We’re halfway through these BBC4 1999 TOTP repeats which means I’m officially in the home straight with this blog which will end with the 90s and there will be no TOTP Rewind the 2000s. Also coming to an end back in 1999 was my time working for Our Price. Having started with the company in October 1990, I now had less than a year left before I would leave. I recently posted a photo of myself taken outside the store in Altrincham around this time and with me in that photo was my manager Pete whom I’ve not referred to before. Pete came in to replace Scott who had been so important in my rehabilitation back into work after a significant amount of time out when I was struggling with my mental health. I’d not worked with Pete before so I was probably a bit concerned when Scott was moved on to the Piccadilly shop in Manchester. I shouldn’t have worried as Pete was great albeit in very different ways to Scott. He was an absolute dynamo, always busy doing something, probably because he was a sugar junkie – Pete would think nothing of having a packet of Tunnocks Teacakes for his lunch. He was also not the best observer of Health and Safety regulations. I recall doing an induction for a Xmas Temp and had literally just told them about never standing on a swivel chair to reach for anything high up and Pete came into the stockroom and reached for something high up on a swivel chair! I once locked him in the shop by mistake after taking both his and my keys home. This was before we all had mobile phones and so I got all the way home to Manchester where I found my answer machine full of messages from a stranded Pete asking me to come back and let him out. He took it in good humour though and we went to the pub afterwards to watch the footy. Pete would be my 14th and final manager before I left both Our Price and Manchester for a job in the Civil Service at York.

You’re not here for recollections about my work life though so let’s get to the music. There are only seven artists on tonight as opposed to the usual eight but having checked, that appears to be the original figure when first broadcast and not due to any revised editing decision. Gail Porter is in the host hot seat and we start with last week’s No 1. This practice of having the previous week’s chart topper raise the curtain on the following week’s show despite having been toppled from their throne was becoming a regular feature. Previously, we had S Club 7, this time it’s the Vengaboys with “Boom Boom Boom Boom”. I get that it was a method of combatting the extreme fluctuations of the very top of the charts otherwise these big selling hits would only get one TOTP appearance but it made for an odd spectacle for those of us who grew up in the 70s and 80s watching the show. We just get a repeat of the performance from seven days prior in this one and as such, I have nothing more to say about this absolute pile of crud.

Instead, I think I’ll comment on the profuse usage of the word ‘boom’ in pop and rock music because the Vengaboys sure weren’t the first to coin it. Going back to 1962 there was “Boom Boom” by legendary US blues artist John Lee Hooker whilst the 70s brought us The Boomtown Rats. Into the 80s, the word seemed to be attached to bands and songs that didn’t achieve the same level of success. “Iko Iko” hitmaker Natasha released “The Boom Boom Room” as the follow up but it failed to crack the Top 40 whilst the band Boom Boom Room never hit any higher than No 74 with “Here Comes The Man” despite releasing it twice. The 90s was…ahem…boom time for songs featuring “boom” in their titles. There’s “Boom Boom Boom” by The Outhere Brothers and “Boom! Shake The Room” by DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince both of which were No 1 records. Meanwhile, Apache Indian would score a Top 5 hit with “Boom Shack-A-Lak” in 1993. I’m sure there are more but I think I’ve proved my point. In fact, I think I’ve earned the right to one of these…

Almost two months (TWO MONTHS!) after we first saw Whitney Houston perform “My Love Is Your Love” on the show, we got to see her do it again this week or rather we were just shown a repeat of that initial appearance. Yes, that’s what the once monumentally important TOTP had become by 1999 – a show that would feed us repeats of performances we’d already seen weeks before. OK, that assessment doesn’t really tell the whole story. Presumably when Whitney and her team agreed to record an in person performance for the show, it came with certain conditions. It wasn’t worth her time to do just one song so two tracks were performed – her current single “It’s Not Right But It’s OK” and the follow up “My Love Is Your Love”. I’m pretty sure that was the case anyway. It makes sense. I recently posited a similar theory regarding Cher who I believe did two performances of her hit “All Or Nothing” in the same recording but with two different outfits on! I guess satisfying diva demands was deemed a fair price to pay to get the biggest names in music on the show.

Anyway, the long game strategy played by Whitney’s people paid off for both parties – they had a ready made performance for promotional purposes in the can for the release of “My Love Is Your Love” and TOTP had the exclusive of a studio appearance that they could show. However, why then was said appearance shown on the 14th May show weeks before it was available to buy in the shops? It must have been to plug the album which had been released the previous November surely? Or perhaps the release date of the single got put back? My guess is your guess.

Ah 1999, you really were a pile of shite weren’t you? Pointless, needless, inexplicable hit after hit cluttering up the charts. Hers another example. For some reason, The Three Amigos and their cover version of “Louie Louie” puts me in mind of The Wiseguys* whom we recently saw coming on like a turn of the millennium Blues Brothers with their single “Ooh La La”. Just like those berks, these jerks put the least amount of original thought that they could get away with into their hit. I mean like literally – they chose possibly the world’s most recorded song (2000 different versions at last estimate) and added a rap to it. That’s it pretty much. Such a poor idea was it that some weird visuals were required to sell it so we get the monochrome, 60s style backing dancers (a nod to the popularity of Austin Powers perhaps) and some sort of sci-fi costumes and and a bloke with a beard who I can’t tell if he’s covered in cobwebs or looks like he’s just come out of a cryogenic freezing facility (Austin Powers again). What utter charlatans (just like the characters from the 1986 comedy movie they were presumably named after).

*It turns out that The Wiseguys remixed one of the tracks on the “Louie Louie” single for The Three Amigos. My Spidey senses working well there.

Suede’s commercial peak was starting to decline by the end of the 90s. Although fourth album “Head Music” had followed “Coming Up” (and before that their eponymous debut album) to the top of the charts, it had only sold a third of its predecessor’s copies. Following suit were the singles released from “Head Music”. “She’s In Fashion” would end a run of six releases charting inside the Top 10 when it peaked at No 13. Subsequent singles taken from the album would not even make the Top 20. And yet “She’s In Fashion” is generally regarded as one of the band’s most accessible songs receiving more airplay than any of their previous singles had. It was championed by Radio 1’s Zoe Ball though possibly she saw it as tool for self promotion due to its opening lines:

“She’s the face on the radio, she’s the body on the morning show.”

Writer(s): Brett Lewis Anderson, Neil John Codling

That must be why my immediate association with the song is the broadcaster and presenter. Didn’t she try and make out that it was written about her? I can’t remember now. It’s too long ago. Enough of all that though, was it any good and why did it receive so much airplay? Well, yes it was, certainly compared to the rest of the junk in the charts. I’m guessing its airplay was down to its lighter, breezier sound that almost had a summery feel. Almost. It’s also quite repetitive for a Suede track which probably helped to lodge it in people’s brains and make it possibly one of their best known songs despite not being one of their biggest hits. Apparently the track was written and recorded at a time when Brett Anderson’s drug habit was at its worst but looking at him here, either he’d turned his life around by this point or the make up artist had done an amazing job on him.

Even in the dying light of the 90s, still the disease that blighted the musical landscape of that decade would not yield – yes, we still had time for yet another boyband. This lot were so lightweight that they’d have floated to the surface if chucked in the nearest canal wearing concrete shoes which is possibly a fate they deserved for the bilge they served up. Too harsh? Maybe but having to write about A1 is really trying my patience. A1 – even their name was awful, only beaten in the manky moniker stakes by Blue.

OK, so what was the story behind this shower? It was all down to someone called Tim Byrne who was one of the people involved in setting up Steps apparently. Paul Marrazzi had just missed out on being in that group but Byrne must have seen something in the pop hopeful and so decided to form another band with him in it. Auditions were held and a four piece put together. Presumably Byrne’s track record with Steps helped get A1 a record deal and hey presto!…their debut single “Be The First To Believe” was suddenly in the Top 10 despite sounding like a piss weak version of Steps if such a thing were possible. Surely this lot were destined for just the 15 minutes of fame but no; they would rack up 11 hit singles including (and this is truly mind boggling) two No 1s! One was a cover version of A-ha’s “Take On Me” which I can only describe as depressing.

They would split in 2002 with the obligatory solo careers pursued but would reunite in 2009 for a series of live shows and a persistent dalliance with Norway and the Eurovision Song Contest (member Christian Ingebrigtsen is Norwegian). In 2014 they appeared in that last scraping of the fame barrel known as The Big Reunion alongside the aforementioned Blue, Five, 911, Adam Rickitt etc. When their 20 years anniversary came around in 2019, Marrazzi rejoined for some live shows and the band released some non album singles. They are still together to this day which see seems incredible to me for a band that had so little to offer.

P.S. When I was at secondary school, we had a grading system that was a combination of letters and numbers with the former referring to your level of achievement in a particular subject and the latter the amount of effort you put in. A1 was therefore the highest you could be awarded and you were generally considered a swot if you received that mark. The coolest grade was A5 – you were naturally clever but couldn’t give a toss about applying yourself. In that system, A1 the band should surely have been an E1 – desperate to do well but intrinsically hopeless. And the recipient of the A5 grade in boyband world? I don’t know, East 17 maybe?

Here’s a question – was I already aware of Jennifer Lopez as an actress before she turned her hand to singing or was her debut single “If You Had My Love” my first introduction to her? Let’s have a look. Which films had she been in up to this point?

*checks her filmography*

Nothing I’d seen then nor indeed since I don’t think. Out Of Sight alongside George Clooney seemed to have been her highest box office hit by this point. The truth is that it’s hard to recall our first awarenesses of huge public figures isn’t it? It’s difficult to pinpoint our consciousness in these matters as our memory shifts and re-edits what we knew and when. I think the answer is probably that I knew of her as an actress but hadn’t engaged with her work on any meaningful level until I had to as I was selling her CDs as part of my job at Our Price. Despite this, I’d be hard pushed to name any of her songs (save maybe “Jenny From The Block”) and there’s plenty to choose from – she’s released nine studio albums and 67 singles! I had no idea! As mentioned earlier, “If You Had My Love” was the first of those 67 and it hit immediately going to No 1 in America and No 4 over here. As a Latin-infused, R&B number, it was never going to do much for me but even my ‘pop’ ear (Popeye’s brother) could identify that it was a very serviceable track competently delivered. Parent album “On The 6” would sell 300,000 copies in the UK and 10 times that amount in the US. A superstar was born and she would go by the name of J-Lo. Well, it was snappier than Jenny From The Block I guess.

It’s yet another different No 1 this time from ATB who was German DJ André Tanneberger. Now, if you look at the chart for 6th to the 12th June 1999, you’ll find two separate entries for “9PM (Till I Come)” – one at No 97 and one at No 78. How could this be and how did the track get to No 1 from these lowly positions? Well, it was all down to imports. The release at No 96 was the Australian import and No 78 position was occupied by the German import. Both singles were released on different labels and therefore circumvented chart rules that didn’t allow the same track to occupy separate chart positions. Neither would get higher than No 47 in the charts. Now that might sound like I’m being sniffy but actually a peak of No 47 for an imported single was very respectable and showed a true demand for the track that had initially been released by Ministry of Sound three months earlier when it had peaked at No 68. Confusing isn’t it? Presumably that Ministry of Sound release didn’t have much promotion behind it or it was a limited pressing as the track remained popular in clubland thereby necessitating those import copies being brought into the country to satisfy demand. In the face of this, Ministry of Sound gave it another go, this time aligned with Summer and the Ibiza season and a No 1 was assured. As I wasn’t frequenting the nightclubs of Ibiza in 1999 (nor anywhere actually being in my 30s at this point), this trance track based around a synthesised slide guitar riff, to paraphrase Midge Ure, meant nothing to me.

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/m002t695/top-of-the-pops-02071999