80stastic

TOTP 20 FEB 1998

There seems to have been a clear decision by Executive Producer Chris Cowey to big up the recent BRIT Awards for this show, presumably to promote a connection between TOTP and what was then a huge brand. Indeed, the BRITS was enjoying a massive media presence in the mid to late 90s with controversy after controversy occurring. 1996 saw the Jarvis Cocker/Michael Jackson incident whilst 1997 gave us Geri Halliwell’s iconic Union Jack dress and her wardrobe malfunction. 1998 delivered another huge moment when Chumbawamba’s Danbert Nobacon poured a jug of water over Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott who was in the audience. Cowey didn’t seem to what to distance himself from such behaviour though and so the first three acts on tonight’s show are all BRIT winners. Our host is Jo Whiley and we start with the person named the best British Female Solo Artist gong Shola Ama. In all honesty and with the greatest respect to those nominated, it wasn’t packed with stellar names that year (I’m possibly doing Lisa Stansfield a disservice here) but you can only beat who’s in front of you as the saying goes. I never really understood all the fuss about Shola who undoubtedly could sing pretty well but was that enough? The fact that her most famous hit was a cover version which was pretty faithful to the original also undermined her credibility for me. Still, here she was with the title track of her debut album which was her fourth hit on the trot. “Much Love” was a competent R&B/soul number but I would have thought that you might need somebody who had a little more to them than that to be declared ‘The Best’. Sorry Shola. Much love and all that.

Our next BRIT winner are Stereophonics who collected the award for Best British Breakthrough Act beating the likes of All Saints (themselves two times winners on the night) and my personal faves Embrace. The award was presented by Jo Whiley (and actor Max Beesley) so there’s a nice sense of continuity with her introducing them on this TOTP. After three Top 40 hits in 1997, a rerelease of their debut single to cash in on their BRIT award success was always likely and so “Local Boy In The Photograph” would become the band’s then highest charting song when it peaked at No 14 having initially stalled at No 51. A fan favourite to this day, you can hear why as this is a mighty tune. Perfectly showcasing Kelly Jones’s knack for creating vignettes of small town life – this one with a tragic twist chronicling the suicide of a teenager from his youth – it’s powerful guitar sound supplies a driving intensity that is the perfect complement to its lyrics. Jones’s capacity for storytelling shouldn’t have been a surprise as he had pursued a parallel career as a scriptwriter, even sending off some of his creations to the BBC who recognised his potential by paying him enough to purchase his first computer. However, music was always Jones’s first love and when the band were signed there was no turning back. Word had got around about the Stereophonics.

Oh this is just silly now and clearly a case of opportunism. Having won BRIT Awards for British Single and British Video of the year for “Never Ever”, Chris Cowey couldn’t resist sneaking in one final appearance of All Saints performing the ubiquitous track to further that link between TOTP and the BRITS. What number was this now? Nine? I’ve lost count and have certainly lost my words to say anything more about this one other than it’s so shoehorned into the running order here that it doesn’t get an intro from Whiley (and just the briefest of mentions in the outro) and it’s just a re-showing of one of those other eight or so previous performances. What a swizz!

That’s the BRITS winners done with and so we move onto another new(ish) guitar band that appeared in the post-Britpop era. Hurricane #1 had their origins in shoegaze outfit Ride whose Andy Bell (yes, that Andy Bell, the latterly Oasis bass player) was the driving force behind them. Similar to Stereophonics, they’d also had a trio of minor hits the previous year but would begin 1998 with their biggest hit to date. “Only The Strongest Will Survive” was the title track of their second album and is a nifty little tune that puts me in mind of another lost 90s band The Lemon Trees. It’s actually a softer sound than I remembered them as having – maybe their band name was playing tricks with my mind. As I recall, they were tipped for great things but it never quite happened for them (despite being signed to Creation) after said second album failed to sell in any meaningful way and the band split up. They did reform in 2014 without Bell and have been prolific in releasing new material with four albums made in just eight years. As for Bell, after being in Oasis for ten years he followed Liam Gallagher into Beady Eye before concentrating on a solo career and doing soundtrack work. Then came that announcement on 24 August 2024…

There seemed to be something going on with TOTP and male guitar bands this week. After Stereophonics and Hurricane # 1 earlier, here comes another one and it doesn’t stop with The Lilys either but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Yes, you read that right – The Lilys and no, I don’t remember them either. Despite having been around since 1988 and having a list of past band members to rival The Fall and The Waterboys, this No 16 hit “A Nanny In Manhattan” seems to be their only 15 minutes of fame in nigh on 40 years.

Within the show’s predilection for guitar bands this week, there appears to be a sub genre which is ‘guitar bands who had a song used in an advert’. What am I talking about? Well, Hurricane # 1 had “Only The Strongest Will Survive” used in an ad campaign for The Sun newspaper and The Lilys were the 1998 recipients of the Levi’s Jeans advert golden chalice although it proved to be more of the poisoned variety. The Washington DC band must have thought that the good times had arrived when their song was chosen to soundtrack the latest Levi’s advert directed by Roman Coppola but they couldn’t replicate the success of the likes of Stiltskin, Babylon Zoo and Freak Power*.

*Did you notice Jo Whiley pull a face when she name checked those bands in her intro? This from the woman who would present a show on the musical significance of The Teletubbies if it kept her on TV!

Listening to “A Nanny In Manhattan”, I’m not surprised. What a racket! I know I’m a very middle aged man now but even 27 years ago I would have hated this if I’d been aware of it. Their Wikipedia page says that they earned a reputation for copying the styles of other artists down the years but I’m not sure who they were trying to sound like here. A shite version of The Strokes three years before they were a thing? Frontman Kurt Heasley seems to think he’s in The Byrds whilst the bass player has cultivated the type of facial hair that was last seen on Mr. Claypole in Rentaghost. I think I’d rather watch Dobbin the pantomime horse curl one out on stage. Gadzooks!

French electronic music was a bit of a thing around this time. First we had Daft Punk and before the end of the decade Cassius arrived. In between them came Air. The duo of Jean-Benoît Dunckel and Nicolas Godin delivered their ‘Best Albums of the 90s’ list featuring “Moon Safari” collection three weeks before they’d even released a single from it which was surely the wrong way round in terms of promotion. Or maybe it wasn’t as “Sexy Boy” gave them a No 13 hit straight off the bat and what a classy track it was. All slinky rhythms and vocoder vocals, it brought sensual dance music to the charts. The problem here though was how to promote it as Dunckel and Godin, by their own admissions, weren’t classic pin up material (see box out below) but, in a bold move, they resisted the temptation to get some male models in to be the titular “sexy boys” and just fronted it out themselves with a pair of keyboards and a band of slacker dudes behind them. Bravo chaps!

“The song was about who we wanted to be; we weren’t handsome when we were younger; our friends always had more success with girls.” #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) July 25, 2025

“Moon Safari” would be a huge hit in the UK going double platinum with 600,000 sales (one of which was to my wife) whilst Air would enjoy a career of success, critical acclaim and longevity. How though, did I manage to think they were singing “sexy body” for years?

It’s time for that final male guitar band on the show and is it just me or is Jo Whiley’s intro to them a bit odd? She refers to The Bluetones as “one of our brightest hopes for ‘98”. What’s wrong with that you might ask? Well, on the one hand…nothing. Having been one of the breakout stars of 1996 with platinum selling, No 1 album “Expecting To Fly”, much would have been anticipated of their sophomore album “Return To The Last Chance Saloon”. And yet…the phrase “brightest hopes for…” suggests a brand new artist doesn’t it? Not one that is pretty well established already no? Well, semantics aside, sadly for the band, Jo’s hopes were dashed and their album title proved to be prophetic as it underperformed significantly compared to its predecessor and although lead single “Solomon Bites The Worm” would debut at No 10, it would be the last of their four consecutive Top 10 hits and indeed last ever. Although on first hearing it advances at you all robust and angular with that twangy guitar rift, it seems to be all posturing and no substance to me. There’s not much to it although Wikipedia informs me it is based upon the English nursery rhyme “Solomon Grundy” which reads:

Solomon Grundy,
Born on a Monday,
Christened on Tuesday,
Married on Wednesday,
Took ill on Thursday,
Worse on Friday,
Died on Saturday,
Buried on Sunday.
This is the end
Of Solomon Grundy

James Orchard Halliwell, 1842

“Solomon Bites The Worm” apes those words and structure about the cradle to the grave concept but to be honest, there’s another song that does that much better…

The Bluetones would release two more singles from the album to diminishing returns but would return in 2000 with perhaps their best song “Keep The Home Fires Burning” and are still a touring entity to this day.

Right, what on earth was going on here. Why was a song that had been in the charts solidly for three months including seven weeks in the Top 20 only just appearing on TOTP when it had peaked and was going down the charts? Seriously, what happened here? Was this actually the first time that Lutricia McNeal had been on the show? Why was she not on in late November/early December ‘97 when “Ain’t That Just The Way” debuted inside the Top 10? Even if Lutricia wasn’t available in person (it was a hit all over Europe so she may have been on promotional duties) why wasn’t the video shown? Explain yourself Chris Cowey!*

*I’m not counting the fact that it was used to soundtrack the Top 20 countdown for a minute or so one week

Anyway, “Ain’t That Just The Way” was originally a 1975 B-side to Barbi Benton’s single “The Reverend Bob” (and featured in an episode of TV series McCloud!) but it was reactivated by Lutricia two decades later to launch her solo career after being the singer with Swedish rap duo Rob’n’Raz. It transcends both the dance and pop markets with its beats and singalong chorus which might explain its wide appeal and ability to hang around the charts for so long. Or maybe I’m just talking crap. Lutricia will be back in the charts again in a few weeks with another hit “Stranded” which, like its predecessor, would also hang around for months. Wonder if Chris Cowey will allow that one on the show?

We have arrived at one of the biggest selling hits of the decade – “My Heart Will Go On” by Celine Dion which, of course, was from the film Titanic. What to say about this monster hit? Well, it was a No 1 in just about every country in every territory and sold 18 million copies worldwide. It’s racked up 728 million streams in the US. It won an Oscar, a Golden Globe, four Grammys…like the song itself, it goes on and on. However, the comment I’d most like to make about it is that it’s dreadful. Awful. Horrible. The only saving grace in all these facts about its commercial success is that it wasn’t actually the best selling single of 1998 in the UK. That was…well, we’ll come to that in a future post. That and the fact that somehow it was only No 1 over here for two non-consecutive weeks although it did spend nine weeks on the trot inside the Top 3. And that’s all I’m saying about it at this time. Unlike Celine’s heart, I won’t go on.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Shola Ama	Much Love	Negative
2	Stereophonics	Local Boy In The Photograph	No but I had the album
3	All Saints	Never Ever	No
4	Hurricane #1	Only The Strongest Will Survive	Nah
5	The Lilys	A Nanny In Manhattan	Hell no
6	Air	Sexy Boy	No but my wife had the album
7	The Bluetones	Solomon Bites The Worm	I did not
8	Lutricia McNeal	Ain’t That Just The Way	Nope
9	Celine Dion	My Heart Will Go On	Never

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002g805/top-of-the-pops-20021998?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 13 FEB 1998

Posted on July 30 by 80stastic

It’s mid February 1998 and my beloved Chelsea have just sacked our manager Ruud Gullit! What?! The guy that just took us to our first major trophy win in 26 years and he’s been got rid of just nine months later?! What the hell was going on?! Well, much was speculated back then and since but my take is that Ruud wanted two contracts – one as a player and one as a manager which chairman Ken Bates balked at. When discussing how much said contracts would be worth, Gullit talked in net figures as opposed to gross (“I always talk netto” he famously quipped) which further put Uncle Ken’s nose out of joint. Add to these issues the idea that Bates just thought Ruud was too flash and disliked him and the legendary Dutchman was out on his ear. It was a huge story when it broke which although it shocked and saddened me, also made me realise that Chelsea were a big deal again after years in the shadows. Indeed, they were second in the league and in the quarter finals of two cup competitions at the point that Gullit got the bullet. My anguish was assuaged by the appointment of another footballing legend as his replacement – Gianluca Vialli -who would ironically become player-manager and deliver four trophies in his two and a half year tenure. I wonder if any of the acts on this episode of TOTP deserved the boot because it just wasn’t working out?

Nobody would want to get rid of the guy opening the show would they? Errol Brown, the front man of Hot Chocolate and the singer of all those classic hits? He always seemed so…well…nice. Nice he may have been but he’d also left Hot Chocolate over a decade before and whilst his former band members carried on without him (I know – without Errol, what was the point?), Brown was fronting his own version of Hot Chocolate for the nostalgia circuit. Maybe there was some tension there which might explain the confusion over the latest of the band’s revivals. After racking up their final UK Top 40 hit fourteen years prior (they were the only band to have a hit in every year between 1970 and 1984), there had been a relaunch of the band and a Greatest Hits package in 1987, 1993 and 1997. They’d been based around their hits “You Sexy Thing” and “It Started With A Kiss” and it’s that song which got another rerelease in 1998.

That last revival had seen the aforementioned “You Sexy Thing” become a No 6 hit in the November of 1997 and TOTP mysteriously billed it as being a solo single by Errol Brown when he appeared on the show even though it was officially (and correctly) by Hot Chocolate. However, the 1998 release of “It Started With A Kiss” was credited to Hot Chocolate featuring Errol Brown so what was going on there? Some contractual/naming rights shenanigans? Who knows? What is clear is that this performance saw Errol give a stripped back, almost acoustic version of the song which loses that lush, smooth production of the original for me. Also, the studio audience sat round him in a semi circle clapping along is giving me Blue Peter vibes which can’t be right on TOTP surely? My lasting memory of “It Started With A Kiss” though is of hearing it played on Radio 1 back in 1982 when it was first a hit and when Errol sang “You don’t remember me do you?”, Steve Wright chiming in with “Yeah, Errol, bald head, does a bit of singing now and again. I remember you” or words to that effect. How I laughed.

Hire or Fire? It has to be hire for Errol

Look out! It’s Cleopatra comin’ atcha! Yes, we have arrived at the time when three teenage sisters from Manchester were going to be the next big thing. However, a flurry of initial success lasted less time than the milk in the their Egyptian namesake’s bath before going sour. Hailing from the infamous Moss Side area, Cleo, Yonah and Zainam Higgins burst into our lives with that catchphrase and a No 3 debut single in “Cleopatra’s Theme”. Early labelling in the press as a UK, female Hanson was as lazy as it was obvious but three Top 5 hits in 1998 earned them BRIT and MOBO Awards nominations. Not only that but they were signed to Madonna’s Maverick label in the US where exposure on the Nickelodeon and Disney channels gave them a sizeable hit single and an album that sold 300,000 copies. They even toured with the Spice Girls and performed at the Vatican Christmas Carol Concert at the request of the Pope! What?! They had their own sitcom TV series on CITV! Maybe they were a big deal. Somehow though, none of this could sustain the group. A record company restructure resulted in a lack of promotion for their first single of the new millennium and a second album went unreleased in the UK. The group’s death knell came not by the bite of an asp but by Warner wanting to promote Cleo as a solo star and Cleopatra were no more. They did appear in ITV’s 2005 Hit Me, Baby, One More Time TV series but they couldn’t best Chesney Hawkes and didn’t make the final. Similarly, Cleo appeared on the second series of The Voice UK but bowed out in the semi-finals.

So why didn’t Cleopatra become global superstars with some longevity? Over exposure maybe? The appeal of their act had a built in time limit? Or perhaps their songs weren’t good enough? Watching them perform on this TOTP, I was expecting their hit to be…well…better but it doesn’t really go anywhere for me. The hooks don’t quite bite – not compared to the aforementioned Hanson’s “MMMBop” certainly – and all that spelling out their name letter by letter I found tedious. Another person who found Cleopatra tedious was the mother at the centre of a tale an ex-work colleague once told me. On a Saturday afternoon in Hull on the infamous Hessle Road, she overheard said mother say to her daughter who was unbelievably called Cleopatra, “Oi Cleopatra! Pack it in or I’ll twat ya!”. Only in Hull.

Hire or Fire? Sorry girls – it’s P45 time.

OK – just what is going on with presenter Jayne Middlemiss’s hair? It started off fairly coiffured and styled but just two songs in, it’s become loose and out of place as if she’s been head-banging down the front of the stage to…who? Cleopatra? Errol Brown? Can’t be surely? If that sounds a bit sexist, commenting on a woman’s look, I didn’t intend that obviously. It’s just that it had noticeably changed in a short space of time and piqued my attention.

Erm…on with the music I think. Who remembers Headswim? No, not me though looking at the cover of their second album “Despite Yourself”, that rang a few bells but I couldn’t have told you what they sounded like. Well, what they did sound like was Radiohead wannabes it transpires if their only hit “Tourniquet” was anything to go by. Radiohead but just not as good. Radiotails maybe. It’s all very angsty and doom laden with searing guitars and tortured vocals but it doesn’t really take me with it somehow.

That second album was recorded after the death of the brother of the band’s Daniel and Tom Glendining so maybe its sound is understandable but it still doesn’t make it any more listenable. The album failed to sell in any significant way and the band were dropped by label Epic. The members of Headswim pursued new musical ambitions with various other projects and even played a one off gig in 2022 to promote the rerelease of debut album “Flood” but there has been nothing from the band since.

Hire or Fire? I think Epic had the right idea

P.S. If I wanted a song that mentioned tourniquets in it, then I’d go for this:

Remember in the late 80s and early 90s when there was a trend for classic hits from the 70s to be reactivated by inserting a nasty, clunky backbeat into the mix and making them palatable to the club generation? I’m thinking of Quartz covering Carole King’s “It’s Too Late”, Black Box taking on Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Fantasy”, Snap!’s revisiting of the Gap Band with “Oops Up” and Fresh 4 (featuring Liz E) hijacking Rose Royce’s “Wishing On A Star”. Well, that final track was raided again in 1998 by rising-star-soon-to-be-legend Jay–Z. Admittedly, he didn’t come up with a horrible dance version but rather he remade it with a hip-hop/ rap twist AND, in a boost of credibility, he persuaded original vocalist Gwen Dickey to do the singing on it for him. However, despite being named in the intro by Jayne Middlemiss, when she declares “here’s Jay-Z…” and the camera pans to Gwen with no sign of the rapper, it looks odd. Eventually, we get a glimpse of him via the three giant screens behind Gwen which feature him rapping his sections thus reuniting the two but it doesn’t quite pull it off visually for me.

As for the track it’s basically Gwen doing a retread through the chorus of her old hit with Jay-Z rapping the verses when he references missing his homies, getting his shit together and, in an unexpected twist, about being interrupted by a chicken he used to cluck with. I presume he means a female acquaintance he used to hang out with? It would peak at No 13 but “Wishing On A Star” would continue to be covered by the likes of Jay-Z’s partner Beyoncé, Seal, Paul Weller and even The X Factor 2011 finalists featuring One Direction and JLS.

Hire or Fire? The original is great but I can live without a hip-hop version thanks

I know I say this all the time in this blog but this next hit I genuinely do not remember. No, it’s not just that I can’t recall it from the dusty recesses of my mind but rather that there is just nothing there at all – as if it never existed. Seriously, it’s like watching it for the very first time but 27 years after the event. Wes was Wes Madiko, a Cameroonian musician who’d worked with French ambient artists Deep Forest and who toured the globe with his brand of world music whilst also highlighting the plight of suffering children. He was a stand-up guy basically. His hit “Alane” was an exuberant and joyful blast of African chants in the Duala language of Cameroon set to an infectious dance beat which puts me in mind of The Lion King. And guess what, Wes contributed a track to the soundtrack of The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride. “Alane” would be his only UK hit and he would sadly die in 2021 aged just 57.

Hire or Fire? I’m saying hire on this one. I might not have know it before but it was a pleasant surprise

After Headswim earlier, here was another band who were hardly your cheesy, TOTP charts stars of yore. I was pretty slow on the uptake when it came to Spiritualized. Although my groovy record shop colleagues were definitely into this lot, all I knew about them was that they had an album out that came in really annoying and impractical packaging that was a nightmare to display in the store. Initial copies of the band’s third album “Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space” came in a box designed to resemble prescription medicine with a booklet containing dosage advice and the CD housed in foil blister packaging! I don’t think I could get past that literally nor metaphorically to get to the actual music. As such, I missed out on the NME’s album of 1997 (as referenced by Jayne Middlemiss in her intro) and its attendant singles the second of which was “I Think I’m In Love”. This earthy, organic, almost hypnotic track wasn’t your standard late 90s chart hit and thank heavens for that. Despite it essentially being just a list of clever word play, it had an authenticity to it that I couldn’t detect in Headswim which sounds mad given that they were writing about personal experience of death. Ah the vagaries of subjectivity when it comes to musical choice.

Anyway, I finally cottoned onto Spiritualized when they released the marvellous “Stop Your Crying” in 2001 after I’d left record shops behind me and become a civil servant*. Parent album “Let It Come Down” was purchased off the back of it as were tickets to see them live in York where I was then living and they made a huge sound as I recall. The band are still together (though I think front man Jason Pierce is the only constant member) and they released their ninth studio album in 2022.

*That was a culture shock and I clearly won’t be writing a blog about that!

Hire or Fire? Definitely a job offer being made to this lot

Ah shite. It’s the Backstreet Boys again with their piss weak ballad “All I Have To Give”. We saw this a few weeks back as a pre-release exclusive I think and it’s gone into the charts at No 2 this week and so is back on again. It’s just a reshowing of that first performance which means they’re all sat down on directors chairs. Presumably Louis Walsh was watching at home and used this appearance as a blueprint for every performance by Westlife. Ever.

Hire or Fire? I’m firing all five of their asses!

The Middlemiss bonce has lurched from sleek to slack during the show but it’s back under control again as she introduces the No 1 song this week – “Doctor Jones” by Aqua. Not a lot else to say about this one other than that the contrast in voices between singer Lene Nystrøm and her bald male counterpart René Dif is the most striking on the show since Marcella Detroit and Siobhan Fahey took to the stage as Shakespears Sister. Also, the name Jones does seem to turn up in a fair few songs. Apart from “Doctor Jones”, there’s this lot for starters off the top of my head:

“Mr. Jones” – Counting Crows
“Me and Mrs. Jones” – Billy Paul
“Jones Vs. Jones” – Kool And The Gang
“Janie Jones” – The Clash

Any others?

Hire or Fire? It’s the old tin tack for Aqua

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Hot Chocolate featuring Errol Brown	It Started With A Kiss	Didn’t happen
2	Cleopatra	Cleopatra’s Theme	Not for me
3	Headswim	Tourniquet	Nah
4	Jay-Z / Gwen Dickey	Wishing On A Star	Negative
5	Wes	Alane	Nope
6	Spiritualized	I Think I’m In Love	I did not
7	Backstreet Boys	All I Have To Give	As if
8	Aqua	Doctor Jones	No

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002fzcb/top-of-the-pops-13021998?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 06 FEB 1998

Posted on July 24 by 80stastic

After a few weeks hiatus due to the BBC’s coverage of Glastonbury and Wimbledon, we’re back with the 1998 TOTP repeats again. I can’t say I missed them which might sound a perverse thing to say from someone who has devoted over eight years of their life to blogging about them but hear me out. Firstly, after publishing over 700 posts in that time, I welcome any break from the relentless writing. Secondly, I have the feeling that 1998 wasn’t a vintage year for the UK charts and that we might be about to endure some hits of dubious quality at best (i.e. some right old shite). Let’s see if my fears are realised in this episode…

Tonight’s host is Zoe Ball who I’m not the biggest fan of but she seems like a safe pair of hands here. Someone who wasn’t exhibiting safe hands was Executive Producer Chris Cowey who has brought back that crap idea again of featuring the song that was last week’s No 1 as the first song of tonight’s show meaning that effectively the same hit is played back to back seven days apart. I might have fallen for what Cowey no doubt thought was a clever ruse back then but watching these repeats nearly 30 years on it seems plain daft. The fortunate recipient of this additional exposure this time is Usher whose “You Make Me Wanna” track lasted just a solitary week at No 1 before being deposed by…well, we’ll get to that in due time.

As for Usher, he’s determined to take off as many clothes as the BBC censors will allow pre-watershed although he maybe should have practiced a bit more first as he struggles to remove his silver padded jacket which he then flings to the floor. What happened to said jacket as it’s nowhere to be seen as the performance progresses – presumably it was snaffled away by a studio audience member. Did they get to keep it or did security make them return it to Usher. I mean, they didn’t even ask for it nicely with one of those annoying ‘Can I have your shirt?’ placards that are ubiquitous at elite football matches these days. By the end of the performance, Usher is naked from the waist up although, as Joe Cocker and, indeed, Tom Jones nearly sang, he did keep his hat on. That’s alright then.

Some proper music from a proper singer next. Much was made back in the day of Carleen Anderson’s musical family heritage* (Zoe Ball even makes a reference to it here) but Carleen’s own personal musical career took in many a familiar name. She’s worked with Omar, on Guru’s “Jazzmatazz: Volume 1” album, Incognito, Brand New Heavies, Jocelyn Brown and yes Zoe, Paul Weller. Of course, she came to prominence with acid jazz pioneers Young Disciples in 1991 with their Mercury Prize nominated album “Road To Freedom” before striking out in her own with solo album “True Spirit” which sold 60,000 copies in the UK and supplied her with four Top 40 singles.

*Carleen’s family tree included:

Her Mum was Vicky Anderson, a singer with the James Brown Revue.
Her stepfather was Bobby Byrd, the R&B, soul/ funk legend and James Brown band mate.
The ‘Godfather of Soul’ himself was Carleen’s actual godfather

Leading the way for her second album was a cover of Paul McCartney’s “Maybe I’m Amazed” which I hadn’t realised until now had never been released as a Macca single (though a live version by Wings was a minor hit in 1977). This is a fantastic track, perhaps one of McCartney’s best, and Carleen does it justice with her version complete with soaring vocal (is it live in this performance?). However, on reflection, it doesn’t have the feel of a single in 1998 somehow. A highlight of Later with…Jools Holland yes, or even his New Year’s Hootenanny show but just not a Top 40 single. The trippy graphics behind Carleen give it the feel of a performance on Channel 4’s notorious late night show The Word but surely Carleen was too classy to have appeared on that (I haven’t checked by the way).

This would prove to be Carleen’s final UK hit and she now has followed a different direction pioneering a new cultural form called “Opus Griot”, a blend of singing, poetry, storytelling and the use of MI.MU Gloves, a new gesture-controlled digital instrument developed by Imogen Heap. As for “Maybe I’m Amazed”, it continues to be covered by artists such as Marc Cohn, Thomas Lang and Billy Joel. Oh and if you play it backwards, you’ll hear a recipe for a really ripping lentil soup…

How does one describe Saint Etienne? It’s a legitimate question I feel as they certainly embraced the eclectic ethic more than most. It’s also a question that will be revisited this year I’m guessing as the band have announced that their forthcoming album “International” will be their last. No doubt this will usher (no, not him!) in retrospective articles in the music press reassessing their career. Indeed, there is one in the latest edition of the excellent Classic Pop magazine which has an interview with the trio at its heart.

My own personal experience of the band started…well, at the start I guess with their dance version of Neil Young’s “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” which was perfect for coming-down play lists with its aching sorrowfulness. It wasn’t a massive hit (No 39) but many of my hipper Our Price colleagues at the time loved it and it was heavily played on the shop stereo. Indeed, my wife liked it so much she bought the band’s debut album “Foxbase Alpha”. The natural progression from this was to see them live which we did in Manchester Academy but it wasn’t a fulfilling experience. Heavily reliant on backing tapes, they played for just 43 minutes and left the stage with Sarah Cracknell delivering the line “We’re not a rock band. We don’t do encores” and they were, indeed, gone. It wasn’t all bad though – the support band were Pulp who were excellent.

As the 90s progressed, Saint Etienne were almost prolific in their output which the stat of four albums in seven years attests to. They’d even accrued enough material for a Best Of album by the midpoint of the decade. Although some of their best known songs seem to be infused with an overt pop sensibility (“You’re In A Bad Way”, “He’s On The Phone”), they truly did span the musical genres. 1994’s “Tiger Bay” explored folk electronica whilst last year’s “The Night” was all about the understated and ambient. Then there’s their actual soundtrack albums. It really is wide ranging stuff. By 1998, they were back in that pop groove with the album “Good Humor” albeit of a more acoustic variety. Lead single “Sylvie” returned them to that classic Saint Etienne sound though – a stylish and catchy tale of sibling love rivalry. Some of its lyrics were a bit trite though rhyming ‘September’ with ‘remember’ and ‘person’ with ‘flirtin’. It would peak at No 12 thus maintaining their record of never having had a Top 10 hit. That run would remain unbroken*, something that Sarah Cracknell admits in that Classic Pop magazine interview remains a regret.

*I’m not counting 1991 No 8 hit “7 Ways To Love” under the guise of Cola Boy nor 2000’a collaboration with Paul van Dyk on “Tell Me Why (The Riddle)”

That last album should arrive in September this year and features guest appearances from the likes of Vince Clarke and the Greatest Living Englishman Nick Heyward so it should be well worth checking out.

By the end of the 90s, it felt like Will Smith was permanently in the charts with a succession of catchy, dance/rap numbers that were based on samples of classic hits from back in the day. Starting with “Men In Black” in 1997 (and omitting the outlier minor hit “Just Cruisin’”), he had a run of six singles that peaked at either No 1, No 2 or No 3. “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It” was the second in that run and was primarily based around Sister Sledge’s 70s disco classic “He’s The Greatest Dancer”. The lyrics, which, incidentally, some people believe were written by rapper Nas and not Smith, include the line:

“Met Ali he told me I’m the greatest”

Written by: Bernard Edwards / Joe Robinson / Nile Rodgers / Samuel Barnes / Will Smith.

How prescient. Smith would play the boxing legend in the 2001 biopic Ali. Anyway, “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It” was a perfect example of the successful formula that Smith had hit upon and he would run with it for all it was worth. However, what did it actually mean to ‘get jiggy with it’? I presumed it was a euphemism for the sexual act but according to Wikipedia, the term was originally a description of sexy fashion or style that was expanded to include dancing skills. As for Smith himself, he saw the use of ‘jiggy’ in the lyrics as an opportunity for racial empowerment as he associated it with the ethnic slur ‘jigaboo’ which popularised the folk-myth of an innate sense of rhythm in people of colour. In essence, it was claiming the phrase back.

The video was suitably grandiose being filmed at various Las Vegas hotels with scenes including Ancient Egypt imagery, volcanoes and ultimately a Statue of Liberty replica. The money and effort put into the promo was rewarded with an MTV award for Best Rap video. We’ll be seeing a lot more of Mr. Smith before these 90s TOTP repeats are through.

I’m totally out of my comfort zone on this next one as TOTP goes freestyle…literally. Freestylers are a British electronic group whose sound is so eclectic it makes Saint Etienne seem like fuddy duddy, dyed-in-the-wool traditionalists. Encompassing elements of breakbeat, big beat, trip hop, acid house and electro house, they are the trio Matt Cantor, Aston Harvey and MC SirReal. Looking at that list of sub genres of dance music, you may understand my comment about being out of my pop/rock comfort zone. I wasn’t the only one though. Zoe Ball was as well although she tries to convince us that she knows what she’s talking about in her intro where she refers to them as the “freesty-laaas”. That faux patois is undermined though by her pronunciation of the word “dancing” as “darncing”. And I thought you were a safe pair of hands Zoe!

Anyway, back to the Freestylers who are joined on this their debut hit “B-Boy Stance” by Tenor Fly who brings some ragga stylings to the mic (or something). It’s all very frenetic with the three breakdancers on stage twirling around on their arses adding to the spectacle/ looking ridiculous (delete as appropriate). To me, it seems very retro even in 1998 with the scratching of records and those “Brrrrrrrrrr” noises from Mr T. Fly. I love the fact though that the pasty, ginger haired bass player looks as un-hip-hop as it’s possible to be.

As with Will Smith’s earlier hit, the track’s title raised the question of what it actually meant (for me anyway). Apparently, it’s that arms-crossed, feet apart pose employed by breakdancers at the end of a routine which represents strength, defiance and the legacy of hip-hop (according to AI Overview anyway). “B-Boy Stance” would peak at No 23 but did it pave the way for an enormous hit later in the year that would become the UK’s third biggest selling single of 1998? I refer, of course, to “It’s Like That” by Run-D.M.C. vs Jason Nevins.

From out of my comfort zone to totally confused now as we get The Rolling Stones and their hit “Saint Of Me”. Before we get to my confusion though, a couple of points of order. What’s the deal with the little message to camera from Mick Jagger apologising for not being in the TOTP studio in person? Did anyone really expect them to be? Seems a bit unnecessary. Maybe it was part of the ‘Still No 1’ campaign whose tagline the hosts were made to trot out each week – “see, we can get names like Mick Jagger to do stuff for us because we’re still, you know, No 1”. Secondly, what was with the shot of the studio audience watching the promo video on a big screen? How did that help the watching millions at home have a better experience or indeed the song’s chances of increasing its sales?

Anyway, to my confused state of mind. I don’t recall this single though I remember the album it came from “Bridges To Babylon” – its cover at least. Consequently, I’ve had to rely on the internet for some info about it and everything I’ve found seems to suggest that this track was remixed by dance remix duo Deep Dish. This seems possible as the first single from the album – “Anybody Seen My Baby” – had been given the remix treatment by Armand Van Helden. Listening to it though, it doesn’t sound very dance influenced at all. Presumably there was a remix of it as an extra track on a CD single or the 12” format? This can’t be it surely? As for the song itself, it’s pleasant enough blues rock, the kind of which the Stones made their legend on with lots of religious imagery in the lyrics – a companion piece to “Sympathy For The Devil” maybe? To be honest though, it sounds like they were doing their best “Give Out But Don’t Give Up” era Primal Scream impression. Or was it the other way round? Ahem.

Wait…what?! Why are OTT back in the show?! I thought we’d done with this lot for the final time the other week? What? They’ve climbed one place from No 20 to No 19 with “The Story Of Love” after debuting at No 11 in its first week? That was enough to warrant another appearance? Damn you Chris Cowey!

Hands up who thought Aqua would be a one hit wonder?

*Blogger sheepishly raises his hand*

It was a fair assumption though. “Barbie Girl” was just about a novelty song so how could a career be carved out from that beginning? How wrong we all were. Not only did they have more hits but they completed a hat-trick of consecutive No1s. The second of those was “Doctor Jones”, another insanely catchy bubblegum pop track. The whole boy/girl cutesy thing was starting to get really annoying second time around and the “Ah-yippie-yi-ooh, ah-yippie-yi -yeah” lyric was brain rotting. Sadly, we would fall for it hook, line and sinker just as we had done for its predecessor. The UK record buying public was sick. Somebody should have called the doctor. Wake up now!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Usher	You Make Me Wanna	I did not
2	Carleen Anderson	Maybe I’m Amazed	Negative
3	Saint Etienne	Sylvie	No
4	Will Smith	Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It	Nope
5	Freestylers	B-Boy Stance	Not my bag at all
6	The Rolling Stones	Saint Of Me	Nah
7	OTT	The Story Of Love	Of course not
8	Aqua	Doctor Jones	Away with you!

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002fzc7/top-of-the-pops-06021998?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 30 JAN 1998

Posted on July 15 by 80stastic

It’s late January 1998 and Bill Clinton, the President of the United States of America, isn’t having a good week. Four days before this TOTP aired, he’d made his infamous “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” denial on TV to the world in the hope of quelling rumours of a sex scandal involving himself and White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

It would turn out that Bill’s definition of ‘sexual relations’ was different to the rest of the planet’s when he was impeached by the House of Representatives on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. Despite admitting months later that he had engaged in an “improper physical relationship” with Lewinsky, Clinton’s insisted that he had not given misleading evidence because he understood the definition of ‘sexual relations’ as given by the Independent Counsel’s Office to include giving oral sex but not receiving oral sex and therefore he had not engaged in sexual relations. Talk about splitting (pubic) hairs!* Somehow he got off the charges of impeachment and stayed in office but he did receive a fine for giving misleading testimony.

*Sorry!

Given that there is now a convicted felon in the White House (for the second time) who seems to be intent on declaring himself ‘King of America’, Clinton-Lewinsky-gate may have loss some of its scandalous reputation when seen through 2025 eyes but I guess that just shows how far the acceptable behaviour bar has been lowered by Trump. None of this has anything to do with good old, wholesome TOTP of course…or does it? I wonder if I can find some incredibly tenuous links…

Our host is Jayne Middlemiss and we start with…oh my God…not again! It can’t be “Never Ever” by All Saints again surely?! This is their eighth appearance on the show (including the Christmas Day episode) and they still have one more to go! Their first performance of “Never Ever” came on the 21 November 1997 and the last will be on 20 February 1998. That’s a time span of almost exactly three months. Three months! If that sounds ludicrous then there does seem to be an explanation which is that their hit spent 15 weeks inside the Top 10 of which only six were occasions when the record went down the chart. It was, in short, an absolute monster! Did it never occur to their record label London to delete the single so as to clear the way for their next release à la Dinah Carroll’s “Don’t Be A Stranger” or just so we could all move on with the rest of our lives as happened with Wet Wet Wet’s “Love Is All Around”? As it turned out, London and All Saints had their cake and ate it as follow up single “Under The Bridge/ Lady Marmalade” went to No 1 (on two separate occasions) anyway.

Clinton-Lewinsky connection: He “never, ever” had sexual relations with that woman (except he did)

Talking of follow ups to huge hit singles that hung around the charts for ages, here’s Chumbawamba trying to consolidate on the unexpected runaway success of “Tubthumping” with their next release “Amnesia”. I couldn’t have told you how this one went before re-hearing it but as soon as that “Do you suffer from long term memory loss?” line appeared in the hook, the sinker dropped and it all came flooding back. No amnesia for me! Although featuring another catchy chorus (delivered this time by Alice Nutter), it didn’t have the same immediate impact as its predecessor. It just didn’t have the same explosive energy – in fact, the verses were quite pedestrian. It was still commercial enough though to score the band a No 10 hit which was still quite remarkable for an anarcho-punk band formed in 1982.

“Amnesia” was written in response to the disparity between the promises of politicians and their actions once voted into power and the repeated lack of discernment of the electorate who put them there with particular inspiration coming from the band’s reaction to Tony Blair’s New Labour. Ten days after this TOTP was broadcast, there was a very visible and infamous rejection of New Labour when the band’s Danbert Nobacon poured a bucket of iced water over then Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott at the BRIT Awards show. Ah, 1998 when the BRITS were still worth watching.

Clinton-Lewinsky connection: Oh brilliant! Check this out from the band’s Boff Whalley about “Amnesia”:

“People forget that what Bill Clinton before he gets elected is not what Bill Clinton will do when he’s in office and that’s not just about Bill Clinton, that’s about all politicians”

“Chumbawamba Talks About Political “Amnesia””. MTV. Viacom.

Still with those hits that had legs comes “Angels” by Robbie Williams which was in its eight week inside the Top 10 four of which had been spent at No 7 where it found itself again this week. Despite all that time in the chart and subsequent TOTP appearances, I don’t think I’ve yet addressed the issue of authorship surrounding this one. Now, we all know that Robbie’s early material was co-written with Guy Chambers who was originally in the criminally underrated and overlooked band The Lemon Trees before meeting Williams and, indeed, “Angels” is one of the songs that they wrote together – theirs are the names that are listed in the credits on the single and parent album. However, enter Irish singer-songwriter Ray Heffernan whom Robbie met in a short visit to Dublin in 1996 before the launch of his solo career. At the time, both men were heavy drinkers and, after a session in a bar, recorded a rough and incomplete version of a song Heffernan had played to Williams called “Angels Instead”.

On returning home, Robbie would take up with Guy Chambers and presented what he had of the early version of “Angels” and they worked it up into the song we know today. Heffernan took legal representation out to protect his claims on the track (whatever they actually were) and in the end settled for a one off payment of £7,500 to basically go away. Forever. “Angels” would become a modern day standard and earn millions in royalties and an Ivor Novello award. You may think this would have destroyed Heffernan and he was certainly angry for a while but on reflection is glad not to have earned all those royalties as he believes it would have only enabled his destructive drug use of the time. All he really wants is proper recognition of his input into the song from Williams. Having watched the video below chronicling the story as to whether Robbie is right or wrong, I think I’m believing Ray instead.

Clinton-Lewinsky connection: I did not have musical relations with that man

Right, it’s all songs we haven’t seen before in these BBC4 repeats from here on in starting with the first appearance on the show for Catatonia. For a while back in the late 90s, this lot were big news. Arriving as part of the ‘cool Cymru’ movement alongside Manic Street Preachers, Super Furry Animals, Stereophonics and Feeder – “Mulder And Scully” was the track to catapult them to superstardom. Obviously influenced by the main characters from hit sci-fi TV show The X–Files, it also allowed singer Cerys Matthews a platform for her distinctive voice or as host Jayne Middlemiss commented, her regional accent. Such vocal stylings were not unique – The Proclaimers were infamous for singing in their Scottish brogue and Chas & Dave made a career out of recording using their cockney dialect – but it wasn’t as simple as that with Cerys. There was also the over pronunciation of words such as “Scull-eee” and the rolling ‘R’s in follow up hit “Road Rage”. Even this wasn’t entirely new though – Liam Gallagher’s extraordinary extended articulation of the word “shine” as “she-iiiiiiine” for example. And yet, you couldn’t ignore Matthews. She was a force of nature with many a tale of legendary drinking escapades to her name. Because of her presence in the line up, it would be easy to lump them in with all those other bands of the period who were fronted by a charismatic female singer like Elastica, Sleeper, Echobelly and Skunk Anansie but all those bands had their own sound and that included Catatonia.

I think I’d first come across them when their single “I Am The Mob” lightly scraped the Top 40 in the Autumn of 1997 though they’d been around for a lot longer than that. Having formed in 1992 and been though various line up changes and independent releases, they’d finally came to market via a major label with 1996’s “Way Beyond Blue” album which I somehow managed to miss completely despite working in a record shop. When “Mulder And Scully” debuted at No 3 though, we all had to take notice. Had it been a deliberate ploy to write a song that referenced an incredibly successful current TV show or was it just that Cerys was plugging into the popular culture zeitgeist? I choose to believe the latter as it’s not really a song about The X–Files as such but rather a metaphor. Having said that, I did find the use of the show’s protagonists’ names in the chorus slightly jarring. Reading all that back, I seem to be rather conflicted about Catatonia don’t I? What I am sure about is that they continued to have hits to the end of the 90s and into the new millennium. Sophomore album “International Velvet” went three times platinum but by the time of their fourth, the band seemed to be an anachronism and they split in 2001.

Cerys Matthews would go on to be an award winning author and broadcaster with shows on BBC Radios 2 and 4 and 6 Music and founded The Good Life Experience festival. In 2007, she appeared on I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here causing a stir in the tabloids when she began a relationship with fellow camp mate and EastEnders actor Marc Bannerman. What I remember most about her post Catatonia career though is that she used to write a column in The Guardian under the pseudonym of Dr Crotchety who was an agony aunt for music fans giving people who wrote in suggestions to liven up their listening habits which I found patronising in the extreme. She gave the impression of loving every single type of musical genre which I just couldn’t get on board with.

Clinton-Lewinsky connection: Well, this is fortunate. Cerys Matthews serenaded Bill Clinton at the Haye-On-Wye Literature Festival in 2001 even laying her head on his chest!

After something so memorable comes a totally forgettable hit which guess what?…I’d forgotten about it. “So Good” by Juliet Roberts anyone? She’d had a medium sized hit in 1994 with a remix of “Caught In The Middle” but sure enough, I don’t recall that either despite the fact that I must have reviewed it in this blog. This one was a double A-side with another remix of a previous hit “Free Love”. She was big on rereleases and remixes was Juliet. She also was fond of a collaboration. As far back as 1983, she was the vocalist for the Funk Masters on their Top 10 hit “It’s Over” and in 2001 had a US Dance chart No 1 with big shot DJ, producer and remixer David Morales on the track “Needin U II”.

Clinton-Lewinsky connection: Nothing for Juliet Roberts. Julia Roberts on the other hand appeared on the final week of The David Letterman Show alongside Bill Clinton and also appeared in a Broadway fund raiser in support of Hilary Clinton in 2016.

A case now of when one of a band’s most well known songs divides their fan base*. Green Day had made their name playing fast, power chord-heavy pop-punk tunes but here they were in reflective mood with an acoustic ballad. The track “Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)” had actually been around for years before it was recorded for the band’s “Nimrod” album, having been considered unsuitable for inclusion on their previous two major label releases.

*See also “More Than Words” by Extreme

It’s a deceptive song – on the one hand very simple – even a basic strummer like me can manage the chord sequence – and yet it has a depth to it. Just look at its title for a start; it’s almost paradoxical but allows the listener to take their preferred meaning away from it. For example, it has become a staple of DJ set lists at US Prom dances as a symbol of celebration for surviving High School. Conversely, when a senior manager left one of my previous workplaces and the staff were asked to contribute a song to a playlist they created for him, I chose “Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)” for the first two words of the title. Ah but what were those two words? Well, ‘good’ and ‘riddance’ obviously except…in some territories it was released as “Time Of Your (Good Riddance)”! What was that all about? To make it more easily identifiable to the casual listener as opposed to a Green Day devotee? Maybe it’s an American thing – the exact same scenario happened with the Icicle Works single “Birds Fly (Whisper To A Scream)” which was released in the US as “Whisper To A Scream (Birds Fly)”.

Anyway, this new direction for Green Day seemed to confuse some of their fanbase and even in some cases left them feeling betrayed. This wasn’t the band they’d grown up loving. They couldn’t…gulp…be looking for a more mainstream audience could they? Thankfully, the band hadn’t sold their soul for a hit and would release perhaps their defining album in 2004 – the punk concept album “American Idiot”. As for “Good Riddance”, it has become accepted as a Green Day standard and is usually played as the last song by the band at their gigs.

Clinton-Lewinsky connection: The band’s song “Holiday” from the aforementioned “American Idiot” album includes the lyrics “I declare I don’t care about the president” and “I don’t care about the latest scandal” which are reportedly about Clinton-Lewinsky-gate.

There are some songs that just won’t be left alone. “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” is one of them. Originally a hit for Sylvester in 1978, it was reactivated in 1990 by Jimmy Somerville who took it into the Top 5. Just eight years later, here was Byron Stingily making it a hat trick of chart appearances for the track. Having first experienced success as part of Ten City in 1989 with “That’s The Way Love Is”, Byron’s solo career finally kicked off in 1997 with the US Dance Chart No 1 hit “Get Up (Everybody)” which also made No 14 in the UK. He followed that up with this curiously hollow and empty sounding version of a disco classic. It really adds nothing to the original and is inferior to the Jimmy Somerville cover to my ears. Stingily would only have one more hit which saw him return to past glories with his solo treatment of that Ten City single. As for “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)”, it’s also been covered by Adam Lambert, Lewis Taylor and Sandra Bernhard.

Clinton-Lewinsky connection: This is unbelievable! Stingily’s version of Sylvester’s best known song was featured on a Spanish dance compilation album called “Ahora ‘98” the front cover of which was a parody of Bill and Hilary Clinton with actors pretending to be them at a desk in the Oval Office with a pair of legs protruding underneath it meant to be Monica Lewinsky who is…well…in a compromising position to say the least!

There’s a new No 1 from someone who would become a global superstar though the only connection he would make with me is that his name is my current job title. Usher has gone on to be known as the ‘King of R&B’ with a multi platinum selling back catalogue including nine No 1 US singles. Curiously though, this track – “You Make Me Wanna…” wasn’t one of them despite topping our charts when it peaked at No 2 over the pond. With its acoustic guitar hook, it crossed over into the mainstream big time winning a host of awards as it went and yet I hardly remember it at all. I guess I’m just not an R&B kinda guy.

Clinton-Lewinsky connection: This post has written itself! In 2010, Usher hosted a Senate fundraiser for candidate Michelle Nunn with Bill Clinton as the guest of honour. A year later, Usher performed at the ‘Decade of Difference’ concert celebrating the 10 year anniversary of the William J. Clinton foundation and also Bill Clinton’s 65th birthday. During Usher’s performance, this happened…

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	All Saints	Never Ever	Nope
2	Chumbawamba	Amnesia	I did not
3	Robbie Williams	Angels	No but I had a promo of his album
4	Catatonia	Mulder And Scully	It’s a no from me
5	Juliet Roberts	So Good	No, it wasn’t
6	Green Day	Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)	Great song but it seems I didn’t
7	Byron Stingily	You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)	Nah
8	Usher	You Make Me Wanna…	Not my bag

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002dt20/top-of-the-pops-30011998?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 23 JAN 1998

Posted on June 30 by 80stastic

Constantly writing reviews of these BBC4 repeats of TOTP for the past eight years has been quite a drain on the old creative juices. I mean, nobody would be interested in a list of songs with me denoting whether I liked them or not would they? I try to give each show some context about what else was happening in the world at the time of its broadcast or perhaps something from my own personal life (if I can remember!). On other occasions, I’ll try and hang the whole past around a theme (however tenuous it might be). Sometimes it’ll work and sometimes it can feel like I’m shoehorning stuff in that really has no place being there. And sometimes…well, sometimes everything just sort of dovetails together by delightful happenstance. This post is one of those. This is how it unfolds. The day after this TOTP aired, a brand new BBC sit com aired called Unfinished Business. Now, I never watched this nor have I even any memory of it but having read its Wikipedia entry, it didn’t sound like it was a laugh-fest. Anyway, what’s that got to do with TOTP? Well, apart from both shows being on the BBC and being broadcast within a day of each other, nothing. Except…our host tonight is Jamie Theakston who I was delighted to find out (when I was looking for a theme for this post) has presented a reality show on Netflix called Cheat: Unfinished Business with Amanda Holden. Is that it I hear you ask? No, one of the artists on this TOTP released an album in 1998 which was called “Unfinished Monkey Business”. And there’s more. The band who had the No 1 record this week, I would argue, are a perfect example of having unfinished business but more of that later.

We begin with half man, half washboard Peter Andre who I’m amazed to find was still having hits as late as 1998. “All Night, All Right”, as Jamie Theakston says, was based around a sample of 1978 hit “Boogie Oogie Oogie” which is familiar from my youth but if I’d been pushed to name who it was by, I would have come up with Earth, Wind & Fire rather than the correct answer of A Taste Of Honey. None of this affects the truth that Andre should have given up on his pop star notions long since. He did after one more hit in the 90s for a whole six years but, deciding he had unfinished business with the charts, relaunched himself after appearing on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here with the wretched “Insania”.

According to Wikipedia, “All Night, All Right” was a collaboration with Coolio on the album version of the track but with Warren G on the single release. Unless I’m missing something, there’s no sign of either rapper in this performance. What gives?*

*Oh, there’s Warren G! Two places below Andre at No 18 in the charts with “Prince Igor”!

It’s a hat-trick of consecutive appearances for the Lighthouse Family! Yes, the duo (they were a duo despite it all being about singer Tunde Baiyewu) have been on every TOTP of this new year so far with their hit “High”. In an attempt to keep things fresh though, executive producer Chris Cowey has come up with the idea of a stripped back, acoustic performance (witness Robbie Williams doing the same last week on his own third time on the show doing “Angels”). It was a decent shout I guess but maybe the better solution would have been to not have the same songs on every week? Certainly the TOTP community seemed to have had enough of this one judging by their online comments or were said comments triggered by who the artist was rather than how many times they’d been on the show? The usual accusations of being ‘bland’ and ‘vacuous’ were made – an almost obligatory event when discussing the Lighthouse Family it seems. I have to say that I certainly wasn’t a fan but would I have gone as far as to call them the Shitehouse Family? I don’t think so (even though I just did).

We have reached, what is for me, the point of peak Radiohead also known as the moment before they disappeared up their own arses musically speaking. If you are a Radiohead devotee and that offends you then I refer you to my disclaimer at the bottom of this post. Let’s not dwell on the negative though – “No Surprises” is possibly one of the most affecting songs on its first hearing you could ever imagine. Not many* tracks have that inherent emotive power that stirs something within you immediately but that’s how it was for me.

*And certainly not many featuring a glockenspiel!

The third single taken from the “OK Computer” album, it would also be the band’s final commercial release of the 90s and what a way to end their decade. Maybe that’s part of the reason why I couldn’t follow their musical path from this point onwards – I’d already drawn a line under my interest in them subconsciously prompted by the arrival of the new millennium.

Anyway, “No Surprises” was just magnificent – a simple lullaby on the one hand the melody of which was at complete odds with its lyrics that were a caustic indictment of modern life. It had a sense of distress about it, as if it was recorded under duress. Both these extremes of the song were portrayed visually. The lullaby narrative was turned into comedy gold by this scene from The Royle Family…

When “no surprises” by @radiohead plays on @XSManchester it reminds me of this from the royle family 💙 pic.twitter.com/yGpn0hExgp
— RACH / ♡ 🐝 (@rach_griff) December 30, 2019

Meanwhile, that theme of duress was captured by its striking video. Directed by Grant Gee, it depicted Thom Yorke in an astronaut type helmet that slowly filled with water as he sang the song’s lyrics that scrolled upwards, reflected in the helmet. Yorke has to lift his head above the water level to sing until he is fully submerged and then stays motionless for over a minute before the water is released and he completes the song. It was genuinely unnerving and took multiple takes before Yorke could complete it to everyone’s satisfaction.

Apparently, Gee was influenced in his vision for the video by the old Gerry Anderson science-fiction series UFO which featured aliens whose spacesuits had a helmet that was filled with a green liquid that they breathed rather than oxygen. That show scared the crap out of me as a very young kid.

As I write this, it’s Glastonbury weekend of which I’ve watched the following artists:

Shed Seven – not bad but Rick Witter introducing them as a 90s band rather dates them
Alanis Morissette – good vocal but she was clearly very nervous
The 1975 – just insufferable
Pulp – reliably excellent
Noah Kahan – a favourite of my teenage son and fast becoming one of mine too
Olivia Rodrigo – better than expected

However, I don’t think anything I’ve seen this weekend can rival Radiohead’s 1997 Glastonbury set which featured “No Surprises”…

Now, here’s some business that is definitely being finished – the dreadful business of OTT that is, who are on to their final UK chart hit and I’m guessing (please!) their last ever TOTP appearance. Their valedictory song is – surprise, surprise – not another cover version but a serviceable pop ditty aimed squarely at capturing the hearts of teenage girls across the land called “The Story Of Love”. Two of their previous three hits had been with other people’s material but this one could easily have been a Boyzone single. Well, they did seem to be copying their fellow Irish lads at every turn so I guess it makes sense to have a hit that was indiscernible from one of theirs. OTT really were second rate in the boy band stakes though. Apparently Asia went mad for them but over here, they never once even made the Top 10. The story of love? Nah, this was more a tale of tosh. Utter guff. OTT were over and OUT!

And now to that artist whose album featured the words ‘unfinished business’ in its title. Since the messy demise of the Stone Roses in 1996, we’d seen John Squire rise from the ashes with The Seahorses, Mani join Primal Scream and not much else. Suddenly though, frontman Ian Brown was back and throwing his hat into the solo career ring. His debut album was titled “Unfinished Monkey Business” and its lead single was “My Star”. Basically a Brown tirade against the expenditure on and reasoning behind the space race, the Mission Control type voices and sound effects put me in mind not of space exploration though but of CB Radios and trucking and that song “Convoy” from the mid 70s by C.W. McCall. Funny how the mind works isn’t it? I recall quite liking this at the time but on reflection, there doesn’t seem to be much to it other than more than a passing resemblance to this rather good track by The Jam…

Anyway, I guess we’d better address the elephant in the room…what was going on with all those eggs?! There’s a man playing a set of them like they’re a percussion instrument and then Brown himself lobs some at the image of him at the back of the stage. The only explanation I can find is that Brown wanted an organic sound effect for the production on the track and so the sound of an egg being cracked into a frying pan was inserted into the mix. Truth or myth? Who knows? What I do know is that it was quite the comeback given the place Brown found himself in after the Roses imploded after a catastrophic performance at Glastonbury in 1996. It was the very antithesis of the aforementioned appearance by Radiohead at the festival a year later. Having said that, given his ex-band’s fanbase, perhaps a hit was almost guaranteed regardless of its quality but its lo-fi sound had some appeal I guess. It was certainly a far cry from the huge expense of the production on the last Stone Roses album “Second Coming” – apparently Brown financed the recording of “Unfinished Monkey Business” himself and it was partly recorded at his home studio.

Looking at Brown’s discography, I’m slightly taken aback at how many hits he’s had under his own steam although he was part of the reformed classic Stone Roses line up in 2011 proving that the four members had some unfinished business with each other. Said business seems to have finally been dealt with as in September 2019, John Squire confirmed in an interview with The Guardian that the Stone Roses had disbanded.

It’s the world’s favourite boy band according to host Jamie Theakston next – Backstreet Boys. Oh dear Lord. I’m not sure I have anything nor want to say anything about this lot at this juncture. They were just so dull and grim. Look, here are the facts…”All I Have To Give” was their eighth consecutive UK hit of which six went Top 5. It was another wimpy ballad that was written and produced by Full Force who collaborated with Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam back in 1985 on “I Wonder If I Take You Home” (I’m sure they’re famous for much more but that’s all I know of them). Apparently the track allowed Backstreet Boy Howie D to do some lead vocals as his voice wasn’t suited to the more pop orientated hits they’d had up to this point. I wonder if Howie had threatened to take his ball home if he wasn’t given his chance? OK, enough of this! My puns are almost as bad as their song!

Oasis are No 1 with “All Around The World” and just like Radiohead before them, this would be their last release of the 90s. Also like Radiohead, it could be seen as a watershed moment. Not only was it the final release on Creation before the label folded but was the last to feature original members Bonehead and Guigsy. This week there’s another intro courtesy of Noel explaining that the band are still in America touring so we get the video rather than a studio appearance. If anyone was in any doubt as to the influence of The Beatles on Oasis and Noel in particular then one watch of this promo surely resolved that. The Yellow Submarine vibe is not so much prevalent as a direct steal.

Now, as fortune would have it, I write this as we enter the week of the first Oasis reunion gigs – yes, the much heralded concerts are nearly here and it will be interesting to see/hear what shape the band are in after sixteen years away. After all the hype, anticipation and negative publicity surrounding dynamic ticket pricing, it’s surely the music that matters right? Well, there is no new music of course – the much speculated and indeed leaked set list won’t have anything we haven’t heard before in it but is that what the hordes would have wanted anyway? I’m not part of the horde by the way. I didn’t feel the need to spend hours virtually queuing for tickets – I saw them in 1996 when they played Maine Road, Manchester when they were at the height of their powers and popularity and felt no pull to revisit the band nearly 30 years later. The band (or more pertinently Noel) clearly don’t feel the same and so we get to the ‘unfinished business’ bit. The reasons behind the Oasis reunion tour have been widely speculated. Did Noel and Liam genuinely want to rebuild their tattered relationship? Was it all about nostalgia and reliving that feeling of when the band could do no wrong? Or is it purely about the money? I think I’m plumping for the last option.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Peter Andre	All Night, All Right	As if
2	Lighthouse Family	High	No
3	Radiohead	No Surprises	No but I had OK Computer
4	OTT	The Story Of Love	Nah
5	Ian Brown	My Star	Nope
6	Backstreet Boys	All I Have To Give	Never
7	Oasis	All Around The World	No but I had a promo of the Be Here Now album

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002dt1y/top-of-the-pops-23011998?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 16 JAN 1998

Posted on June 20 by 80stastic

It’s the middle of January 1998 and two days before this TOTP aired on the BBC, Channel 4 broadcast the 2000th edition of their soap opera Brookside. I don’t think I was still watching it by this point but, in a cards on the table moment, I can reveal that I have been watching the repeats being shown on STV. From the very start in 1982. We’re up to 1988 now (that’s nearly 650 episodes) and yes, like you, I am asking myself “What am I doing with my life?”. Still, there’s worse things you could do than watch some episodes of a now defunct soap. Or indeed, spend years watching repeats of old pop music shows and then even longer writing up reviews of each one. Oh God – what am I doing with my life?! Oh well, it is what it is and what this TOTP is (or was) we need to find out…

Jayne ‘The Smirk’ Middlemiss is our host and we start with a band who were meant to lead us out of the Britpop years and into…well, a post-Britpop era I guess. Rialto were formed from the ashes of indie rockers Kinky Machine. Retaining their record label (EastWest Records) but not their name and adding some new members, the new look band courted the favour and patronage of the music press and were predicted a hugely successful future by Melody Maker for their epic, soundscape songs that were dripping with atmosphere. Somehow it didn’t quite turn out like that though. Being dropped by their record label shortly before their much anticipated debut album was about to be released can’t have been good for confidence in the band either internally or externally. According to vocalist Louis Eliot, it was just a case of being in the wrong place at the time. EastWest had a change of personnel and sacked their A&R man which led to the band being let go. Their album was released by China Records (home of Art Of Noise, Morcheeba and The Levellers) but in an extraordinary stroke of bad luck, China were bought out by EastWest and Rialto were dropped again.

I’m getting ahead of myself though. Reactions to the album were generally positive but in that ‘build ‘em up, knock ‘em down’ attitude so prevalent in the UK press, some reviewers decided to bury the hatchet right between the band’s collective shoulder blades. It made a reasonable stab at the charts though peaking at No 21 no doubt helped by the respectable performance of this single “Untouchable” (No 20). A sweeping, cinematic track that had echoes of a John Barry TV or movie theme (The Persuaders comes to mind), this was a favourite of mine and my wife’s and a purchase was duly made. We were so taken with the band that we had tickets to see them at The Manchester Academy but I was ill on the night of the gig and we missed them. Their success in the UK was dwarfed by that in South Korea where they even outsold Celine Dion and their album went to No 1 but a trip to South East Asia to catch them live seemed a bit over the top (and I’d been to China for just seven days the year before!). A second album arrived in 2001 but by then the writing was in the wall and Rialto split. Eliot pursued a brief solo career but is currently a permanent member of Grace Jones’s touring band. And then, out of the blue, Rialto were back in 2023 playing festivals and with a new album released on the legendary indie label Fierce Panda in April this year. Maybe I’ll get to see them play live after all.

Next is Robbie Williams whose song “Angels” is continuing its undulating chart journey and is back up to No 6 this week. It would alternate between rising and falling for ten of the twelve weeks it remained inside the Top 10. Quite extraordinary. Perhaps in order to build Robbie some credibility and for him to be seen as a serious artist, this time he’s doing the song live and acoustic (or ‘unplugged’ as we said in the 90s). Whether this gave him that credibility is not for me to surmise but it certainly imbued him with some confidence – you can see it all over his face. It could be his famous bravado of course.

P.S. Why was Louis Theroux playing guitar in this performance?

In many ways, KC And The Sunshine Band’s UK legacy is in complete contrast to its US counterpart. In America, they racked up five No 1s and two No 2s whereas over here, their only chart topper was the sickeningly upbeat “Give It Up” which curiously only made No 18 over the water. Of those American No 1s, only two translated into massive hits over here. “Please Don’t Go” was a No 3 in the UK whilst “That’s The Way (I Like It)” made it to No 4. Of those other massive US hits, none got higher than No 21 over here. There must have been something about those two transatlantic hits as both would become huge all over again in the 80s and 90s. KWS took “Please Don’t Go” all the way to No 1 in 1992 whilst Dead Or Alive’s first hit wasn’t “You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)” but their Hi-NRG version of “That’s The Way (I Like It)” from 1984. And then there’s this cover of it by Clock. Just…just…WHY?! Well, for the money obviously as it can’t have been for reasons of artistic integrity can it?! I think this lot were possibly the most shameful and shameless of all those 90s dance acts, stealing a living by pinching other people’s songs and putting a nasty dance backing track to them. The Four Seasons, Hot Chocolate, Tag Team and even Harold Faltermeyer had received the Clock treatment and now even KC And The Sunshine Band weren’t safe from Clock’s hands. This one though didn’t even seem to have that nasty 90s sheen to it as it was a fairly straight run through of the original.

The only good news is that time was ticking on Clock. They would only have two more UK chart hits before their spring was sprung one of which was yet another cover – this time of The Jacksons’ “Blame It On The Boogie” which itself had already been covered by heinous boy band Big Fun in 1989. None of this nonsense was the way I liked it.

It’s the Lighthouse Family up next with another performance of their hit “High”. I can’t think of a single thing to say about this one having only just commented on it in the previous post. However…having watched their appearance back, there’s something odd going on with the studio audience or more specifically one member of it. If you go to 3:20 in on the clip YouTube clip below, look at the young girl in a patterned top in the forefront of the screen. She seems to be distracted by something or someone out of shot and the look on her face is one of bewilderment with perhaps a hint of disgust. What was going on there? It wasn’t a reaction I’d have expected whilst watching the blandly inoffensive Lighthouse Family!

Early 1998 saw an Oasis milestone occur that was actually more like a line drawn in the sand in terms of the band’s history. “All Around The World” wasn’t just the third single released from the “Be Here Now” album nor the fourth of eight No 1s that they clocked up. No, it was their last release on Creation Records and the last to feature founding members Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs and Paul ‘Guigsy’ McGuigan. It was the end of an era and some might say that things were never the same again. Bonehead and Guigsy would both leave the band within two weeks of each other in the Summer of 1999 after completing preliminary recording sessions for fourth album “Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants”. Said album would appear in 2000 on the band’s own label Big Brother after the dissolution of Creation by Alan McGee in December of 1999.

As for “All Around The World”, this was a track written by Noel Gallagher in the band’s very early pre-record deal days which he infamously said he would leave recording until the third Oasis album. He was true to his word and it was the tenth track on “Be Here Now” clocking in at a mighty 9:20 in length making it the longest track the band had ever recorded. I was always bemused that given its size and stature, it wasn’t the last track in the album with it being trailed by “It’s Gettin’ Better (Man!!)” but there is a two minute instrumental reprise of “All Around The World” to close the album in fairness. It also marks the point at which the band were most open about vaunting their Beatles influences. Not content to try and rewrite “Hey Jude”, the video that went with it was an obvious steal from the Fab Four’s Yellow Submarine film. We don’t get to see that here though and nor do we get a studio performance but, as the personal VT message from the band says, a clip of them playing it live at the old GMEX venue in Manchester as part of the Be Here Now tour which had taken the band to America for its next leg hence their absence tonight. The live version sounds more powerful than the single release and, of course, there’s Liam’s obligatory over pronunciation of the word ‘shine’ as ‘she-iiiiine’. It got me wondering how many of their song has lyrics which feature that word. A quick search of the internet found this lot:

Rock N Roll Star – “I live my life for the stars that shine”

Cigarettes’ and Alcohol – “You could wait for a lifetime to spend your days in the sunshine”

Slide Away – “Let me be the one who shines with you”

Up in the Sky – “I heard that the shine’s gone out of your life.”

Some Might Say – “Some might say that sunshine follows thunder” / “Go and tell it to the man who cannot shine”

Hello – “Cos the sun don’t shine”

All Around the World – “These are crazy days but they make me shine”

Acquiesce – “I only wanna see the light that shines behind your eyes”

Magic Pie – “My star will shine”

Who Feels Love – “Thank you for the sun, the one that shines on every one who feels love”

The Hindu Times – “You’re my sunshine you’re my rain” / “There’s a light that shines on, shines on me”

Stop Crying Your Heart Out – “May your smile shine on”

She is Love – “When the sunshine beckons to ya”

Born on a Different Cloud – “You’re my sun and you’re gonna shine”

The Importance of Being Idle – “As long as there’s a bed beneath the stars that shine”

A Bell Will Ring – “The sun will shine on you again”

Bag It Up – “Gold and silver and sunshine is rising up”

Soldier On – “Shine a light for me tonight”

Boy with the Blues – “Remember to shine”

Cloudburst – “Downtown the moon is shining”

One Way Road – “And are we gonna see the heavens shine”

Round Are Way – “Round are way the sun shines bright”

Flashbax – “There shines a light, like dynamite”

Idler’s Dream – “The light that’s shining through your eyes of gold”

Shout It Out Loud – “I hope the light shines on we as one”

“Shiiiiiine on”!

They’ve finally done it! It’s taken nine weeks of which two saw them going down the charts and three as a non-mover but All Saints are at No 1 with “Never Ever”. They’re in the studio to celebrate their achievement which includes a fairly inane chat with Jayne Middlemiss before they deliver what seems to be a live vocal performance judging by the a cappella bit at the end.

Listening to those spoken word lyrics, some of them don’t seem to make any sense. For example:

“A few questions that I need to know”

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Shaznay Lewis / Robert Jazayeri / Sean Prescott Mather
Never Ever lyrics © Mca Music Ltd., Stl Songs Limited, Rickidy Raw Prod., Inc.

Surely that should be answers not ‘questions’? Then there’s this:

“I need to know what I’ve done wrong and how long it’s been going on”

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Shaznay Lewis / Robert Jazayeri / Sean Prescott Mather
Never Ever lyrics © Mca Music Ltd., Stl Songs Limited, Rickidy Raw Prod., Inc.

That doesn’t quite ring true. Shouldn’t it be “I need to know what you’ve done wrong”?

Then there’s the whole confusion over how to pronounce the letter ‘Z’ – is it ‘zee’ or ‘zed’ as both are used here. All very bewildering. Also bewildering is how many times the band have been on the show to perform “Never Ever”. If you think this must be the last as this was the song’s only week at No 1, you’re wrong. They’re on again in a couple of repeats!

After weeks of finishing the show with the No 1 record, suddenly we’ve reverted to having a play out hit. Was this a temporary thing or will it be here to stay? Anyway, there was clearly a KC And The Sunshine Band mini revival going on in January 1998 as after Clock earlier, here’s another hit based on one of their tunes. For “That’s The Way (I Like It)” read “Get Down Tonight” but with a 90s house beat applied to it and a new title – “Bamboogie”. Who was responsible for this crud? A producer called Andrew Livingstone who created the vehicle Bamboo to peddle this crap. I’m guessing it’s high chart entry at No 2 was taking advantage of the post Christmas sales slump. Thank God for those people who bought the 557 extra copies of “Never Ever” to keep “Bamboogie” from being No 1! A slender but important victory. You just knew this was going to be awful by its vintage cartoon video which stank of “this’ll do”. See also Jive Bunny And The Mastermixers and the Outhere Brothers.

I’m guessing that KC And The Sunshine Band’s record label will have taken advantage of this renewed interest in their artist and released a Best Of album?

*checks KC’s discography*

Yes they did and it sold enough copies to be granted silver status. I should think so too. In any case, if I wanted a song with “Bamboogie” in the title then I would certainly choose this one over that Bamboo shite.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Rialto	Untouchable	YES!!!
2	Robbie Williams	Angels	No but I had a promo copy of the album
3	Clock	That’s The Way ( I Like It)”	Of course not
4	Lighthouse Family	High	Nah
5	Oasis	All AroundThe World	No, I’d stopped buying their singles by this point
6	All Saints	Never Ever	I didn’t
7	Bamboo	Bamboogie	Never

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002dfcd/top-of-the-pops-16011998?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 09 JAN 1998

Posted on June 18 by 80stastic

Here we go then with another year of BBC4’s TOTP repeats. Do I have high hopes for 1998? Not really but I am willing and hopeful to be proved wrong. The first show since the Christmas Day broadcast has a mixture of hits we’ve seen before and some brand new ones plus something of a chart rarity concerning the No 1 record. Our host is regular presenter Jo Whiley and we kick off with the Lighthouse Family and their latest single “High” which is an apt title as the band were at the highest point of their popularity and success. Sensibly held back from the December release schedules to avoid being lost in the rush, it would peak at No 4 becoming their joint biggest single alongside “Lifted”. Taken from their four times platinum, sophomore album “Postcards From Heaven”, it couldn’t have been more easy listening playlist if it had been fiendishly crafted by Dr. Easy Listening in the laboratory for producing Easy Listening songs. And yet…if I had to, at gunpoint, take one Lighthouse Family song with me throughout my life, it would be this one as it’s so life-affirmingly positive.

Having said that, it’s a good job it wasn’t recorded in the 60s. The lyric “one day we’re gonna get so high” wouldn’t have got past the network censors on the Ed Sullivan Show and somehow I can’t imagine singer Tunde Baiyewu pulling a Jim Morrison. That reminds me – I was at a wedding recently and at the sit down meal at the reception found myself talking to a perfectly pleasant young man to my right who was planning a holiday to Paris. When asked by him if I’d ever been, I replied in the affirmative and started listing the attractions he might want to visit including the Père Lachaise cemetery but I gave warning of all the drugs paraphernalia directing people to the grave of Jim Morrison. The young man’s reply? “Who?”! He didn’t know Morrison or The Doors though he thought he might have heard the song “Riders On The Storm”. I’m so old.

“Jiggle your bits to this!” says Jo Whiley. Jiggle your bits? Were you allowed to say that back in the day before the watershed? In the age of lad culture you probably were sadly. Anyway, although this was our first glimpse of Steps on TOTP, their debut hit “5,6,7,8” had actually been around for weeks by this point. Eight of them in fact having ricocheted between the Nos 23 to 17 before finally peaking at No 14 prompting this appearance. It would then spend a further four consecutive weeks inside the Top 20 before finally bowing out of the Top 40 in its 15th week since release. Although one of the group’s lowest charting singles, it’s their third biggest hit thanks to subsequent streams of over nearly 38 million by 2021.

I think it’s fair to say that this track is not typical* of the rest of their back catalogue and I’m guessing that maybe they were only put together on a one single deal written to take advantage of the line dancing phenomenon that was sweeping the nation at the time. Responding to an advertisement in trade publication The Stage, the quintet surely didn’t expect the success and longevity that they have enjoyed.

*Of course, they’re not alone in having their debut hit sound nothing like subsequent releases. Some of the biggest names in pop music history could tell a similar tale. Look at the difference between “Love Me Do” and, say, “Strawberry Fields Forever” or between those early Beach Boys surfing hits and “God Only Knows”. Not that I’m putting Steps in the same bracket as Brian Wilson (RIP) nor Lennon & McCartney obviously.

Look at some of these numbers:

22 million records sold worldwide
5 million album sales in the UK
4.8 million singles sales in the UK
13 consecutive Top 5 singles in the UK including two No 1s

Not bad for an act that was put together to sell a one-off, line dancing hit. Ah yes, that hit. It really is atrocious. As if we hadn’t been tormented enough with “Cotton Eye Joe” by Rednex a few years before. Nobody should have been surprised to discover that Pete Waterman was involved in this mess with the group signed to his EBUL label in partnership with Jive Records and the man himself acting as co-producer. I think it’s fair to say that he ultimately saw Steps as a second chance to launch the British ABBA after his initial attempt with Bananarama in the early 90s had failed to ignite the charts. Sure, “5,6,7,8” sounded nothing like the Swedish pop superstars but their follow up “Last Thing On My Mind”* certainly did as did their third single “One For Sorrow”. Steps would ultimately transcend that idea (if not ABBA’s sales) to establish themselves in the premier league of late 90s pop groups.

*That track was released as a single by Bananarama in 1992 but failed to chart.

Despite having two separate periods of hiatus that amounted to the group being inactive for a total of 15 years, their story is still not fully told as the jukebox musical Here & Now featuring the hits of Steps opened last year and is set to tour the UK from August this year until May next.

P.S. As I was writing this, I turned on the TV and on BBC1 was Ian ‘H’ Watkins giving an interview about his small music festival in the town of Cowbridge where he lives that had been forced by the US Coachella festival to change its name from Cowchella to Moo-La-La. Rather than be disappointed, H was delighted with the publicity the story had generated for his festival. Boot scootin’ indeed.

It’s a re-showing of a previous Janet Jackson appearance next as we see that dress-down Friday performance of “Together Again”…erm…again. Supposedly, Janet’s inspiration to write the track came from the 1996 Nuyorican Soul hit “Runaway” which had been huge in the US clubs. However, it wasn’t contemporary clubs that had been at the forefront of Janet’s mind in writing the song but perhaps the most famous club of all time – New York’s Studio 54. Apparently, “Runaway” reminded her of being in there as a child. What the hell was she doing in Studio 54 as a child?! The club was notorious for its open drug use and sexual activity by its patrons. There’s a famous photo of Canadian First Lady Margaret Trudeau at Studio 54 without any underwear on! And Janet was in there as a minor! I think I’ll leave that story there.

After becoming bona fide pop stars in 1996 with some quirky hits straight out of left field like “Female Of The Species” and “Neighbourhood”, Space weren’t about to rest on their laurels and released sophomore album “Tin Planet” just 18 months after debut “Spiders”. The lead single from it was “Avenging Angels” which seemed to me to pursue a more mainstream sound than some of its predecessors. I mean, it still wasn’t your standard rock/pop song – it still had that spooky, twangy guitar sound in the mix – but the chorus was more conventionally melodic it seemed to me. They did retain that retro sound though – in fact, listening back to it now it could be the theme tune to a 60s sci-fi show or maybe I’m just fixating on the ‘angels’ part of the song and conjuring up images of the female fighter pilots from Captain Scarlet And The Mysterons. There’s two other parts of the song that needs some discussion. Firstly, I could never get along with the “kick ass angels” lyric of the chorus – it always really jarred with me for some reason. Secondly, that megaphone sung middle eight part. Apparently, Radio 1 said they wouldn’t play the single unless its length was cut in half. It duly was and “Avenging Angels” became a No 6 hit, the band’s biggest ever to that point.

It’s yet another appearance by All Saints again next as their uber-hit “Never Ever” continues its lengthy yet inevitable rise to the top of the chart. After witnessing the dance extravaganza that was Steps earlier in the show, I have to say that despite all the bells and whistles of that Steps performance, I find the All Saints…erm…steps more effective. Yes, all the thumbs down the waistbands, the twirling, the handclaps, the sidestepping, the lassoing and gun toting moves I found less memorable than All Saints stepping around in a circle shrugging their shoulders. Less really is more sometimes.

Now here’s a genuinely intriguing collaboration and yet I have zero recall of it. Absolutely nothing at all so listening to it now was quite illuminating. We’d already seen the worlds of rock and pop and classical collide on hits such as The Farm’s “All Together Now” and rap and a classical come together on Coolio’s “C U When U Get There” both of which were heavily based on Johann Pachelbel’s “Cannon”. However, had we seen rap and opera combined before? The people to thank for this (if ‘thank’ is indeed the right word) were West Coast rapper Warren G and Norwegian soprano Sissel Kyrkjebø who together went by the name of The Rapsody (see what they did there?) and gave us the track “Prince Igor”. Inspired by the “Polovtsian Dances” of Alexander Borodin’s opera “Prince Igor”, it topped the charts in Norway and Iceland and was a respectable No 15 hit in the UK. It was the lead single from a whole album of opera/hip hop mash ups entitled “The Rapsody Overture: Hip Hop Meets Classic” and I thought I would unreservedly hate it but it has something to it that engaged me. I think it’s the aria part sung by Sissel rather than Warren G’s rapping to be fair. Oh and remember my Captain Scarlet reference earlier when commenting on Space? What was one of the Angels pilots call signs? Yep, Rhapsody (spelt correctly this time). The others were Symphony, Harmony, Destiny and Melody if you were wondering.

Now if you thought “5,6,7,8” was a novelty hit, get a load of this! What on earth was going on here?! Just like All Saints, there were four members of Vanilla and two of them were sisters but that is undoubtedly where the comparisons end. Quite what this said about the contempt that EMI who released this tripe had for the record buying public can’t be articulated. The whole sorry episode also spoke volumes of those poor gullible fools that bought what is surely one of the worst singles of the decade. LBC Radio presenter James O’Brien has a phrase he uses in respect to the Brexit debate which is ‘Compassion for the conned, contempt for the conmen’ but I would struggle with the first part of it when it came to anyone who spent their money on “No Way, No Way”. Based on “Mah Nà Mah Nà” by Italian composer Piero Umiliani which became internationally recognised for its usage on The Muppets and The Benny Hill Show, it almost registers zero brain activity in its conception and execution. Apparently, when they were offered the chance to record it, the group weren’t sure as they wanted to pursue an R&B style but were convinced by the argument that “Wannabe” by the Spice Girls was as essentially a novelty hit so ‘what the hell’. Yes, it brought them instant yet brief fame of sorts but did they really think they could build a career off the back of it?!

Of course, they couldn’t. After getting to No 14 with “No Way, No Way”, the follow up single “True To Us” only made No 36 despite conducting a number of appearances at schools and being on the Disney Channel UK 1998 tour. In 2011 the inevitable happened when one of the group appeared in the Identity Parade section of Never Mind The Buzzcocks…

Despite the ridicule the group received, they seemed like good sports appearing multiple times on The Big Breakfast in a feature called ‘Vanilla’s Thrillers’.

Thankfully, if I think of The Muppets, the association in my head isn’t Vanilla but this from Alan Partridge’s Mid Morning Matters series…

So to that rare chart event surrounding the No 1 record as “Perfect Day” by Various Artists returns to the top some five weeks after it initially wore the crown. Now it wasn’t a unique occurrence for a single to return to No 1 after being temporarily deposed by another hit but it was the length of the gap between being the best selling song of the week that was surprising. Having been released at the end of November and being at No 1 for two weeks, it the spent a fortnight at No 3 over Christmas. Traditionally, the first No 1s of the New Year around this time could be snatched by a less mainstream hit with careful/cynical release timing when singles sales slumped dramatically after Christmas. Think Iron Maiden in 1991 and Tori Amos in 1997. However, for a single to regain the top spot after it seemed to have peaked was unusual though as I said earlier not unique. The Lightning Seeds achieved a return to No 1 in the Summer of 1996 after a four week gap but that phenomenon was fuelled by the Euros ‘96 football tournament. What was propelling sales of “Perfect Day” all over again? It would hang around the Top 40 for another six weeks before finally going home when it got dark.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it ?
1	Lighthouse Family	High	Only with a gun held to my head
2	Steps	5,6,7,8	Never
3	Janet Jackson	Together Again	No
4	Space	Avenging Angels	Nah
5	All Saints	Never Ever	Nope
6	Warren G and Sissel Kyrkjebø	Prince Igor	I did not
7	Vanilla	No Way, No Way	Hell No!
8	Various Artists	Perfect Day	And no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002dfcb/top-of-the-pops-09011998?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 1998 – the prologue

Posted on June 13 by 80stastic

Just as in 1997, there were some seismic events in 1998 none more so than the signing of The Good Friday Agreement that put an end to most of the violence of the Troubles in Northern Ireland that had blighted the country since the 60s. Meanwhile, in technology, the DVD format was released into the UK market for the first time. It was seen as revolutionary which it was compared to the good old *VHS tape that we’d all been making do with for years. Funny to think that even that format is pretty much now redundant.

*Remember having to set the timer for a few minutes before and a few minutes after the programme you wanted to record to make sure you got all of it?!

Whilst peace was on the agenda in Northern Ireland, it seemed that violence and bad behaviour was dominating the headlines in the music world. Chumbawamba’s Danbert Nobacon poured a bucket of ice over Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott at the 1998 BRIT Awards in February whilst in March, in the space of a week, Liam Gallagher was charged with assault for breaking a fan’s nose in Australia before he was banned from Cathay Pacific airline for allegedly abusing passengers on the flight home to the UK. Also in March, Mark Morrison was sentenced to jail for paying a lookalike to do his community service. The following month, The Fall’s Mark E. Smith got into a fight with band mates whilst performing a gig in New York and he was arrested and charged with assaulting band member Julia Nagle the next day. Within 24 hours, George Michael was arrested after being caught in a “lewd act” by an undercover officer in a sting operation. The incident would lead to Michael coming out re: his sexuality within days of the event. Finally, in October, Ian Brown of the Stone Roses was jailed for threatening behaviour towards a stewardess on a British Airways flight. He served two months of a four month sentence in Strangeways prison, Manchester leaving to a graffiti campaign proclaiming ‘Ian Brown is innocent’.

Meanwhile, on a mad day in May, two huge news stories broke. Geri Halliwell announced she was leaving the Spice Girls whilst Paul ‘Gazza’ Gascoigne was left out of the England World Cup squad. 1998 saw a number of bands split up including Menswear, Salad and Sleeper (Britpop really was over!) but those still going strong were All Saints with three No 1 singles and the Spice Girls who would record their third consecutive Christmas No 1. Also boarding the all female success train were sibling trio Cleopatra and Irish lassies B*Witched who matched All Saints tally of three chart toppers. Perhaps the biggest female star of them all also returned this year when Madonna released her “Ray Of Light” album. As for the boys, Robbie Williams went from strength to strength having saved his career with “Angels” whilst Boyzone were still churning out the hits with two No 1s and Five scored themselves a No 1 album.

As for me, I was still working for Our Price in the Stockport branch but things were starting to go south with my mental health and I would end up finishing the year in a different place geographically and mentally. This year might just be the toughest I’ve had to review so far.

TOTP 1997 – the epilogue

Posted on June 13 by 80stastic

So there goes 1997 – and what a seismic year it was. Labour won the General Election to form a government for the first time in 18 years whilst the end of the British Empire was finally signalled by the return of Hong Kong’s sovereignty to the People’s Republic of China. In other UK news, we got a new terrestrial TV channel for the first time since 1982 when Channel 5 launched. Just beating that event in the time elapsed stakes was the United Kingdom’s victory at the Eurovision Song Contest making us the winners for the first time in sixteen years. Trumping them all though in terms of time past was my beloved Chelsea winning a major trophy for the first time in twenty-six years when they beat Middlesbrough 2-0 in the FA Cup final.

However, one news story would overshadow just about every other as the Summer drew to a close – the death of Princess Diana in a car crash in Paris. Its reverberations were felt in every corner of the planet – one of those global events where you can remember where you were and what you were doing when you heard the news. It would, of course, have an historic impact on the pop charts as well in the form of the Elton John single “Candle In The Wind 1997 / “Something About The Way You Look Tonight” both the fastest and best selling single of all time in the UK overtaking Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” in the process.

Of course, there was more to the world of pop music in this year than that one single (no matter how many copies it sold). What else happened in the charts? Who were the movers and shakers and which musical trends were in the ascendancy? Well, there is a school of thought that says the Britpop movement officially came to an end this year with the release of the third Oasis album “Be Here Now”. Music critic Jon Savage certainly made that claim citing the weight of expectation crushing both the album and any lingering momentum Britpop may have been clinging on to. The decision of Noel Gallagher to attend a drinks reception at Downing Street at the invitation of newly installed Prime Minister Tony Blair may have also been a final nail in the coffin for what had ostensibly been seen as a working class movement previously.

So if Britpop was fizzling out, what was catching fire? Well, it’s time for a look at those year-end charts again to see if we can make head or tail of them. Here’s the list of the 50 best selling singles of the year:

No.	Title	Artist	Peak position	Sales^[5]
1	“Candle in the Wind 1997“/”Something About the Way You Look Tonight“	Elton John	1	4,770,000
2	“Barbie Girl“	Aqua	1	1,500,000
3	“I’ll Be Missing You“	Puff Daddy & Faith Evansfeaturing 112	1
4	“Perfect Day“	Various Artists	1	1,000,000+
5	“Teletubbies Say Eh-Oh!“	Teletubbies	1
6	“Men in Black“	Will Smith	1
7	“Don’t Speak“	No Doubt	1
8	“Torn“	Natalie Imbruglia	2	813,000
9	“Tubthumping“	Chumbawamba	2
10	“Spice Up Your Life“	Spice Girls	1
11	“MMMBop“	Hanson	1
12	“D’You Know What I Mean?“	Oasis	1
13	“Never Ever“	All Saints	3^[a]
14	“I Believe I Can Fly“	R. Kelly	1
15	“Mama“/”Who Do You Think You Are“	Spice Girls	1
16	“I Wanna Be the Only One“	Eternal featuring BeBe Winans	1	600,000+
17	“Freed from Desire“	Gala	2
18	“Where Do You Go“	No Mercy	2
19	“Sunchyme“	Dario G	2
20	“Free“	Ultra Naté	4
21	“Encore Une Fois“	Sash!	2
22	“Too Much“	Spice Girls	1
23	“Time to Say Goodbye (Con Te Partirò)“	Sarah Brightman & Andrea Bocelli	2
24	“Bellissima“	DJ Quicksilver	4
25	“As Long as You Love Me“	Backstreet Boys	3
26	“Baby Can I Hold You“/”Shooting Star”	Boyzone	2
27	“Ecuador“	Sash! featuring Rodriguez	2
28	“Wind Beneath My Wings“	Steven Houghton	3
29	“Don’t Let Go (Love)“	En Vogue	5
30	“Stay“	Sash! featuring La Trec	2
31	“Lovefool“	The Cardigans	2
32	“The Drugs Don’t Work“	The Verve	1
33	“Tell Him“	Barbra Streisand & Celine Dion	3
34	“Together Again“	Janet Jackson	4
35	“2 Become 1“	Spice Girls	1
36	“You Might Need Somebody“	Shola Ama	4
37	“You’re Not Alone“	Olive	1
38	“Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)“	Backstreet Boys	3
39	“Angels“	Robbie Williams	5^[b]
40	“C U When U Get There“	Coolio featuring 40 Thevz	3
41	“Your Woman“	White Town	1
42	“Never Gonna Let You Go“	Tina Moore	7
43	“Bitter Sweet Symphony“	The Verve	2
44	“Remember Me“	Blue Boy	8
45	“Closer than Close“	Rosie Gaines	4
46	“Stand by Me“	Oasis	2
47	“Professional Widow (It’s Got to Be Big)“	Tori Amos	1
48	“Picture of You“	Boyzone	2
49	“Say What You Want“	Texas	3
50	“I’ll Be There for You“	The Rembrandts	5^[c]

Well, as ever, it’s hard to draw any cast iron conclusions from that about what on earth was going on in the charts in that particular year. My first observation is that the Spice Girls only had one entry in the Top 10 but I think that was a scheduling issue with “2 Become 1” and “Too Much” suffering from having sales over two calendar years as Christmas No 1s. It certainly didn’t mean the UK were bored of them yet – they had two albums in the Top 5 best selling albums of the year. However, 1998 would be a difficult year for the group with the departure of Geri Halliwell and negative reviews of their Spice World film.

Looking more closely at the make up of the Top 10, I think they break down like this:

two charity records in “Candle In The Wind 1997” and “Perfect Day”
a novelty record (the Teletubbies) which could be two if you include “Barbie Girl” in that category which I think I do
a hit from a successful film (“Men In Black”)
a rap tribute track that was based around a No 1 from a 1983 No 1 hit (Puff Daddy)
a debut single from another Australian soap actor turned pop star (Natalie Imbruglia)
a ska-punk/ new wave band who turned up a mainstream crossover monster (No Doubt)
a most unlikely drinking anthem courtesy of an anarcho-punk band who’s been around for 15 years by this point (“Tubthumping”)

I would argue that the two most unexpected artists in that list are Chumbawamba and No Doubt in terms of ‘who saw them coming?’. The rest of the Top 50 includes over a dozen hits by artists whom I would qualify as being dance acts which seems to accurately reflect the weekly content of the charts. Special mention should go to Sash! for having three entries in the Top 50. As for Britpop, it is noted only by its absence. Oasis have two entries (“D’You Know What I Mean?” at No 12 and “Stand By Me” at No 46) whilst the only other artist that could possibly be put in that bracket (however much they may not have wanted to be) was The Verve who also had two songs on the list in “Bitter Sweet Symphony” (No 43) and “The Drugs Don’t Work” (No 32). In more general terms, sales of the single format remained healthy with each No 1 single in every week from late June onwards selling at least 100,000 copies per week. There were also 24 different No 1s, the same as the previous year and twice the amount in 1992 and that’s allowing for the fact that Puff Daddy was at the top for six weeks (over two separate periods), Elton John for five weeks, Aqua for four and Will Smith for four.

If we examine the best selling albums chart, you’d be forgiven for discounting everything I said about Britpop being over as Oasis and The Verve took the top two positions. It didn’t feel like that though. The former’s “Be Here Now” numbers seemed like the final hurrah of a sales phenomenon – certainly the album’s legacy doesn’t match its commercial performance. As for The Verve’s “Urban Hymns”, the presence of two of the most iconic singles of the decade in its track listing caused a massive crossover into the mainstream that few would have foreseen based on their previous back catalogue.

The rest of the Top 10 seemed more predictable on first glance but actually wasn’t. Sure, both the Spice Girls albums are in there but who saw such a successful return by Texas coming? The same can’t be said for Celine Dion for whom the services of a crystal ball were not required but both The Prodigy and Radiohead (the latter with one of the most revered albums of all time) were most definitely not conventional chart stars. The final two places went to the only Greatest Hits albums in the Top 10 courtesy of Eternal (presumably helped by the popularity of their No 1 single “I Wanna Be The Only One”) and, in a retro style, Wham! despite the fact that they split up eleven years prior. Elsewhere in the list, it was all very as you were with established artists like M People, Jamiroquai, The Beautiful South, Madonna and Enya all featuring via their latest album. A mention in dispatches for the Lighthouse Family who had two albums between Nos 11 and 14. Rubbing salt in Blur’s wound was the fact that, after being crushed by the sales of “(What’s The Story) Morning Glory?” in the war with Oasis, their eponymous fifth album could only manage a year end position of No 29 (despite having topped the charts on release) whilst “Be Here Now” was the best seller of 1997 with 1.5 million units shifted.

And what of TOTP? Well, 1997 saw a change of Executive Producer with Ric Blaxill departing after three years at the helm to be replaced by Chris Cowey who had made his name at Channel 4 working on The Tube and The White Room. A new name at the top meant a new approach and Cowey would ditch the ‘golden mic’ celebrity presenters in favour of a rotating roster of fixed presenters pulled from the BBC’s youth entertainment show The O–Zone. Enter Jayne Middlemiss and Jamie Theakston to join the retained Radio 1 DJs Jo Whiley and Zoe Ball. Further changes would be made in 1998 with more new presenters, a revitalised theme tune plus a 60s inspired logo and title sequence but that’s all for another time.

Hits That Never Were

Not as many entries in this section as in past years. Not sure if that is significant or not.

Edward Ball – “The Mill Hill Self Hate Club”

Released: Apr ’97

Chart Peak: Did not chart but peaked at No 57 on first release in ’96

Not to be confused with Ed Balls the ex-politician, TV presenter and initiator of ‘Ed Balls Day’ via an erroneous tweet, Edward Ball was the overlooked man of Creation Records. Whilst an infatuated UK couldn’t get enough of Oasis, Edward was quietly releasing some quality tunes that were shamefully ignored by the public. I include myself in that category as I have only discovered his music in the past couple of years but it was worth the wait.

“The Mill Hill Self Hate Club” was initially released in 1996 when it made it to No 57 in the charts but was given a rerelease in 1997 hence its presence here. A marvellously tuneful pop romp that should have been perfect for daytime radio in the style of Dodgy but somehow it never happened. The video features a number of well known faces including Creation founder Alan McGee, Hurricane #1 guitarist and future Oasis member Andy Bell, *Chelsea footballer and indie music enthusiast Graeme Le Saux and – hallelujah – the greatest living Englishman Nick Heyward who was signed to Creation at the time. As if that wasn’t enough, the wonderful Anna Friel makes a cameo at the video’s beginning and end!

*I’m wondering if Edward is a fan of my beloved Chelsea FC as the video features a picture on the wall of their 1970 FA Cup win plus the presence of Le Saux of course. In addition to that, Nick Heyward has a song on his “Apple Bed” album called “The Chelsea Sky” and Edward’s single before this was called “Love Is Blue”.

Nick Heyward – “Today”

Released: Jun ’97

Chart Peak: Did not chart

So, it’s time for the usual check-in with the aforementioned Nick Heyward to see what he’d been up to this year. Well, he hadn’t been testing on his laurels. After releasing his second album of the 90s in 1995 with “Tangled” (which had given him his first UK Top 40 single for twelve years in “Rollerblade”), he left Epic Records and signed to Creation (hence his appearance in the Edward Ball video presumably). Surely being on the coolest label, the label that helped Oasis achieve so much success, would mean Nick would regain his rightful place in the hearts and charts of the UK. Not a bit of it. He released two singles in this year to trail his wonderful “Apple Bed” album and they both sank without trace.

“Today” was the first of those, a blistering power-pop track complete with wah-wah guitar solo in the instrumental break – it was a bold statement. That it floundered completely says everything about the record buying public and nothing about Nick’s songwriting. How he failed to find commercial success with any of his three 90s albums in the age of Britpop is staggering especially with the last of those released on the ultimate Britpop label. Nick continues to tour constantly both as a solo act and as part of the reactivated Haircut 100 but has only released three albums in the last 27 years with the most recent being 2017’s “Woodland Echoes”.

ABC – “Skyscraping”

Released: May ’97

Chart Peak: No 93

By 1997, ABC hadn’t released an album for six years and were now down to just one original member of the classic line up – lead singer Martin Fry after Mark White had left the band to pursue interests outside of the music industry. Teaming up with Heaven 17’s Glenn Gregory, Fry came back with the album “Skyscraping” which was a critical success but a commercial flop. I’m not sure why as the three singles lifted from it were all good, solid, proper pop tunes. The title track gets the nod for this section as it’s a typically grandiose ABC number with sweeping strings and a poised vocal from Martin. I have to say that Fry doesn’t maybe get the credit he deserves sometimes. He’s still out there touring constantly and has even found time to revisit the classic “Lexicon Of Love” album to produce a second volume. In spite of all this, his voice still sounds on point unlike some of his contemporaries. I caught him on tour around this time at the Manchester Academy and he was great with this song a highlight. Good on you Martin!

Goldblade – “Strictly Hardcore”

Released: Mar ’97

Chart Peak: No 64

This one made the cut not because I was a particular fan but because I was working at the time with the sister of one of the band members so I heard a lot about them. Goldblade were/are a hardcore art punk band from Manchester formed in 1995 by John Robb, once of The Membranes and now a respected and published author and journalist. He also makes occasional appearances as a music commentator in the media – I say ‘occasional’ but he seems to be the resident go to talking head on these retrospective music list shows that are normally on Channel 5. He’s always on – it’s become a standing joke in our house. I find him a bit annoying if I’m honest and his book about The Stone Roses was repetitive and not well edited in my opinion. However, he is credited with coining the phrase ‘Britpop’. Or was that Stuart Maconie?

Anyway, back in 1997, Rob’s band Goldblade featured Jay Taylor on guitar whose sister Beth I worked with at the Our Price in Stockport. Beth had her own band Dumb who were regulars on the live music scene in Manchester in the 90s whose sound was compared to that of US hardcore band Fugazi. I think Jay may have even been a floating member of Dumb as well. They released a few singles and a couple of albums and did a session for John Peel too. I saw them live once and although the music wasn’t really my bag, they were exhilarating to watch.

Goldblade had two UK chart entries the highest peaking of which was “Strictly Hardcore” which, in fairness, is actually a great song. Octane-fuelled and relentless of pace, it belts along cracking the whip as it goes. There’s even some Dexy’s style horns at the end. They are still an on-off entity, occasionally playing live gigs though they have gone on the back burner whilst Robb reactivated the Membranes.

Hits We Missed

We missed loads of TOTP repeats for this year due to the Puff Daddy/R Kelly issue and consequently lots of performances so I’m going to have to be selective about which ones feature in this section else I’ll never get this post finished. Some of the hits we missed were some of the most prominent of the decade like Blur’s “Song 2” and “Bitter Sweet Symphony” by The Verve but so much has been written about them already that I’m not going to add my insignificant tuppence worth. Instead I’ve picked out five, four of which we didn’t see because they didn’t warrant a TOTP appearance as opposed to the show not being repeated.

Candyskins – “Monday Morning”

Released: Feb ’97

Chart Peak: No 34

Just as Edward Ball was the overlooked man of Creation Records, so The Candyskins were the almost forgotten men of the ‘Oxford scene’ that brought us Radiohead and Supergrass. By 1997, despite being hailed by the music press as one of the seminal bands of the early stages of Britpop, The Candyskins had already released two albums to limited interest from the record buying public. After leaving record label Geffen due to a dispute over royalties, their album “Sunday Morning Fever” was released on Ultimate and gave the band their only UK Top 40 single “Monday Morning”. As with Edward Ball, this should have been massive on the radio but I don’t remember hearing it much back then. A breezy, guitar driven track with a jaunty chorus, it could certainly have lived with “Alright” by the aforementioned Supergrass.

Bizarrely, the title “Monday Morning” seemed to be a flame to the moths of Britpop. Not only did The Candyskins write a song of that name but Rialto had a minor hit in this year also called “Monday Morning 5.19”. And we’re still not done. There’s a track on Pulp’s “Different Class” album called “Monday Morning” too.

Lamb – “Gorecki”

Released: Mar ’97

Chart Peak: No 30

If you think of the trip-hop movement, where and who comes to mind first? Bristol and Portishead? Tricky? I bet it’s not Lamb and Manchester but they definitely deserve a name check. OK, I m not sure that they would want to be definitively defined as a trip-hop artist per se as there were elements of jazz and drum and bass in their work but if you listen to their biggest hit “Górecki” you can understand why they are categorised as such. Inspired by Henryk Górecki’s “Third Symphony”, check out some of the comments on YouTube about it. Superlative after superlative – ‘timeless’, ‘perfection’, ‘incredible’, ‘beautiful’, ‘unparalleled’, ‘masterpiece’…my wife was one of those using such descriptions as she bought the single (well, I did for her on my staff discount). It is certainly an affecting track and one that you can hear being a left field ‘our tune’ for the want of a better phrase.

And yet…what I remember most about this track is punters asking for that song ‘Goreki’ as opposed to ‘Goretski’. And yes I realise how snobby that sounds! The track would go on to be used in various TV shows, movies and video games including Torchwood, Moulin Rouge and Tomb Raider. Lamb spilt in 2004 before reconvening five years later. Three studio albums later, they are currently inactive.

Travis – “Happy”

Released: Oct ’97

Chart Peak: No 38

It’s my understanding that in 1999, Scottish band Travis almost single-handedly kept record shop chain Our Price (for whom I was working) from going to the wall with the sales of their sophomore album “The Man Who”. So perilous were the company’s finances that the cash injection supplied by the phenomenal success of the album was crucial in keeping the wolf from the door. Of course, that could all just be a myth but it’s what I heard. If it seems a like an unlikely tale then so is the rise of Travis from Britpop also-ran to multi platinum selling band within two years.

Back in 1997, they’d just released their debut album to mixed reviews and inconsistent sales. Their first four singles had peaked at Nos 39, 40, 30 and 38. It was hardly ground breaking stuff. “Happy” was the last of those and is a robust and at times soaring rock/pop track that maybe fell between the gaps when it came to airplay. Too rocky for daytime but not rock enough for the specialist stations. We had a promo sampler of the album to be played in store which I nabbed and would lead me to purchase the proper album eventually. It’s a far harder sound than the one which they conquered the UK with on their follow up but I think I actually prefer it (although I did like “The Man Who” as well).

I’m pretty sure I caught them live before they made it big supporting Nick Heyward at the Manchester Academy but I definitely saw them just as they were taking off at the same venue which must have been a couple of years later. Nowadays, they’ve become a byword for naff which seems unfair as Fran Healy is a decent songwriter although he did nick the chords from “Wonderwall” for the hit “Writing To Reach You” albeit that he does acknowledge that with a reference to the Oasis classic in the lyrics.

Ben Folds Five – “Battle Of Who Could Care Less”

Released: Mar ’97

Chart Peak: No 26

In 2004, much was made of Keane’s debut album “Hopes And Fears” and quite rightly too as it’s a fine album full of swooping, epic pop songs. However, what people mostly seemed to be talking about was the fact that the music was very heavily piano-led leading to the band being dubbed ‘the band with no guitars’. It seemed to me that this approach was being described as revolutionary and yet they weren’t the first band to adopt such a style. Ben Folds Five were from Chapel Hill, North Carolina and opted to exclude lead guitars from their music to focus on piano, bass and drums. This, allied to their quirky humour (there were only three members of Ben Folds Five for example), clever arrangements and vocal harmonies, made them standout in the 90s alt-rock scene. They crossed over into mainstream success with second album “Whatever And Ever Amen” which featured lead single “Battle Of Who Could Care Less”. I was immediately drawn to the song’s unusual title and was rewarded for my interest by a clever, biting yet melodic track which sounded like nothing else in the charts. It shouldn’t really have been a hit given its polarity to its contemporaries but thankfully it was. The band have split and reformed numerous times with Folds pursuing a solo career in between.

Echo & The Bunnymen – “Nothing Lasts Forever”

Released: Jun ’97

Chart Peak: No 8

Finally, we end this section with a hit we should have see as it made it onto TOTP but were denied due to the Puff Daddy/R Kelly issue. As with Texas this year, the revitalisation of Echo & The Bunnymen was surely not on anyone’s 90s bingo card. After Ian McCulloch left the band in 1988, the three remaining members had committed to carrying on but having recruited a replacement singer (as if McCulloch could ever be replaced) their plans were destroyed by the death of drummer Pete de Freitas in an RTA aged just 27. A psychedelic tinged album called “Reverberation” was released in 1990 to apathy from the fanbase and just about zero sales. As guitarist Will Sergeant observed, it seemed that the world wasn’t interested in Echo & The Bunnymen without Mac there and the band duly split.

McCulloch would record two well received though equally poor selling solo albums before reuniting with Sergeant to record new material under the name Electrafixion but it would take bassist Les Pattinson’s decision to rejoin the fold to prompt the return of Echo & The Bunnymen and what a return it was with the album “Evergreen” going Top 10 as did lead single “Nothing Lasts Forever”. This was one of those songs that felt like an instant classic the very first time you heard it. An indie rock anthem with a hint of melancholy about it, this was such a strong comeback. Its poignancy was confirmed by the fact that both Janice Long and Christian O’Connell played it as the final song in their last ever shows for Radio 2 and Absolute Radio respectively. Not that it needed it but the presence on backing vocals of Noel Gallagher probably added to its appeal for some. The band have released six albums since then and remain a big pull on the live circuit.

Their Season In The Sun

Hanson

A classic case of ‘the only way is down’ after their first single went to No 1 around the world. “MMMBop” was one of the catchiest hits of the decade but all anybody wanted to really talk about was how young the trio of brothers were. Two more hits followed before the year was out but nothing they released could top their debut. The band are still together though and in 2023 collaborated with Busted on their cover of that song which was retitled “MMMBop 2.0”. It isn’t the only cover in existence – as of 2016 there were 93,000 versions of it on YouTube.

No Mercy

Not as controversial nor as successful as German producer Frank Farian’s other group projects Boney M and Milli Vanilli, this American trio briefly found fame in 1997 when they combined flamenco guitars with a Eurodance beat which saw their song “Where Do You Go” become a hit in the UK, the US and Europe. We especially couldn’t get enough of it and bought enough copies for it to spend nine consecutive weeks inside the Top 10. Two more charting singles followed before the craze burnt out and the hits dried up.

Chumbawamba

It seems unfair to include these anarcho-punks in this section but the truth is that their 30 year career can be condensed into just one hit for the vast majority of people. “Tubthumping”was everywhere in the late Summer and Autumn of 1997 and even its lyric about being ‘knocked down’ set against the backdrop of the death of Princess Diana in a car crash couldn’t dent its popularity. In truth, there were a couple more hits including a World Cup song meaning they weren’t a one hit wonder but really their legacy to everyone outside of their fanbase is that No 2 hit. Indeed, it is so well known that the far right have attempted to hijack it for their political campaigns (Trump in 2016 and New Zealand’s Winston Peters in 2024) resulting in cease and desist letters being sent from the band. Quite right too.

White Town

Now this lot definitely were a one hit wonder and a definitive example of it at that- a solitary smash that was a No 1 and then absolutely nothing. I say ‘this lot’ but it was really just Jyoti Prakash Mishra who gave the world “Your Woman”, a distinctive dance number that didn’t sound like anything you’d ever heard before despite sampling British bandleader Lew Stone’s treatment of the 1932 song “My Woman” featuring vocals by Al Bowlly – not that many who bought it would have been familiar with a 65 year old song. The gender identity swapping lyrics allied to its insanely catchy hooks caused a brief sensation but a follow up single failed to make the Top 40 and White Town’s fame was over almost before it had begun. However, “Your Woman”’s legacy was given a boost in 2020 when Dua Lipa sampled the same trumpet hook featured in it in her song “Love Again”

The Supernaturals

Some of the finest power pop melodies of the year were provided by this Glasgow outfit who scored three Top 40 hits and a Top 10 album in this year. Sadly, they couldn’t consolidate on that success and it was a case of diminishing returns from there on in and they split in 2002. However, since reforming in 2012 they have continued to be active on the festival scene and have supported the likes of Sleeper and Embrace. Their two most well known songs “The Day Before Yesterday’s Man” and “Smile” have outlived their initial chart lives by being used to soundtrack banking TV adverts and appeared in TV series like Teachers and Peter Kay’s Phoenix Nights and the film Shooting Fish.

Last Words

So, 1997 – we are done with you but you were quite the year. On a personal level, it was pretty significant. I went to China (!), I was the manager of a record shop (albeit for a few months as a stand in until somebody else was appointed permanently) and I finally witnessed my beloved Chelsea win a major trophy. It wasn’t all good though. This was the year my mental health started to dip and it would turn into a full blown crisis in 1998…

TOTP 19 DEC 1997

Posted on June 10 by 80stastic

Christmas is nearly upon us in the world of BBC4’s TOTP repeats and, unlike nowadays, there is much talk of who will be this year’s festive No 1. Some of the contenders in the race were:

The Teletubbies – “Teletubbies Say ‘Eh-Oh’”
Various Artists – “Perfect Day”
Spice Girls – “Too Much”
Robbie Williams – “Angels”
Chicken Shed Theatre Company – “I Am In Love With The World”

If you can’t remember who clinched the title then here’s a clue – they had silly names and there was a lot of controversy surrounding them. No, not the Teletubbies! It was the Spice Girls though I’m willing to bet a few of them had handbags to rival Tinky Winky’s!

Anyway, we’re not there yet. We still have one last show for the great and the good of the class of 1997’s pop cohort to promote their Christmas wares and we start with Natalie Imbruglia who is still in the Top 10 despite having spent the last two months in residence there. Although this was the era of singles debuting high and crashing out of the Top 40 completely within a fortnight due to record company first week of release discounting, there were still plenty of examples of hits that bucked that trend. Off the top of my head, just in 1997, there’s No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak”, “Tubthumping” by Chumbawamba, No Mercy’s “Where Do You Go”, All Saints’ “Never Ever” and “Encore Une Fois” by Sash! “Torn” was another such song. Look at these chart stats:

2 – 2 – 2 – 4 – 5 – 9 – 8 – 8 – 8 – 9 – 10

This week’s TOTP appearance was for one of those No 8 positions so presumably because it had gone back up the charts or was holding steady. In the week before Christmas, it seems a bit odd to be opening the show with a months old hit which would also feature in the Christmas Day show but there you go. Would there have been a discussion at her label RCA about deleting it to make way for the follow up single “Big Mistake”? If there was, it was clearly poo-pooed in favour of ensuring it wasn’t swallowed up in the festive rush and was held back for the much slower post Christmas sales period. Nearly thirty years on though, it all see seems a bit academic as despite a triple platinum selling debut album and ten UK Top 40 singles to her name, I’m willing to bet the vast majority of people could only name “Torn” when it comes to Natalie Imbruglia hits.

Here’s another of those songs that took up long term residency in the charts – “Angels” by Robbie Williams. This one spent twelve consecutive weeks inside the Top 10 whilst never going higher than No 4 thus undermining the faith that some of the bookies had in it to be the Christmas chart topper. Maybe some of that belief was based on the fact that:

It was a ballad – always a winner at Christmas
There appeared to be some sleigh bells somewhere in the mix in the intro
There was an extra track on the CD single called “Walk This Sleigh”

History tells us, of course, that this was the single that saved Robbie’s career which got me thinking if there were other examples of this. The first that came to mind was “Instinction” by Spandau Ballet. After scoring their biggest ever hit with “Chant No. 1 (I Don’t Need This Pressure On)” in the Summer of 1981, their next two singles released for the “Diamond” album were chart failures. “Paint Me Down” only managed a humble peak of No 30 whilst “She Loved Like Diamond” was a sales disaster failing to make the Top 40 at all. Suddenly, the pressure was on and the band were in desperate need of a hit to resurrect their career. Enter Trevor Horn whose remix of the album track “Instinction” took them back to the Top 10 before the band became global superstars with “True”.

Then there’s the case of Culture Club. Having had demos rejected by EMI, the band finally signed with Virgin Records but after their first two singles had less longevity to them than TACO Trump’s tariff charges, there must have been concern within the record label that their charges were a dud. A last throw of the dice in third single “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me” saw the track receive support from David Hamilton on Radio 2 (which wasn’t the popular music playing station it is today back then) and a last minute TOTP appearance after Shakin’ Stevens cried off saw the world introduced to Boy George. Cue tabloid hysteria but also massive sales and pop superstardom.

Bringing it back to Robbie Williams, Take That struggled to find chart success in their early days with their first three singles getting no further than No 38. After all the promotional groundwork the band had done in clubs and schools, it was scant reward. A fourth single was given the go ahead but only with the safety net of it being a cover version. Their version of the old Tavares hit “It Only Takes A Minute” took them into the Top 10 and Take That are still with us 33 years later (albeit now as a trio).

Now I remember there was a Bryan Adams MTV Unplugged album because I recognise the cover but I couldn’t have told you that the lead single from it was called “Back To You”. However, I do know the song. How come? Because it was a staple of the early guitar classes I attended back in about 2009 as it turns out the chords to it are pretty basic. We used to start with this one to get us warmed up. Does that mean I liked it? It’s an OK track but it doesn’t come near to the power of “Run To You”. It actually sounds a bit twee in comparison. Still, those chords won’t learn themselves and a part of me will always be reminded of sitting in a circle and strumming along to its backing track whenever I hear it. Bryan’s original would make No 18 in the UK but was a No 1, rather predictably, in his native Canada.

I’m not sure if the bookmakers had this one down as a potential Christmas No 1 but then, in fairness to Ladbrokes, William Hill and the rest, the chart journey of “Never Ever” by All Saints was hard to have predicted. In at No 3 in its first week, it then fell for two consecutive charts before reversing the trend to spend three weeks at No 4 of which this TOTP appearance was one. It would finally top the charts for a solitary week in early 1998. Quite extraordinary really.

P.S. I like host Jayne Middlemiss’ intro where she really lets her Geordie accent come through when she says “Mel. Shaz, Nicki and Nat are gonna sing for wuh”. Lovely stuff.

What’s not so lovely though is the link to the next song which comes from one of the band themselves. Yes, introducing “If God Will Send His Angels” by U2 is Bono himself. What was this all about? A demonstration that the show’s profile was still so powerful that it could get superstars to record exclusives for it? Bono’s Christmas message includes him banging on about his kids wanting him to have a bath after returning from being on tour (how festive) before apologising for not being there with us (by which I presume he means in the studio) and therefore we get the promo for the single which was the fifth and last taken from “Pop”. I had totally forgotten about this one probably because it’s totally unmemorable. Even the by now over used record-at-slow-speed-and-then-sped-up video technique employed on the promo seemed old hat. It really is a bit of a dirge but it managed a chart peak of No 12 nonetheless. You could doubt the wisdom of releasing a fifth track from an album at the height of the Christmas singles rush – what did record label Island think was going to happen? The reasoning behind it seems to be the fact that due to the deadline of a pre-booked tour, the “Pop” album was rushed to market in what the group felt was an unfinished state. As such the band either remixed or completely remade the tracks taken from it for single release making them seem like more essential than usual purchases for the die-hards in the fanbase.

“If God Will Send His Angels” would also end up on the soundtrack album for the film City Of Angels (the clue to the reason why is in both titles!). I’ve never seen it but it starred Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan and was about an angel falling in love with a mortal woman. The film was a commercial success as was the soundtrack which also featured songs by Alanis Morissette and Goo Goo Dolls both of whom were managed by Rob Cavallo who was the album’s executive producer. Funny that. Morissette had the follow up album to global smash “Jagged Little Pill” due out whilst Goo Goo Dolls also had an album forthcoming. Again, funny that. The latter’s track contributed to the film was “Iris” which would top airplay charts around the world when released as a single the following year, be nominated for a Grammy and is still a staple of pop/rock radio station playlists to this day and you can’t say that about “If God Will Send His Angels”,

And so to another of those potential contenders for the Christmas No 1 according to the bookies. “I Am In Love With The World” by Chicken Shed Theatre Company was originally included on the “Diana Princess Of Wales: Tribute” charity album due to her patronage of the theatre company that literally started in an old chicken shed and was released as a single from it in time for Christmas. Presumably the bookmakers were predicting another Elton John style flood of sales. It never transpired with “I Am In Love With The World” (why was it ‘I am’ and not ‘I’m’) peaking at a relatively lowly No 15. Maybe its inclusion on an album that went double platinum in the UK reduced its chances or maybe the nation had taken enough time by this point to shake off its collective malaise that Diana’s death had brought on. Or maybe, and I don’t wish to wield harsh criticism against a charity record, it was just terrible. Because it really was.

Say what you like about Celine Dion (and many of us have) but she worked with some of the biggest names in music. Her previous single to this (which was still in the Top 40) was a duet with Barbra Streisand and the follow up – “The Reason” – was co-written by Carole King. My wife introduced me to Carole’s “Tapestry” LP when we first met back in 1986 so it has a special place in my heart but this track was like a paper doily compared to the songs woven into that classic album. A power ballad (of course it was) but it wasn’t a Jim Steinman type powerhouse like “It’s All Coming Back To Me Now” which she’d had a hit with the previous year. It sounded like a Eurovision* entry or possibly an X Factor winner’s song.

*Celine had, of course, won that particular song contest for Switzerland in 1988.

Tellingly, that duet with Barbra Streisand (“Tell Him”) would endure much better than “The Reason”. It peaked at No 3, spent four weeks inside the Top Ten 10 and a further four inside the Top 20 whereas “The Reason” peaked at No 11 and spent just three weeks in total in the Top 20. In the week of the Christmas chart, “Tell Him” held at No 13 whilst “The Reason” dropped to No 16.

Christmas wasn’t just about selling singles though. Albums was where the real money was and what type of album did record companies love to put out at Christmas time? A Best Of compilation of course! Yes, the reliable old staple of festive release schedules was a Greatest Hits/Best Of/Collection (delete as appropriate) and around this time a new strain of the format appeared – a retrospective of a solo artist and their former band on the same album. Although there had already been a Sting Greatest Hits (“Fields Of Gold: The Best Of Sting 1984-1994”) and two collections from The Police (1986’s “Every Breath You Take: The Singles” and 1992’s “Greatest Hits”), record label A&M reckoned they could still squeeze some more readies out of the back catalogue of both their artists by combining them into one album. Was this a genius move or a hateful idea – you’ll have your own opinion but it didn’t sit well with me. I like my retrospectives to be definitive which this surely couldn’t be. Not everything by two artists could be contained in one album. Surely a box set was needed?

Anyway, in 1997 came “The Very Best Of Sting & The Police” (note the use of the word ‘Very’ to signify that this was something different even though it wasn’t). Featuring fifteen tracks (seven from Sting and eight by The Police), it went four times platinum in the UK either matching or beating the sales of those aforementioned previous collections. So which songs didn’t make the cut?

The Police:

“So Lonely”
“De Do Do Do De Da Da Da” (though it was included in subsequent reissues of the album)
“Invisible Sun”
“Spirits In The Material World”
“Wrapped Around Your Finger”
“Synchronicity II”
“King Of Pain”

Sting:

“Spread A Little Happiness”
“All This Time”
“It’s Probably Me”
“Nothing ‘Bout Me”
“All For Love” (with Rod Stewart and Bryan Adams)
“Love Is The Seventh Wave”
“Seven Days”

And those lists aren’t completely exhaustive! Bah!

To promote the album, a single was required and so The Police’s first UK Top 40 hit “Roxanne” was recommissioned for the job. However, it wasn’t the original version but a horrible remix by Puff Daddy who probably reckoned he owed Sting one for “I’ll Be Missing You”. What he came up with featured samples and a horrible rap and was retitled as “Roxanne ‘97” and was just a dreadful mess. Thankfully, we don’t get that version here but a rather affecting acoustic take on it. Although Sting might rival Bono in the holier-than-thou arse stakes, you can’t deny that “Roxanne” is a great tune (Puff Daddy remix aside).

I’m guessing that the bookies didn’t want to get burned by a Christmas No 1 they hadn’t seen coming as happened in 1993 when firm favourites Take That were bounced out of the top spot by Mr Blobby and so didn’t underestimate the Teletubbies. Thankfully, history didn’t repeat itself. It seems the joke was wearing thin by this point as we only get 30 seconds of “Teletubbies Say ‘Eh-Oh!’” as the credits roll. I never thought I’d say this but thank God for the Spice Girls.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Natalie Imbruglia	Torn	No
2	Robbie Williams	Angels	No but I had a promo copy of the album
3	Bryan Adams	Back to You	Nope
4	All Saints	Never Ever	Negative
5	U2	If God Will Send His Angels	I did not
6	Chicken Shed Theatre Company	I Am In Love With The World	Hell No!
7	Celine Dion	The Reason	Never
8	The Police / Sting	Roxanne ’97	Nah
9	Teletubbies	Teletubbies Say ‘Eh-Oh!’	Of course not

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002chnq/top-of-the-pops-19121997?seriesId=unsliced