80stastic

TOTP 06 DEC 1990

Posted on April 23, 2021 by 80stastic

We’ve finally hit December 1990 here at TOTP Rewind and that can only mean one thing, the Xmas rush is on and I don’t just mean that scramble to find presents for family and friends – there is also the race for the Xmas No 1 to consider. This was definitely still a thing back then before it was hijacked and devalued by X Factor winners and latterly some bloke going on about sausage rolls every Yuletide. As such, the Top 40 is awash with new songs frantically looking for those all important sales that could make them a festive chart topper. As host Mark Goodier says at the top of the show “Tonight we may well see the song which is the Xmas No 1 so stay tuned”. Eyes down then (or should that be prick up your ears) as we find out who’s in the running…

…well surely not this lot?! Twenty 4 Seven featuring Captain Hollywood had been Top 10 in our charts with their single “I Can’t Stand It” just a couple of months prior to this but their chances of being the Xmas No 1 with a song that was just some more Eurodance pap were slim to non existent. The performance of their single “Are You Dreaming” here is….excruciating frankly.

The three lads in the group bounce on stage and start jive talking about dreams of cars, money and girls until one of them adopts the moral high ground when he interjects with “Yo wait a minute man, you better think about the world”. WTF?! What’s that supposed to mean? The world is a pretty big subject really don’t you think? Care to narrow it down a bit? Are we talking the environment here? Or politics? World peace maybe? What?! The whole thing reminds me of this image on Twitter that went viral a few years ago…

The rest of the song seems to be a jumble of influences and steals. The ‘oaah oh oh oh’ chant in the chorus is very similar to “Montego Bay” by Bobby Bloom (and later covered by Amazulu) whilst the lyrics seem to have stolen from Kajagoogoo (‘Eye to eye from you to me …eye to eye from me to you”) and there is a zeitgeist moment when an obligatory Vanilla Ice theme emerges (“(yeah) dreams can be very nice (yeah) Sometimes hot sometimes ice cold (yeah)”). Just pants. Get off!

“Are You Dreaming” peaked at No 17 – miles away from the Xmas No 1 title.

Now this next song had a better chance of…ahem…pulling off a Xmas No 1 as it were (Fnarr! Fnarr!) although it would have been a controversial one. In its favour, it was by a genuine pop music heavyweight, a superstar of the genre in Madonna. Against its chances were its sexually provocative sound and lyrics. “Justify My Love” was one of two new songs released from Madge’s first ever Greatest Hits album “The Immaculate Collection” (the other was “Rescue Me” which I mentioned in the post for the previous week’s TOTP). Written with Lenny Kravitz and Ingrid Chavez, the lyrics didn’t hold back and Madonna’s almost total delivery of them as a spoken word whisper created an almost threatening vibe to the song:

I want to run naked in a rainstorm
Make love in a train cross-country
You put this in me
So now what, so now what?

I don’t want to be your mother
I don’t want to be your sister either
I just want to be your lover
I want to be your baby
Kiss me, that’s right, kiss me

OK, OK steady on. We haven’t even got to the video yet! Ah yes, that video. Clearly the promo film that TOTP uses was not the official video for the single which was deemed far to explicit for pre-watershed broadcast so instead we got a compilation of scenes from her previous hits. To be fair, there did seem to be some attempt to co-ordinate the scenes chosen with the music (Madonna cavorting about in the waves from “Cherish” for example) but it was nothing compared to the banned video. Shot entirely in black and white, it had a European, art house feel to it and included imagery of sadomasochism, voyeurism and bisexuality alongside some actual (albeit brief) nudity, all designed to push back the barriers of what a pop promo could /should be. All very deliberate and yet designed to be defensible as well as controversial – Madonna would argue that all the women characters in her videos are sexually in control.

The film would be released as a stand alone video single (imagine that all you kids brought up on YouTube with instant access to anything ever recorded) and would sell over one million copies world wide. I certainly recall the Our Price I was working in stocking it and it being quite a big deal as it had an 18 certificate.

In a 1991 interview with Q magazine, Lenny Kravitz had this to say about “Justify My Love” and working with Madonna:

“I think it’s a classic of its type, like an old Donna Summer song. And I like Madonna a lot. She’s the best; the queen of what she does. She’s very articulate, elegant, and she has taste up the ass. It’s unbelievable.”

‘Taste up the ass’?! Oh give it a rest Lenny!

“Justify My Love” would peak at No 2 – close but no cigar Madge.

Oh this is just a great song and one that will always remind me of this time of my life. The Farm were already bona fide chart stars by this time courtesy of their previous Top 10 single “Groovy Train” but “All Together Now” completely sealed the deal. But this was more than just a chart hit, more than just a catchy pop song. Written about the unofficial truce in 1914 during WWI when British and German troops came out of the trenches to play football with each other for Christmas, it also combines a piece of classical music in its structure via its use of ‘Pachelbel’s Canon’ by the German Baroque composer Johann Pachelbel. Once I realised this, Pachelbel would be my go to classical artist for those specialist music mornings that Our Price insisted upon during the week when I was first working there.

Going back to the lyrical subject matter, we were all now familiar with the truce story thanks to Paul McCartney’s “Pipes Of Peace” single but The Farm had actually beaten him to it in terms of writing a song about it when they recorded a very different version of the song (called “No Man’s Land”) for a Peel session back in 1983.

Fast forward 7 years and with Suggs of Madness as their producer, they returned to that Peel session track and turned it into “All Together Now”. It even had the brilliant fellow scouser Pete Wylie on backing vocals. What’s not to like?!

The song is very closely associated with football having been co-opted by many a team (including Everton FC) and to promote both the Euro 2004 and 2006 World Cup tournaments. Beyond that though, it has soundtracked charity work like Operation Shoebox which sends gifts in shoeboxes to soldiers serving in Afghanistan. When lead singer Peter Hooton returned to his former school in Bootle, Merseyside in later life, the children there sang his song and read out WWI poetry. Like I said, more than just a pop song.

At one point, it looked like “All Together Now” with its unity and anti-war themes might have a genuine tilt at being the Xmas No 1 but would eventually run out of steam peaking at No 4. Perhaps the ultimate Xmas No 1 that never was?

One of the biggest break out stars of the year next. Did MC Hammer have a serious shot at the Xmas No 1 spot? “Pray” was the third single to be lifted from his “Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt ‘Em” album and after pinching from Rick James for “U Can’t Touch This” and the Chi-Lites for “Have You Seen Her”, this time Hammer picks the pocket of Prince for a prominent sample of “When Doves Cry”. I say pickpockets but Prince did actually authorise the use of the sample, the first in fact of just a handful that he would allow.

This was very much in the mould of “U Can’t Touch This” but I found it all a bit dull and repetitive. Repetitive? Yes, check out this piece of trivia I found on Wikipedia:

The word ‘pray’ is mentioned 147 times during the song, setting the record for the number of times a song title is repeated in an American Top 40 hit.

I wasn’t alone in my thinking. Reviewed in Smash Hits by no less a musical authority than Timmy Mallett, the annoying little git described it as ‘awful’ and a ‘messy noise’. Of course he couldn’t resist the open goal that was MC Hammer’s name:

“I think he’s got a great name though. MC Mallett would be even better than MC Hammer but I’m MC Mallett”.

Timmy Mallett there, the dickhead’s dickhead.

“Pray” was never a serious Xmas No 1 contender peaking just inside the Top 10 at No 8 although it was a No 2 record in the US.

And just like that the game was up. After correctly predicting that The Farm would have a Top 5 hit with “All Together Now” earlier, Mark Goodier amazingly managed to be right twice in the space of a few minutes as *spoiler alert* we do get to hear the Xmas No 1 for 1990 on this very show. Of course, it had to be Cliff Richard didn’t it? This was peak Cliff wins Xmas time. After securing the festive chart topper just two years before with “Mistletoe And Wine”, here he was again with another mawkish, horrible effort in “Saviour’s Day”. In some ways it was a hat trick of Xmas No 1s as he’s appeared on the Band Aid II record in 1989. If pressed, I would have to say it was marginally less annoying than “Mistletoe And Wine” but again, it would be a case of splitting arse hairs.

He’s, of course, backed a by a choir of extras including that bloke from Modern Romance (again) and can’t resist doing that weird arm waving thing he always does. The gaelic whistle bit (which sounds like an attempt to mimic Simple Minds take on Irish folk song “She Moved Through the Fair” when they released “Belfast Child”) prompts Cliff to stand next to the whistle player and attempt to ‘play’ his microphone in the same way. Oh God, my eyes hurt. Also, what is he wearing? That silver jacket makes him resemble that Honey G woman who tried to convince us (and herself) that she was a rapper on X Factor a few years ago. This is just all kinds of wrong.

In the run up to the Xmas chart, a TV news crew (Granada?) visited our shop to talk to the people on the front line selling the records about who we thought would be the Xmas No 1. They interviewed the singles buyer who was Andy (another Our Price legend) who loved all the attention. He once just about pushed me out of the way to get to serve actress Barbara Knox who played Rita Fairclough in Coronation Street so he wasn’t going to miss out on this opportunity! Andy correctly predicted that Cliff would be the Xmas No 1 on account of the sales he would generate from appearing on The Des O’Connor Show. I so wish I could find the interview on line but despite extensive searching, I have turned up a blank.

TOTP were still sticking with the Top 5 albums feature that they had started in the Summer and so here are the best selling albums for November 1990:

Elton John – “The Very Best Of Elton John”

2. Phil Collins – “Serious Hits …Live!”

3. The Beautiful South – “Choke”

4. Paul Simon – “The Rhythm Of The Saints”

5. Madonna – “The Immaculate Collection”

A couple of things to note here. Madonna’s “The Immaculate Collection” was already starting to show its huge sales potential and sure enough, it would end up being the best selling album of the whole year in the UK despite having only been released on Nov 9th.

Secondly, can anyone make sense of Mark Goodier’s comment here?

“No 1 artist album in November, Elton John The Very Best Of Elton John …a sort of greatest hits collection”

Yes, thanks Mark. An album called ‘The Very Best Of…’ really didn’t require the qualifying statement ‘a sort of greatest hits collection’!!

RIght, where are we up to with the Snap! single release schedule of 1990? One of the most dominant charts acts of the year were onto their fourth hit with the release of “Mary Had A Little Boy”. This was the last single to be lifted from their “World Power” album and was based around the ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ nursery rhyme but now I’m wondering if this track was specifically chosen as Xmas approached with one eye on a “Mary’s Boy Child” Boney M vibe. Maybe not.

This didn’t do anything for me and after a Megamix single early the next year had been and gone, I would have bet money that would have been the last we would have seen of Snap! but I hadn’t reckoned on rhythm being a dancer two years later.

Much like MC Hammer earlier, their run of Top 10 singles was maintained when “Mary Had A Little Boy” made it to No 8 but it was never going to seriously trouble Cliff.

Right, if it’s 1990 then there must be a New Kids On The Block record in the charts and indeed there is. “This One’s For The Children” was their eighth (!) Top 10 hit of the year and was clearly aimed at the Xmas market being a track from their “Merry, Merry Christmas” album and all. It is also possibly the most saccharine, schmaltzy dollop of shite it has ever been my misfortune to hear. It’s as if “We Are The World”(hardly a lyrical masterpiece itself) had been re-written by a six year old. Look at these lyrics:

There are some people living in this world
They have no food to eat, they have no place to go

or these…

Many people are happy and many people are sad
Some people have many things that others can only wish they had

For the love of God! Actually, God does get a name check later:

This one’s for the children
May God keep them in His throne

Just unbearable.

They must have thought they had a genuine chance of being the Xmas No 1 with this but even Cliff would have baulked at this sentimental crap. “This One’s For The Children” peaked at No 9 and would see out not just 1990 but also T’KNOB’s imperial phase. They would never be as popular again. Phew!

After Goodier does a spoonerism in his Top 10 countdown when he says “Kinky Boots” is up 5 at No 9 (it’s the other way round Mark, up 9 at No 5), we get to Vanilla Ice who is not only still at No 1 but also “rapping totally live” in the studio! Would this have been a big deal back in the day? I think it might have been you know. Ice does a good job of performing “Ice Ice Baby” as well alongside his trio of backing dancers plus a DJ. Pretty nifty moves and rhymes. Right, I can’t be seen to be endorsing Vanilla Ice so to even it up, here is his atrocious rhyming message for all the readers of Smash Hits back then :

“Yo, this is Vanilla Ice, Just chillin’ like Bob Dylan, And maxin’ like Michael Jackson on Smash Hits Baby!”

Oof!

Still, Vanilla Ice looked a good bet for staying at No 1 until Xmas and he would prove to be Cliff’s stiffest competition. The race for that coveted spot would go right to the wire.

The play out video is “24 Hours” by Betty Boo and is surely the least remembered of her trio of hit singles in 1990. Nowhere near as good as either “Doin’ The Do” or “Where Are You Baby” it would stall at No 25. Betty’s profile didn’t take an immediate nose dive though as she was voted that year’s best British Breakthrough Act at the 1991 BRIT Awards. However, a lip-synching scandal whilst on tour in Australia combined with caring for her mother when she was diagnosed with cancer meant a pause would have to be inserted into her pop career, a pause from which she would never really recover as a recording artist.

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Twenty Four Seven featuring Captain Hollywood	Are You Dreaming	Not dreaming, having a nightmare more like – no
2	Madonna	Justify My Love	No but I have that Immaculate Collection CD it’s included on
3	The Farm	All Together Now	I was sure I had but the singles box says no
4	MC Hammer	Pray	Nah
5	Cliff Richard	Saviour’s Day	Hell no!
6	Snap!	Mary Had A Little Boy	Nope
7	New Kids On The Block	This One’s For The Children	See 5 above
8	Vanilla Ice	Ice Ice baby	No No baby
9	Betty Boo	24 Hours	No

Disclaimer

OK – here’s the thing – the TOTP episodes are only available on iPlayer for a limited amount of time so the link to the programme below only works for about another month so you’ll have to work fast if you want to catch the whole show.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000ty1q/top-of-the-pops-06121990

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.

Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 29 NOV 1990

Posted on April 22, 2021 by 80stastic

We’re back! After an unexpected but welcome week off from reviewing these TOTP repeats due to the BBC’s frankly bizarre decision to suspend BBC4 broadcasts due to the death of Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh, the schedule has been rejigged so we haven’t missed any episodes as a result. Back in late November 1990, there was also a major news event (quite literally) as John Major became the new leader of the Conservative party and therefore the new UK Prime Minister following the demise of Thatcher.

Despite an apparent blanket ban on TOTP presenters going anywhere near the political shenanigans of the leadership contest the previous week, maverick host Nicky Campbell almost falls over himself trying to shoe horn in a John Major reference at every turn. “John Major or no John Major – as music shows go this is the nation’s premier – TOTP! Remember if you make it to No 10 here it’s good but it could be better….” he trills before introducing the show’s opening act Dream Warriors with “My Definition Of A Boombastic Jazz Style”.

I always quite liked this as I had their first single “Wash Your Face in My Sink”. They certainly had some intriguing song titles this Canadian duo – you had to give them that at least. Heavily sampling Quincy Jones’s “Soul Bossa Nova” (and therefore bringing it to the attention of UK audiences some 7 years before Mike Myers did via his Austin Powers* series of films), this had a similar vibe (did I really just write that?!) to its predecessor and worked pretty well I thought and crucially sounded nothing like the titular jazz (or at least my definition of it). But what was their definition? Well, they mention ‘jazz’, ‘funk’ and ‘a new blend’ in the lyrics but ultimately inform us at the end of the second verse that ‘there is no definition’. Huh.

And what was with the staffs the pair have in their hands throughout this performance? They put me in mind of Morgan fromThe Walking Dead especially with those coats on that Nicky Campbell makes a big deal of at the end of the song. Dream Warriors released an album with both hits on called “And Now The Legacy Begins” but after the use of the term ‘legacy fans’ in relation to the wanky European Super League concept this week, let’s not go there.

“My Definition Of A Boombastic Jazz Style” peaked at No 13.

* I never got the whole Austin Powers phenomenon – I just found the whole wretched thing totally unfunny.

I have zero recall of the next song – “Missing You” by Soul II Soul anyone? Apparently it was the third single to be lifted from their second album “Vol. II: 1990 – A New Decade” and would peak at No 22. That whole album was recorded without Caron Wheeler involved and so some guest vocalists were employed – this single featured ‘The First Lady of House Music’ Kym Mazelle, probably best known at this point for her duet with Dr Robert from the Blow Monkeys on “Wait” in 1989. Well, either that or for being name checked in The Beloved’s “Hello” hit from earlier in the year.

Listening to it now, it does sound remarkably similar in tempo and style to their “Keep on Movin'” hit which was a deduction that the music press of the time also came to. Seeing the lyrics written down, the opening lines sound absolutely filthy…

Ooh, yeah
You’re the sweetest
Yeah, baby
Oh, yes, you are
You’re the sweetest
Yes, baby, ooh…

…but despite a Marvin Gaye “Sexual Healing” sample thrown into the mix, they don’t sound quite as obscene on the record. We would not see Soul II Soul in the charts for the whole of 1991 but they would return the following year with their album “Volume III Just Right”.

Right what’s this nonsense? That Megabass shite again? This was just shameless marketing on behalf of record label Telstar for one of their dance compilation albums. Supposedly, somebody wrote into Smash Hits enquiring about them:

“Who are Megabass? They’ve had a record in the charts for a couple of weeks now but I haven’t seen any pictures of them and I don’t know anything about them. Could you enlighten me?”

That letter was written by one M.Sharpe from Kent. Yeah right. Totally made up! Probably Telstar bought some space in the magazine for extra exposure. Why would anybody have wanted to see photos of two remixers who were from the same stable as those Jive Bunny arses? Unbelievably, Smash Hits did include a picture of them in their reply – two young fellas one of whom looked a bit like Spandau Ballet’s Gary Kemp from the side. Probably some Shutterstock image of random male models. What a total sham!

“Time To Make The Floor Burn” peaked at No 16.

Oh come on! After that Megabass rubbish we move onto a novelty song! Who’s doing was this?! Simon Mayo?! I should have known. That guy had previous for generating Top 40 hits out of nothing other than his massive ego and his Breakfast Show platform to convince dullard listeners that what they really needed in their lives was to own a copy of “Kinky Boots” by Patrick Macnee and Honor Blackman. Yes, not content with having foisted “Donald Where’s Your Troosers?” on us the previous Xmas, he was at it again with a song that the public had clearly rejected twice already. It failed to be a hit when originally released in 1964 and a re-release in 1983 did nothing either. That wasn’t going to stop Mayo though who clearly believed he was radio’s version of King Midas who could turn anything to gold (or at least a Top 10 hit). Quite why Avengers stars Macnee and Blackman recorded this originally I’m not sure (to promote their TV show I guess). On top of everything else , it completely creepy. The bit when Macnee says ‘sexy little schoolgirls’ with almost breathless excitement?! Just horrible. Mercifully, the song is quite short – just one minute and thirty seven seconds long. Phew!

Meathead Mayo was at it again in 1991 when he got Monty Python’s “Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life” to No 3 in the charts whilst “Kinky Boots” made it to No 5.

Who?! Dimples D?! Nope, I’ve got nothing. I’m not having a good week recall wise. I think it might be linked to the fact that though I was working in a record shop at this point, which you would have thought would have only improved my memory of the charts at this time, the store (Our Price in Market Street, Manchester) had two trading floors and I worked mainly on the ground floor where the albums were. Down in the basement (where all the cool members of staff hung out) was where the singles were at so I didn’t actually get to sell many of them. That’s my story anyway and I’m sticking to that.

It turns out that Dimples (real name Crystal Smith) had recorded this track back in 1983 as “Sucker DJ’s (I Will Survive)” but it hadn’t achieved amy meaningful success. Fast forward 7 years and ubiquitous remixer Ben Liebrand got his mits on it, added a sample of the theme tune to I Dream of Jeannie* to it, called it “Sucker DJ (A Witch for Love)”and boom! A hit all over Europe, Australia and New Zealand. It’s actually not that dissimilar to the show’s opening song “My Definition Of A Boombastic Jazz Style” in that it’s a rap over a very familiar sample.

*I was always more of a Bewitched fan than I Dream of Jeannie – I’m talking US fantasy sitcom series and not Irish all girl groups obviously.

Now I do remember this! Chris Isaak had been around for years making his twangy, moody guitar music with the added ingredient of his falsetto vocals and yet he was totally unknown over here (well, I’d never heard of him at least). “Wicked Game” appeared as a fully formed, instant classic as Xmas 1990 approached and Chris himself was causing many a heart to flutter. Almost the entire female staff of the Our Price store I was working in seemed to have fallen under his spell as had my wife.

When I think of Chris Isaak, David Lynch comes to mind immediately but I had forgotten the details of why. It is, of course, because he had featured two of Isaak’s songs in his disturbing Blue Velvet film whilst an instrumental version of “Wicked Game” had been included in his Wild At Heart flick. Lynch was already making waves at this time with Twin Peaks and indeed he would ultimately cast Isaak with a major role in that series’ film prequel Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. So quite the connection between the two really. Chris has had sporadic acting roles including a small role in The Silence Of The Lambs. However, my favourite role of his film wise is as Uncle Bob in That Thing You Do! where he pretty much just does some hand clapping.

Back to “Wicked Game” and I have a memory of being asked constantly for his album which, as Nicky Campbell advises in his intro, was called “Heart Shaped World” which of course we didn’t stock as it had done nothing in the UK at that point. After a David Lynch obsessed Atlanta radio station music director played “Wicked Game” and created an irresistible demand for the track and made it a chart hit, record label Reprise did what any right thinking record label would do and shoved out some more material into the market place. A compilation album also called “Wicked Game” containing 11 songs from Isaak’s three albums was released and the track listing was compiled by Phil Knox-Roberts of WEA UK. Why do I mention him? Well, I worked with his brother Paul around this time. ‘Knoxy’ was an Our Price legend and the supplier of many a great tale. One of my favourites was when I played in a football game with him as part of an Our Price team versus a record company reps team at Preston North End’s ground. Knoxy was very proud of his quiff that he had cultivated at this time and when he went down following a collision with an opposition player clutching his head and shouting in pain, we all feared a dreadful injury. As we gathered around him concerned, he stood up, shook his head and said “Does my hair look alright?”. Again, that’s my version of the story and I’m sticking to that.

“Wicked Game” (the single) peaked at No 10.

Now I don’t often agree with much that Nicky Campbell had to say in these TOTP appearances of his but I think he was on the money with his intro to the next act. “The new album “Behaviour” has songs that will be remembered for a long time…here’s one of them “Being Boring”, the Pet Shop Boys“. Widely acknowledged amongst the duo’s fan base as their best ever song, it was seen at the time as very much a downturn in commercial fortunes. It stalled at No 20, their first single since 1986’s “Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money)” not to make the Top 10 and, at the time, their lowest peaking hit ever. Proving however that wise, old theory that popularity does not great art make, “Being Boring” could well be said to be the perfect pop song. If I’m honest, I wasn’t saying that at the time. It kind of passed me by a bit and I’d preferred lead single from the album “So Hard”. I wasn’t alone in this view. Writing in Smash Hits, Miranda Sawyer dismissed it as an album track. We were both wrong.

“Being Boring” is a template for great songwriting. From the lyrics to the minor chord sequence to the understated yet perennial melody, all bang on the money. Those aforementioned lyrics don’t refer specifically to themselves (as I thought at the time) but they do tell an autobiographical tale of Neil Tennant’s teenage parties through to going to seek fame and fortune in London and the self-realisation of what that meant once achieved. Intertwined in it all is the story of how his childhood friend who had moved to London with him would ultimately die of AIDS. I’m not sure if I’m making too much of this but in their “Pop Art” compilation album of 2003, “Being Boring” is included on the ‘Art’ CD whereas some of their biggest hits such as “It’s A Sin”, “Heart” and “Suburbia” are all on the ‘Pop’ disc. For what it worth, I very much agree with the track listing here. It does seem to be more than just pop.

If all that sounds too heavy, then I’ll lighten the mood. Why did Neil turn up for this performance dressed as Inspector Gadget?

The phrase ‘from the sublime to the ridiculous’ has never been so appropriate as to describe the segue from Pet Shop Boys to the next act who are Bombalu-f*****g-rina! Yes, the hideous concoction that was Timmy Mallett and Andrew Lloyd Webber didn’t even have the good grace to be a one hit wonder. Wankers!

“Seven Little Girls Sitting In The Backseat” (originally a hit for The Avons in 1959) followed the exact same formula as “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” even down to the insertion of the same ‘Ah Yeah’ sample and ‘Wooh! Yeah!’ loop. The only difference that I can see is that the act seems to have grown an extra peroxide blonde backing singer (presumably to make up the numbers as one of the titular seven little girls).

Bombalurina‘s version peaked at No 18 and that, praise be, was the last we would see of this whole, sorry undertaking.

It’s a new No 1 as Vanilla Ice storms to the top of the charts with “Ice Ice Baby”. Watching this back it inevitably looks very dated (as so it should at over 30 years old) and yet at least one thing about Vanilla Ice lasted longer than his music career. Was this the first time that we saw the shaved eyebrow look? Wasn’t that a big thing throughout the 90s and beyond? Is it still a thing now? Look, I’m a 52 year old middle aged man so I have no idea about what is fashionable now – I don’t even know the current phrase that young people use to mean something is fashionable (‘on trend’ maybe?) – but I know shaved eyebrows were a definite thing…erm..at sometime.

I’m pretty sure the aforementioned Knoxy liked this one if only for the “Rollin’ in my 5.0” lyric speaking of which, the “Yo VIP, let’s kick it” opening line? The VIP part stood for the Vanilla Ice Posse (of course it did). A bit like Elvis and his entourage having TCB rings that were an acronym for Taking Care of Business then? Except much, much lamer obviously.

Hands up who can name a Deee-Lite song that isn’t “Groove Is In The Heart”? Yup, pretty much none of us then. They do have other songs of course – here’s one now. “Power Of Love” (surely one of the most used title in pop music history) was the follow up to that mighty dance anthem and I have to admit to not remembering at all how this one went. And then I listened to it again and thought ‘that sounds familiar’ and it was for good reason – the chorus hook bears an uncanny resemblance to Madonna’s “Rescue Me”.

So did Deee-Lite influence Madonna or was it the other way round? They were both released (and presumably recorded) around the same time so it’s hard to say. Or is it just one of those massive coincidences that life throws up occasionally? Whatever the true story, what we do know is that “Power Of Love” was Deee-Lite’s last ever trip to the UK Top 40, peaking at No 25.

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Dream Warriors	My Definition Of A Boombastic Jazz Style	I think I have this on something but I didn’t buy the single at the time
2	Soul II Soul	Missing You	I was quite happy to miss out on this one – no
3	Megabass	Time To Make The Floor Burn	Putting this record on the bonfire was too good for it
4	Patrick Macnee and Honor Blackman	Kinky Boots	Stinky boots more like! This reeked! No
5	Dimples D	Sucker DJ	No
6	Chris Isaak	Wicked Game	I think my wife had the tape of the “Wicked Game” compilation album once upon a time but no idea where it would be now
7	Being Boring	Pet Shop Boys	Not the single but it’s on that Pop Art Best Of CD I have
8	Bombalurina	Seven Little Girls Sitting In The Back Seat	They might as well have been shitting in the back seat because this was a turd of a record – NO!
9	Vanilla Ice	Ice Ice baby	No No baby
10	Deee-Lite	Power Of Love	Nope

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000ty1n/top-of-the-pops-29111990

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.

Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 22 NOV 1990

Posted on April 9, 2021 by 80stastic

22nd Nov 1990. A momentous date in British history. Why? Thatcher was finally going after her Cabinet refused to back her in a second round of leadership elections. I’m pretty sure I was in work with my newly acquired Xmas temp job at Our Price when the news broke. A Downing Street statement was issued at 09.30 in the morning after Thatcher had informed her Cabinet and the Queen of her decision to stand down. The timing of the news meant that the whole day would have been taken up discussing it (whilst serving some customers as well no doubt). I was just 10 years old when Thatcher came to power. I was now a married man of 22. This was huge. I have a memory that I couldn’t quite believe it when I first heard. After all, less than 24 hours earlier she had vowed to ‘fight on and fight to win’ after winning the first round of the leadership contest but not with the required majority. I should state that I wasn’t in a state of denial and couldn’t accept what had happened – I despised Thatcher and her government. It was just that it felt like her reign would never end and then suddenly, she was done. It didn’t seem real. There was a very staunch socialist working in the shop at the time who was besides himself with excitement the whole day. There was no mention of the news on that night’s TOTP although host Anthea Turner, whom I’m pretty sure she is a Tory supporter, seems to be sporting a rather sensible haircut that would prove to be an inspiration for Theresa May decades later. That apart, the BBC steered clear of any political comment. Enough of the politics though, who were the acts that were campaigning for your sales to make them the new chart leader?

We start with new chart sensations EMF who have gone Top 5 already with “Unbelievable” and were no doubt eyeing that No 1 spot. I’d certainly never heard of them before their Smash Hits Poll Winners Party slot but apparently the ‘buzz’ around the band had been building for a while. When they toured as support for Adamski, there were more EMF baseball caps and T-shirts sold than the “Killer” hit maker’s. As a result the group were banned from selling merchandise in the concert venues. With a loyal following in place and a fantastic, fresh sound, they seemed destined to have a No 1 record…..

…and then this bloke happened! If it’s late 1990, it must be Vanilla Ice! Rising to the attention of the UK via the same route as EMF (appearing on the Smash Hits Poll Winners Party), it seems crazy to recall now but Vanilla Ice wasn’t always regarded as a complete joke. I’m fairly confident that his “Under Pressure” sampling hit “Ice Ice Baby” was seen as, if not cutting edge, then inventive? No? How about ‘clever’? Still not having it. OK, ‘resourceful’ then? Right then smart arses, what word would you use? ‘SHITE’. Yes, agreed but I’m taking about back in 1990 without any revisionism in play. Still ‘shite’. Ok, you win. Even so, it was the first ever single by a rap artist to go to No 1 in the US. That must count for something surely?

Very much seen as the white MC Hammer, the two seemed inextricably entwined for a while – Ice toured with Hammer and “Ice Ice Baby” was nominated for a Grammy in the category Best Rap Performance alongside Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This” (which took the award).

Real name (unbelievably) Robert Van Winkle, Vanilla Ice took “Ice Ice Baby” straight to No 3 (a record highest entry for a new act in the UK Top 40 at the time -it was eventually usurped by Whigfield’s ‘Saturday Night”) before making the short jump to No 1 a week later. We were in the grip of Vanilla Ice fever! Sensing they were onto something potentially very big record company SBK, once the single had hit the top spot in the US also, pulled “Ice Ice Baby” from sale in an attempt to force people to buy Ice’s album “To The Extreme”. It worked as it went onto go 7× Platinum in the States. Like I said, Vanilla Ice fever.

And yet…at some undetermined point, the world seemed to wake up to the fact that we’d all been duped. This guy wasn’t the real deal, he was a fraud! His success disappeared almost as soon as it had started. One further Top 10 single followed (a cover of Wild Cherry’s “Play That Funky Music”) and then…pretty much nothing. No, not nothing, ridicule. Suddenly nobody was owning up to having bought any Vanilla Ice records. The spell was broken and music fans came to their senses. Maybe it had all been a bad dream.

As for Vanilla Ice himself, various career changes were undertaken to maintain his celebrity. An attempt at becoming a serious rapper appealing to the hip hop market fell on deaf ears. There then followed acting, motocross, becoming a Rastafarian and growing dreadlocks and then eventually, inevitably, reality TV. Oh dear. A little part of 1990 however will always remain Vanilla Ice’s. Yo, VIP, let’s kick it!

Perhaps the least remembered of their hits, so what was the deal with The Proclaimers doing a cover of Roger Miller’s “King Of The Road” then? Well it was from a film soundtrack (of course it was), the film in question being an Australian romantic drama called The Crossing – no I’ve never seen it either. Anyway, I should say for all the pedants out there that “King Of The Road” was actually an EP (remember EPs were all the rage in 1990 – The Wedding Present, Ride, Inspiral Carpets etc) with three other tracks on it including their take on a song mostly associated with Johnny Cash called “Long Black Veil”).

The performance by Charlie and Craig here strikes me as a bit odd. Why the tuxedos and bow ties? Is it some sort of ironic comment on the subject of the lyrics (a drifter of no fixed abode)? Then of course there is the Jonathan King sticker on the double bass – that hasn’t aged well. I was only mentioned King in the last post in relation to the Righteous Brothers. I had no idea I would be referring to him again so soon. At the song’s close, the sound seems to dip to almost a whisper. Is that how it was on the record or a sound fault in the studio? Oh and I don’t recall anybody seriously suggesting that “King Of The Road” might be the Xmas No 1 as Anthea informs us. Really?! As it turned out, it peaked at No 9.

Right, who’s idea was this because I need to have a serious word with them? Did we really need a version of “It Takes Two” by Rod Stewart and Tina Turner in our lives? I didn’t. Look, I don’t mind the original by Marvin Gaye and Kim Weston of course but this duet seemed so cynical and… well, just money for old rope. What? It was part of a Pepsi TV advert campaign you say? Well, look I’m not about to take on the might of a multinational corporation so I’ll let this one go.

Rod, of course, was no stranger to cover versions. Just the previous year, he’d had a hit with Tom Waits’ “Downtown Train” and he seems to have spent huge chunks of the latter part of his career churning out covers as part of his “Great American Songbook” series of albums. Rod maintained his Motown theme when he released a single literally called “The Motown Song” in 1991. Both that and “It Takes Two” were included on his “Vagabond Heart” album of the same year.

“It Takes Two” is one of those songs that was made for a duet and as such many, many versions of it have been recorded down the years – Donny and Marie Osmond, Cliff Richard and Cilla Black even Rod returned to it again in 2019 when he partnered with Robbie Williams (yuk!). Even worse than that though was a version by Bruno Brookes and Liz Kershaw! At least such a ghastly creation cold never happen again…could it?

Rod and Tina’s version of “It Takes Two” peaked at No 5.

Ah, this is better – a genuinely affecting (if slightly disturbing) ballad in “Falling” courtesy of Julee Cruise. Sadly, Anthea can’t remember her chart placings and although she has just announced that it is at No 11 this week in her chart rundown section, she then introduces it as being at No 10. FFS! You were hosting a show literally based around the Top 40 Anthea!. These things mattered!

Julee gives a very ethereal performance befitting the song that she is singing. She refuses to look into the camera and her ‘I’m not really here’ persona gives the impression that she has been transported to another far away dimension entirely. I think it worked pretty well.

The song’s co-composer Angelo Badalamenti would achieve another Top 40 hit six years later when he teamed up with James’s Tim Booth for the Booth and the Bad Angel project which produced an album and this single called “I Believe” but really, it sounded just like something from Booth’s day job to me:

Like “It Takes Two” earlier, here’s another song that has been widely covered. Jimmy Somerville‘s take on “To Love Somebody” by the Bee Gees was to promote his “The Singles Collection 1984/1990” which was a big seller over Xmas as I remember. That album seemed to draw a line under Jimmy’s career for a while. It would be another five years before he released his next record and indeed he has only recorded four solo albums in total since 1990.

For someone with such unique vocal talents, a lot of Jimmy’s hits seem to have been cover versions. I’m thinking “Don’t Leave Me This Way and “Never Can Say Goodbye” with The Communards and ” “It Ain’t Necessarily So” and the medley of “I Feel Love / Johnny Remember Me / Love To Love You Baby” with Bronski Beat. Then there’s “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” and this one as a solo artist. I’m not making a judgement just an observation.

“To Love Somebody” was Jimmy’s last Top 10 hit peaking at No 8.

Definitely not a cover version is double A-side “Cubik/Olympic” by 808 State. We get “Cubik” this week and back then, that menacing, heavy dance riff would have sounded exhilarating to me but listening back 31 years later, it makes me feel a sense of dread. Damn you middle age!

To be fair though, even in my 30s I was a delicate flower and I did find myself nearly having a panic attack every time the staff in the Our Price I was working played “Higher State of Consciousness” by Josh Wink over the in-store sound system.

The fourth and final week at No 1 for The Righteous Brothers with “Unchained Melody”. Unlikely as it seems, there is a connection between The Righteous Brothers and Scottish stadium rockers Simple Minds. How so? Erm…simple really. The Minds 1984 single “Speed Your Love To Me” was influenced by the line in “Unchained Melody” ‘God speed your love to me’. When asked in an interview with Songfacts.com if there was a connection, Jim Kerr replied:

Yes, there must have been. We loved that song. I think it was [producer] Steve Lillywhite that said, “You know, there’s, ‘God speed your love to me’ in The Righteous Brothers’ ‘Unchained Melody.'” And, of course, it’s wonderful. Such a great sentiment.

As far as I can tell, Simple minds have never covered “Unchained Melody” and The Righteous Brothers have never given us their take on “Speed Your Love To Me”.

What fresh Hell is this?! Bloody jinxed it didn’t I with my comment about Bruno Brookes and Liz Kershaw before because here they are with the official Children In Need charity single for 1990. Their version of “It Takes Two” had been the previous year’s official single for the charity and it made it all the way to…No 53! Great effort. “Let’s Dance” was the old Chris Montez number and this time Bruno and Liz pulled out all the stops and got the record to…No 54. There have been worse performing Children In Need singles but not many. It’s hardly “Perfect Day” is it?

I always found Brookes and Kershaw’s ‘love-hate’ on air relationship tedious at best and creepy at worst.

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart rundown below:

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	EMF	Unbelievable	Unbelievably not at the time but I did buy a later single of theirs called Afro King, the CD of which was like a mini greatest hits which had it on
2	Vanilla Ice	Ice Ice baby	No No baby
3	The Proclaimers	King Of The Road	Nah
4	Rod Stewart and Tina Turner	It Takes Two	But not you two – no!
5	Julee Cruise	Falling	No but it was on that first Q Magazine album that I bought.
6	Jimmy Somerville	To Love Somebody	No but I had that 84-90 Best Of with it on
7	808 State	Cubik / Olympic	Nope
8	The Righteous Brothers	Unchained Melody	It’s a no
9	Bruno Brookes and Liz Kershaw	Let’s Dance	Charity single or not, this was simply appalling. NO!

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000tpzk/top-of-the-pops-22111990

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.

Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 15 NOV 1990

Posted on April 7, 2021 by 80stastic

It’s the exact mid-point of November 1990. I’m coming up to my one month wedding anniversary and have been employed in a temporary sales assistant position with Our Price for about two weeks. Xmas is fast approaching but for Maggie Thatcher, there are more issues afoot than the impending festive celebrations.1990 has not been a good year for Thatcher’s government; the introduction of the deeply unpopular Poll Tax had led to a riot in Trafalgar Square, inflation was pushing 10% meaning by late 1990 the economy was in the first stages of recession and at one point The Conservatives trailed Labour by 20 points in the polls. Dissatisfaction with Thatcher within her own party led to a challenge to her leadership from Michael Heseltine announced the day before this TOTP aired. Her time as Prime Minister was nearly over…hurray!

Away from politics, another type of of contest was being eagerly awaited. Boxing fans had been clamouring for a bout between Nigel Benn and Chris Eubank on the back of a very public rivalry between the two pugilists. That fight finally came to fruition on 18 November 1990 and was described by referee Richard Steele as “The most dramatic fight I’ve ever refereed”. It went the way of Eubank in round 9. I’m not a big boxing fan I have to say so why do I mention this fight here? Well, in 1990 Nigel Benn decided to cash in on his fame and release a single – rather predictably it was called “Stand And Fight” and was credited to The Pack featuring Nigel Benn. OK, so what? Well, ‘The Dark Destroyer’ as he was nicknamed came to the Our Price store I was working in to do a PA to promote it! I can’t recall if this was pre or post the big fight. There was a photo taken of Benn with the shop staff (including me) that appeared in a WH Smith news letter (Our Price was part of the WH Smith chain at that point). I had a copy for many years but I don’t know where it is now. I got Nigel’s autograph for my elder brother who was a fan. What? The song? Oh it was utter garbage….

Anyway, on with the show and the proper music although I’m not sure that Black Box‘s version of “Fantasy” strictly counts as ‘proper’ music. There seems to be some copyright issue with their TOTP studio performance so the official video will have to suffice for the purposes of this blog. To be fair, that performance doesn’t have a lot going on in it. Katrin Quinol is still fronting the whole sham, lip syncing away to vocals we all knew weren’t hers while the two guys at the back bang away on their keyboards with their heads down. One of them has that 90s long hair look that requires an alice band while the other guy has a top on with ‘Boys Wander In’ emblazoned across it. What’s that supposed to mean? So dull is the whole thing that during the instrumental break the cameras revert to crossing to the gantry to show some very unenthusiastic hand clapping from the studio audience. They looks so lifeless and flat that you would believe that, given the choice, they would rather eat their own arms than us them to clap along with. “Fantasy” peaked at No 5.

OK, I know that Inspiral Carpets released something called “Island Head EP” but I couldn’t have told you any of the songs on it or how they went. As far as I can see none of the four tracks on it featured on their debut album “Life” (at least not the UK version). “Biggest Mountain” performed here sounds pretty mournful to me. I’m not entirely sure why it was released to be honest. Their album had only been out six months and they’d not long been in the charts with “She Comes In The Fall”. Maybe they just had some new songs they wanted the fans to hear? Or maybe they were just jumping on an indie bandwagon – let’s not forget that EPs seemed to be a thing in 1990 with The Wedding Present and Ride both having released their own recently. And yes, mention must be made of those haircuts. Tom Hingley looks like a lockdown version of Mr Spock whilst Clint Boon…well just …Clint Boon! The “Island Head EP” peaked at No 21.

Next up are Robert Palmer and UB40 with their rendition of Bob Dylan’s “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight”. It strikes me that those cheeky Brummies have done rather a lot of collaborations during their career. Of course there are those two recordings with Chrissie Hynde in “I Got You Babe” and “Breakfast In Bed” neither of which I liked but there’s also “Reckless” with Afrika Bambaataa and an 808 Sate remix of “One In Ten”. There’s even two whole albums of collaborations in “UB40 Present The Dancehall Album” and “UB40 Present The Fathers Of Reggae” which featured some of their musical heroes like Toots Hibbert, John Holt, Alton Ellis and the Mighty Diamonds. And lest we forget Ali and Robin Campbell being credited on Pato Banton’s No 1 single “Baby Come Back”? Hmm…maybe we should all try and forget that one.

I wondered in a previous post how Bob Palmer and UB40 came to be working together and it was down to an individual called Dave Harper who managed both artists. Now I had no idea but this guy was steeped in rock history. He’d been Jim Morrison’s roadie and looked after Bob Marley and the Wailers even mixing their “Live at the Rainbow” album before moving onto manage Robert Palmer and UB40. As I said, I had no idea of any of this so when I googled Dave Harper I found a result for:

Dave Harper Bagpipes | Wedding Music | Easy Weddings

That couldn’t be him surely I found myself asking. No, no it wasn’t. That Dave Harper has been playing the bagpipes for 45 years and offers professional, expert bagpiping services across Norfolk, Norwich and the East Anglia for a wide range of events (according to his website). Still, UB40 and bagpipes! There’s a collaboration made in Hell. “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” peaked at No 6 and that new UB40 single that host Bruno Brookes mentions? It was actually called “Impossible Love” not “It’s Impossible” as Brookes claimed and it peaked at No 47.

An unusual event next. I’m guessing that not many singles that made it onto TOTP had a chart track record of just 1 week in the Top 40 at No 40 but that’s exactly what happened with Caron Wheeler‘s “UK Blak” single. The title track from her debut album, dropping out of the Top 40 completely after securing a studio performance (so not even just a Breaker slot) must have been a shock to the system for both Caron and her record label.

“UK Blak” would be Caron’s final appearance in the UK singles charts but the following year she recorded a song called “Don’t Quit” for a film called Career Opportunities and taking her own advice and perhaps inspired by the movie’s title has continued her musical career up to this day including on/off spells with Soul II Soul.

Three Breakers next and these are “all good records” according to Bruno Brookes so let’s see if he is right…

…we start with The Mission who have turned out to be one of the most consistent chart entry makers of this whole TOTP blog thing. “Hands Across The Ocean” (nothing to do with Paul McCartney’s “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey”) was their 9th consecutive Top 40 hit (and their fourth of 1990 alone) and yet none of them even made the Top 10. The only other artist that I can think of with such a discography would be Siouxsie and the Banshees.

I have to admit to not knowing this one at all although on listening to it now, it does sound very reminiscent of something else that I can’t quite put my finger on*.

Bruno Brookes ‘all good records’ clapometer score: Not bad

*Got it – the verses are like U2’s “Where The Streets Have No Name” whilst the chorus sounds like Scottish popsters The Big Dish.

There was a second single from Jon Bon Jovi‘s Young Guns II project? Yes, his “Blaze Of Glory” album furnished us with “Miracle” which very much sounds like Jon doing his best Bruce Springsteen impression to me. It didn’t have the same dramatic appeal of the title track single and was accordingly a much smaller hit – “Blaze Of Glory ” was a US No 1 record and a No 13 hit over here whilst “Miracle” peaked at No 12 in the States and a lowly No 29 in the UK.

The accompanying video has very little connection to the Young Guns II film. There are no clips from it as the promo is set in the present day with Jon riding his big motorbike around what looks like Mexico setting. And yes that is a pre-Friends Matt LeBlanc catching the señorita’s eye (How you doin’?) and Jeff Beck playing guitar in the cantina.

Bruno Brookes ‘all good records’ clapometer score: Boring

Ooh now here’s something interesting. Twin Peaks appeared out of some dark hole of David Lynch’s imagination and was like nothing we had ever seen before – one of the biggest TV phenomenons of not just the 90s but of any decade. Mixing horror, mystery and the supernatural into one dramatic entity, it was almost like the most bizarre soap opera ever. Its slogan of ‘Who Killed Laura Palmer?’ was the hook that caught all of us who dared to engage in it. Its run on BBC2 started just as my wife and I had moved to Manchester and was all everybody at the Our Price store I was working in was talking about so we took the plunge. Sheesh it was weird! The final scene of series two (and the denouement of the whole story at that point) remains one of the most disturbing things I have seen on TV.

Part of the show’s creepy appeal was its soundtrack composed by Angelo Badalamenti who had worked previously with Lynch on the frankly disturbing Blue Velvet and it was to him that Lynch returned for Twin Peaks. Theme tune “Falling” would also bring back into the fold someone else who had been involved in Blue Velvet project but the name Julee Cruise will forever be associated with Twin Peaks. The song was eerie, chilling (especially for viewers of the series) and yet delightful in its delicate beauty. It (and Cruise herself) featured prominently in the series and the show’s popularity would propel it to No 7 in the UK singles chart.

Bruno Brookes ‘all good records’ clapometer score: Fantastic

What?! How was Jive Bunny still a thing in late 1990?! Wikipedia tells me “Let’s Swing Again” was their sixth hit single out of eight. What! There’s still two more to come after this?! No, sorry but f**k this! I am not wasting any more of my time or words on reviewing any more f*****g Jive Bunny singles. No. I mean it.

Right. With that declaration of intent made, who’s next? What’s that Bruno? The guys behind Jive Bunny are also behind this next act called Megabass?! You have got to be f*****g kidding me?! WTF?! Ok, well I will have to retract my previous statement. It turns out that “Time To Make The Floor Burn” was one of those medley singles like Latino Rave and The Brits 1990 that were basically an advertising campaign for a compilation album. I do recall the Telstar ‘Megabass’ series from my early Our Price days but I do wonder who the intended market for them were. Some of these tunes were ancient in terms of chart lives – “Ride On Time”, Pump Up The Jam”, Big Fun” – these were all well over 12 months old. Ah to Hell with them! Next!

Nice. It’s the Kim Appleby performance of her debut solo single “Don’t Worry” from the other week. However, like Black Box earlier, that clip has infringed somebody’s copyright and is no longer available so here she is on some European music TV show instead. Although Kim would go on to have a couple more Top 20 hits, her solo career never really progressed from this point on. I get the impression that recording the album of songs she and her late sister Mel had been working on was what had kept her going in the months after the tragedy and once that task had been completed, then Kim’s desire for the music business went cold.

A third of four weeks at the top for The Righteous Brothers with “Unchained Melody” which inevitably led to a clamour to get more of the duo’s product out there (and just in time for Xmas too!). So which song got re-released to follow “Unchained Melody” in to the charts? Yes of course it was probably their best known song “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin'” which had been heavily featured in the Top Gun film which had only recently received its UK terrestrial TV premiere and which had led to the re-release of Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away”. What a tangled web of re-issues we weaved.

I recall hearing disgraced TV and radio personality Jonathan king stating that the record label should have switched the release to the B-side which was a song called “Ebb Tide”. Wanna hear it? OK…

Hmm…I’m not sure. “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin'” did well enough anyway thanks Jonathan peaking at No 3.

The play out video is “New Power Generation” by Prince. This was where it all started getting very confusing for me with Prince. New Power Generation was also the name of Prince’s new backing band who would continue in that role until 2013. The phrase “Welcome to the New Power Generation” was first mentioned in a track on the “Lovesexy” album whilst New Power Generation was used for the first time as a band name in the 1990 film Graffiti Bridge. Then there was the single “New Power Generation” and whilst Prince was in dispute with Warners and he became ‘symbol’ in 1993, he use the NPG as a way to release music outside of his contract. However, up to that point, any new Prince music was credited to Prince and The New Power Generation but between 1994 and 1997, the NPG had three Top 40 UK hits in their own right plus two whole albums. Still with me? I think I’ve confused myself actually.

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000tpzf/top-of-the-pops-15111990

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.

Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 08 NOV 1990

Posted on April 3, 2021 by 80stastic

This schedule of reviewing two retro TOTP shows a week is killing me! Plus my Mac is now so old that it can’t cope with any software updates which means the formatting of my posts has gone to pot recently so apologies for that. Enough of my IT issues though. Just a reminder of what is going on here. I, a 52 year old middle aged man, have been reviewing these BBC4 TOTP repeats for over four years now. Having started in 1983 we are now into 1990 and with it being November, the release schedules are starting to get busy with the all important Xmas market on the horizon. As such there are six new singles on the show tonight but we start with a second studio performance for a song that surely didn’t warrant a repeat.

Despite being voted the Best Male Solo SInger in the Smash Hits Readers Poll of 1990 for the second year running (he was also voted the worst Male Solo Singer) and having a string of hit singles to his name this calendar year, all was not well in Jason Donovan world. The hits were getting smaller and the teeny bopper fans had new idols to worship in the form of New Kids On The Block (Donovan trailed in third behind two of them in the Most Fanciable Male category). His latest single “I’m Doing Fine” was doing nothing of the sort and had not even yet made it into the Top 20. A second TOTP outing was called for and so here he was opening the show in a determined effort to re-establish himself in the upper echelons of the charts.

If you compare and contrast this SAW produced ‘song’ with the glorious “Step Back In Time” that we saw on last week’s show from Kylie Minogue… well, it’s like comparing Boris Johnson with the New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern; one’s a fine example of statecraft the other is…well…just a state. And talking of states, what the Hell is Jason wearing here?! It appears to be a suit over the top of a gold lamé tracksuit top and the only person I can think of who used to wear such a garment was that now unmentionable name from Radio 1’s past and the host of that show about fixing things for people (no, not Repair Shop – you know who I’m talking about!).

This TOTP performance did nothing to alleviate Jason’s chart fortunes (literally nothing as it went down from No 22 to No 29 the following week). In 1991, the classic (but desperate) record company trick of releasing a Best Of album saw his profile at least maintained and brought him a couple of Top 20 hits (one a cover version obviously) but his true resurrection came from left field when he scored a No 1 with “Any Dream WIll Do” from Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

Another song at its chart peak next. Paul Simon‘s “The Obvious Child” was very well received critically (as was parent album “The Rhythm Of The Saints”) but what was it actually about? Well, according to one review in Rolling Stone magazine, the lyrics referred to the process of growing old and the fact that ‘days have become defined by their limitations and dogged ordinariness’. Wow! That could just as easily be describing living through the COVID pandemic.

Apparently the song is also the namesake of a film which I never knew until now. Obvious Child is a 2014 American rom-com about a drunken one night stand which leads to the lead character (played by Jenny Slate) deciding to have an abortion. I’ve never seen it but it gets rave reviews with Slate receiving numerous awards for her performance. A bit like Paul Simon then.

“The Obvious Child” peaked at No 15 and it would be another 16 years before Simon had another UK Top 40 single.

What the f**k?! A single that includes the line ‘What the f**k?’ in its lyrics and yet seems to have gone unnoticed for three decades and never been censored nor banned?! Unbelievable! OK, I’ve overplayed the puns a bit there but it is quite extraordinary. You could say the same about the whole EMF story though. Hailing from the Forest Of Dean in Gloucestershire, this lot appeared almost fully formed with an irresistible song and stardom seemed theirs for the taking.

I think I first became aware of them when they appeared on the Smash Hits Poll Winners Party 1990 show which my research tells me took place on the 11th November (so presumably I hadn’t watched this TOTP from three days earlier). I recall saying to my wife as we watched it in our flat that we had just moved into “who the Hell are EMF?”. To be fair to me, what were they doing on a show about the chart stars of the year winning awards when they had only just released their debut single? I would find out soon enough. Their song “Unbelievable” blew me away. It was the right sound at just the right time; they were perfect for late 1990 – right on the money. Coming over like the younger, cheekier siblings of Jesus Jones, they rode the rock-dance crossover zeitgeist flawlessly and were rewarded with a huge hit. “Unbelievable” was a No 3 hit in the UK and a No 1 in the US.

Apparently the “oh” and “It’s unbelievable” samples were taken from controversial (and pretty offensive) US comedian Andrew Dice Clay which I never knew until now. I do recall though that there was a big fuss about what the initials EMF actually stood for. The official line was ‘Epsom Mad Funkers’, a name taken from a New Order fan club although rumours persisted that it referred to ‘ecstasy mother f**ker’ as that phrase featured in a hidden song simply called “EMF” on the band’s debut album “Schubert Dip”.

Despite a string of singles after “Unbelievable” that all made the Top 40, their chart peaks were in decline and after three albums they eventually split. Multiple reunions have taken place since but the band’s history also included tragedy – Zac Foley, the band’s bass guitarist, died in 2002 aged just 31 due to an overdose of non-prescribed drugs.

One of my abiding memories of EMF and “Unbelievable” comes from a long forgotten TV show called Tom Jones: The Right Time which chronicled the history of pop music and how it had been influenced and shaped. The first episode included this performance with EMF and audience members getting on stage to literally hang off Tom’s Neck.

Whilst not a super fan (although I do have their Best Of CD), I would be able to name quite a few Del Amitri songs including “Spit In The Rain” but I had no idea it had actually made it into the Top 40. As far as I can tell, this was a non-album single* released in between the “Waking Hours” and “Change Everything” LPs and actually made No 21 in the charts. In my head, everything the band released between “Nothing Ever Happens” in 1990 and “Always The Last To Know” in 1992 missed the Top 40 but clearly not. It’s fairly typical Del Amitri fare but that’s fine by me with the ‘spit in the rain’ simile a clever lyrical tool.

The band are due to release a new album later in 2021 entitled “Fatal Mistakes” which again could be a reference to the COVID 19 panademic.

*It did eventually appear on a two -disc reissue of “Waking Hours” in 2014

The Top 5 albums feature is still with us so for all the completists out there, these were the best selling albums in the UK for October 1990

Paul Simon – “Rhythm Of The Saints”
The Three Tenors – “In Concert”
Status Quo – “Rocking All Over The Years”
George Michael – “Listen Without Prejudice Vol 1”
The Charlatans – “Some Friendly”

Some pretty mainstream names in there although The Charlatans creeping in at No 5 to remind us that this was 1990 after all. ‘Madchester’ and all that.

Definitely not part of ‘Madchester’ were Liverpool’s The La’s and if EMF’s story was extraordinary, even that had nothing on this lot. The legend of Lee Mavers remains a mystery up there with Richie Edwards of the Manics. Often referred to as a scouse Brian Wilson, his refusal to dance to the music industry’s tune and reputation for studio perfection means he has become a mythical figure with just that one, solitary La’s album to show for his talent.

I think I’d first heard “There She Goes” when working in the toy department of Debenhams at Xmas in 1989 – a colleague had played it to me (it was originally released in November of 1988) and so immediately familiar did it sound that it felt impossible that it hadn’t been in existence for years and years. A timeless melody indeed. The 1990 re-release here was remixed by Steve Lillywhite and this time, resistance was futile. If The Stone Roses could be treated as the new gods of popular music then surely The La’s were also assured a place in musical heaven? For all the plaudits that their album received, I was amazed to discover that it only made No 30 on the chart. It got played to death in the Manchester Our Price I was working in at the time. Sadly, there was to never be a follow up. Bassist John Power got fed up of the inertia and left at the end of 1991 to form the super successful Cast (who Mavers has expressed his extreme dislike for) whilst The La’s went into hiatus for 14 years before a brief reunion in 2005 that resulted in some live shows but no new music.

I saw The La’s twice live; once supporting Fine Young Cannibals when I confidently told my wife that their band name was pronounced The L.A.s (as in LA, California) and once with a friend called Jane who was a fan – that gig was cut short when one of the band possibly Mavers, possibly Peter “Cammy” Cammell (the John Bishop lookalike in this performance I think) stormed off stage never to return, a bit like the hope of any new La’s material.

Just like “The Obvious Child” being name checked in a film, BBC comedy-drama TV series There She Goes was named after the song by The La’s.

To quote EMF, What the f**k?! A single by Gazza?! Yep, despite Italia ’90 having come to its sad conclusion (for England fans) four months prior, we still couldn’t get enough of Mr Gascoigne (supposedly). “Fog On The Tyne” was re-written by Lindisfarne just for the man himself and released as “Fog On The Tyne (Revisited)”. Well, if Timmy Mallett could be a pop star, why not Gazza? Surely he was more popular than that berk? Well, not quite it seemed as Gazza’s debut waxing peaked at No 2 whilst Mallett scored a No 1 as Bombalurina. Still, No 2 was pretty impressive to say that the record was a load of shite.

Was he inspired by his Spurs and England team mate Chris Waddle whose “Diamond Lights” as part of Glenn & Chris had been a hit three years before? Or was it his involvement in New Order’s “World In Motion” England song from the World Cup that made him think he could be a pop star? Well, according to an interview in Smash Hits, when asked ‘why did you decide to embark on a career as a pop star?’ Gazza replied:

“Somebody asked us if I wanted to do a record and I said I would do it”.

There you go then. Simples.

To my mind, Gascoigne’s well documented problems seem to have been exasperated by being surrounded by a lot of people trying to catch a ride on his fame. That Smash Hits article commented that the video shoot was ‘packed with Gazza’s family and Gazza’s mates and Gazza’s mates’ mates and Gazza’s mates’ mates’ second cousins’. Says it all really. Bet Jimmy Five Bellies was there.

Not content with one single, Gazza released a follow up and an album (!) called “Let’s Have A Party” (of course it was) which included four Jive Bunny style medleys – a disco one, a Motown one, an Elvis one (Gazza’s favourite) and a Gilbert O’Sullivan one (yes, a Gilbert O’Sullivan one). Even allowing for the madness of the aforementioned Jive Bunny phenomenon, surely nobody bought Gazza’s album? Surely?

A massive seller over this Xmas period was “The Singles Collection 1984/1990” by Jimmy Somerville covering his solo, Bronski Beat and The Communards career. To promote the album, Jimmy did a cover of The Bee Gees hit “To Love Somebody” which actually suited his voice I thought. Well, I suppose you could join the dots between the Jimmy’s falsetto voice and Barry Gibb’s (who wrote the song) quite easily. I like the way in which Jimmy never seemed to dress up for his TOTP appearances. Check him out here in his plain grey T-shirt and jeans. Quite the contrast to Jason Donovan’s attire at the top of the show. If you’ve got the pipes, that’s all that is really required, eh Jase?

“To Love Somebody” peaked at No 8.

The Righteous Brothers remain in pole position with “Unchained Melody” which, in 1999, the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers called one of the 25 most-performed songs and musical works of the entire 20th century! It’s been covered by everyone from Elvis to Bing Crosby to LeAnn Rimes to U2…no really….see?

It’s the Righteous Brothers version that is the definitive take though surely? So pervasive is the song’s influence that Ghost (the film that generated its re-release) was originally going to be called Unchained Melody.

Inevitably, Family Guy has its own take on Ghost and “Unchained Melody”:

The play out video is the new one from 808 State. Double A-side “Cubik / Olympic” would peak at No 10. The “Olympic” track was recorded in support of Manchester’s 1996 Olympic bid. That bid would be unsuccessful with Atlanta getting the nod but Manchester would try again for the 2000 Olympics and I was was working in Our Price in Stockport the day that decision was announced. There was an event down at the Castlefield area in Manchester city centre with thousands of people congregating to hopefully celebrate the good news. The trams were packed ferrying party goers to the venue. Sadly, the Manchester faithful were disappointed again as Sydney was announced as the host city. That great city that was our home for the best part of the 90s would ultimately get its time in the sun when it hosted the 2002 Commonwealth Games – two years after we left Manchester.

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Jason Donovan	I’m Doing Fine	No of course not
2	Paul Simon	Obvious Child	No but it was on that first Q Magazine album that I bought.
3	EMF	Unbelievable	Unbelievably not at the time but I did buy a later single of theirs called Afro King, the CD of which was like a mini greatest hits which had it on
4	Del Amitri	Spit In The Rain	No but its on my greatest hits CD of theirs
5	The La’s	There She Goes	Not the single but I have their album
6	Gazza and Lindisfarne	Fog On The Tyne – Revisited	NO!
7	Jimmy Somerville	To Love Somebody	No but I had that 84-90 Best Of with it on
8	The Righteous Brothers	Unchained Melody	It’s a no
9	808 State	Cubik / Olympic	Nope

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000th92/top-of-the-pops-08111990

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.

Some bedtime reading?

Page 1 - Smash Hits - Issue 311 - 31st October - 13th November 1990

TOTP 01 NOV 1990

Posted on April 1, 2021 by 80stastic

It’s November 1990 and having got married just 12 days earlier, another huge moment in my life has occurred – we’ve moved to Manchester! Yes, despite knowing only two other residents of Manc land between us, my wife and I have chosen to move to that great city to begin our married life together. We arrived back from our honeymoon exactly one week after the wedding day and moved that very day to Manchester. I hadn’t even seen the rented flat we were going to be living in as my wife had sorted that out. That small studio flat would be our home for the next four years and we loved it. The big events kept coming as after the wedding, the honeymoon, moving city, moving into a flat, I then started work on the Monday at Our Price. After two days training in the offices above the Piccadilly store, I was despatched to the Market Street shop down the road. By the time this TOTP was broadcast, I would have completed two whole days there (If my dates are correct). Given that this was such a momentous time for me, I must surely remember all the songs that were on the show?

Tonight’s host is Simon Mayo who I don’t recall being so smug but that’s the exact word I would use to describe his performance here. Certainly not smug though is the opening act – if anything I would think she was the exact opposite – unsure and apprehensive. Kim Appleby was of course one half of Mel & Kim who had torn up the charts in the late 80s with their SAW dance tunes and ‘up yours’ attitude. Tragically, Mel had died of cancer-related pneumonia at the start of 1990 but Kim resolved to carry on and record some of the songs that they had been working on during her sister’s illness. “Don’t Worry” was the first of those to see the light of day but Kim’s hesitancy about going it alone was revealed in a Smash Hits interview:

“I don’t know how people are going to react to my record but all I can say is I’m doing my best.”

She needn’t have… erm…worried because “Don’t Worry” was a fantastic pop song. Was it a million miles away from her Mel & Kim era? No, of course not (even though it was not produced by SAW) but it had an added sense of maturity to it from that unexpected, gentle fade in to the uplifting lyrics promoting positivity – there was no showing out or getting fresh going on here.

If Kim was nervous about her return to the world of pop music, she disguised those anxieties with an energetic performance here although quite what she thought being dressed like Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen would add to the overall effect, I’m not sure.

“Don’t Worry” surely exceeded Kim and her record label’s expectations after being away for so long by peaking at No 2.

Robert Palmer already had a reputation for being a musical chameleon with his back catalogue combining elements of soul, jazz, rock, pop, reggae and blues. Quite what he hoped to get credibility wise out of a collaboration with UB40 then I’m not sure. Not only that but it wasn’t even an original song that they might have cooked up between them but a cover version. “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” was a Bob Dylan song from his “John Wesley Harding” album and given how many artists have interpreted Dylan songs down the years*, was Palmer just jumping on a well ridden bandwagon? To be fair, the version he and the Brummie reggae boys came up with didn’t sound much like Dylan with its calypso lilt and jaunty rhythms. It still doesn’t explain the reason why the two acts chose to record it though. It wasn’t as if either had been languishing in the chart doldrums for a sustained period. Indeed, both had clocked up Top 10 singles within recent memory. Maybe they just knew each other and got along?

Palmer’s album “Don’t Explain” (from which “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” was the lead single) would go onto be certified Gold although the only other chart hit from it was another cover version – “Marvin Gaye’s “Mercy Mercy Me” whilst “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” would peak at No 6.

*The history of recorded music is littered is with Dylan covers by a multitude of artists but if you want a really out there one, how about “Subterranean Homesick Blues” by Lofty from Eastenders?

After coming over all smug and superior with his ‘look at how much I know about pop music’ tone when advising us all that “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” was actually a Bob Dylan song, Simon Mayo is at it again when introducing Black Box.

“Well, cover versions are all the thing. We’ve already had one, that was the UB40 song. Here’s another one…” he starts off. He’s like the most patronising Jackanory presenter ever. ‘Let me tell you a story about cover versions…’ he might as well have said. Git. Technically he is right of course in that “Fantasy” is the song by Earth, Wind And Fire but his tone is so condescending.

This was Black Box’s fourth consecutive UK chart hit but it would prove to be the last time that they would visit the Top 10 when it peaked at No 5. I’m not sure that their version actually adds anything at all to the original being a fairly faithful reproduction of it. Also, surely the cat must have been out of the bag by this time that the woman up there front of stage (Katrin Quinol) wasn’t the actual vocalist on any of these hits. The singer on this one was Martha Wash who did most of the vocals on their “Dreamland” album. Apparently the guys behind Black Box didn’t care a jot though and were boldly brazening it out like Boris Johnson shamelessly disregarding yet another cronyism scandal. In ‘Borisworld’, the PM would no doubt have Jennifer Arcuri up there lip syncing away whilst declaring that all her vocals had been laid down in complete propriety and that the recording sessions were all there on public record for anyone to see.

More ‘look how clever I am’ – ness from Mayo next as he references Robert Palmer / UB40’s “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” (yet again) with Whitney Houston‘s “I’m Your Baby Tonight” as the song titles sound very similar. Well done Simon, what an amazing insight you provided. In all honesty though, whilst I’m criticising Mayo, I’ve very little else to say about this one myself other than I have a memory of selling the “I’m Your Baby Tonight” album on tape whilst working at Our Price that Xmas and the shop chart cassette buyer (a guy called Steve who I am still friends with all these years later) sitting near the chart cassette filing one Saturday afternoon trying to order some more as we had almost sold out and asking me to go away and sell something else as he was nearly out of stock. Yeah, right, not sure how that was supposed to work Steve? I don’t think I had an ‘Actually, would you mind awfully buying something else otherwise the buyer’s going to have a breakdown’ in me. Oh, hang on – was it the Jimmy Somerville Best Of album now I come to think of it? Amazing insight from your blogger there I’m sure you’ll agree.

“I’m Your Baby Tonight” (the single) peaked at No 5.

Some Roxette next with a re-release of their “Dressed For Success” single. When I started at Our Price there wasn’t much of a dress code; certainly there wasn’t a staff uniform (although that would come in later years). You could pretty much wear what you wanted within reason. One woman turned up in a catsuit one day and asked me if I thought it was a bit much for work. I didn’t know where to look! I’ve no memory of what I’d chosen to wear for my first day in the shop but I do remember being mercilessly ribbed the day I decided to come in wearing a white shirt and a black waistcoat. Cue lots of comments about Ray Reardon, snooker and…erm…cues.

Back to Roxette and Mayo is still shoehorning in references to Bob Dylan b-sides (even though there is no relevance here whatsoever). Some eagle eyed viewer reckoned that this performance must have been recorded for the initial release of the single back in ’89 (you could tell by the BBC logos or something) and that does make sense as the cut to the duo clearly indicates that they were not there for the actual recording of the show. This of course raises the question of why a performance would have been recorded for a song that didn’t get in the chart on first release? I thought the show was meant to have a strict Top 40 only policy? What? They had ‘the look’ and were ‘dressed for success’ and that got them the gig? Sorry – that was lame.

Another song we’ve seen before recently now as Rita MacNeil sings us a tale of a “Working Man”. Although the song’s sentiments were very worthy, there was very little here to hold my attention. It was all a bit Lena Martell (who had been a favourite of my parents during my childhood) meets “Every Loser Wins” by Nick Berry. Rita never had another UK chart hit and sadly died in 2013.

When I think of The Cure‘s remix compilation album “Mixed Up”, the track that comes to mind is “Never Enough” which was the single chosen to promote it. I had totally forgotten that a second single was released from it. “Close to Me – Remix” was that single and of course was a remix of their 1985 track from their “The Head On The Door” album. I really cannot see the point of this 1990 version though. It sounds exactly like the original but just slowed down a bit doesn’t it? Or am I missing something? The gentle intrigue of the 1985 original gets lost in the mix for me.

It took me a little while to realise that the video for the remix single was a continuation of the original promo which I thought was very clever, playing on the theme of claustrophobia with the band performing under duress within the confines of a wardrobe. Unfortunately, the second video doesn’t really work as well. Carrying on where the first video ended with the wardrobe (and its content of band members) falling off the edge of a cliff into the sea Young Ones style. The story board of the second video had the band escaping from their potential watery grave only to be attacked by an octopus and a starfish. The 1985 video was genuinely ingenious – there didn’t seem to be much thought gone into its 1990 counterpart although I’m guessing they were both directed by the band’s long time collaborator Tim Pope. The sea creature costumes make it all look a bit Mighty Boosh but without the laughs. Actually, maybe the video was was a source of inspiration for Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt. I can imagine Fielding in particular being a big Robert Smith fan.

“Close to Me – Remix” peaked at No 13 (as did “Never Enough”) which was 11 places higher than the much better original. We would not see The Cure in the charts for another 18 months when they would return with their “Wish” album.

OK, for me, this next song is peak Kylie Minogue. I might be looking back through nostalgia-tinted glasses of a much happier and simpler time but “Step Back In Time” was a great pop-dance track and yes, I realise that means I am commending a SAW produced track! Essentially one of those tribute songs like “Nightshift” by The Commodores and… erm…”Tribute (Right On)” by The Pasadenas with its 70s disco referencing lyrics, it’s got a great hooky chorus whilst the bridges that lead into them (‘Remember the O’Jays…’) are brilliant. One of my Xmas co-workers at Our Price in 1990 was a girl called Lucy who loved this track and she was bang on the money. Also, the dance routines on show in this performance really are impressive. Say what you like about Kylie but she really was very good at jumping in time.

“Step Back In Time” was the second single from Kylie’s “Rhythm Of Love” album and peaked at No 4.

Well that didn’t take very long did it? “Unchained Melody” by The Righteous Brothers is No 1 after just two weeks! Know-it-all Mayo feels the need to once more furnish us with his pop music knowledge by giving us the details of other artists who have recorded the track by name checking Jimmy Young, Harry Secombe and Des O’Connor (all the greats then). Look Mayo, if you wanted to dazzle us with charts statistics then here’s how you do it courtesy of @TOTPFacts:

"Unchained Melody" was first a UK hit for Les Baxter in 1955, peaking at 10. The top 20 for 17-23 June 1955 included four different recordings of the song: Al Hibbler's version at 2, Jimmy Young at 3, Les Baxter at 17 and Liberace at 20 – a record! #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) March 26, 2021

Last week I mentioned that the video for this had confused me when I first saw it as there was only one person (Bobby Hatfield) singing and I wondered where the other Righteous Brother Bill Medley was. Well, Simon Mayo, the guru of pop trivia , had the answer for me in his closing link. At the song’s end, he says “the other one was in the loo or something, I don’t know”. Simon Mayo there doing his best Mike Read impression.

The play out video is George Michael with “Waiting For That Day”. Another video mystery with this one as last week I posited the notion that I didn’t think George had done a promo for this (much as he had refused to film one for previous single “Praying For Time” due to his dispute with Sony). All that I could find was a clip from The South Bank Show which showed George discussing the song’s origins in the studio. However, TOTP seemed to have secured a video which was solely a performance of the track in the said same studio. I’ve worked out what the deal was here though. If you go to the final minute of that South Bank Show clip, there is that very performance. Bit of clever editing going on there then I think by the TOTP producers.

“Waiting For That Day” peaked at No 23.

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Kim Appleby	Don’t Worry	Don’t think I did – great pop song though
2	Robert Palmer / UB40	I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight	No but it might be on my Robert Palmer Best Of CD
3	Black Box	Fantasy	Nope
4	Whitney Houston	I’m Your Baby Tonight	Negative
5	Roxette	Dressed For Success	Nah
6	Rita MacNeil	Working Man	No
7	The Cure	Close To Me – Remix	Another no
8	Kylie Minogue	Step Back In Time	No but I think my wife has her Greatest Hits with it on
9	The Righteous Brothers	Unchained Melody	It’s a no
10	George Michael	Waiting For That Day	No but my wife had the album

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000th90/top-of-the-pops-01111990

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.

Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 25 OCT 1990

Posted on March 26, 2021 by 80stastic

It’s late October 1990 and I’m on my honeymoon in Germany. Yes, having tied the knot with my girlfriend five days prior to this TOTP broadcast, we were abroad (for the first time for me) thanks to one of our old friends from Polytechnic who had sorted out a cheap holiday for us as they were working as a temp in a travel agents at the time. Unfortunately for me, my feet were in spasms of agony after I had made a very poor choice when purchasing a pair of shoes for the big day on the morning of the wedding. Why I did this so late I can’t recall but I had no time to wear them in and the shape of them clearly didn’t agree with my feet. My despair was compounded when I realised that I hadn’t packed any other sort of footwear for the honeymoon and so had to spend the whole week wearing them in pain.

As a result of being out of the country, I am absolutely sure that I would not have watched this particular TOTP – if memory serves, I was bathing my poor plates of meat whilst watching some German football in our accommodation. I wonder if there was anything soothing on the show that night or was it a distinctly more painful experience….

We start with the song that closed the last show but this time the artist is in the studio. Not only that but, according to host Jakki Brambles, she had broken off rehearsals with the reformed Go-Go’s to be there. It can only be Belinda Carlisle with “(We Want) The Same Thing”. That Go-Go’s rehearsal was for a tour to promote their first Best Of album although according to Wikipedia, it peaked at No 127 in the US so I’m not sure that the tour was really that successful in achieving its aim.

“(We Want) The Same Thing” on the other hand was doing a great job of re-energising Belinda’s “Runaway Horses” album, surprisingly going Top 10 despite being the fifth single to be released from the album. When I joined Our Price the following week, there was a tip from the buying department in the weekly memos advising stores to stock up on the album noting that it was a record that, despite being over a year old, just wouldn’t stay dead.

Belinda’s beehived backing singers appear to include Sharon Watts from Eastenders in their number whilst her own outfit seems to have been inspired by a French maid character that you might see on those ‘saucy’ postcards back in the 70s. Thankfully it isn’t the same thing though despite what young teenage lads watching on TV may have wanted.

Another golden oldie back in the charts?! Oh and guess what? It was from yet another film. This time it was the supernatural romantic thriller Ghost starring Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore and Whoopi Goldberg that was to blame. The Righteous Brothers had already featured in a very successful film back in 1986 when they were included on the Top Gun soundtrack with “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin'” (there really was an all roads lead to Tom Cruise thing going on wasn’t there?) but now their version of “Unchained Melody” was at the centrepiece of Ghost’s most iconic moment – the pottery wheel scene. Cited as ‘one of the most iconic moments of ’90s cinema’, all that mucky clay business created a clamour for the song that could only be sated by a re-release that would become not only a No 1 record (it originally peaked at No 14 in 1965) but also *spoiler alert* the UK’s top selling single of 1990. The single’s success would be reason enough for a follow up and so, inevitably, “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin'” was re-issued and made No 3 as did a hastily arranged Righteous Brothers Best Of compilation.

The Righteous Brothers were, in their original format, Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield. Medley, of course, already had his own personal bit of soundtrack history when he duetted with Jennifer Warnes on “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” from Dirty Dancing. Given this info, I was immediately confused when I saw the video being used to promote “Unchained Melody” as there was only one Righteous Brother on display who was Hatfield, Where the Hell was Bill Medley?! Well, the legend goes something like this. Hatfield and Medley had agreed to do one solo song each per album. Both had wanted to sing “Unchained Melody” for their fourth album but Hatfield won the coin toss.

The song would cause another Top 40 phenomenon five years later when it was performed by actors Robson Green and Jerome Flynn in the ITV drama Soldier Soldier. I was working in the Stockport branch of Our Price at the time and the amount of people who had not been near a record shop for years that ventured in to enquire about that record from Soldier Soldier was unreal. When eventually released, like The Righteous Brothers five years before them, it would become the best selling single of the year in the UK. Strange times indeed. And we haven’t even mentioned the Gareth Gates version in 2002 but let’s not get into that eh?

An example of a new track being used to promote a load of old tunes next as we get “Don’t Ask Me” by Public Image Limited. This single was taken from a Best Of album called “The Greatest Hits, So Far” (although PiL never did manage another chart entry after this). It sounded so very pop music-like to me which was a surprise given John Lydon’s previous canon of work. When I was a full on pop kid back in ’83 influenced almost entirely by the Top 40, “This Is Not A Love Song” sounded like it had come from a different universe entirely compared to its chart peers. I didn’t know much of PiL’s back catalogue (although I obviously knew of Lydon’s Sex Pistols’ history) but anybody could hear how completely ‘other’ this song was in the shiny world of ‘new pop’ back then. Fast forward seven years, and although anything with Lydon’s vocals on it could never be described as mainstream, “Don’t Ask Me” was ….well…a good pop song. According to @TOTPFacts though, the band’s bassist Allan Dias who wrote it really wasn’t happy with how it sounded:

"I hate that version that's out, it's so soft. You should have heard my version – it was cutting, it kicked! They softened it up, they made it MTV-friendly." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) March 19, 2021

“Don’t Ask Me” peaked at No 22 and it took PiL a further two years to release any new recordings which arrived in the form of the album “That What Is Not”. Two years was nothing though as the album after that didn’t appear for TWENTY years as the band was put on hiatus.

I’ve always found Lydon a captivating character and been intrigued by his confrontational interviews. However, his support for Donald Trump in the 2020 US Presidential election was a step too far for me and I found his views totally unpalatable.

Oh come on! This is getting ridiculous now! After Maria McKee spent a month at No 1 with a song from a Tom Cruise movie and after seeing “Unchained Melody” back in the charts earlier from the film Ghost, here were Berlin riding high in the Top 40 once more with that song from yet another movie! And indeed, another Tom Cruise film! What was it with this guys films generating huge hits in the music charts back then? After Top Gun gave us the frankly awful (in my book) “Take My Breath Away”, we then had two singles from the soundtrack to Cruise’s 1988 flick Cocktail in “Kokomo” by The Beach Boys and Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” which both became massive successes.

Even his 1992 film Far And Away whose soundtrack was composed by John Williams and was a mixture of traditional Irish instrumentation and conventional orchestra; yes even that managed to give us “Book Of Days” by Enya! The following year his Interview With A Vampire film spawned what was seen as heresy for many a rock fan, the Guns N’ Roses cover of “Sympathy For The Devil” by The Rolling Stones (described by a record shop colleague at the time as ‘comedy record of the week’).

Out of interest, I just googled if there was an album of Tom Cruise film songs and there is! Called “Born On The Fourth Of July – Music From The Films Of Tom Cruise”, it’s yours for £369.32 from Amazon! All of this would eventually and inevitably lead to Cruise having a go at the old singing lark himself when he played rock star Stacee Jaxx in Rock Of Ages. Behold the Cruisemeister!

Finally some new music from a new band (sort of). Having finally hit big commercially with “I’m Free” over the Summer, The Soup Dragons needed a quick, sure -fire follow up to consolidate on that success. So what did they do? Well, they did what everyone does and re-released a previous single that had flopped and bingo! Another bona fide chart hit! The previous single in question was “Mother Universe” which for me was even better than “I’m Free” and I duly bought it. However, that original version that was released back in 1989 (which I hadn’t known) didn’t sound like the re-release….

Compare that rather turgid mix to the revamped, pimped up 1990 incarnation…

It’s as if the magic elixir that they had discovered for “I’m Free” had been liberally poured all over the original “Mother Universe” recording and what grew in its place was the slick, knowing and well-to-do cousin of its poor relative. The gospel choir, the Mikey Dread sample in the intro and all those other little elements that had conspired to make “I’m Free” so irresistible did the trick again. and “Mother Universe” (the re-release) was another chart hit, albeit much smaller than its predecessor peaking at No 26.

Despite that, and as much as I liked “I’m Free”, this will always be the better record for me (see also The Boo Radleys whose “Wake Up Boo!” is by far their biggest and most played hit but I infinitely prefer its follow up “Find The Answer Within”) Is there a name for that syndrome of preferring a more obscure song to the one that was an artist’s biggest hit that everyone else always chooses? Oh yes, I think it’s called being a precious, music snob.

Jason Donovan again?! For all that he was the pop prince of 1989 which was his year in the sun, he seems to have cast quite the shadow over 1990 as well. “I’m Doing Fine” was his fourth single release of the year (all taken from his “Between The Lines” album) and was also the worst performing, peaking at No 22. Now what’s Jakki Brambles saying about him in her intro? Something about him proving all his critics wrong by actually playing live at his…erm…live gigs. She protests too much I do fear. And what was that about The Beatles? This was his tribute to them? What’s that supposed to mean? OK, let’s have a listen then….

…well, as a Beatles influenced record it’s hardly Oasis is it? The opening guitar chords are very vaguely reminiscent of their “Rubber Soul” era but if anything, it sounds more like a track by The Monkees than the MopTops. It’s like a piss weak version of “Tonight” by New Kids On The Block which in itself was a piss weak take on The Beatles / Beach Boys sound. And what the heck was Donovan’s performance here all about? All that Billie from The Double Deckers thumbs up, arm jerking, his ridiculous hair and those frankly bizarre strides. Yet again, I say he protests too much.

Ooh! A single now from a new album that the music business is in raptures over according to Jakki B – what could it be? Oh… it’s “The Rhythm Of The Saints” by Paul Simon. This is probably a completely unfair opinion and I am certainly no expert on the album but wasn’t this just a retread of his iconic “Graceland’ album only not as good? As I said, probably unfair but the sales figures kind of back me up. Although it sold well (2 x platinum in both the UK and the US – indeed it was a No 1 album over here), those numbers were dwarfed by what “Graceland” achieved. Again, probably an unfair gauge but apart from lead single “The Obvious Child”, none of the other tracks lifted from “The Rhythm Of The Saints” were hits.

Although both were termed ‘world music’ albums, whereas “Graceland” had combined Western pop themes with African rhythms, its follow up relocated geographically to South America and took its inspiration from Brazilian drum beats. “The Obvious Child” was pleasant enough although those drums seemed a bit incongruous but it was nowhere near as memorably quirky as say “You Can Call Me Al”. I’m sure that in the intervening 30 years that some revisionism will have taken place and “The Rhythm Of The Saints” will no doubt be critically adored but it all felt a bit underwhelming to me at the time. “Graceland 2”? Bit obvious wasn’t it Paul?

A couple of Breakers next from two guys who knew each other well and had worked with together previously. George Michael was not happy with his record company Sony Music at this time as he perceived that they were not supporting him as an artist. So toxic had the relationship become that he refused to film a video for his last single “Praying For time” which had been the first track released from his second solo album “Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1”. As far as I can see, he didn’t film one for follow up single “Waiting For That Day” either. The clip below seems to be taken from the South Bank Show judging by Melvyn Bragg’s voice over. It’s quite an interesting clip though, explaining as it does how George put the track together by employing the ubiquitous James Brown “Funky Drummer” sample in a totally different way alongside some mellow folk style guitar chords. The melody borrows heavily from “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” by The Rolling Stones so George wisely drew attention to this by referencing that song in the lyrics and giving Mick Jagger and Keith Richards a songwriting credit.

After the mega success of “Faith” and its attendant singles, whatever came after from Michael would probably not be seen favourably in comparison but for me, “Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1” is by far the better album with “Waiting For That Day” one of the stand out tracks. However, much like Paul Simon, the album didn’t sell anywhere near as well as its predecessor and the singles were not huge hits. “Waiting For That Day” peaked at No 23 in the UK and No 27 in the US.

I don’t recall this Elton John single at all. “You Gotta Love Someone”? Nope – I’ve got nothing at all. Was this another track from “Sleeping With The Past”?

*checks Wikipedia*

FFS! It was from the Days Of Thunder soundtrack! Pissing Tom Cruise strikes again!

It’s not much of a song in truth. As with much of his early 90s output, it was a trudging, mid tempo ballad that Elton tried to liven up a bit at the end with the addition of a gospel choir – he should have got onto The Soup Dragons for help in that direction. It peaked at No 33 but was included on “The Very Best Of Elton John” album that was released this month and which would end up being the first thing I ever sold when I came to work at Our Price a week or so later.

Paul Simon, George Michael, Elton John and now Paul McCartney in the running order for this TOTP! Talk about big names! They weren’t exactly new and exciting though were they? We saw “Birthday” just the other week so I’ve very little left to say about it.

The 90s were not Paul’s most successful years I would argue. He didn’t have a single that even made the Top 15 let alone the Top 5. He did however dabble in a different musical genre when he released “Paul McCartney’s Liverpool Oratorio”, his first foray into classical music and a collaboration with conductor and composer Clive Davis to commemorate The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra’s 150th anniversary. Towards the end of the decade, he released the “Flaming Pie” album which, although not necessarily reversing his commercial fortunes, was critically well received.

“Birthday” peaked at No 29.

We arrive at what remains the only No 1 song ever penned by Paul Heaton*. Given his canon of work, this seems incredible. “A Little Time” was the first single from the second album by The Beautiful South called “Choke” and rather bizarrely was the only single from it to be a Top 40 hit. The album sold well enough – it went platinum and peaked at No 2 – but the two further singles released from it, (the Soul II Soul lampooning “My Book” and “Let Love Speak Up Itself”) peaked at Nos 43 and 51 respectively. The phenomenon of No 1 singles by established artists (so not one hit wonders) being followed by records that didn’t even chart is not a common one I’m guessing. I can think of “E.S.P” by The Bee Gees peaking outside the Top 40 after their chart Topper “You Win Again”. off the top of my head.

I recall that when I started at Our Price, whoever the chart LP buyer was in my store had gone a bit overboard with the orders for “Choke” and there was a massive overstock of it that I don’t think was ever cleared (a lack of further hit singles from it probably didn’t help!).

*”Caravan Of Love” was a No 1 for The Housemartins but was a cover version of an Isley-Jasper-Isley song

The play out video is “Dressed For Success” by Roxette whose re-release schedule was still in full effect at this point. Having hit it big with “It Must Have Been Love” (yet another film soundtrack single), the band’s record company had embarked upon a strategy of re-issuing their previous singles that hadn’t been hits first time around. We’d already had “Listen To Your Heart” go Top 10 and now it was time for “Dressed For Success” to try its luck. Despite its self prophesying title, it didn’t quite do the same job although its peak of No 18 was 30 places higher than its original release.

Not sounding as accomplished as either “It Must Have Been Love” or “Listen To Your Heart”, it was like a clunky version of early Abba material. It did the job of maintaining the duo’s profile though until new album “Joyride” was released in the March of 1991.

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Belinda Carlisle	(We Want) The Same Thing	Not sure we did Belinda because I didn’t buy this
2	The Righteous Brothers	Unchained Melody	It’s a no
3	Public Image Limited	Don’t Ask Me	Nope
4	Berlin	Take My Breath Away	No – not in 1990 nor 1986
5	The Soup Dragons	Mother Universe	Yes! Present and correct in the singles box!
6	Jason Donovan	I’m Doing Fine	No of course not
7	Paul Simon	Obvious Child	No but it was on that first Q Magazine album that I bought.
8	George Michael	Waiting For That Day	No but my wife had the album
9	Elton John	You Gotta Love Someone	No
10	Paul McCartney	Birthday	Negative
11	The Beautiful South	A Little Time	Not the single but I have it on their Best Of album
12	Roxette	Dressed For Success	Nah

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000t888/top-of-the-pops-25101990

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.

Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 18 OCT 1990

Posted on March 24, 2021 by 80stastic

I’m getting married in two days time! Well, back in 1990 I was – I’ve been married for 30 years now but yes, on Saturday 20th October of that momentous year, my wife and I tied the knot at the tender age of 22. Consequently, I’m not entirely sure that I would have had the time to watch this particular episode of TOTP on the Thursday, less than 48 hours before the big day. Wedding preparations and all that. However, I was still sufficiently engaged with the charts back then to know most of the songs featured here although a couple do escape me. Let’s see what I missed out on….

Goodier had over done it in the Green room pre show and it finally caught up with him

First of all, it should be noted that, for some reason, tonight’s host, Mark Goodier, has decided to come dressed looking like a redshirt from Star Trek – you know, those disposable characters that wore red tunics to signify they were security personnel that would almost always end up dying within the first few minutes, usually after transporting down the the surface of an alien planet and probably before the opening titles had played. Let’s hope Goodier doesn’t make any howlers that leads to him dying on stage as it were.

Tonight’s first act are A-ha, not seen in the charts for nearly two years and by the point that they made it back, it seemed that maybe their time had passed. Their cover of the Everly Brothers’ “Crying In The Rain” was the lead single from their fourth album “East Of The Sun, West Of The Moon” but unlike their previous three albums which had all peaked at No 2, this one topped out at No 12. Not a disaster but definitely going in the wrong direction. “Crying In The Rain” was the only cover version on the album with the rest being either Pål Waaktaar or Magne Furuholmen originals or collaborations between the two. Did the fact that they had chosen to announce the album with a cover version indicate a lack of faith in their own songs or am I reading too much into that?

I think they actually make a fine job of “Crying In The Rain”, imbuing it with some Nordic atmospherics and a fjord full of drama. Morten Harket was born to sing this sort of stuff. However, as with the album, the public’s reaction was lukewarm and it failed to make the Top 10. Again, not a catastrophe – only the title track of the four singles lifted from previous album “Stay On These Roads” had made the Top 10 – but it was a far cry from the days of their ’85 to ’87 peak when pretty much every single release went Top 10.

I spent a lot of those A-ha glory years paying close attention to what Morten was doing with his hair with many an unsuccessful attempt to recreate his look befalling my bonce. Here though he looks like he’s got what we would call today ‘lockdown’ hair, all overgrown and loosely styled. Had I caught the show at the time, I’m not sure I would have been convinced.

A-ha would not have another Top 40 hit for three years.

A marmite song next or at least it seems to be for many people, you either love it or hate it. I fall into the former category but I know people (my mate Robin for one) who think it is beyond awful. Aztec Camera had enjoyed a remarkable and unexpected upturn in commercial fortunes at the back end of the 80s with their sleek, well polished soul-pop album “Love” which brought them (I mean Roddy Frame really of course) their biggest ever hit single in “Somewhere In My Heart” which was also their worst in my book but we don’t need to go there.

However, in a move reminiscent of ABC recording the rock-influenced sophomore album “Beauty Stab” when the smart money would have been to come up with “The Lexicon Of Love” part II (which they ultimately did in 2016), Frame retreated from putting out another overly commercial album as the follow up to “Love” and instead came up with “Stray”. Not that “Stray” was a straight up rock record despite it including their best Rolling Stones impression on “How It Is” ; no, it was more….’organic’? I hate that word but what I mean is that it was lacking in the big production sheen of its predecessor and was a bit more back to basics, the Roddy Frame of those early 80s years. The album is pretty eclectic actually with most musical genres on display including smoky jazz ballads (“Over My Head”), doomy rock (“Get Outta London”) and the sparkling indie-pop of lead single “The Crying Scene” (which I bought but everybody else seemed to ignore).

However, it’s second single “Good Morning Britain” that everyone thinks of, for better or worse, during this phase of the band’s career. Quite why people seem to hate it so much I’m not sure. In the case of my friend Robin, it seems to be about Roddy choosing to wear bondage trousers in the video (presumably as some sort of acknowledgement of his collaborator Mick Jones’s punk past) that offends so. Mind you, Robin was massively offended by the Steve character (played by Campbell Scott) in the 1992 Seattle based rom-com film Singles because Steve, urban planner by day but DJ by night, kept his record collection in see through PVC sleeves! The horror! Once that scene played out early on in the film, Robin was done and paid little attention to the rest of it. Ironically, I think the record that caused Robin to nearly self combust with rage was “London Calling” by The Clash.

Back to “Good Morning Britain”, and another person who cannot stand the song is 6 Music DJ Shaun Keaveny who I’m pretty sure made a commitment on air once that he would never allow it to be played on his show. For me though, it fair throbs along and the interplay between Frame and Jones singing alternate lines adds another layer to it. The politicised lyrics calling for better equality and treatment of citizens from all four corners of the United Kingdom seems a rallying call worth making. It’s pretty damn catchy as well of course.

It would prove to be Roddy’s last ever trip to the Top 40 when it peaked at No 19.

“The No 1 dance record in the UK at the moment” is up next according to Mark Goodier. Wow! Who could that be?! The KLF? Bass-O-Matic maybe? MC Hammer even? No, it’s Innocence with “Let’s Push It”. Really?! This was the No 1 dance record?! OK, I was never a massive dance fan so I don’t really know what I’m talking about but was this meandering, chill-out, soul/jazz confection really that much of a big deal?! I mean it’s inoffensive enough but that’s the problem, it doesn’t really go anywhere or cause any sort of reaction (well, not in me at least). I didn’t and still don’t really get it. I didn’t mind their next single, the more melodic “A Matter Of Fact” but this one? Nah, not for me.

Some more soul incoming but this was much more bold and brassy sounding to my ears. Behold the return of Whitney Houston! “I’m Your Baby Tonight” was the name of her new single and album and was apparently a deliberate attempt by her record label Arista to reconnect her with her black fan base. As such, after the all out pop sound of her “Whitney” album, her third studio album had more of an R&B edge. If there had been any fear at Arista about her success continuing after a record-breaking string of seven consecutive No 1 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 prior to this release, then they would have been allayed by the title track making it eight on the trot. The second single of the album (“All the Man That I Need”) would extend the run to nine.

However, although the album sold well, it only did half the business that her first two LPs did. Furthermore, the newly emerged foe who was Mariah Carey meant that laurels could not be rested upon, especially when she beat Whitney to the Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for her “Vision Of Love” single which trumped “I’m Your Baby Tonight”.

Fast forward two years though and Whitney would return with the biggest selling album of her career – “The Bodyguard: Original Soundtrack Album” which would sell a whopping 45 million copies worldwide. For now though, back in October 1990, she was doing OK just about. She was however, just weeks away from a pre-recorded vocals controversy when she sang the national anthem at Super Bowl XXV. Controversy and Whitney would be forever entwined throughout her life it seemed.

Mondays in the area! Yes, with my own move to Manchester happening just 9 days on from this TOTP, here were one of the kings of ‘Madchester’ back in the Top 40. Happy Mondays were bona fide charts stars now after the huge success of “Step On” earlier in the year. “Kinky Afro” though was the first big hit that they would have that was their own tune (“Step On” had been a cover version).

A Happy Mondays original it may have been but its sound was certainly shaped by some exterior influences. Apparently, the bass line was inspired by Hot Chocolate’s Brother Louie” whilst the ‘yippie yippie ya ya yeah yeah’ chorus was their take on ‘voulez-vous coucher avec moi’ from the Labelle hit “Lady Marmalade”. And check this out from @TOTPFacts about the song’s title:

Shaun Ryder: "We were gonna call it 'Groovy Afro' but we changed it to 'Kinky' after The Farm came out with 'Groovy Train.'" #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) March 19, 2021

That new album that Goodier makes reference to in his intro is of course the band’s iconic long player “Pills ‘n’ Thrills And Bellyaches”. It was released just as I was starting in my position of Xmas temp at Our Price in Manchester and I can still see the seemingly endless amount of copies of the vinyl for it behind the counter and thinking ‘are they really going to see all those?’. I think they did.

“Kinky Afro” matched its predecessor “Step On” by peaking at No 5.

Right, who’s this lady? Well, Rita MacNeil was a Canadian country singer who very briefly was one of the genre’s biggest names. Her international hit was “Working Man” which was a tribute to the endeavours of coal miners in Nova Scotia (hence Goodier’s pathetically weak quip “Yep, that song is suitable for minors”). On the back of the success of the single, she embarked on a European tour including one night at the Royal Albert Hall.

There really wasn’t much here for me I have to say although she is a big favourite of my country music loving Dad and he has even been known to belt out a version of “Working Man” himself.

Rita MacNeil died in 2013, from complications of surgery.

Some Breakers now and so much was the appetite for songs from film soundtracks in 1990 that even those that had been No 1 just four short years before were able to rise up the charts again. Yes, not content with one song from a Tom Cruise movie already being No 1 in this week’s chart courtesy of “Show Me Heaven” by Maria McKee, it seemed that we needed two as “Take My Breath Away” by Berlin from Top Gun had a second Top 40 life after it had already scaled the summit of the charts back in 1986! Talk about doubling down!

So what the crap was this all about?! Well, apparently Top Gun had its UK TV premiere earlier this month back in 1990 and such was the reaction to this happening that “Take My Breath Away” was re-released. I had just been starting my time as a student when it was first a hit and I was now about to begin another phase of my life as a married man when it reappeared. Had I had time to take this in back then, it would probably have freaked me out. Not only did it tick the film soundtrack box but it also represented the TV advert methodology of scoring a hit by being on the latest Peugeot promo for their 405 model range. You know, that one with the burning, exploding row of trees? Come on, this one…

The reissue of “Take My Breath Away” made it all the way to No 3 which seems faintly ridiculous for a song that had already been No 1 in recent memory. It was backed by “Danger Zone” by Kenny Loggins on the b-side. When I started at Our Price a couple of weeks later, the wall of the men’s toilet in the store I was working in was daubed with graffiti of hilarious poo related musical artists. I can’t recall them all but they included Deacon Poo, The Ruthless Crap Assassins, Iggy Plop and of course, Kenny Loggins.

Another Tina Turner single? Didn’t she have one out just the other week? Yes she did! “Look Me in the Heart” had only been released in mid August and yet a few weeks later here she was back for more with something called “Be Tender With Me Baby”. Like its predecessor, this was also taken from Tina’s “Foreign Affair” album (this was the fifth single lifted from it to be released in the UK!). I don’t recall this one at all so when I saw the title of it I thought it might be a cover version of that soul classic that always seems to be sung by Ruby Turner on Jools Holland’s Hootenanny but it turns out that is called “Stay With Me Baby” and is a different song altogether.

“Be Tender With Me Baby” is more of a rock ballad and not a very good one in my opinion. It peaked at No 28 but incredibly, Tina will be back in the charts the following month with “It Takes Two”, a duet with Rod Stewart. FFS!

After one music icon, here comes another. Like Tina Turner, Paul MccCartney had also spent some of 1990 still flogging his last studio album to death. “Flowers In The Dirt” had arrived in June of 1989 but he was releasing singles from it into the new decade with the fourth and final one being “Put It There”. “Birthday” was nothing to do with that particular project though being, as it was, a Beatles song that had originally been on the “White Album”.

So why was Macca releasing his own version of it some 22 years after it was originally recorded. There’s no great mystery really – it was a live version to promote his “Tripping The Live Fantastic” album which documented The Paul McCartney World Tour which was the first tour under his own name. It seems an odd choice of single given the 37 songs that could have been selected from the album’s track listing. Even the “Tripping The Live Fantastic: Highlights!” single album with just the 17 tracks on it included some legendary stuff like “Hey Jude” and “Let It Be”. Maybe they would have been too much of a crowd sing-a-long? OK, then how about “Get Back” or “Back In The U.S.S.R.” or even “Coming Up”?

The video for this is also a bit strange. If you want to promote your live album wouldn’t it be a good idea to just have the video showing you… erm…live in concert? Yes there is some of that but what’s with all the staged vignette scenes that pad it out? They are all very obvious themes around having a birthday that add little in my book and actually the scene with the all male party of braying toffs (clearly Tories) and a young woman (potentially a stripper?) bursting out of a birthday cake looks distinctly unpalatable at best through todays eyes.

Paul McCartney’s live version of “Birthday” peaked at No 29.

Still with those bleedin’ turtles?! “Spin That Wheel (Turtles Get Real)” was originally released at the start of 1990 and failed to get anywhere near the UK Top 40. Back then, there had been no tie-in with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film – the (Turtles Get Real) suffix was added for the re-release – and had included references to drug taking in the lyrics. These were all removed and a sanitised version was included on the movie soundtrack.

Hi Tek 3 featuring Ya Kid K were, of course, all part of the Technotronic family tree which was quite the tangled oak with branches everywhere – significantly its roots weren’t solid and it would succumb to powdery mildew disease (I had to look that up for the purposes of the metaphor)….

Technotronic was essentially just one person Jo Bogearet who had the original seed of an idea for the group, owned their record company and produced their records. It all got more complex when it came to promoting their releases. Bogeart was a recluse who spoke to nobody so he was never going to be the public face of Technotronic. That turned out to be a singer with blue lipstick called Felly (who didn’t actually sing on the records at all) – no, the singer was Manuela Djogi aka Ya Kid K who didn’t join the group initially because she didn’t want to sign a contract. Then she did and Felly was ousted but vowed to get some singing lessons and rejoin the group. She never did. Enter Welshman MC Eric as the rapper on third single “This Beat Is Technotronic”. While that was being a hit, “Spin That Wheel'” was released becoming a hit in the US and Australia but not over here. Then a support slot on the Madonna tour was announced – however Ya Kid K wanted to sue Technotronic’s record company for unpaid monies. A fourth single “Rocking Over The Beat” was released with next to no promotion from the group presumably because of the Madonna tour commitments though this seems unlikely as Ya Kid K and MC Eric had pulled out of the European tour dates as they didn’t want to promote the Technotronic name anymore. Then Ya Kid K announced she was pregnant – the father was MC Eric, obviously. There followed a counter court case against Ya Kid K and MC Eric brought by Jo Bogearet to stop them using the Technotronic name even though they said they didn’t want to use it anyway and that was the reason for them pulling out of the Madonna tour in the first place. Then…oh bollocks to it….who cares?!

“Spin That Wheel (Turtles Get Real)” peaked at No 15 in the UK.

A final week then at No 1 for Maria McKee with “Show Me Heaven” which also makes it the record that was No 1 when I got married. Or was it? I always got a bit confused about this as when we got back from our honeymoon the following Saturday, The Beautiful South were No 1. I’m trying to recall on what day the new charts were announced back then. Was it still on a Tuesday? Or had it moved to Sunday by then. The officialcharts.com website shows that for the week 14 October to 20 October (our wedding date), the No 1 record was indeed “Show Me Heaven” whilst for the week 21 October to October 27th it was The Beautiful South. So, I think that proves it was Maria Mckee. Either way, I’m just glad it wasn’t the song in the No 2 position which was “The Anniversary Waltz – Part 1” by Status Quo.

The play out video is “(We Want) The Same Thing” by Belinda Carlisle but before we get to that, what’s going on with Trekky Gooider? Surrounded by studio audience members for the final cut away shot, he seems disturbed, looks to his left and announces ” What’s going on here? I love it – it’s so warm” WTF?! That sounds wrong on so many levels.

Anyway, back to Belinda and this was a hit that made no sense at all. Why? Well, also like Tina Turner before her, she was still releasing tracks from an album that was 12 months old but apart from lead single ‘Leave A Light On”, none of them had pulled up any trees chart-wise. See?

Leave A Light On – No 4
La Luna – No 38
Runaway Horse – No 40
Vision Of You – No 41

Then, “(We Want) The Same Thing”, with its bizarre use of brackets, released as a fifth single from a year old album, goes all the way to No 6! How do you explain that? Well, apparently the single mix was very different from the album version so maybe Carlisle completists would have bought it for that reason? Plus, there was a deluxe 12″ vinyl boxed set with free stickers and a picture disc single on CD (according to Wikipedia) for the real Belinda obsessives but even so.

I’ve just listened to that album version and it is indeed very different. Where are the ‘Hey!’ shouts at the beginning for a start? Ah, that must have been its USP and the reason behind its success – you can’t beat some good old ‘Hey!’ yelps can you?

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	A-ha	Crying In The Rain	No but it must be on my Greatest Hits CD of theirs
2	Aztec Camera	Good Morning Britain	No but it was on that first Q Magazine album that I bought.
3	Innocence	Let’s Push it	Let’s not..no
4	Whitney Houston	I’m Your Baby Tonight	Negative
5	Happy Mondays	Kinky Afro	No but I did buy the album
6	Rita MacNeil	Working Man	No
7	Berlin	Take My Breath Away	No – not in 1990 nor 1996
8	Tina Turner	Be Tender With Me Baby	Nope
9	Paul McCartney	Birthday	It wasn’t and I didn’t
10	Hi Tek 3 featuring Ya Kid K	Spin That Wheel (Turtles Get Real)	Hell no
11	Maria McKee	Show Me Heaven	Nah
12	Belinda Carlisle	(We Want) The Same Thing	Not sure we did Belinda because I didn’t buy this

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000t884/top-of-the-pops-18101990

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.

Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 11 OCT 1990

Posted on March 19, 2021 by 80stastic

Hello and welcome back to 1990, the year when the charts were infested by cruddy Eurodance pop, the Bleep ‘n’ Bass phenomenon, old pop standards of yesteryear revitalised by their use in adverts and mega hits propelled to massive sales off the back of their inclusion on box office breaking film soundtracks. Oh, and ruddy New Kids On The Block and those pesky ninja turtle creatures. However, giving a massive pale (and possibly black nail varnished) middle finger to all of this are Goth gods The Sisters Of Mercy who stride back into the TOTP studio this week with their latest hit “More”. Yes, proving that Goth was still relevant, Andrew Eldritch and co released their first single since 1988’s ‘Lucretia My Reflection”. It’s actually the lead single off their album “Vision Thing” talking of which – get this. How many albums do you reckon The Sisters Of Mercy have released during their 40 odd years career? I mean proper, studio albums, not Best Ofs nor EPs. It’s three.THREE! And this one, “Vision Thing released in November 1990, is the most recent one! Not keen on hard work our Andrew is he? in November 2016 when interviewed by the TeamRock website, he said of his release slumber:

“I can tell you one thing – if Donald Trump actually does become President, that will be reason enough for me to release another album. I don’t think I could keep quiet if that happened.”

Well, Andrew, ‘The Donald’ has been and gone (thank God!) and still no new album from you laddie. They seem to have committed themselves to being a perennial touring band from what I can work out but if they never have any new material to play, have they made themselves a nostalgia circuit band by default?

“More” must have passed me by at the time as I have no recollection of it at all but it has all their usual Sisters trademarks. Eldritch’s unearthly vocals, the dark, chugging guitar sound and the cauldron of shrieking vocals emanating from the almost Macbethian trio of backing singers. Apparently the track was co-written by Jim Steinman, he of Meatloaf fame. Want to hear The Loaf’s version of it? If you must…

Enough of all that! What we need now is something completely wholesome to counteract the creepy, gothic stuff and what could be more wholesome than Cliff Richard?! Cliff was still plundering tracks from his “From A Distance: The Event” live album and after “Silhouettes ” just the other week, came the title track. It was originally recorded by Nanci Griffith of course (though not actually written by her) on her “Lone Star State Of Mind” album. Listen to her restrained and pure rendition of it here on the Letterman show….

and then contrast it with the pig’s ear that Cliff makes of it below…

He’s ruined it with all that grandstanding and those lumbering drum fills and synth refrains – very similar to the desecration he inflicted on traditional Christmas carol “O Little Town of Bethlehem” when he did his own arrangement of it called “Little Town”. Nasty. And who are all those people up there on stage with him? It looks like the worst episode of Glee you’ve ever seen!

Cliff’s treatment of “From A Distance” made No 11 but it was topped by Bette Midler’s version a year later which peaked at No 6.

Ah. I wasn’t expecting The Chimes to be back on the show with “Heaven” after it was a Breaker last week. Consequently, I’ve very little left to say about it (and I didn’t have much in the first place). Singer Pauline Henry of course went on to have a string of hits in the mid 90s on her own, the biggest of which was a cover of Bad Company’s “Feel Like Making Love”. If you search for The Chimes on Amazon, as well as the original and Cherry Red deluxe edition of their album, you also get a result for something called “Heaven – Very Best Of Pauline Henry And The Chimes” which seems like a very cynical marketing trick to me. Surely both artists stood independently of each other without needing to mash them together. I recall A&M doing a similar thing with a Sting / The Police Best Of album. I’m trying to think of other examples now. Oh yes, there’s one for David Grant & Jaki Graham as well but I guess they did record two actual duets together at least. A tenner says that there must be a Best Of Kajagoogoo and Limahl in existence as well.

“Heaven ” peaked at No 24.

The year of New Kids On The Block still has some legs in it yet I’m afraid. This was their seventh hit of the year and after the 70s soul sound of The Chi-Lites returned to the UK Top 40 in 1990 courtesy of Paul Young and MC Hammer covers, now we had some Philly Soul with T’KNOB’s take on “Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time)” by The Delfonics.

This was actually a double A-side single with the other track being “Let’s Try It Again” which was taken from their “Step By Step” album. Presumably, the two songs were twinned together to help stimulate sales of two of the band’s albums as “Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time)” was from their 1986 self titled debut album. Those dastardly record companies at it again! Apparently, “Let’s Try It Again” (which I don’t think I’ve ever heard as all the airplay went to “Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time)”) was the beginning of the end for the band’s phenomenal appeal. It was their first single since 1986’s “Stop It Girl” that failed to peak within the US Top 40. Many put their decent down to over saturation – did the world really need the New Kids animated cartoon series that tonight’s host Bruno Brookes mentions? Talking of Bruno, he gets into a right muddle with his intro for them when he forgets to mention the song title and when he corrects this in his outro, he name checks the wrong A-side. Piss poor as ever Bruno.

“Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time)” / “Let’s Try It Again” peaked at No 8 in the UK.

The final six songs on this week’s broadcast have all been featured on the show before starting with The Beautiful South and “A Little Time”. They’re in the studio this week but where is Paul Heaton? Oh there he is! On the keyboards right at the back. We don’t really get to see him until at least a minute in. I like the fact that he steps into the shadows for this song and gives the spotlight rightfully to Brianna Corrigan and Dave Hemmingway. Both had underrated voices I think. Dave had a very pure, ballad vocal whilst Brianna had a most unusual tone that completely suited those bittersweet Heaton tunes. It was a great shame in many ways that she felt that she couldn’t stay in the band but then, without her departure, we wouldn’t have had Jacqui Abbott which in turn of course led to all those marvellous Heaton and Abbott songs.

I saw The Beautiful South live in 1997 (I think) at the Manchester Arena and have also seen Paul Heaton and Jacqui Abbott back in 2017 at the Hull KR stadium gig. I’ve even seen The South who were what the band morphed into when the original incarnation split in 2007. I think Hemmingway was still in the line up at that point (although he has since retired) alongside the final female vocalist Alison Wheeler who replaced Abbott in 2000. It seems I’m a bit of a fan. Maybe it’s the Hull connection.

“A Little time” will be at No 1 within a couple of weeks.

Another of last week’s Breakers now as Neneh Cherry returns to the TOTP studio for her version of “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”. The AIDS charity record “Red Hot + Blue” that this track was taken from would go on to sell over 1 million copies worldwide. Its success would lead to a number of releases by parent organisation the Red Hot Organization throughout the 90s including “Red Hot + Dance” (which would include the one-off George Michael single “Too Funky”) and “Red Hot + Country” which featured such heavyweights as Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton and the aforementioned Nanci Griffith. As for that original album “Red Hot + Blue”, my favourite track from it was definitely this one by David Byrne…

Neneh Cherry was still a massive name in 1990 off the back of the success of her platinum selling debut album ‘Raw Like Sushi”. However, it would take her three years to release the follow up (1992’s “Homebrew”) by which point grunge had happened and the musical landscape had shifted. The album performed poorly sales wise (peaking at No 27) whilst none of the singles from it made the Top 20. However, she would return in 1996 with the more popular “Man” album which included the huge worldwide hit “7 Seconds” with Youssou N’Dour.

Monie Love again? I think this is the third time that “It’s A Shame (My Sister)” has been on the show. Not bad for a single that didn’t even make the Top 10. In a Smash Hits article, Monie (real name Simone Johnson) described the art of writing raps thus:

“Er..well you just write it down. You just put what is exactly in your head down on paper. All it takes is being able to pronounce your words and if you’re a good English student then you could write a good rap.”

That’s it?! OK, well I’ve got an English ‘O’ level and I write a lot of words doing this blog so let’s give it a go…

*spends half an hour trying to write a good rap*

Nah, that’s bollocks Monie. I’m crap at writing rap lyrics it turns out. I followed your advice about putting exactly what is in my head down on paper and it came out like this…

My name is Dickie B, I’m looking at a tree

My cat wanted to pee, so he did it up against the tree

“It’s A Shame (My Sister)” peaked at No 12.

Talking of crap, here’s Status Quo with the “Anniversary Waltz Part 1”. Oh come on, even the most committed of Quo fans must have known this was a pile of shite and cringed in embarrassment when it was released. It’s horrible. Bruno Brookes introducing it by saying that the band celebrated their 25th anniversary with a massive party at Butlins in Minehead just about sums it up! Of all the venues in the country to book for such a celebration, that was the optimum one?! What? Minehead was where Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt met all those years ago? Oh. Well, I don’t care. The “Anniversary Waltz Part 1” was a terrible idea and remains the last time that the band were in the Top 10. Even a re-release of their ‘party tune’ that was “Marguerita Time” would surely have been a better idea?

Maria McKee is still at No 1 with “Show Me Heaven”. Although she never came anywhere near to repeating the commercial triumph of this single, Maria has continued to write and record material. She wrote two songs for the aforementioned Bette Midler on her 1995 “Bette Of Roses” album whilst The Chicks (previously known as Dixie Chicks) recorded her song “Am I the Only One (Who’s Ever Felt This Way)” for their “Wide Open Spaces” album. Of course, we all know that Feargal Sharkey took her song “A Good Heart” to No 1 in 1985 but he also recorded the McKee penned “To Miss Someone” on his “Songs from the Mardi Gras” album. She has also contributed to numerous tribute albums for the likes of Blind Willie Johnson and T-Rex.

“Show Me Heaven” wasn’t her only soundtrack album hit. After that song was recorded for Days Of Thunder, she also contributed “If Love Is a Red Dress (Hang Me in Rags)” for the Pulp Fiction soundtrack.

The play out video is “World In My Eyes” by Depeche Mode. This is supposedly Andy Fletcher of the band’s favourite song that they have ever recorded. Fletcher’s career is an unusual one in that opinion is divided as to what he actually does in the band. In the 1989 “101” documentary about the band, Fletcher himself had this to say on the subject:

“Martin’s the songwriter, Alan’s the good musician, Dave’s the vocalist, and I bum around.”

Whilst that may be tongue in cheek, it remains the case that Fletcher is the only member of the band (past and present) who has never received a songwriting credit. He is also the only member of Depeche Mode who does not sing although he does do something with synthesizers on stage during live gigs. Apparently he is very active in Depeche’s business affairs and has assumed the role of band spokesperson.

Are there any other examples of band members who don’t contribute much musically? Bez of course in Happy Mondays is an obvious one and isn’t there somebody in Coldpay who doesn’t do much (or is that all of them apart from *Chris Martin?). How about journalist Fiona Russell Powell (aka Eden) and photographer David Yarritu who joined the ranks of ABC for their “How To Be A Zillionaire” album?

“World In My Eyes” peaked at No 17.

*Sorry Coldplay fans!

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart rundown below:

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	The Sisters Of Mercy	More	Less actually – no
2	Cliff Richard	From A Distance	…is where I wish to remain from Cliff – no
3	The Chimes	Heaven	Negative
4	New Kids On The Block	Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time)	This was not a mind blowing cover – no
5	The Beautiful South	A Little Time	Not the single but I have it on their Best Of album
6	Neneh Cherry	I’ve Got You Under My Skin	It’s a no
7	Monie Love	It’s A Shame (My Sister)	Nope
8	Status Quo	The Anniversary Waltz (Part One)	Sod off
9	Maria McKee	Show Me Heaven	Nah
10	Depeche Mode	World In My Eyes	I did not

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000t134/top-of-the-pops-11101990

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.

Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 04 OCT 1990

Posted on March 16, 2021 by 80stastic

We’re really out of sync with these BBC4 TOTP repeats. In the real world in 2021 we are entering Spring whilst in TOTP Rewind land we are are well into the Autumn of 1990. Like a busted clock, even allowing for the two repeats a week schedule, there’s usually a couple of times in a calendar year when TOTP of yesteryear and real time are in harmony but the delay between the end of the 1989 shows and the beginning of the 1990 broadcasts has thrown everything out. Oh well – in a world of lockdown, time seems to have shifted from its axis anyway and no longer seems to function as it once did. The days are so much longer and the lack of anything to do means they all blur into each other anyway. When I was working in record shops in the 90s, I’m sure Mr Our Price used to mess with the space-time continuum so slowly did some of the afternoons pass.

The first act on this week’s TOTP ought to know something about the workings of time given their name – Twenty 4 Seven featuring Captain Hollywood. OK, the Captain Hollywood bit doesn’t add anything to the theme but you can see where I was going. This lot seemed to be a prototype 2 Unlimited with their template of a male rapper and female singer (plus both acts were Dutch) and yet, unlike the latter who terrorised the charts for a good few years in the early to mid 90s, they never seemed able to capitalise on the success of “I Can’t Stand It” in the UK. There was a follow up single that made the Top 20 but after that, time stood still for them.

In the rest of Europe however, it was a completely different story where they remained popular and successful despite the departure of the Captain himself in 1991. By the way, Hollywood’s real name is Tony Dawson-Harrison and after leaving the band, he went a bit off the rails…

Talking of time as we were…it’s HAMMER TIME! Yes, MC Hammer is back and for the second time this year, there is a cover of a song originally recorded by the Chi-Lites in the UK Top 40. Back in July, Paul Young released his version of their “Oh Girl” track and now MC Hammer has followed suit by covering “Have You Seen Her”. As a follow up to “U Can’t Touch This”, it was quite a departure bpm wise. With it being a Hammer production though, he changes the lyrics significantly with pretty much the only one kept the same being the ‘Have you seen her, tell me have you seen her’ chorus. I’m not sure that all of the rewritten words have aged that well. Check these out:

“Hammer, you know I’m looking
Calling all my friends all around the place
Guy, Levert, or my homey Rob Base

If you’ve peeped her out, tell me
Yo, veo on the phone
Ted, Dre, or Ed Lover
Fab Five, homeys won’t you help a young brother”

Songwriters: Eugene Record / Barbara Acklin / Brandon Thomas Stewart / Leslie Michael Stewart

Have You Seen Her lyrics © Unichappell Music Inc.

Peeped her out?! Plus he refers to himself in the third person at least twice – a clear sing that success had gone to his head by this point. Apparently Hammer would inflict fines for breaches of discipline by any of his touring party for such crimes as making mistakes on stage! Lost. In. Showbiz. “Have You Seen Her” didn’t quite match the heights of “U Can’t Touch This” but was a solid follow up, peaking inside the Top 10 at No 8. The third single released from the album, “Pray”, would further consolidate his success by duplicating that chart position. We’re not done with Hammer time just yet!

One of the most consistent commercially successful bands of the 80s next who, despite by their own acknowledgement had realised by this point that their imperial phase was over, nevertheless continued to produce work of substance into the new decade. “So Hard” was the lead single from the first Pet Shop Boys album in nigh on two years. When it was released later in the month, “Behaviour” would go to No 2 but would sell substantially less copies than their “Actually” and “Introspective” albums. However, despite my persistent blogging about a TV show format that insisted the opposite and made a competition out of music, creativity cannot be measured by units shifted and chart positions alone. “Behaviour” is now very much seen as a maturing of their writing and routinely named as one of their finest works by their fan base. A melancholy classic dealing with the weighty subjects of friendship, loss and, in the case of the track “Being Boring”, speaking to and for the LGBT community of the heartbreak and tragedy of AIDS.

Coming back to “So Hard”, apparently it was the first track finished for “Behaviour” but Chris Lowe has subsequently acknowledged that it could and possibly should have been left off the album so incongruous was it to the rest of the songs it contained. Even if you only know the singles taken from the album like the aforementioned “Being Boring” and “Jealousy”, it’s easy to see what Chris was getting at. Not that it isn’t a good song, I think it stands up well and I initially preferred it to the subsequent single releases but over time I have come to appreciate more the power of the song writing on those other tracks.

I once got into a Twitter row with the Absolute 80s radio station about “So Hard”. How so? Well, it was all to do with the subject of time again, or more specifically the delineation of it. What am I going on about? Well, it’s simple really. Absolute 80s played “So Hard”, a song released 10 months into the 90s. It offended my sense of musical eras. Here’s the spat in full:

@Absolute80s Sure but you just played So Hard by Pet Shop Boys released Oct 1990. Hardly 80s is it? #getyourdatesstraight
— Richard Bayliss (@Dickiebliss) October 9, 2013

@Dickiebliss Some tracks are on the cusp of a decade but fit more the style of the previous or next one… so we exercise creative curation!
— Absolute 80s (@Absolute80s) October 9, 2013

@Absolute80s Hmm..I see. So it's out with the creative shoe horn is it? Not sure how PSB will feel about being pigeon-holed as an 80s band.
— Richard Bayliss (@Dickiebliss) October 9, 2013

@Absolute80s Ridiculous! If you segregate music as you have done then stick to your own branding rules. #getyourdatesstraight
— Richard Bayliss (@Dickiebliss) October 9, 2013

Yes, I am a complete pedant. “So Hard” peaked at No 4 in the UK Top 40.

Oh come on! Who in the whole wide world needed a Technotronic “Megamix”?! This was weapons grade shithousery by the act’s record label as they basically had their first four singles (that had already been hits) mixed together and shoved that out into the market to get people to buy them all over again. Thankfully, this act of gross manipulation turned out to be the tipping point and record buyers rejected their poisonous product after this. They would achieve just one more Top 20 hit in the UK. In early 1991, fellow Eurodance snake oil salesmen Snap! would pull the exact same shit when they released a single called “Mega Mix” which was a remix of their first four singles and just like Technotronic’s effort, it also went Top 10. Would we ever learn?

The TOTP producers are still persisting with this best selling albums of the previous month nonsense. For the record, the best selling albums of Sep 1990 were:

1. Three Tenors – In Concert

2. George Michael – “Listen Without Prejudice Vol 1”

3. Elton John – “Sleeping With The Past”

4. Michael Bolton – “Soul Provider”

5. Deacon Blue – “Ooh Las Vegas”

A couple of noteworthy things here. Firstly, the weird, DIY looking clip to reflect the George Michael album. What the Hell was that?! Well, George had refused to shoot a video for the album’s lead single “Praying For Time” due to tensions with his record company Sony and seeing as there wasn’t yet another single taken from it, seemingly somebody (Sony? TOTP?) put together some stills against a back drop of the “Waiting For That Day” track. It looks odd to say the least.

Secondly, that Deacon Blue album was a compilation of B-sides and unreleased tracks so the fact that it was such a big seller says much for their popularity at that time. I’ve got “Ooh Las Vegas” and there are some great songs on there and no I don’t care what you think of that statement.

Back in the studio we find MC Tunes and 808 State with “Tunes Splits The Atom”. This was the second consecutive hit for Tunes after “The Only Rhyme That Bites” earlier in the year and while it’s crammed with his rap lyrics like its predecessor, it has a more mellow vibe to it. This was the last single to be officially credited to ‘MC Tunes versus 808 State’ – “Primary Rhyming”, the next single lifted from his debut album “The North At Its Heights”, had that wording removed from its cover credits. That act seemed to break the spell as it peaked at No 67 and MC Tunes never graced the charts again. There was no chain reaction of subsequent hits after this one (ho ho).

He made the most of his time in the spotlight though including being the guest singles reviewer for Smash Hits around this time. He chose “So Hard” by Pet Shop Boys as his single of the fortnight but he hated MC Hammer’s “Have You Seen Her” describing it thus:

“This is the sort of tune that gets played in nightclubs called ‘Mr Smiths’ wear people go wearing their nice suits, drink brown ale and chat up women. Crap.”

Quite. Smash Hits subsequently ran a competition to win the very copy of the MC Hammer single that MC Tunes damaged! “Tunes Splits The Atom” peaked at No 18.

Some Breakers now…what? Four of them?! Oh great. Lots more typing to do yet then. We start with the Adventures of Stevie V who I had no idea managed two chart hits! “Body Language” was that second hit but was nowhere near as successful as his No 2 hit “Dirty Cash” peaking at No 29. The reason why? It was a load of old cobblers! Give me The Adventures of Tin Tin over Stevie V anytime. Hell, I’d even settle for some Thompson Twins (see what I did there?).

The unusual event next of a Breaker tune becoming a No 1 record. Despite the TOTP hosts usual claims that this section featured the most ‘happening’ records on the charts, they rarely were and the whole premise of the feature was presumably just a ploy to be able to cram in a load more tunes on the show. “A Little Time” by The Beautiful South was a welcome exception. Whilst not my favourite song of theirs by quite some distance, compared to the likes of The Adventures Of Stevie V, it was chart nectar. Entering the charts at a lowly No 30, it progressed steadily to the Top 10 the following week, then the Top 5 and finally No 1 for a solitary week.

Yet another bittersweet tune from the pens of Paul Heaton and David Rotheray, the use of a male and female vocalist in Dave Hemmingway and Briana Corrigan helped to emphasise the opposing sides of the lyrics with the sting in the tale that while ‘Dave’ had been off enjoying himself before committing himself to the relationship, by the time he had decided, ‘Briana’ had pulled the plug on it and wanted nothing to do with him. The memorable video full of flour, feathers, kitchen knives and a decapitated teddy bear with its head on a spike won the 1991 Brit Awards for British Video of the Year.

“Red Hot + Blue” was a compilation album from the Red Hot Organization, a not-for-profit international body dedicated to fighting AIDS through pop culture and featured interpretations of Cole Porter songs by contemporary pop artists. It was a fairly eclectic roster of artists who contributed from Tom Waits to U2 and from Salif Keita to k.d. lang. It sold over a million copies worldwide and there was an accompanying TV special featuring specially created videos for the songs, alongside clips highlighting the effects of AIDS.

I remember the album used to get a regular airing in the Our Price store I was working in and by the end of the year and my favourite track from it was David Byrne’s treatment of “Don’t Fence Me In” closely followed by Debbie Harry and Iggy Pop’s cover of “Well, Did You Evah!”. However, the official single released from the album was Neneh Cherry ‘s take on “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” which, whilst very important in terms of helping to promote AIDS awareness, I didn’t like that much at all musically. Looking back ,and given the subject matter of “Being Boring”, I’m surprised that Pet Shop Boys weren’t contributors to the project whereas the aforementioned Thompson Twins were. Not that I know anything about how such projects are put together of course. “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” peaked at No 25.

As with the first of this week’s Breakers The Adventures of Stevie V, I had no idea this lot had a second hit but they did. “Heaven” was the re-released follow up to The Chimes‘ cover version of U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”. It was a No 1 song on the US Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart but struggled to a high of No 24 in the UK Top 40. Listening to it now, I can appreciate Pauline Henry’s vocal prowess but the song doesn’t do anything much for me at all I’m afraid.

Who on earth was Bobby Vinton and what was he doing in the charts? Well, you only had to hear “Blue Velvet” once to realise that he was a singing star from back in the day but apart from that I knew very little. Oh hang on, was he the guy that sang “Dream Lover” and “Mack The Knife”? No, that was Bobby Darin. Oh. Well, Wikipedia tells me that Vinton was a US singer-songwriter who, get this, released 38 studio albums, 67 compilation albums and 88 singles over the course of the 60s, 70s and 80s. However, he’d only ever had two minor Top 40 hits in the UK back in the early 60s.

So why was he riding high in our charts in the 90s? I don’t really have to spell it out do I? No, it was nothing to do with the David Lynch’s 1986 film Blue Velvet (although the song does feature in it as sung by its star Isabella Rossellini). OK, it seems I do have to spell it out. It was used in an advert. Of course it was! Everything in the charts in this year seemed to have been in a bloody advert. Here’s @TOTPFacts with the details:

This re-release of "Blue Velvet" came about thanks to its inclusion in an ad for Nivea cold cream (which came in a blue bottle!). https://t.co/iqkvkhWjCl #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) March 12, 2021

Nowadays of course, Nivea have turned from blue to red and got Liverpool FC footballers to advertise their products. Thankfully, this hasn’t led to a re-release of the “Anfield Rap” yet. “Blue Velvet” would rise all the way to No 2.

Maria McKee is still at No 1 with “Show Me Heaven” but instead of that live vocal studio performance that they’ve been showing, we get the official promo video this week. As it’s from the Days Of Thunder film, it’s not long before we see Tom Cruise’s fizzog (mostly kissing co-star and later wife Nicole Kidman) although to be fair, Maria does get plenty of screen time too.

I’ve never seen Days Of Thunder but I’m imagining it’s like Top Gun but with racing cars instead of jets. Hang on, it says in Wikipedia that Cruise’s character was called Cole Trickle? Cole Trickle? Wait! It gets better (or worse). The character’s name was a reference to real life American race car driver Dick Trickle! That’s DICK TRICKLE!! Once more…DICK TRICKLE!! That’s up there with Biggus Dickus…

Just in case you hadn’t had enough Technotonic in the last 30 minutes, here they were again as the play out video but under their pseudonym of Hi Tek 3 along with Ya Kid K with “Spin That Wheel (Turtles Get Real)”. Like Partners In Kryme before them, this was from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles soundtrack and was actually a re-release having made No 69 back in January but was propelled to No 15 this time around on the back of the fuss/success surrounding those infernal turtles.

Ya Kid K always makes me think of “Our Kid Eh” by Mark and Lard’s spoof group The Shirehorses which of course lampoons Radiohead’s “Kid A” and features songs such as “Why Is It Always Dairy Lea” (a take off of “Why Does It Always Rain On Me?” by Travis) and “Feel Like Shite” (their take on “Alright” by Supergrass). Lovely stuff.

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Twenty 4 Seven featuring Captain Hollywood	I Can’t Stand It	…and therefore I didn’t buy it
2	MC Hammer	Have You Seen Her	Nope
3	Pet Shop Boys	So Hard	No but it’s on my Pop Art retrospective of theirs
4	Technotronic	Megamix	As if
5	MC Tunes / 808 State	Tunes Splits The Atom	No
6	The Adventures Of Stevie V	Body Language	Negative
7	The Beautiful South	A Little Time	Not the single but I have it on their Best Of album
8	Neneh Cherry	I’ve Got You Under My Skin	It’s a no
9	The Chimes	Heaven	And another one
10	Bobby Vinton	Blue Velvet	Not for me thanks
11	Maria McKee	Show Me Heaven	Nah
12	Hi Tek 3 featuring Ya Kid K	Spin That Wheel (Turtles Get Real)	Hell 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.

Some bedtime reading?

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

Author: 80stastic

TOTP 06 DEC 1990

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Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 29 NOV 1990

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Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 22 NOV 1990

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TOTP 15 NOV 1990

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Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 08 NOV 1990

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Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 01 NOV 1990

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Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 25 OCT 1990

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Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 18 OCT 1990

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TOTP 11 OCT 1990

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Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 04 OCT 1990

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Some bedtime reading?