums by Mariah Carey and REM whilst the first official release by The Beatles since 1977 (“Live At The BBC”) proved irresistible for many a music fan. One of the biggest stories of the year though was the album lodged in at No 8. We all know about the sales and legacy of “Parklife” now but back in 1994, it certainly wouldn’t have been a given that Blur would pull this milestone album out of the bag.

As for TOTP, 1994 was a year of more huge change, just three years after the ‘year zero’ revamp. Despite an initial upturn in viewing figures, the new presenters bounce was short lived and just eight months later the numbers tuning in fell by a third where they would remain for the next year and a half. The experiment had failed and there was even talk of the show being put out to pasture on BBC2 before ultimately being cancelled. Radio 1 Breakfast Show producer Ric Blaxill was called in to replace Stanley Appel and by February, regular hosts Tony Dortie and Mark Franklin were gone, ushering in the return of Radio 1 DJs Simon Mayo, Mark Goodier, Nicky Campbell and (god help us!) Bruno Brookes. It wasn’t just a lazy attempt to recreate the golden days of the 80s though. Blaxill wanted to go further than that and, wishing to make TOTP must see TV again, created a ‘Golden Mic’ element to the show by having guest presenters in amongst the DJs. Pop stars, comedians and even completely out there names like Malcolm McLaren were lured into the spot and by the end of the year, twenty-two different celebrities had taken up the challenge of presenting the show. Some I am really looking forward to revisiting like Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer, Jarvis Cocker and Damon Albarn introducing Oasis. Blaxill didn’t always get it right though. I’m guessing we won’t be seeing the show where Gary Glitter presided.

In the September the TOTP2 brand was launched showing classic clips from the archives. It was initially anchored by Johnnie Walker before Steve Wright became synonymous with it in 1997. It ran on and off until 2017 and is still present in the BBC4 schedules for specials like Christmas and Halloween and the like.

As for me, 1994 was another year of upheaval. I started the year working in the Our Price store in Altrincham before being moved to the Market Street shop in Manchester where I’d started as a Christmas temp back in 1990. By the Summer I was shunted up the road to the Piccadilly branch where I spent most of my time in the staff kitchen with the security guard waiting for the police to turn up after he’d caught yet another shoplifter. I hated it there and after much protest, I was back at Market Street in time for Christmas. In the August though, a piece of legislation came into force that would change the world of retail forever, not just for those of us working in it but also the behaviour of shoppers themselves. Thanks a lot Sunday Trading Act 1994.

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/m0016dt6/top-of-the-pops-the-story-of-1994

TOTP 23 DEC 1993

Posted on December 17, 2022 by 80stastic

It’s nearly Christmas. Well, yes that’s hardly news I know but I’m talking about Christmas twenty-nine years ago as per the BBC4 TOTP repeats schedule which has arrived at the festive period in 1993. I was working in the Our Price store in Altrincham at the time and so if I watched this episode then I would have done so in the knowledge that the following day was perhaps the busiest of the whole retail year. Given my experience of Christmas Eve in the Rochdale store the previous year, I wouldn’t have been looking forward to it. You could say there was a distinct lack of festive cheer from the punters or to put it another way, they tore lumps out of us. Rude, aggressive and if we told them that we’d sold out of Gloria Estefan’s Greatest Hits on cassette (we had), they reacted as if we’d told their three year old child that Father Christmas didn’t exist. As such, I wasn’t looking forward much to the 24th December. I wonder which songs were in the charts that I might have been flogging to Christmas stressed customers?

We start with a song that would reach its chart peak the following year which is why I associate “Come Baby Come” by K7 with 1994 rather than 1993. The last time this was on TOTP in the Breakers section, I commented on how its lyrics were full of innuendo so I was expecting a very risqué studio performance full of explicit, sexually charged dance moves. However, whilst Mr K7 (real name Louis Sharpe) and his three backing singers/dancers are next level slick, I didn’t notice too many moves that would have had the TOTP producers panicking. Bizarrely though, at one point the main man pulls out one that appears to be replicating him washing his armpits in the shower with his microphone substituting for a bar of soap! He then follows it up with a Jarvis Cocker Michael Jackson baiting bum waft – not sure if that qualifies as explicit or just plain silly. “Come Baby Come” would peak at No 3 in the UK.

The Bee Gees are up to No 4 with “For Whom The Bell Tolls” giving them their highest chart placing since their No 1 “You Win Again” in 1987. The song’s title references the phrase originally written by metaphysical poet John Donne and the novel by Ernest Hemingway but there was another band that beat the Gibb brothers to using it to name a song by nearly a decade. I have to admit to not having a clue that this track even existed before now but exist it does and it comes from one of the biggest rock bands ever. Metallica (for it is they) recorded a track called “For Whom The Bell Tolls” for their second album “Ride The Lightning” in 1984. In the name of musical exploration, I listened to it earlier and guess what? It did absolutely nothing for me! Lots of crunching rock guitar and strangulated vocals does not make yours truly a happy boy. Apparently the song is a huge fan favourite but seeing as I’m not a Metallica fan, that influences me as much as Rishi Sunak telling me that he cares about the working class (ooh, bit of politics there as Ben Elton used to say).

Anyway, the rather surprising success of the Bee Gees song meant that the group now had a UK Top 5 single in four consecutive decades (the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s) – that’s approaching Cliff Richard levels of chart achievement. They would even bag themselves two more before the decade was out. Quite remarkable.

Now here’s a curious but rather charming Christmas tune. This seemed to come out of nowhere just as the big day approached but maybe it was released too late to make any real impression on the Top 40. Certainly its chart peak of No 37 seems to reflect that. Or maybe it was just too out of leftfield for the mainstream Christmas market with its non traditional shoppers for whom the festive season is the only time they would venture into a record shop all year looking for Cliff Richard or that nice Elton John and Kiki Dee song or even the Bee Gees. It was unlikely their shopping list included the record by Saint Etienne and the bloke from The Charlatans.

I’d forgotten that “I Was Born On Christmas Day” was actually just one song from a four track EP called (rather bluntly) “Xmas 93” but it was the only one to feature the now national treasure that is Tim Burgess. The other tracks included a Billy Fury cover and two instrumentals none of which I’ve ever heard as the lead song was presumably the only one played.

As Christmas tunes go, it’s an odd one but pretty groovy. Mostly devoid of the usual festive music baubles (sleigh bells, references to Santa Claus, snow, trees, presents etc), it instead has a driving house beat and an unusual melody. In fact, apart from its title which is sung on repeat in the coda, there’s very little to distinguish it’s a Christmas song. The lyrics seem to be about someone missing their absent partner throughout the course of the year awaiting their return at Christmas and thinking of everything that has happened in the world they left behind whilst away.

Tim Burgess and Sarah Cracknell have definite chemistry up there on stage, holding hands, draping a shared feather boa around each other’s shoulders…is there even a little kiss between them at one point? Well, the lyrics do refer to a Tim and Sarah tying the knot!

As host Mark Franklin says in his intro, 1993 had been a great year for Saint Etienne with a Top 10 album (“So Tough”) and their highest ever charting single (to that point) in “You’re In A Bad Way”. The Charlatans on the other hand failed to release any material but would return in 1994 with their own Top 10 album “Up To Our Hips” and the excellent single “Can’t Get Out Of Bed”. As for “I Was Born In Christmas Day”, you don’t hear it that often on the radio despite its obvious time slot each year. Incidentally, neither Tim nor Sarah were actually born on Christmas Day though Saint Etienne’s Bob Stanley was. Other rock/pop stars born on the 25th December include Annie Lennox, Dido and Shane MacGowan whilst Lemmy came into the world on Christmas Eve.

One of the nastiest things about 1993 (amongst many) was the breakthrough success of the revolting Shabba Ranks. After a rereleased “Mr Loverman” took him to No 3, there was a small procession of follow up singles in its wake of which “Family Affair” was the third. Pretty much a remake of the Sly And The Family Stone classic with some rapping and toasting over the top (including inevitably a few shouts of ‘Shabba!’), this was from the soundtrack to the Addams Family Values film. I’d quite enjoyed the silly but likeable “Addams Groove” by Hammer from the original 1991 The Addams Family film but this was just horrible. It featured Patra, Terri and Monica (I’ve no idea) and made No 18 in the charts but I’m glad to say I don’t remember it at all – I’ve never seen any of the Addams Family films either. Shabba Ranks would only have one more UK Top 40 hit after this. Good riddance to his homophobic ass!

Dina Carroll now with “The Perfect Year”, a single that perfectly encapsulates her annus mirabilis. One of the comments most made by people commenting on the Twitter hashtag #TOTP during the 1993 repeats has been “Whatever happened to Dina Carroll?” and it’s a fair question. After this single, we didn’t hear any new material from her for nearly three years. When it did arrive, it was successful but just not anywhere near as much as her earlier stuff. Debut album “So Close” went four times platinum. By comparison, the follow up “Only Human” sold a quarter of that; not insubstantial by any measure but a definite decline. Why did it take so long for that sophomore album to appear? Well, she suffered from burn out after that initial runaway success and took a break from touring and recording and when she returned she walked into a contract mess. The guy who signed her for A&M had left for Mercury Records but his new label weren’t keen on him taking Dina with him initially. By the time it was all resolved and Dina’s first single on Mercury appeared (“Escaping”), it was 1996!

Her new label seemed unsure what to do with her – was she a slick, soul balladeer or a club diva? Or both? She’d successfully straddled both camps with her eclectic debut album but somehow Mercury didn’t seem reassured by that. A third album was never released and a case of otosclerosis (hereditary bone disease of the ear) was clearly not helpful for a recording artist. As the millennium dawned, Dina just seemed to disappear. A Best Of album fulfilled her contractual obligations to Mercury in 2001 and her only release since then was 2016’s “We Bring The Party” with the Dig Band.

Meanwhile, back in 1993, Dina became the only British female artist to have two simultaneous Top 10 hits during the whole of the decade. In the week 12th to 18th December, “Don’t Be A Stranger” was at No 8 whilst “The Perfect Year” was at No 10. I think I’m right in saying A&M had deleted the former to make way for the latter so we had loads of the No 10 but hardly any of the No 8. Funny the things you remember isn’t it?

Even though this is officially the Christmas chart, there are still room for a couple of Breakers. One though is utterly dreadful and the other is last year’s Christmas No 1! Yes, despite being the best selling single in the UK of 1992, it’s back in the Top 40 twelve months on. I refer, of course, to Whitney Houston’s version of “I Will Always Love You”. Now remember that the charts were a different beast back then to the one that functions (sort of) these days. You couldn’t just get a song (any song) into the charts via a concerted social media campaign by coercing people into streaming it loads. It had to be officially released which means that “I Will Always Love You”, despite its ubiquity over the last twelve months, must have been rereleased. Why would that have happened? Well, it was all to do with the VHS of The Bodyguard coming out in November of this year.

This was such a big marketing event back then that it presumably made perfect sense to record label Arista to give the soundtrack and the most famous single from it another promotional push. As a result, “I Will Always Love You” managed a peak of No 25 the second time around. Of course, this wasn’t an entirely new phenomenon. In 1985, both “Last Christmas” by Wham! and “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” by Band Aid returned to the charts after being the festive No 2 and No 1 respectively the year before. Even so though, it did feel like overkill.

Now to that second and abhorrent Breaker. Probably long forgotten as the other novelty record in the chart of Christmas 1993, overshadowed by the spotted, pink dickhead at No 1 but the combination of Hulk Hogan and Green Jellÿ doing a cover of “I’m The Leader Of The Gang” is potentially even more heinous than the blobby one’s effort, given what we now know about Gary Glitter. Hulk Hogan had been a wrestling star throughout the 80s with his 1988 WWF match with Andre the Giant holding the record for the highest TV audience for wrestling ever. In 1993, Hogan broke away from WWF to sign for rival federation WCW which maybe is the reason for this single release? Bit of promotion for WCW? After all, the WWF Superstars had bagged themselves two UK hit singles in the past twelve months so…

Green Jellÿ had achieved the same chart feat with two hits of their own in 1993 with “Three Little Pigs” and “Anarchy In The UK” and it was they that Hogan was paired with to deliver this execrable record. I mean, it’s literally unlistenable. Who the hell bought enough copies to take it to No 25?

The penultimate tune before we get to the Christmas No 1 comes from EYC. This lot of chancers were put together to take the US by storm but did diddly squat over there. They did, however, gain moderate chart success both here and in Australia. Debut hit “Feelin’ Alright” reached No 16 but listening to it back now, it just sounds like a lot of horrible shouting. Maybe I’m just too middle aged to be able to engage with this sort of stuff now but I probably felt the same about it nearly thirty years ago.

They were the first act to win the Best Roadshow Act award at the Smash Hits Poll Winners Party but that sounds like an award that was designed purely for them to win – a bit like the award I got from my works 5-a-side team for Most Improved Player (a back handed compliment if there ever was one). They also picked up six UK Top 40 singles during their brief career so I fear we may not have seen the last of them by a long chalk.

“So this is Christmas and what have you done?” sang John Lennon and in 1993 this line rang truer than ever for it was indeed Christmas and what the British public had done was to make Mr Blobby the festive chart topper. How on earth could we have let this happen?! I’d foolishly believed that the “Mr Blobby” single had peaked too early after being No 1 two weeks ago but the deposed chart topper somehow rallied and regained the crown just in time to be announced as the Christmas No 1. How often did that sort of chart trajectory occur? Apparently “She Loves You” by The Beatles was No 1 for four weeks in 1963 before dropping down for a whole seven weeks and then miraculously returning to the top for a further two weeks. The Fab Four then knocked themselves off the pinnacle with “I Want To Hold Your Hand”. So not without precedent but that was The f*****g Beatles we’re talking about not some tit in a pink latex suit! Aaaarrrgh!!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	K7	Come Baby Come	I did not
2	Bee Gees	For Whom The Bell Tolls	Nah
3	Saint Etienne and Tim Burgess	I Was Born On Christmas Day	Probably should have but no
4	Shabba Ranks with Patra, Terri and Monica	Family Affair	Never happening
5	Dina Carroll	The Perfect Year	Nope
6	Whitney Houston	I Will Always Love You	Not the first nor second time
7	Hulk Hogan and Green Jellÿ	I’m The Leader Of The Gang	As if
8	EYC	Feeling’ Alright	No
9	Mr Blobby	Mr Blobby	Did I bollocks!

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/m001g4xh/top-of-the-pops-23121993

TOTP 16 DEC 1993

Posted on December 11, 2022 by 80stastic

To paraphrase Frankie Valli, here at TOTP Rewind it’s mid December back in ‘93 and very much like the temperatures in 2022, I recall it being very cold. I was working in the Our Price store in Altrincham and travelling there from Manchester every day by a bus and then a tram. As such, it was an early start and I have a distinct memory of standing next to the radiator in our little flat not wanting to go outside to start the commute. The radio was playing “Babe” by Take That which didn’t help my mood as it brought to mind the song’s video which had lots of snow themed scenes including Mark Owen wandering around in what appeared to be Russia looking for his former lover in a bit of a blizzard. Aside from the cold, the work days were long and busy as this was a time before streaming where you had to physically go out to a record shop and buy a CD or cassette if you wanted an album or single. We packed so many customers into that little shop on George Street that at times it felt like the floor would collapse*.

*That did happen once when I was working in the Rochdale Our Price. A floor tile just cracked one day to reveal a gaping hole underneath. Just one of the many mishaps that occurred during my retail years including a man walking through the window which he mistook for the door, the shop’s fuse box starting to smoke, alarm call outs in the middle of the night, blocked toilets, failed central heating systems etc etc.

Despite all of the above, I was loving my time in Altrincham to the extent that me and my wife even contemplated moving there and even looked around a flat or two. Fortunately, we never made that move as in the first couple of weeks after Christmas came the word from area management that I was being moved again. I wouldn’t get back to Altrincham for five years. Enough of my personal life though, which songs were those busy shoppers snapping up as the big day approached…

If your hear the names Chaka Demus and Pliers, what immediately comes to mind? Apart from the ridiculousness of that second name obviously. For me it’s 1993 and their hit “Tease Me” and yet that No 2 (in more ways than one) was eclipsed by this single, their version of “Twist And Shout”. Somehow though, it seems to have escaped my memory banks despite it going to No 1 one in early ‘94. Maybe it’s because there have been so many different releases of this perennial song. I’m guessing most of us know it from The Beatles take on it in 1963 but it was very first recorded before them by The Top Notes. The first time it was a hit was when The Isley Brothers took it into the charts in 1962. Brian Poole and The Tremeloes had the temerity to release a version just four months after The Beatles (though they claimed they were already playing it live in shows before anybody else) and had a hit with it. It’s also been attempted by The Searchers, The Kingsmen, Bruce Springsteen and then in 1988, it was given the hip-hop treatment by Salt-N-Pepa and became a No 4 single in the UK.

Fast forward five years and here it was again courtesy of Chaka Demus and Pliers (plus Jack Radics and Taxi Gang). Maybe they were inspired by Salt-N-Pepa – if it could be hip-hopped, then maybe the song could be also be reggae-fied? Or maybe they took inspiration from ragga duo Louchie Lou and Michie One who took another song originally done by The Isley Brothers but made famous by another artist (“Shout” by Lulu) and bagged a Top 10 hit earlier in 1993 . Whatever the reason, Chaka Demus and Pliers’ version of “Twist And Shout” didn’t work for me as I could never got on board with all that toasting. Also, wasn’t this more of a Summer tune than a Christmas one? I know host Tony Dortie goes on about what a big party tune it is which could crossover into festive celebrations I guess but clearly the TOTP producers saw it as a Summer song judging by the palm trees in the set they designed for the performance here.

You’d be hard pressed to find a more blatant example of record company cashing in than this. Not having had Meatloaf as their artist for a decade by this point didn’t matter at all to CBS when it came to exploiting the back catalogue of their previous charge. With “Bat Out Of Hell II: Back Into Hell” and its single “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)” tearing up the charts everywhere on the planet, of course CBS we’re going to rerelease probably his most famous song. So it came to pass the Meatloaf managed to be in possession of two UK Top 20 hits simultaneously in 1993 when “Bat Out Of Hell” got to No 8 beating its original 1979 peak by seven places. Who was buying it though? The parent album is one of the best selling in history so many, many people would surely already own the song so that leaves two options to my mind. One, Meatloaf completists or two, young music fans who’d only just discovered him via his latest success and either thought this was his latest/new single or wanted to explore his older stuff.

All of this just goes to show how perceptions can change in the wake of a huge success. Two years prior to this, “Bat Out Of Hell: Re-vamped” was released -basically a straight reissue but with “Dead Ringer For Love” added – and to promote it “Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad” was rereleased. It peaked at No 69.

You know that debate that rages about this time of year about whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie or not? Well, there’s surely a musical equivalent to that argument about whether “Stay Another Day” by East 17 is a Christmas song isn’t there? Why am I going on about a track that is twelve months away from being the festive No 1? I guess because looking at their performance here of “It’s Alright”, it’s clear that they weren’t averse to pushing a Christmas agenda if it suited which it did literally here as all four members are Santa suited-up. I actually beat East 17 to it by four years. In Christmas 1989, I was working in the toy department at Debenhams and used to stand in for the guy playing Father Christmas in the grotto on his breaks. That suit stank to high heaven. The store had a fire alarm go off whilst I was in it and we all had to evacuate the building. I got a few comments from the rest of the employees whilst stood outside waiting to be allowed back in.

Back to East 17 though and Tony Dortie says two things that peaked my interest in his links. Firstly that Brian Harvey was “flu affected”. We’ve been here before just the other week when Gabrielle appeared on the show in person to say she couldn’t perform her single as she had flu. Harvey goes one better by having flu but still managing to sing and jig about on stage. Flu my arse! Secondly, Dortie announces that he’s off on tour with East 17 shortly. On tour? Doing what exactly? They already had two guys in the band who appeared to do not very much at all. Surely they didn’t need a third?! Was Dortie just going to introduce them on stage each night? Was that all? Nice work if you can get it. It’s alright indeed.

In Christmas 1993, Diana Ross had a Best Of album out called “One Woman: The Ultimate Collection” which was a huge seller over the festive season going four times platinum and selling 1.2 million copies in the UK. We sold loads of it in that Altrincham Our Price where I was working but we had to go against company policy to do so. The CD was officially priced at something like £11.99 but all the other outlets in Altrincham (Boots, Woolies etc) were selling it for £9.99. Myself and the manager Cathy came to the conclusion that we wouldn’t sell any at £11.99 and so price matched. We didn’t ask permission or tell any other stores, we just did it and it worked – we sold loads and maintained a decent market share on the album. However, when the Area Manager turned up unexpectedly for a store visit we nearly shat ourselves thinking he would notice. He had this thing he did at Christmas where he would help out serving customers and so we were sure we would get busted as somebody in the queue would have the Diana Ross CD. Myself and Cathy joined in serving trying to spot anyone in the queue who would give the game away and head them off at the pass by jumping in and getting to them first. Somehow we got away with it. Phew!

Diana did an extensive tour to help promote the album an Our Price colleague went to see her on one of her dates. When I asked him how it had been the next day, he’d convinced himself that he was Ms Ross’s long lost, illegitimate child so consumed by the experience was he. I’m assuming she performed the single “Your Love” which was a new track added to the album to help promote it but it was hardly up there with some of her classic recordings for me. It peaked at No 14.

WTF?! Eight Breakers?! EIGHT?! You have to be kidding me?! That must be a record! Five is pretty much maximum capacity usually. Presumably the TOTP producers have done this because the chart at Christmas are usually clogged up with new records strategically released to cash in on the extra sales at this time of year. Even so. Eight Breakers means a whopping grand total of fourteen songs on this show! Tossers! Don’t they realise how much work this is for me?

We start with another boy band, this time of the American variety who time would surely have forgotten if not for a gimmick surrounding their name. EYC (it stood for Express Yourself Clearly) had this annoying habit of signing off from any promotional appearances by saying “E Y See ya”. Ugh! Somehow this trio of ex-New Kids On The Block backing dancers (no, that’s literally what they were) somehow managed to bag themselves six UK Top 40 hits the first of which was “Feelin’ Alright”. It had a sub House Of Pain vibe to it tailored for the teen market but it was pretty lame all the same.

My main memory of this lot came the following year. I was now working in the Our Price in Market Street, Manchester where I first started three years previously. I was on the counter with the manager and he served a young girl with one of their singles. As he went behind the shelving to get it (the stock wasn’t in the racks live at this point) he said to me in a really loud voice which the customer must have heard, “This is crap isn’t it?”. How I cringed.

Next up a tune so intensely and annoyingly catchy it’s still in my head nearly thirty years on. I would have said that “Come Baby Come” by K7 was from 1994 not 1993. I’m kind of right. It reached its peak of No 3 in the January of ‘94 but was actually released in December ‘93. K7 was essentially US all rounder Louis Sharpe. A rapper, songwriter, record producer, he also went by the name of Kayel. He’s only really known over here though for this single. Employing that call and answer style of rap (is it meant to be him and his homies who he’s hangin’ with?), it kind of reminds me of that drill instructor song from the late 80s. What was it called again?

*googles ‘drill instructor song’

That’s it! “Full Metal Jacket (I Wanna Be Your Drill Instructor)” by Abigail Mead and Nigel Goulding…

Anyway, it also had that drive-you- insane shouty chorus that once heard is never forgotten*. Maybe it was just meant to distract you from those innuendo loaded lyrics which were actually pretty filthy. I guess the clue was in the song title but check these out:

Better move it fast so you can pump it (pump it)
Two balls and a bat (hoo), a pitcher with a hat (ha)
Slidin’ into home base, tryin’ to hit a home run
Swing batta batta batta batta batta swing
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Louis Sharpe / Joey Gardner
Come Baby Come lyrics © Universal Music – Z Songs, Warner-tamerlane Publishing Corp., Blue Ink Music, Third And Lex Music

You don’t have to be Finbarr Saunders to work out what’s going on here! I’m sure we’ll be seeing and hearing more of K7 in future TOTP repeats. For those of a delicate nature, you have been warned!

*Such an ear worm is it that thirty years later, when I want my dog called Benji to come to me, I often say “Come Benji come, Benji, Benji come come”.

Ah now, talking of delicate…how to approach this one? OK well, the facts around the record are that “Gone Too Soon” was the ninth and final single taken from Michael Jackson’s “Dangerous” album (the first – “Black And White” – had been released an incredible 25 months earlier). As the ninth single from an album that had been out for two years, even Jackson couldn’t eke out a big hit from it and it stalled at No 33. This was his lowest UK chart placing since a rerelease of “Girl Your So Together” in 1984.

Jackson recorded the track as a tribute to Ryan White, a US teenager who was haemophiliac and became infected with the HIV virus from a contaminated blood treatment. This was the dark ages of 1984 and Ryan was subsequently barred by his school from attending due to concerns from other parents that he would spread the virus. Given just six months to live, Ryan lived on for another five years in which time he became a high profile figure for HIV/AIDS research and public education attracting the attention of Jackson.

Unfortunately for the singer (and this is where the delicate bit comes in) the release of the song coincided with allegations of child sexual abuse against him made by the then thirteen years old Jordan Chandler. I’m guessing the single’s cover with a picture of Jackson walking around his Neverland ranch with Ryan maybe didn’t do the King of Pop any favours in the eyes of anyone who wanted to believe the allegations. The case was eventually settled out of court with the plaintiff reportedly receiving $23 million. Speculation about Jackson’s private life (already a media frenzy) had gone onto another, darker level. The scrutiny and effects of the accusations would never leave him and indeed resurfaced in 2003 with a second set of allegations. Jackson was acquitted on all counts in 2005. Four years later, he would be dead himself from cardiac arrest. At the memorial service, Usher performed “Gone Too Soon” and the circle was complete.

After being on the show last time, Cliff Richard is into the charts but it’s more with a loud fart than a bang at a lowly No 27 with “Healing Love”. The single would struggle on gamely to a high of No 19 but it was a far cry from the massive Christmas hits of “Mistletoe And Wine” and “Saviour’s Day”.

I can’t even find the official promo video for the single online so unloved is the song but from the few seconds we see here there seems to be a lot of billowing drapes behind Cliff as he sings. Haven’t seen as much material being wafted about since Spandau Ballet and “Only When You Leave” in 1984.

Next up a duet featuring a man who, despite being around since the time of disco, is only known in the UK for three songs, all of them collaborations with a female singer. Peabo Bryson first had a – no wait! You’re right. Let’s address that name of his before anything else. Peabo…you don’t get many of them to the pound do you? I’ve never heard anyone calling out “Peabo, come here now!” or “Have you seen our Peabo?”. However, I do know someone who once heard these immortal words come out of the mouth of a tired and frustrated mother:

“Oi! Cleopatra! Pack it in or I’ll twat ya!”
Hessle Road, Hull sometime around 2010

Only in Hull. Anyway, Peabo isn’t his real name. No, of course it isn’t! Sadly his real name is worse if anything – Robert Peapo Bryson. Peapo! That’s what you say when playing with a baby! As I was saying though, he first had a hit in the UK in 1983 with “Tonight, I Celebrate My Love For You”, an horrendously schmaltzy ballad that went all the way to No 2. There then followed an eight year gap until he returned with the title song from the Disney animation Beauty And The Beast alongside Celine Dion which bagged them a Top 10 hit. Clearly onto a good thing, he returned in 1993 with another Disney film song. This time it was “A Whole New World” which was from Aladdin and was, of course, another duet. The lucky lady this time was US singer songwriter Regina Belle who had been releasing records since 1987 without much commercial success. That was rectified and then some by “A Whole New World”. Not only was it an American No 1, it also is noteworthy for being the record that finally knocked Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” off the top spot after fourteen weeks over there. The reception to the record was a bit more lukewarm in the UK where it peaked at No 12.

It’s been covered a few times including by ex- One Direction member Zayn Malik (alongside Zhavia Ward) but the one that really stands out is the version by the god awful Peter Andre and his then wife Katie Price who included it on their album of covers also called “A Whole New World”. The track listing includes their takes on “Islands In The Stream” and the aforementioned “Tonight, I Celebrate My Love For You”. Hell’s teeth! That’s a whole new world of pain more like!

Next another of those rappers that the white middle class kids of Altrincham, Cheshire would fawn over. Ice T had a reputation for controversy that far outweighed any commercial success he achieved, certainly in this country. By 1993, he’d already released five albums but had never had a UK Top 40 hit…until “That’s How I’m Livin’”. We kind of knew already how he was living (that’s with a ‘g’ rather than as a ‘G’) and that was tendentiously. He’d provoked the ire of the POTUS George Bush no less with the release of “Cop Killer” by Body Count a track he wrote and a band he was a member of. He is also recognised as one of the defining influences of gangster rap and had well publicised disputes with fellow rappers like LL Cool J. However, Ice T was also savvy enough to diversify and forged an acting career for himself, starring in dozens of films and TV shows like New Jack City and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. “That’s How I’m Livin’” was taken from his album “Home Invasion” and peaked at No 21.

We didn’t know it at the time but the “Spooky” single would be the last material released by New Order (barring Best Ofs and rereleased singles) for eight years. For five of those years, the band didn’t see each other at all whilst the concentrated on personal projects. Yet again I have zero recall of this track. New Order singles of 1993? “Regret” of course. “Ruined In A Day”? Yeah. “World (The Price Of Love)”? Just about. This one though? I’ve got nothing, zero, nada. Like I’ve never heard it before. Why put out a fourth single from an album that been out for months during the Christmas rush? Consequently, “Spooky” only made No 22 which is actually higher than I would have expected. Maybe they just wanted to set a personal band record. This was the first time that New Order ever achieved four hits from the same album.

Tellingly, Tony Dortie says he doesn’t think the band have ever made a bad video. A bad video? Is that what they’d become reduced to by this point? What about the music? There were worst times ahead though with Peter Hook leaving under very acrimonious circumstances. Oh dear.

The final Breaker is a song that had already almost been the Christmas No 1 once and was rush released in 1993 to try again. Back in 1984, the whole of the UK record buying public seemed to be enthralled by Frankie Goes To Hollywood. Two No 1 singles clocking up fifteen weeks at the top between them meant that when it came to the runners and riders for the festive chart topper, they were the bookies favourite. They had an epic, bowl-you-over ballad that was perfect for Christmas. They even had a nativity themed promo video. “The Power Of Love” duly went to No 1 on its first week of release. What hadn’t been figured into the odds was Bob Geldof and Band Aid which, when the list of high profile pop star contributors to the record became known, was always going to be the Christmas chart topper. Frankie were dethroned after just one week. Could the 1993 rerelease do what the 1984 original couldn’t and be No 1 for Yuletide? For Bob Geldof read Mr Blobby. They never stood a chance though “The Power Of Love” remains a firm favourite on Christmas playlists to this day. Mr Blobby on the other hand…

One of the success stories of 1993 now (and it pains me to say it) as we catch up with Haddaway in Disney World, Florida. Didn’t we see PM Dawn and Boy George there this year as well? Did TOTP have some sort of arrangement with Disney? Anyway, after No 2 and No 6 hits in the UK charts, the big question for Haddaway wasn’t “What Is Love?” but “how do I get a third hit? Well, one of the biggest lessons we’ve learned from these hundreds of TOTP repeats is that if you’re a new act with a shiny, uptempo pop song, you can replicate that formula for the follow up but you need something different for the third release and what is more different than a ballad? Haddaway clearly knew the rules and his third release was indeed a slow, romantic number called “I Miss You”. Sadly though, it’s not only slow but completely laboured and ponderous. It literally never gets out of first gear. Just dreadful. The lyrics sound like they came out of a one minute brainstorming session about the most obvious themes of love and regret.

I miss you, oh I miss you
I’m gonna need you more and more each day
I miss you, more than words can say
More than words can ever say
Copyright © 2000-2022 AZLyrics.com

Dreadful stuff. Somehow though, this nonsense got to No 9 to give Haddaway his third consecutive Top 10 hit. 1993 really had a lot to answer for.

Take That have gone straight into the charts at No 1 for the third consecutive time with “Babe”. No other act had done this at the time. Not the aforementioned Frankie, not The Jam (they managed two) not anyone. It really was quite the rise when you consider that eighteen months earlier, their biggest hit to date had been the No 38 single “Promises”. By Christmas 1993, they were the undisputed heroes for a generation of teenage girls. Of course, it’s not like we hadn’t seen bands being screamed at before. Bay City Rollers, Duran Duran, Bros…and yet none of them attained this particular chart achievement.

Tony Dortie joins the band on stage at the song’s end for a cosy chat about how well they’re doing and so high on success are they that they take the piss out of dethroned No 1 Mr Blobby by doing some Blobby impressions (led by Robbie Williams naturally). The pink and yellow dotted buffoon would have his revenge a week later when, rather improbably, he returned to the top of the charts to bag the Christmas No 1. I remember thinking that this was nuts and how had it happened? I was no Take That fan obviously but at least “Babe” was a proper song. Somebody who was a fan was my younger sister and years later she went to see a Robbie Williams tribute act where, in an unlikely turn of events, the worlds of Mr Blobby and Take That collided once more. The impersonator was a rather rotund figure and so his stage name was Blobby Williams and he was part of Take Fat. Marvellous.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Chaka Demus and Pliers	Twist And Shout	Nope
2	Meatloaf	Bat Out Of Hell	No
3	East 17	It’s Alright	Yes, yes I did
4	Diana Ross	Your Love	Never happening
5	EYC	Feelin’ Alright	As if
6	K7	Come Baby Come	I did not
7	Michael Jackson	Gone Too Soon	Nah
8	Cliff Richard	Healing Love	Of course not
9	Peabo Bryson and Regina Belle	A Whole New World	Noi chance
10	Ice T	That’s How I’m Livin	Not my bag
11	New Order	Spooky	Negative
12	Frankie Goes To Hollywood	The Power Of Love	Not in 1984 nor 1993
13	Haddaway	I Miss You	Awful – no
14	Take That	Babe	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/m001fy5t/top-of-the-pops-16121993

TOTP 09 DEC 1993

Posted on December 7, 2022 by 80stastic

In the last post I made a claim that the No 1 was a bit of an anticlimax on the grounds that it followed the biggest boy band around who performed in the studio against a backdrop of 3D images (ooh!). By comparison, the No 1 was in its seventh week at the top and we were surely all getting a bit fed up of its video. It doesn’t seem right though does it? TOTP was always a chart based show highlighting which songs were the most popular in a chronological way via the chart countdown. Despite the use of such a linear tool, the implication is that the excitement heightens as we get to the nation’s favourite song. But what if said record doesn’t deserve such a reception? I realise this leaves me open to accusations of musical snobbery but if the No 1 is so heinous, what’s the plan? The question is especially relevant to this particular TOTP as, like a Tory minister doubling down on a failed economic policy, the ending of this show has two terrible songs.

Having said all of the above, the start of the show is pretty ropey as well. Bad Boys Inc were one of the many awful boy bands that appeared in the wake of Take That during the 90s. The whole thing reeked of cynicism with no more of a bigger example than this slushy ballad aimed at the Christmas market. After, two uptempo pop singles had made them bona fide chart stars (albeit in quite a minor way), they took that well worn path of releasing a slowie as their third single to, you know, showcase their diversity. The fact that it was shoved out into the marketplace as Christmas approached was surely just coincidence no? “Walking On Air” (note the similarity of title to established festive tune “Walking In The Air” from The Snowman) was ghastly whilst the performance here (I can’t find it in YouTube as nobody seems interested in recording it for posterity) is just as dire. The lead singer out front forever putting his hand to his heart to show his sincerity backed by three twirling, sliding goons all performing on a bed of dry ice. What a shower!

Disregarding the Bee Gees, I haven’t heard such high pitched vocals since Modern Romance did their ballad “Walking In The Rain” a decade earlier. What is it with ballads and the word ‘walking’? “Walking In Air”, “Walking In The Rain”, “Walking In Memphis” and of course who could forget George Michael’s ‘guilty feet’ in “Careless Whisper”. The record buying public showed their lack of affection for Bad Boys Inc with their own feet by walking past their local record shop and therefore not buying their single. It peaked at No 24.

Now here’s a very old track (even in 1993) which was suddenly and maybe surprisingly a very big hit. Sudden because it’s gone straight into the chart at No 5 and surprising because when it was first released in 1981 it did nothing at all sales wise. There is a reason for its explosion of popularity though and as usual it’s to do with record company promotional activities. “Controversy” was the title track from Prince’s fourth studio album and by 1993 he’d added another ten to that number so why was it plucked for single release at this point in his career? To advertise a Best Of album of course. “The Hits 1”, “The Hits 2” and “The Hits / The B sides” was a triple headed beast of a release documenting The Purple One’s best/most well known/biggest (delete as applicable) songs so far. Previous single “Peach” was released in the October to promote the set but that was a brand new composition I think. To give the Best Ofs an extra push for Christmas, another single was required and “Controversy” was selected for the job. Did I know this track? Don’t think I did. I only cottoned onto Prince from about 1983 when conversely “1999” was in the charts the first time around. Did I like it? Not that much. Was I surprised that it was such a big hit? Yes I was. As with “Peach” though, the two CD singles contained hits that weren’t included on the Hits albums plus there was a William Orbit remix of “The Future” so maybe that was it?

We’re back to this trend of the TOTP hosts telling us that an artist should have been on the show but can’t be because they’re ill/indisposed etc. I asked the other week why they bothered with this practice as they could have just shown the video without saying anything and we wouldn’t have known any better. This week, they’ve doubled down like…ah I’ve been here before haven’t I? They have made a complete spectacle of this issue though with Gabrielle. According to presenter Mark Franklin she can’t perform in the studio tonight and the reason is…Well, let’s ask Gabrielle herself because she’s in the actual studio! What?! Mark asks her if she’s OK and Gabrielle days “Not at the moment because I’ve got flu”. Got flu?! Got flu?! Why aren’t you in bed Gabrielle?! This is madness! Look, when I’ve had flu I’ve had to crawl to the bathroom if I needed the loo on my hands and knees. The idea that I could have got myself into a TV studio and been interviewed in front of a TV audience of millions is just unconscionable. I don’t wish to doubt her but really?!

Anyway, enough of the health issues, what about the music? Well, I’m guessing that Gabrielle’s record label were ever so slightly uncomfortable at this point. After the euphoria of a No 1 single with her debut single “Dreams”, might they have been expecting a bigger follow up hit than the No 9 that the unfortunately entitled “Going Nowhere” supplied? If so, then a lot must have been riding on “I Wish”. Sadly, it wasn’t really up to the task being a fairly average piece of soul/pop and it peaked at No 26. Maybe it just got lost in the Christmas rush. Gabrielle would recover to bag a further eight Top 10 hits including No 1 “Rise” in 2000. Seems like Gabrielle’s wish came true.

The Bee Gees are up to No 6 in an unexpected tilt at the Christmas No 1 spot with “For Whom The Bell Tolls”. To mark the event we get a live by satellite performance from New York. As with the vast majority of these satellite specials, it’s a total let down. Maybe I’m viewing them through 2022 eyes and in 1993 it may have been a major event but I can’t help but think it’s totally lame. A completely uneventful run through of the song performed underneath Brooklyn Bridge is interlaced with some totally non related shots of ice skating at the Rockefeller Center. And that’s it. Yes, it’s a cinematic backdrop I guess with the Statue of Liberty visible in the background and a helicopter comes into view at one point but I was more fascinated by who the fourth Bee Gee was up there with Barry, Maurice and Robin.

There’s an easy line to be written here about the next artist and the title of her latest single but I’m not that obvious. All I’ll say is that 1993 is surely a year that Dina Carroll would never forget. Five hit singles and an album that was the highest selling debut by a British female artist in UK chart history at the time? It was the stuff of dreams. The last of those five hits was “The Perfect Year” which was from the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Sunset Boulevard. It seemed a bit of an anomaly to me at the time. Firstly, it wasn’t on the aforementioned album (“So Close”) which confused and upset a few punters in the Our Price store I was working in and wouldn’t appear on an album until Dina’s sophomore effort “Only Human” appeared a whole three years later.

Secondly, the schedule for its release had clearly been set to cash in on the Christmas holidays market with the lyrics even referencing New Year’s Eve but it was hampered by the extended success of previous single “Don’t Be A Stranger”. So well received had it been that it was still in the Top 10 and outsold “The Perfect Year” on the latter’s first week of release. Clearly, record label A&M would not have wanted her previous hit to be splitting sales of her new one but because of the latter’s Christmas theme, they couldn’t keep it back any later. Dina having two simultaneous hits added to the customer confusion in store:

Customer: Do you have the Dina Carroll single?

Me: Which one? There’s two

Customer: The one that’s in the charts

Me: They both are

Customer: The one that’s a big ballad

Me: They both are

Customer: Well, I’ll get her album then I’m covered

Me: Her album doesn’t have both singles on it

Customer: Are you having a laugh?

Me: Not really, no

Dina’s performance here is very professional but then she’d had plenty of practice at being on TOTP that year. It felt like she was on the show every other week. Her black and white outfit is very effective against the Wintery backdrop though those impractical, oversized sleeves must have been a nightmare at the dinner table. Also, why did they feel the need to insert some clips (presumably) from the video while Dina was singing? They looked so incongruous. Children running across a field and then staring at the camera motionless – why? Then there’s the old fella. The expression he had on his face reminded me of something and it’s this. My sadly departed mother-in-law used to work as a receptionist in a doctor’s surgery and would sometimes bring home freebies from the pharmaceutical companies like mugs. She had one that was just an old man grinning on it. The first time I saw it I couldn’t understand why anyone would have that image on a mug and then I turned it around and saw the drug it was advertising – it was a brand of laxative. Aaah…

“The Perfect Year” had to settle for a chart peak of No 5, two places lower than “Don’t Be A Stranger”.

Four Breakers now starting with UB40 whose single “Bring Me Your Cup” I don’t recall at all. It was the third track lifted from their “Promises And Lies” album and listening to it now, it’s actually a lot better than I was expecting. It starts out very understated but forms an unexpected ear worm very quickly with its lilting rhythm allied to Ali Campbell’s soothing vocals. Should probably have been a bigger hit than No 24 but then the album had been out for over four months by then so maybe it was to be expected. Not a bad effort though.

In amongst the endless diet of Eurodance bollocks that 1993 served up there were the occasional morsels of unexpected taste. Songs that would appear for no apparent reason and then the artist would pretty much disappear again. Off the top of my head I’m thinking Spin Doctors, The Frank and Walters and this lot – Blind Melon. These US psychedelic rockers reminded me of fellow countrymen Jellyfish who similarly are known in this country for one hit and not much else despite there being so much more to them. Blind Melon’s contribution to the story of 1993 was “No Rain”, a hippy, trippy, winsome tune with some Beatles influences thrown in for good measure. It sounded like an antidote to some of the god awfulness populating the charts and yet again a complete outlier.

Helping to promote the song was the video featuring the ‘bee girl’, a tap dancer in a bee costume and large glasses who gets laughed off stage and then spends the rest of the film trying to dance for anyone who will let her. She eventually finds an unlikely outlet for her routine – a field of similarly dressed people all dancing together. The girl playing the character would become a bit of a star, hobnobbing with the likes of Madonna at the MTV awards before having a career as an actress appearing in two episodes of US medical drama ER. Blind Melon themselves would have two further very minor UK chart hits before disbanding in 1999. They have reformed a couple of times since despite the drugs overdose death of vocalist Shannon Hoon.

Name a Pet Shop Boys single released in 1993? “Go West” right? Has to be. No? “Can You Forgive Her” then? Still not the one you’re thinking of? “I Wouldn’t Normally Do This Kind Of Thing” – well, no I don’t habitually spend hours trying to remember the titles of Pet Shop Boys singles but…oh, of course! That was the third track released from their “Very” album and in many ways is the quintessential PSB song. Eccentric title? Check! Swirly synth back beat? Check! Gloriously catchy, camp melody? Check! Typically deadpan vocals from Neil Tennant? Check! This was what they did best. Sadly, I think it got caught up in the Christmas rush and didn’t even make the Top 10, peaking at No 13.

The kaleidoscopic video features Chris and Neil in daft wigs that make the former look like Mike Flowers of Mike Flowers Pops (two years before anybody knew who he was) and the latter like Louis Balfour, host of The Fast Show’s Jazz Club. Nice!

The final Breaker comes from “the most successful rap group of 1993” according to host Mark Franklin. Were Cypress Hill that big?

*checks their bio*

Seems they were. The band have sold 20 million albums worldwide and in 1993 their second album “Black Sunday” went straight into the US charts at No 1 selling 261,000 copies in its first week. Their eponymous debut album was also still on the charts at the same time and they became the first hip hop artist to have two albums in the Top 10 simultaneously.

From “Black Sunday” came this third single “I Ain’t Goin’ Out Like That”. I’d liked the House Of Pain sounding “Insane In The Brain” (who couldn’t?) but by this one I’d probably lost interest. Maybe I had a beef with them as the album was one of those that always needed a temporary inlay card to display it otherwise the real CD cover would get nicked especially as the booklet contained 19 facts about the history of hemp and the positive attributes of cannabis. The middle class, white kids in Altrincham where I was working loved all of that stuff and especially those T-shirts and posters with the image of an alien on them with a massive reefer blazing up bearing the legend ‘Take me to your dealer’. Laughed their arses off at that every time.

“I Ain’t Goin’ Out Like That” peaked at No 15.

We have arrived at the first of those two terrible songs that end the show. By 1993, Cliff Richard was absolutely synonymous with Christmas. Not only had he claimed the festive No 1 twice since 1988 (thrice if you count his contribution to Band Aid II) but he seemed to have a tilt at it every year. “We Should Be Together” was his offering in 1991 peaking at No 10 and “I Still Believe In You” was strategically released in late November the following year to try and capture those Christmas sales making it to No 7. Come 1993 and Cliff was chancing his arm once more with “Healing Love”. Not a specifically Christmas themed song for once, it was actually the last of five singles released from his “The Album”…erm…album. It was co-written by Nik Kershaw who knows his way around a decent pop tune but this definitely wasn’t one of them. It’s not just that it’s a sluggish, turgid, completely unexceptional tune but the lyrics are dreadful. Really hackneyed stuff about losing the battle but winning the war and how about this for a line a seven year old could have written…

“Now I can see that you’re feeling sad…”

Come on! For this performance, Cliff has turned up in a jacket and tie and looks like he’s got his schedule wrong and was expecting to be on Wogan and not TOTP. As ever, he’s brought with him that guy from the aforementioned Modern Romance as one of his backing singers who’s been with him since “Mistletoe And Wine”.

“Healing Love” never hit a sniff at topping the charts peaking at No 19 but Cliff never really gave up on his quest for another Christmas No 1. The following year, he teamed up with his old pal Phil Everly for a double A-side of “All I Have To Do Is Dream” and a remix of his old hit “Miss You Nights” but it topped out at No 14. He couldn’t have come any closer in 1999 with the divisive “The Millennium Prayer” which actually went to No 1 and was still top of the pile with just one week to go before being toppled by Westlife. Undeterred, he went again in 2003 (“Santa’s List” – No 5) and 2006 (“21st Century Christmas” – No 2) and this year he has released a Christmas album. Cliff was 82 in October. You have to admire his longevity if not his music.

Just…just…f*****g WHY?! What were people thinking?! Oh, yeah. Of course. There was no thinking happening at all. A complete lack of brain activity. How else can you explain this total failure of any sense of taste on such a widespread scale? This monumental aberration. Nothing about “Mr Blobby” by Mr Blobby deserved anything but our complete contempt. So why was it f*****g No 1? Were 5 year olds (or their parents) buying it? When The Teletubbies became a phenomenon a few years later with the pre school population and released a record, I could just about understand parents doing just that but Mr Blobby wasn’t quite the same type of character. His beginnings weren’t on children’s TV but an early evening light entertainment show presumably not being watched by toddlers so who was his single appealing to? It certainly wasn’t funny and neither was its accompanying video which featured a number of celebrity cameos. Obviously, Edmonds was there being responsible for the whole debacle but there’s also a very young looking Jeremy Clarkson as Mr Blobby’s limo driver, Carole Vorderman, Wayne Sleep and bizarrely ex-footballer and pundit Garth Crooks. Mr Blobby is seen in various scenes where he inevitably falls over destroying everything in his path which includes parodies of four well known recent pop promos – “Addicted To Love” by Robert Palmer, “Rhythm Is A Dancer” by Snap!, “I Can’t Dance” by Genesis and “Stay” by Shakespear’s Sister. The last one particularly grinds my gears for the pure reason that it uses actual footage of the original in the parody – why? We all knew which video it was lampooning when the camera switched to the lookalike Marcella Detroit so why try and install some credibility by using images of the real one? I don’t know why this especially offends me but it does. Anyway, this madness will all be over soon as Take That will be top of the charts next week and surely also the Christmas No 1 won’t it? Won’t it?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Bad Boys Inc	Walking On Air	Of course not
2	Prince	Controversy	No
3	Gabrielle	I Wish	Nope
4	Bee Gees	For Whom The Bell Tolls	I did not
5	Dina Carroll	The Perfect Year	Nah
6	UB40	Bring Me Your Cup	Negative
7	Blind Melon	No Rain	No but maybe should have
8	Pet Shop Boys	I Wouldn’t Normally Do This Kind Of Thing	No but I assume it’s on their Pop Art Best Of which I have
9	Cypress Hill	I Ain’t Goin’ Out Like That	It’s another no
10	Cliff Richard	Healing Love	Never happening
11	Mr Blobby	Mr Blobby	What do you think?

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/m001frnn/top-of-the-pops-09121993

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

Author: 80stastic

TOTP 10 FEB 1994

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TOTP 03 FEB 1994

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TOTP 27 JAN 1994

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TOTP 20 JAN 1994

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TOTP 13 JAN 1994

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TOTP 06 JAN 1994

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TOTP 1994 – the prologue

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TOTP 23 DEC 1993

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TOTP 16 DEC 1993

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TOTP 09 DEC 1993

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