Ace Of Base

TOTP 09 OCT 1998

In a truncated show (I think the Fawlty Towers repeats issue was at play again), there’s only seven hits being offered up to the viewing audience but only one of those has been seen before which is last week’s No 1. Our host is Kate Thornton who tells us in her top of the show intro that there’s “a slice of the riviera thrown in for free”. What can she mean? We’ll find out in due course but we start with Ace Of Base who, five years on from their debut hit and No 1 record “All That She Wants”, were still pestering us with their tinny sounding brand of reggae-lite Eurodance. After the sickly sweet but ultimately pointless entity that was their last single “Life Is A Flower”, they were back with a cover version of a Bananarama track. Get that – Bananarama and not fellow Swedes ABBA with whom numerous and completely illegitimate comparisons had been made. “Cruel Summer” was the song chosen supposedly at the demand of their record company. Maybe they thought Steps* had already cornered the market with ABBA soundalikes?

*Steps had themselves had a hit with a cover version of a Bananarama track earlier in 1998. “Last Thing On My Mind” made No 71 in 1992 for the Nanas whereas Steps took it to No 6.

Now this particular song has had quite the prolonged life. Originally a No 8 hit for Bananarama in 1983, it also went Top 10 in America the following year after it was included in the hit movie The Karate Kid. Five years on from that it was remixed and rereleased making it to No 19 in the UK charts. Then came this insipid version from Ace Of Base but get this – they didn’t inflict it upon the world once but three times! A bilingual second version with French boy band Alliage was recorded specifically for the French market and then in 2009, an eight track strong EP of remixes from Rico Bernasconi was released in Germany. Mein gott! Now that is cruel! Mercifully, we only get about 2:15 of the 3:30 total length of the track in this performance presumably as the show had more pressing matters in the Riviera…

…and suddenly were on the beach at Cannes with Jamie Theakston! What the…?! No lead up to it, no proper explanation – Theakston says something about being there for the television festival – and where’s Kate Thornton disappeared to? The camera angle doesn’t impart the sense of glamour and decadence that you’d expect with the French Riviera – it’s just the screen filled with Theakston’s slappable face until we get an aerial shot to show that it’s definitely Cannes beach although it doesn’t look that impressive, just a few palm trees and a tiny stage set up in a corner next to what seems to be a jetty. It’s hardly making the splash that executive producer Chris Cowey must have intended.

So who is the artist in Cannes for this ‘exclusive’ performance? Why it’s Billie of course who is giving us a preview of her second single “Girlfriend”, the follow up to her debut hit “Because We Want To”. Within a week it would follow its predecessor to the top of the charts thereby emulating this week’s No 1 artist B*Witched by having her first two singles not just go to the top but debut there. Pure and simple pop artists were clearly in vogue at this time. Also just like B*Witched, Billie’s second release wasn’t as immediate as her first but I guess it did the job of more than consolidating on that initial success. It does seem a bit basic though and it’s puerile chorus about asking someone if they have a girlfriend doesn’t really sustain but then it was probably perfect for her teenage girl fan base. After all, Billie herself had only just turned 16 a couple of weeks before this TOTP aired. Then we’re back to Theakston who does a link into the next artist back in the studio. So why was he in Cannes anyway? Maybe he was trying to get away from the trauma of having split up with his then girlfriend Natalie Appleton from All Saints? Billie’s song probably didn’t help. Oh, that’s what that exchange between Theakston and Robbie Williams was about the other week when the former introduced the latter onto the TOTP stage and they seemed to be arguing about who had the best girlfriend – Williams was dating Nicole Appleton at the time.

That artist that Theakston links back to in the studio is Bryan Adams who seems to be doing his best impression of Oasis with his new single “On A Day Like Today”. From the acoustic intro to the drenching of strings in the mix, it has a suspicious whiff of “Wonderwall” about it before it eventually goes full soft rock anthem at its climax. It really was a bit of an elephant in the room which was quite apt as the parent album’s cover featured Adams and an elephant’s trunk. After a run of medium sized hits during the mid 90s (including “On A Day Like Today” which peaked at No 13), the end of the decade and the new millennium would herald a string of bigger singles for Bryan. A duet with Mel C made the Top 3 which was followed by two unlikely hits (including a No 1 no less) with ambient/trance DJ Chicane. None of which sounded like Oasis.

After her successful duet with Monica on “The Boy Is Mine”, Brandy is on collab duty again for the follow up, this time with rapper Mase on the track “Top Of The World”. As we’ve seen previously when there’s a rapper/R&B artist get together, the former isn’t available in the studio so his contributions are supplied via the official video on a big screen at the back of the stage behind Brandy. As with her previous hit, the UK record buying public loved this and sent it to No 2 with sales of 200,000 copies. Me? You won’t be surprised to know that:

(a) I don’t remember it

(b) I don’t like it now that I’ve heard it

These types of R&B tracks do nothing for me. I just can’t seem to find any sort of foothold in them that I can grab hold of, no ‘in’ that I can squeeze through to maintain my interest. If I’d been in the studio audience for this performance, Brandy exhorting the assembled crowd to “Come on, sing along if you know the words” would have had zero effect on me not least because she then just sings “sittin’ on top of the world” repeatedly which is basically the title of the song but for the words “sittin’ on”. Even the least observant of us could surely have remembered/known two extra words?!

What on earth is this?! Well, it’s four young people on stage singing Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me” in an urban style badly that’s what it is but it could be an audition for Britain’s Got Talent*. This is just horrible. The people behind it were called 4 The Cause although the real culprits of responsibility would have been their record label I suppose for putting this garbage out. Hailing from Illinois originally but having relocated to Germany, they suddenly found themselves successful with this rubbish across Europe and so tried to repeat the trick with more covers of “Ain’t No Sunshine” by Bill Withers and “Everytime You Go Away” by Hall & Oates but thankfully neither hit pay dirt.

*Tellingly, they got a record contract after winning the Apollo Style talent contest at school in 1995.

Blimey! UB40 were still having hits in 1998? Yes, they were and they were still residents of the UK’s Top 40 as late as 2005 but “Come Back Darling” would be their final Top 10 hit ever. Despite having no doubt reviewed some of them in this blog, I couldn’t have named any of their hits in the 90s after their No 1 cover of “(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With You”. There were a few though, most of them from their last big selling album “Promises And Lies”. Their next studio album “Guns In The Ghetto” had disappointed commercially and so the band resorted to their reliable fall back position of releasing another volume of their “Labour Of Love” project. The first volume in 1983 and the second from 1990 had both been hugely successful and so I guess it made sense to go there again and “Come Back Darling” was the lead single from it. I have to admit to not knowing the original by Johnny Osbourne and The Sensations but I can only hope it’s better than this dreary, snooze-fest that UB40 dished up. Honestly, I couldn’t make it through to the end of this one – that’s how dull it was. It did strike me though, looking at the band up there on stage, how sad it is that this line up is completely and irreversibly fractured. Brian Travers and Astro have both passed away whilst the split between brothers Robin and Ali Campbell created a fissure so large that there are two versions of the band in existence with seemingly little hope of the two entities being reunified.

B*Witched are No 1 for a second week with “Rollercoaster” bringing to an end a run of six consecutive different chart toppers in six weeks. I mentioned earlier when discussing Billie that pure pop acts were order of the day in 1998 but it’s a claim which stands up when you consider some of the year’s biggest singles artists include Steps, Five, Aqua, Cleopatra and 911 as well as the already established pop big hitters like Boyzone and the Spice Girls. As if to crystallise that sentiment, four of them would appear on a single celebrating the ultimate in pop royalty ABBA with the medley single “Thank ABBA For The Music” that would go to No 4 six months later. Pop was most definitely back.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Ace Of Base	Cruel Summer	Never
2	Billie	Girlfriend	Nah
3	Bryan Adams	On A Day Like Today	I did not
4	Brandy / Mase	Top Of The World	Nope
5	4 The Cause	Stand By Me	Dear me no
6	UB40	Come Back Darling	Negative
7	B*Witched	Rollercoaster	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/m002m4hn/top-of-the-pops-09101998

TOTP 07 AUG 1998

Posted on October 23 by 80stastic

It’s a monumental episode of TOTP this one as it’s the last one hosted by Jo Whiley. Well, that’s not strictly true as she returned in 2006 to do a couple more shows but it’ll be the last I review in this blog that features her. So what to make of Jo? I have to admit to having held very strong negative views about her in the past. I couldn’t get along with her over enthusiasm when it came to expressing her love of music. If that sounds miserabilist or misanthropic, let me clarify. It was her professed love of all music, whatever its genre or merits which gave the impression that she would be as comfortable introducing Go West as The Go-Betweens as long as it kept her on the airwaves. However, after her campaigning on behalf of her sister who has learning disabilities during the pandemic that she and others like her should be prioritised to receive the COVID vaccine, I gained a lot of respect for her. She also does a lot of charity work for the likes of Mencap so there’s that as well. However, I just can’t shake my distrust of her proclamations and motives when it comes to music but maybe I’m just jealous of her career. As to why she left the roster of TOTP hosts at this time, I’m not sure. To focus on her Radio 1 show The Lunchtime Social? To spend more time with her family* Whatever the reason, I think, against the odds, I might actually miss her.

*She has four children

I won’t be missing the opening act tonight though who are Ace Of Base though I can’t guarantee this will be the last we see of them in these 90s TOTP repeats. What I can say with some conviction is that their brand of reggae-lite Europop was just terrible, shockingly bad. No, I don’t accept the comparisons with ABBA whose complex, pop compositions were superbly crafted. Ace Of Base, by contrast, peddled simple, almost nursery rhyme-like ditties that were sickly sweet but of zero nutritional value. If ABBA were the Armani Casa of furniture then Ace Of Base were IKEA – flat-pack, flat track dull(y). “Life Is A Flower” was a typical example of their oeuvre. Hooky but schlocky. Their next single would be a cover of Bananarama’s “Cruel Summer”. Cruel indeed.

This is starting to worry me now as my poor brain cells seem to be misfiring again. How many times have I said in this blog lately that I don’t remember a song or an artist? Well, it’s happened once more. Who were/are Lucid? Well, I’m not entirely sure as there’s not a lot of information about them online. The ever reliable @TOTPFacts has come to my rescue though with this tweet:

Lucid were production duo Adam Carter-Ryan and Mark Hadfield, and vocalist Clare Canty. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) October 17, 2025

Grateful as always but it’s pretty slim pickings. Got anything else? Oh, they have…

Adam Carter-Ryan and Mark Hadfield also produced Emmie’s cover of Roxy Music’s “More Than This”, a number five hit in January 1999. https://t.co/STESg3Fzmk #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) October 17, 2025

And Mark Hadfield also had a hit under the name Lovefreekz – "Shine" (which pinched its melody from “Shine A Little Love” by ELO) peaked at six in 2004. https://t.co/3vFKhTHy9E #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) October 17, 2025

A few years back Lucid vocalist Clare Canty was a teaching fellow at The Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, but it looks like she's moved on from that. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) October 17, 2025

Excellent! Will that do for this entry? No? OK, well, they had three hits the first of which was “I Can’t Help Myself” which I assume was a big hit in the clubs judging by Jo Whiley’s intro that references Ibiza. It’s very underwhelming to my ears though. Maybe executive producer Chris Cowey was in agreement with me given the over the top staging of this performance. “A tune so dangerous we’ve been forced to restrain the lead singer” says Jo before we see singer Clare Canty in a straitjacket. It’s a daring look but surely it would have been more of an arresting image if she’d have done the whole performance under duress as it were but she releases herself from her (clearly fake) bonds halfway through which kind of undermines the whole idea. Or maybe it was, in fact, just a bad idea to have a woman restrained on stage (even if it was just for effect)? Maybe the thinking behind it wasn’t so lucid after all?

What’s this? Jo Whiley interviewing a pop star on the show? This wasn’t a regular occurrence so was Chris Cowey letting her go out with a bit of a bang? Presumably, he couldn’t get both Brandy & Monica in the TOTP studio simultaneously so the video and a brief (and cringeworthy) interview with one of them – Brandy – was deemed the next best thing. Or was it just that Cowey couldn’t ignore the hit that was “The Boy Is Mine” any longer and Jo was in the right place at the right time? This was another of those hardy hits like “How Do I Live” by LeAnne Rimes that stuck around the charts for ages having debuted at No 2 and then spent weeks hovering around the lower end of the Top 10 before it settled on a three week run at No 13. It was at this point that it was finally deemed worthy of a slot on the show which makes no sense but running orders rarely did in the Cowey era. Maybe there were some undeclared contractual issues preventing the song getting an airing until now or maybe it was just a combination of timing and Cowey’s previous stubbornness not to feature videos on the show? Whatever the truth, what was undeniable about the record is that it was a monster. If the resilience it displayed in our charts was impressive, it was nothing compared to the success it had in the US where it spent 13 weeks at No 1 and was the biggest selling single of the year. It also held a curious chart record of being the first hit to ascend to No 1 from a position outside of the Top 20 since The Beatles charged from No 27 to the top in 1964 with “Can’t Buy Me Love”.

Supposedly inspired by the Michael Jackson/Paul McCartney duet on “The Girl Is Mine” and by The Jerry Springer Show as referenced in Brandy’s chat with Whiley, it’s a mid-tempo R&B ballad that exerts a deceptive pull on the listener. Both singers’ vocals are low in the mix with a distinct lack of histrionics but rather gestate a slow but determined ear worm that burrows into your brain and sets up home there. It’s the musical equivalent of Aesop’s fable about the tortoise and the hare. Both Brandy and Monica went on to have long and successful careers in the worlds of music and acting and revisited “The Boy Is Mine” just last year featuring on a remix of the track by Ariana Grande.

Now this edition of TOTP was originally meant to be 25 minutes in length with seven songs featured which is a reduction of one from the standard eight but has been further reduced by the omission of the Puff Daddy & Jimmy Page hit “Come With Me” from the Godzilla movie for obvious reasons. However, the censors could have taken this one out for me as well on the grounds of poor quality and possibly taste as well. As with Lucid earlier, I have zero recollection of Baby Bumps and their hit “Burning” and there is precious little about them online either. Even the normally reliable @TOTPFacts can only come up with the fact that their hit sampled “Disco Inferno” by The Trammps. So who were these chumps and why were they having a hit with this awful butchering of a classic track? Well, they seem to be a female version of The Village People judging by their stage costumes and as for why they were having a hit…well, the bad taste of the record buying public strikes again. It is a dreadful treatment of “Disco Inferno” and was there something wrong with the sound as the lead woman’s singing sounded too quiet in parts. I say ‘singing’ but it was more like shouting and is it me or does she not seem able to count to four?! I’m sure she shouts “Four, two, three, four”. Twice. Apparently, they had another hit in 2000 but happily I won’t have to review it as this is a 90s blog and will finish with the 1999 repeats.

It’s yet another hit from a film soundtrack next as Apollo Four Forty launch into the upper echelons of the chart with “Lost In Space”. As it’s Apollo Four Forty, of course, it’s a dance track but then, there had been a trend for dance versions of old film/TV theme tunes around this time. Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen had given us their treatment of the Mission Impossible theme whilst Orbital took on The Saint. As for Lost In Space, I did see the film starring Matt Le Blanc of Friends fame which was a big screen adaptation of the 60s TV series and, like most people who watched it, I thought it stank the cinema out. Just hopeless and not because I was looking through nostalgic glasses at the TV series as I hardly remembered that but just because it was a bad film. It pretty much did for Le Blanc’s film star aspirations. – I think he had a small part in the Charlie’s Angels reboot after this but not much else.

As for the Apollo Four Forty song, it didn’t do an awful lot for me. Apparently, it was based (loosely) on the second John Williams theme tune that he composed for the series but it’s all at breakneck speed and features some frenetic fret work (including a precursor of the Royal Blood bass guitar style possibly?) that’s all a bit much for me. Then there’s the geezer with the peroxide blonde hair and glasses giving me a headache by shouting out random phrases like “Space is the place” and “This cold war’s just got hot”. When he shouts “Can you feel it?”, he sounds like one of those blokes on the mike at a fairground exporting people to “Scream if you want to go faster!”. Like I said, headache inducing.

The Spice Girls remain at No 1 with “Viva Forever” but this will be its last week at the top. As with last week, we don’t get the stop-motion animation video but that performance recorded whilst the group were on tour. In an earlier form, the song was titled “Obrigado” which means ‘thank you’ in Portuguese and I can imagine that as it scans similarly to “Viva Forever”. Talking of titles, Viva Forever! was the name of the Spice Girls jukebox musical written by Jennifer Saunders which opened in 2012 to a very poor reception and some of the worst reviews of that year. Thankfully for the group, the song did not receive the same response as the musical.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Ace Of Base	Life Is A Flower	Definitely not
2	Lucid	I Can’t Help Myself	I could though – no
3	Brandy & Monica	The Boy Is Mine	Nah
4	Baby Bumps	Burning	Never
5	Apollo Four Forty	Lost In Space	No
6	Spice Girls	Viva Forever	Nope

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/m002kx4v/top-of-the-pops-07081998

TOTP 24 JUL 1998

Posted on October 18 by 80stastic

I’m starting to get behind with these TOTP reviews. All it takes is one busy week in my own life and suddenly I’ve got four shows to write up in seven days to keep pace with the BBC4 schedule. I’ve tried skimping on the word count when this scenario arises but the completist in me fights hard against this strategy. Besides, nobody wants to read a couple of dozen words on each song stating whether I liked it or not do they? Our host tonight is Jayne Middlemiss who hasn’t been on the show for a month (maybe she really had been ill when they did that skit to introduce Kate Thornton the other week).

We start with Pras Michel featuring Ol’ Dirty Bastard and introducing Mýa and their hit “Ghetto Superstar (That Is What You Are)” to quote the full title which I don’t think I did in the last post (no brackets, no points!). I also failed to mention that this came from a film called Bulworth which was written and directed by and starred Warren Beatty. I was a regular cinema goer around this time but I failed to catch this movie which was a political black comedy that was well received critically but failed to put bums on seats in the cineplexes (wasn’t just me then).

The soundtrack album was popular in the US selling a million copies but that success didn’t translate across the pond in the UK. In fact, I don’t recall it being released over here at all and certainly don’t recognise the art work of the cover. The album featured some of the biggest names in hip-hop and rap including Dr. Dre, LL Cool J, Method Man, Ice Cube and Public Enemy. As for Pras, he would have two more UK hits – “Blue Angels” which was the follow up to “Ghetto Superstar” and he also featured on “Another One Bites The Dust” which was a remix of the Queen track by Fugees band mate Wyclef Jean for the soundtrack to the film Small Soldiers. Ol’ Dirty Bastard sadly passed away in 2004 from a drugs overdose whilst since 2013, Mýa has been married to herself. No, really.

Next up is the singing medical student Ultra Naté. OK, she wasn’t really but she did seem to have an obsession with medically themed song titles. After her previous hit “Found A Cure”, she was back with the follow up “New Kind Of Medicine”. It strikes me that Ultra Naté was a bit of a musical chameleon. On her biggest hit “Free” she channeled her inner Rozalla and then looked to “No More Tears” (Enough Is Enough)” by Donna Summer and Barbra Streisand for the inspiration for “Found A Cure”. Chic were her muse for “New Kind Of Medicine” and it worked well for her albeit that the single couldn’t match the chart numbers of its two predecessors.

As for that unusual name, it turns out that was her actual real name and not a stage moniker. No, really. It’s Ultra Naté Wyche. Sticking with the name theme, I note that “New Kind Of Medicine” was co-written by one Ed Baden-Powell who surely must be a relative of Lord Baden-Powell, founder of the Scouts movement. It doesn’t stop there though – “Free” and “Found A Cure” were co-written by one Lem Springsteen though he doesn’t seem to be related to ‘The Boss’.

Still with Peter Andre?! Still?! In 1998?! Panic not though as I believe this is the last time we’ll see him on TOTP; at least the last time I’ll have to write about him anyway as he didn’t have another hit after this until 2004 with a rerelease of “Mysterious Girl” and I’m packing in this blog after the 1999 episodes have finished. I have zero recollection of “Kiss The Girl” but listening back to it, I thought it sounded like it could have been from the soundtrack to something like The Lion King. Well, blow me down but, on reading up on the song, I wasn’t a million miles away as it was from The Little Mermaid. Originally, the song was a calypso number but, as part of the film’s rerelease in 1998, the soundtrack was revisited with some of its songs being re-recorded by new artists. For some unfathomable and despicable reason, Peter Andre was one of those invited to the project and he turned it into a dismal, sappy ballad, the berk. How did this guy ever become and continue to be famous? Minuscule talent but massive pecs see seems to be the answer. I swear down, has there ever been a more useless celebrity?! Away with you sir and your overly gelled hair!

There’s quite a back story to this next hit. “Mas Que Nada” is a song written by Brazilian Jorge Ben who originally recorded it with bandleader Zé Maria in 1962 and it was subsequently covered by other Brazilian acts such as the Tamba Trio in 1963 and Louis Carlos Vinhas the following year. However, the most commonly known version came in 1966 when Sérgio Mendes covered it with his band Brazil ‘66. Thirty-one years later, its profile was raised again when it was famously used in a Nike commercial featuring Brazilian footballers such as Ronaldo and Roberto Carlos. In 1998, it resurfaced again, I’m guessing as part of the plethora of football related songs released due to the World Cup of that year (I could be wrong on that). Not just once though but twice as the aforementioned Tamba Trio version was a Top 20 hit the week before this danced-up version by Echobeatz just pipped it by making the Top 10. I’ve no idea who Echobeatz were/are but clearly whoever was behind this version had one eye on the clubs judging by the Italian House flavoured mix they gave it. “Mas que nada” is a Portuguese expression that can mean “more than anything else in Spanish” but in Brazilian Portuguese it has a more colloquial meaning of “whatever” or “no big deal”. I wonder if Ariel got Peter Crouch to record an advert for the Brazilian market with him saying “Mas que nada”?

Just as with B*Witched and Billie recently, last week’s No 1 gets another airing despite the fact that it’s been deposed from its chart crown. In her intro to “Freak Me” by Another Level, did Jayne Middlemiss say one of them was called Bobak? Sounds more like a Croatian footballer…

*checks Wikipedia*

Oh that was Zvonimir Boban who played most of his career with AC Milan. I’m sure there was a footballer called Bobak though…

*checks Wikipedia again*

There was a Peter Bodak who played for Coventry City in the 80s…

*checks Wikipedia one last time*

Found him! Roman Bobak! A Polish right back. I can’t mean him though. He’s hardly had any sort of career at all. Maybe I was thinking of Stjepan Bobek, a Yugoslavian player in the 40s and 50s and manager in the 70s. As dull as all this is for you to read and for me to write, it is more interesting than anything Another Level ever did.

P.S. Remember the last post when I said I always get Dane Bowers mixed up with Blue’s Anthony Costa? Well, when Another Level appeared at the RnB Nation festival in 2024. Only Bowers and Mark Baron from the original line up signed up for the gig so they got two new blokes in to make up the numbers and one of them was called Greg Costa. No wonder I’m confused!

I seem to have developed a theme to this post as I’ve gone along which is that of names. Joining the 15 year old Billie (Piper) in the charts this week was another Billie – Billie Myers. This Billie was 27 years old at the time and that older age meant that her hit was a little more…mature than Ms Piper’s. Well, a lot more if you watch the official video for “Tell Me”. Set in what see seems to be some sort of bondage club, Myers is a participant in some erotic scenes which look like they could have been in Bram Stoker’s Dracula film starring Keane Reeves and Winona Ryder.

The song itself sizzles with passion and even, dare I say it, menace and is a definite lost classic of the 90s. It really should have been a much bigger hit than its No 28 peak. After its appearance on this BBC4 TOTP repeat, there was a lot of love for it declared online. Sadly, in 1998, the record buying public was more enamoured with Billie Piper than Billie Myers and it slipped thoroughly the net. Shame.

Billie Piper and stuff like this. If I was surprised that Peter Andre was still having hits in 1998, then colour me shocked that Ace Of Base were as well. Their No 1 “All That She Wants” had been as long ago as 1993 whilst their last visit to the Top 10 had been in 1994. Somehow though, they convinced us that this life-affirming slice of pop fluff that was “Life Is A Flower” made them still relevant deep into the 90s.

Apparently the favourite Ace Of Base song by the band member who wrote it (Jonas Berggren), “Life Is A Flower” was radio friendly but brain cell hostile. It would rot your mind if you listened to it too much. Its lyrics included:

“Please Mr. Agony, release them for a while,

Learn them the consequences of living without life”

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Jonas Berggren
Life Is a Flower lyrics © Megasong Publishing

“Learn them”?! Surely you mean ‘teach’ them? In an act of redemption though, after Tina Arena the other week with the title song from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Whistle Down The Wind musical, here’s another use of those words in the opening two lines to remind us of not only a great film but a great pop song too…

It’s another new No 1 and the only one of Jamiroquai’s career. “Deeper Underground” was taken from the soundtrack to the Godzilla movie of this year starring Matthew Broderick. As with the aforementioned Bulworth, I’ve never seen this film and, judging by its reviews, I’m glad I haven’t. Rated mainly as a stinker, it also underperformed commercially. Even the director never wanted to make this film apparently. However, its soundtrack album did go some good business, debuting at No 2 on the charts and achieving platinum sales in America. It mainly featured what would be defined as ‘rock’ songs, including another huge hit called “Cone With Me” by Puff Daddy and Jimmy Page which sampled the legendary Led Zeppelin track “Kashmir” but we won’t be seeing that on any BBC4 repeat due to the Puff Daddy issue. Although definitely not a rock song, “Deeper Underground” did have a harder sound than we had come to expect from Jamiroquai it seemed to me.

Despite only having one week at the chart summit, it was a pretty hardy single spending three weeks inside the Top 10 and two months on the Top 40 in total. Is it Jamiroquai’s most famous song? I don’t know. They’re a funny act. For all their 26 hits, only nine of them went Top 10. And could you name them? I might be able to pull out two or three from the recesses of my mind and I’ve probably reviewed most of them. Have they all just morphed into one because, dare I say it, they all sound the same?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Pras Michel featuring Ol’ Dirty Bastard and introducing Mýa	Ghetto Superstar (That Is What You Are)	I did not
2	Ultra Naté	New Kind Of Medicine	Negative
3	Peter Andre	Kiss The Girl	As if
4	Echobeatz	Mas Que Nada	Nah
5	Another Level	Freak Me	Nope
6	Billie Myers	Tell Me	Great song but no
7	Ace Of Base	Life Is A Flower	Never
8	Jamiroquai	Deeper Underground	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/m002kkmx/top-of-the-pops-24071998

TOTP 25 JAN 1996

Posted on May 20, 2024 by 80stastic

Oh God! As The Boo Radleys once sang…”It’s Lulu”. Yes, the diminutive Scottish singer has been handed the ‘golden mic’ presenter slot this time around. I can’t really be doing with Lulu – firstly I can’t stand her most famous hit “Shout” and secondly, she just doesn’t seem like a nice person. I’m not the only one with this opinion – the late Dale Winton once said of her whilst hosting music panel show Never Mind The Buzzcocks that he would “gladly dance on her grave”. Ouch!

Anyway, let’s not obsess about Lulu and turn our attention to the music and we begin with another band who were very much associated with the Britpop movement. They seem to be coming thick and fast now don’t they? Shed Seven (for it is them) were about to have the best year of their career. Their five UK Top 40 hits in 1996 were more than any other artist in that calendar twelve months. Yes, things were certainly “Getting Better” (sorry!) for the lads from York as this single became their highest charting at the time when it peaked at No 14. Taken from sophomore album “A Maximum High” (which went Top 10 and is their biggest selling studio album), this was the sound of a band really hitting their stride. I’d not really got wholly on board with their early stuff but “Getting Better” was a belter. It sounded like they’d really tightened up their sound and decided on a defiantly more commercial style which was about to pay off. They would follow this up with the equally good “Going For Gold” and round the year off with possibly one of their most well known hits “Chasing Rainbows”. If that sounds like this post is so far just a list of Shed 7 songs, well, let’s just say I’m not the only one to have done that. Look at this from @TOTPFacts…

“Getting Better” was one of five Shed Seven titles featured in a speech in the House Of Commons by Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrat MP for Lewes, in 2008. Baker insisted it was “entirely coincidental”. Hmmmm #TOTP pic.twitter.com/aR0nDktM35
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) May 10, 2024

Coincidence my arse! The article says the guy used to be a regional manager for Our Price (for whom I worked in the 90s) so that only makes it more likely that he knew what he was doing. Anyway, my own personal go to memory of this song is when the BBC used it to soundtrack a clip for the Euro 96 football tournament. After an indifferent start, the England team had beaten Scotland and thumped Holland to qualify for the knockout stages and the Beeb used “Getting Better” as the music for a montage of England goals. As England progressed to the semi-finals, they then used the aforementioned “Going For Gold” to promote their coverage of the match. There was definitely a Shed 7 fan working for BBC Sport back then!

Now I absolutely remember “Whole Lotta Love” by Goldbug and thinking it was wild at the time but listening back to it some 28 years later, it sounds like a bit of a mess. Reworking the famous Led Zeppelin tune to incorporate the Pearl & Dean cinema music (pa-pa per pa per pa pa-pa pa per pa) might have seems like a good idea at the time but it doesn’t hold much water in retrospect. Released on the achingly trendy Acid Jazz label, the single was championed by Radio 1 DJ Chris Evans (makes a change from Simon ‘Smug’ Mayo) and went straight into the chart at No 3.

I’m not saying anything very profound nor insightful by stating that Led Zeppelin weren’t keen on releasing singles in the UK and “Whole Lotta Love” was another case in point. Despite being hugely well known thanks to the instrumental version by CCS that was used as the theme to TOTP for years during the 70s, it didn’t get a release in this country despite being a hit just about everywhere else. As I’ve said before, I never got the boat to Led Zep island and so my knowledge of their catalogue is paper thin but even I can appreciate the rock majesty of “Whole Lotta Love”. The Goldbug version though? Let’s just say it makes the Far Corporation’s take on “Stairway To Heaven” seem celestial by comparison. All those people on stage during this performance just seemed to add to the chaos. Goldbug would release just one further single which barely scraped into the Top 100 before the group split up amongst a dispute with Acid Jazz over unpaid royalties.

Back in 1993, with “All That She Wants” topping our charts, I reckon you’d have got very long odds on Ace Of Base still having hits three years later but here they were with their seventh such smash “Beautiful Life”. Now, if you’re wondering what the story behind this tune is (and I know you are!), here’s @TOTPFacts…

Jonas Berggren on “Beautiful Life”: "I was at the Canary Islands… and the last evening I just heard the song in my head… It was melancholic to leave the islands and it was a wonderful evening, with the mood and sunset. It was a beautiful life!" #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) May 10, 2024

Hmm. OK. I get that your muse could appear to you watching a beautiful sunset whilst in the Canary Islands but then inspiration gives rise to that song?! Not a beautiful ballad or feel good anthem but a nasty, Eurodance track?! Nah, come on! You came up with a song that sounds like a prototype for “Barbie Girl”. Let’s move on…very quickly…

…to The Saw Doctors. What an anachronism this lot were. A good time Irish rock band in a UK chart of the mid 90s informed by a record buying public obsessed with dance music and Britpop? That was never going to fly. But it did somehow. Lulu seemed very enthused by the whole prospect of them being on the show and even adopts an Irish accent in support of them.

So how do we account for this single – “World Of Good” – becoming a No 15 hit and securing the band a slot on TOTP? Was it just a natural extension of a loyal fan base garnered by their reputation as a great live band? Surely it can’t have been off the back of a very long tail of popularity for The Commitments project? They were all the rage years before this. Mind you, the guitarist with the glasses does have a look of the piano player in the film. Maybe it was a simple as the song being a pretty good tune? No, I’m being naive. Since when has a song being good guaranteed it being a chart hit? Whatever the reason, The Saw Doctors would repeat the feat when their next single peaked at No 14 but they would return to the UK Top 40 just once more in 2002. It was a different story in the Irish charts though in which the band continued to have massive hits – three No 1s including the biggest selling Irish single ever “I Useta Lover” – way into the new millennium. They are still a going concern despite numerous line up changes though mainly as a touring band rather than a recording artist.

The 90s was a boom time for boy bands. They were everywhere beginning with America’s New Kids On The Block through to our own Take That and onto those nice Irish lads Boyzone and Westlife. They were some of the Champions League names but, looking lower down the table, there were some more mid ones as well such as 911, Let Loose and 5ive. Down in the relegation places were the likes of OTT, Gemini and the execrable Bad Boys Inc. Most of those bands were put together deliberately to appeal to the young female market, sometimes quite cynically and more often than not it seemed by Louis Walsh. However, in a league of their own when it came to manufactured boy bands were Upside Down. Put together by independent record label World Records (who, it would transpire, weren’t exactly the ‘global’ player their name suggested when they subsequently went bankrupt), this quartet looked like being yet another failed group when their debut single “Change Your Mind” only scraped into the Top 40 at No 35. The came the story of how they came into existence as told by the BBC documentary series Inside Story. Detailing the audition and selection process and the marketing strategy for such a group was compelling viewing and I did indeed watch the programme. It also exposed the utter cynicism and manipulation at the heart of the music business. In short, Upside Down were the antithesis of the likes of The Saw Doctors whose own origins were so organic you’d expect them to be on display in an aisle at Sainsbury’s.

The four band members were picked from 8,000 hopefuls and apart from the lead singer, didn’t seem like anyone you’d look twice at in the street but then I wasn’t the project’s target audience. The short guy I recall was interviewed about the prospect of pop stardom and him saying something like “If there’s any fans out there for me, I’ll find them” which sounded vaguely threatening! As for their song, it was clearly a rip off of “Careless Whisper” and was originally meant to be Bad Boys Inc’s next single until they were dropped by their label but, with the exposure that followed the broadcast of the documentary, would ultimately rise to No 11. Three more Top 40 hits followed (including a cover of Chicago’s “If You Leave Me Now”) before World Records went bankrupt and Upside Down regrouped and relaunched with the worst band name ever Orange Orange. Inevitably, they flopped and split.

Around this time, I was pondering on the idea of arranging a personal appearance by an artist at the Our Price store where I worked to try and raise our profile (there was a HMV in the same precinct). I even went as far as speaking to someone at Head Office about my plan and asked about the possibility of getting Upside Down to come to the store. I was told very politely by the lady in marketing that “I think they’re very busy at the moment” meaning “You’ve no chance mate”. Some of my female work colleagues had got very excited about the prospect of being in close proximity to the lead singer of Upside Down, the other guys in the group not so much though.

OK. This is very strange. Just seven days ago, we had the video for Coolio’s new single “Too Hot” on the show which had debuted inside the Top 10 in its first week on the chart. Despite that exposure, it fell ten places to No 19. As such, there was no way it would be on the programme again this week. However, that didn’t mean Coolio wouldn’t be on the show as we got a repeat of him in the TOTP studio performing “Gangsta’s Paradise”! As Lulu said in her intro, the single had been on the charts for fourteen weeks by this point and was no longer No 1 so what gives? Well, in this week, it actually moved up the chart from No 18 to No 11 so the TOTP producers could make a case that its reappearance was legitimate but come on! Surely there was another track inside the Top 40 they could have showcased instead?

*scans that week’s Top 40*

Erm…well…it was actually pretty slim pickings. Most of the new entries were indeed featured on the show. Due to the fast moving nature of the charts back then with singles entering high in the first week and then falling away dramatically the following week (as Coolio had done), there weren’t that many records actually climbing the charts. These were the only artists that were also new entries that week which didn’t make the cut:

Culture Beat (No 32)
Xscape (No 31)
Meatloaf (No 23)
Chemical Brothers (No 13)

I think you could make a case for Chemical Brothers though could you not?

Oh now this is a tune! “Weak” by Skunk Anansie almost rips your ears off. That chorus! That vocal! Unfairly and inaccurately lumped in with the Britpop crowd – they were more Britrock* if anything – Skunk Anansie were fronted by the magnificent Skin with her striking look and stunning voice.

*Skin described their sound as “clit-rock”!

Deceptively simple in its construction around just three chords, it veritably exploded when the chorus was reached, so powerful was it. Why this didn’t get beyond No 20 in the charts is beyond me. As much as I liked “Weak” however, I have to admit to not following through on my initial interest with Skunk Anansie. More and bigger hits came in “Weak”’s wake but I can’t say I recall that many of them. My potential familiarity with their canon of work wasn’t helped by their second album “Stoosh” needing a parental guidance sticker because of some of its lyrics meaning we couldn’t play it on the shop stereo despite at least one of my colleagues really wanting to hear it. Still, that didn’t affect the band’s sales – they spent 142 weeks on the singles and album charts up to 2003 and have sold five million records.

Is it that time already? Not my teatime but 3T-time! Yes, the offspring of Tito Jackson (Taj, TJ and Taryll – see what they did there?) were amongst us in 1996 to the tune of four hit singles and a gold selling album. With their uncle Michael having huge success at this time, it was impossible to avoid the family connection being mentioned. Did it go as far as accusations of nepotism? Well, Jacko did sign them to his record label MJJ Music, mentored them and even appeared with them on one of their hits. Yeah, it’s hardly paying your dues playing the pub and club circuit is it?

“Anything” was their debut single and what a drippy ballad it was – wetter than Rishi Sunak’s suit the other day. There were no suits on display in this performance though as all three were wearing baggy shirts and what look like pyjama bottoms. And what on earth was the rucksack accessory all about and why did he take it off and fling it to the floor at the song’s climax? Was he trying to beef up their image or the song’s sound? Actually, the optics on Sunak’s General Election announcement could only have been worse if he’d taken his soaking wet suit jacket off and thrown it down in anger.

After selling half a million copies in one week*, Babylon Zoo are unsurprisingly No 1. “Spaceman” would go on to sell 1.15 million copies in total and no, I don’t know how many of those were returned to shops under the trades description act after people got past the first 20 seconds or so. To be fair, although a lot is made about how the song didn’t sound like it did on the Levi’s advert, it’s maybe a misconception that everyone who bought it felt cheated. Given those huge numbers and its exposure on radio and indeed TOTP, a lot of people must have actually liked the way it sounded all the way through.

*According to Lulu and the TOTP caption though Wikipedia says 383,000

Has it stood the test of time? I’d have to say no and that it was very much an ‘in the moment’ hit. Certainly Babylon Zoo themselves (or more correctly Jas Mann) hardly left a legacy of work behind after the fame of that hit finally faded. I wonder how many people who bought it would admit to it today?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Shed Seven	Getting Better	Not the single but I must have it on something surely?
2	Goldbug	While Lotta Love	Nah
3	Ace Of Base	Beautiful Life	Never
4	The Saw Doctors	World Of Good	Nope
5	Upside Down	Change Your Mind	As if
6	Coolio	Gangsta’s Paradise	No
7	Skunk Anansie	Weak	No but I had it on one of those Best Album Ever compilations I think
8	3T	Anything	Not likely
9	Babylon Zoo	Spaceman	I am going to admit to buying it but not for me for a friend who was obsessed with it so she could use my staff discount – honest!

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/m001z1vp/top-of-the-pops-25011996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 09 NOV 1995

Posted on April 3, 2024 by 80stastic

Tonight’s TOTP sees yet another ‘golden mic’ host at the helm. I find Lee Evans an interesting guy not because I especially liked his physical brand of humour but more because he took the unusual to retire from stand up comedy and retreated from the world of celebrity at the age of just 50 to spend more time with his family. Apart from a couple of stage roles, he’s rarely been seen since. Anybody who walks away at the height of their fame makes for a fascinating case study in my book just because you don’t see it that often. In the world of music, off the top of my head there’s Rick Astley though he subsequently came back to the world of pop music with a level of success that must have surprised even him. I guess you could also include Take That in this category who split in 1996 whilst still wildly popular though again they came back to the charts with a vengeance. How about Syd Barrett? The co-founder of Pink Floyd withdrew from public life completely in 1972 though to be fair, he’d already been fired from his band over concerns about his drug taking and mental health but he did release two solo albums before disappearing to concentrate on his gardening.

Anyway, Lee Evans had been pulling in huge crowds on his stand up tours playing to a record breaking 10,108 people in 2005 at the Manchester Arena. His 2008 “Big” tour was the biggest selling comedy DVD that Christmas. In 2011, he was honoured by the British Comedy Awards with the Channel 4 award for Special Contribution to Comedy. In short, he was huge. And then, in 2014 he announced his retirement from stand up comedy. Presumably, he could have carried on with the massive grossing tours but he quit at the top and fair play to him. I wonder if there’s any acts on tonight’s TOTP that also went out at the top?

Well, I don’t think the opening turn tonight could be put into that category. One No 13 hit could hardly be described as being at the top! Who the heck were Ruffneck featuring Yavahn anyway? Having listened to their hit “Everybody Be Somebody” they appear to have been the creators of one of the worst dance tracks of the 90s. This is just horrible! Totally repetitive with Yavahn basically singing the title over and over with some bloke screeching it back to her somewhere in the mix. Seriously, this was awful. And yet, incredibly, in one chart – the US Hot Dance Club Play chart – this Swedish act were actually at the top as this track went to No 1 for three weeks. Ruffneck? I’d rather have Rednex and that’s saying something!

Talking of dreadful Swedish pop groups, here’s another one right on cue. Ace Of Base had first entered our lives in 1993 with the odious chart topper “All That She Wants”. The hits kept coming with no upturn in quality – “The Sign” was as bad as its predecessor whilst their cover of Aswad’s “Don’t Turn Around” was execrable. “Lucky Love” was the lead single from their second album “The Bridge” and was more of the same turgid, insipid euro-pop that they made their name with. And the lyrics! They must have taken all of the time it took for Lee Evans to start sweating to write…

Lucky love belongs in teenage heaven

Whoa, whoa, yeah
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: – Joker / Billy Steinberg
Lucky Love lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc

What the hell does that mean?! Pure gibberish. The track was so insubstantial and unmemorable that even the TOTP caption person couldn’t remember its title and so we got a graphic declaring it was called “Lucky Cove” which sounds like a location on a pirate map where ‘X’ marked the spot where the treasure was to be found. “Lucky Love” was less treasure and more cheap baubles and despite it being a No 1 in their home country and Finland, it rightly stalled at No 20 in the UK.

Next, a true legend of popular music who potentially could have gone out right at the top of their game but, unlike their erstwhile rivals The Beatles, chose to carry on…and on…and on…and on. By 1995, The Rolling Stones had been on the go for 33 years – the fact that they are still an ongoing entity a further 29 years later is utterly remarkable. A career lasting 62 years and counting? It’s just mad, crazy and probably never to be repeated. Sure, there’s versions of other bands still touring but they’ve had so many line up changes that you’d have to apply the spade law* to them. The fact that The Stones have only ever had eight official band members in all those years surely marks them out as unique from everyone else. Ronnie Wood is the youngest of the current band line up at the age of 76!

*If you replace the handle of your spade and then subsequently its blade, is it still the original spade or a different tool entirely?

Anyway, in late 1995 the band had not long finished The Voodoo Lounge Tour. Instead of taking a well earned break, they released “Stripped” which was an acoustic album made up of a mixture of live tracks from the tour (including rehearsals performances in some cases) and studio reworking of songs from their back catalogue. I’m guessing that new label Virgin had their eyes on the upcoming Christmas market and took inspiration from the then in vogue MTV Unplugged show to come up with the idea for “Stripped”. To promote the album, a single was needed and in a move that seems so calculated yet obvious you can’t believe they hadn’t done it before, the band released a version of the Bob Dylan classic “Like A Rolling Stone”. It’s a great song and a decent enough version but come on! Dylan has always been a conundrum to me – a great songwriter but I don’t like his voice. I suppose it’s all subjective. The same could be said of Tom Waits but I really like Tom’s vocals. The Stones’ version of “Like A Rolling Stone” made No 12 giving them their biggest UK hit since “Undercover Of The Night” twelve years earlier. Ah, the power of a cover – and in this particular case, that cover by this band.

Saint Etienne have always been a band who do things on their own terms it seems to me so they had it in them to quit while they were ahead as it were but chose to carry on a career which has been going 34 years now. Never let it be said that it hasn’t been a diverse one though. 60s pop, house music, electronica and even folk have been influences incorporated into their sound. The very definition of eclectic. With support from the ‘inkies’ press, they really should have had bigger hits but they’ve never even had one Top 10* hit.

*If you don’t count “7 Ways To Love” under the guise of Cola Boy which I don’t.

Their lack of huge selling singles makes the decision to release a singles collection album literally called “Too Young To Die: Singles 1990-1995” seem a rather odd one. A Japan only Best Of called “Fairy Tales From Saint Etienne” had been released earlier in the year so maybe they wanted a more official documentation of their work so far? Whatever the reason, the album did OK sales wise reaching No 17 in a crowded pre-Christmas market place though failed to match the chart highs of previous two studio albums “So Tough” and “Tiger Bay” which both went Top 10.

To promote the album, the single “He’s On The Phone” was released. The song’s origins were rather convoluted. A remix by producer Motiv8 of their track “Accident” from the band’s “Reserection” EP (and no that’s not a typo) that they made in collaboration with French singer songwriter Étienne Daho, “Accident” itself was a reworking of Daho’s 1984 French language hit “Week-end à Rome”. That’s Daho in this TOTP performance, the bloke who wanders on stage towards the end of the song to mumble some words in French. I’d forgotten what how much of a dance track this one was. I think I was confusing it with “You’re In A Bad Way” which was much more pure pop. There seems to be an awful lot of PVC on show here with the overly energetic backing dancers kind of jarring against the smooth delivery of Sarah Cracknell who’s very good at looking straight down the camera. “He’s On The Phone” became the band’s biggest ever hit when it peaked at No 11.

A proper One Hit Wonder now (in the UK at least) as Whale get their fifteen minutes of fame. Can such an artist that falls into this category be able to quit at the top? I suppose it depends on whether they carry on in search (unsuccessfully) of more hits. I’m guessing that most do. In Whale’s case, they pushed really hard just to have the one. “Hobo Humpin’ Slobo Babe” was on its second mission to seek out the strange new world of the UK Top 40 having peaked at No 46 on its first release back in 1993. Its second incarnation beamed down into the Top 20 at No 15. And what a curious, almost alien life form it was. The music press tied itself up in knots trying to define it. Many tried to describe the song by referring to it as a hybrid of other bands, usually Beastie Boys/Dee-Lite/ Red Hot Chili Peppers and The Sugacubes. Others just made shit up like Stephen Dalton from the NME:

“A monstrous saga of sexual slumming perched atop a toxic tidal wave of scuzz–metal riffola”
Dalton, Stephen (12 August 1995). “Long Play”. NME. p. 42.

“Scuzz–metal riffola? Anyways, what did I make of it? I suppose I have to give you my attempt to describe it now. Well, I liked it – let me say that for starters. An otherworldly, wailing (no pun intended) vocal from the female singer on an undulating, almost hypnotic verse before the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” like chorus not just kicks in but kicks the door down. There’s even some death-metal-esque random shouting in there. How’s that for a description? I seem to recall a fair bit of discussion about what a ‘slobo’ was so here’s @TOTPFacts with the answer:

What is a “slobo”, exactly? Er, a misunderstanding. Whale’s Henrik Schyffert: "I heard that 'slobo' was a nickname for Chelsea girls. 'Hobo Humpin' Sloane Babe' would have been right. So there's a cute Swedish misunderstanding for you.” #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) March 22, 2024

I like the way singer Cia Berg pops up beside Lee Evans in his intro before joining the rest of the band on stage. I thought she was a cheeky, inventive studio audience member at first. Whale would have one more (even bigger) hit in their native Sweden but after two albums they were done and split before the end of the decade.

Having described Saint Etienne as the very definition of eclectic earlier, where the hell do I go to talk about Everything But The Girl? Their Wikipedia entry uses the following categorisations of their music:

Sophisti-pop
Electronica
Drum and Bass
Trip-hop
Folk pop
Jazz pop
Indie pop

Pick the bones out of that lot. However you think of them, perhaps the first song of theirs that will come to mind is “Missing” or rather the Todd Terry remix of it. Already inside the Top 10 by this TOTP appearance and therefore their biggest ever hit even at that point, it would spend 14 weeks inside the Top 10 peaking at No 3. The success of the single saw them head off to explore more possibilities of a dance sound with 1996’s album “Walking Wounded” embracing electronica and finding acceptance amongst the record buying public by going platinum in the UK. Not everyone was in favour of their new direction though. I recall Tracey and Ben in an interview talking about a crowd reaction to a gig they did around the time of “Walking Wounded” and recalled that one disgruntled punter had said of the music on the way out “Well, that was a load of techno bollocks!”. Can’t please them all I suppose.

Now here’s a band that probably should have called it a day long before they did but in 1995, there was no bigger name in British music than Oasis. After losing out in the Battle of Britpop to Blur, the lads from Burnage would go on to win the war when it came to album sales. “(What’s The Story) Morning Glory?” would go 17 (seventeen!) times platinum in the UK alone becoming the second best selling album here of 1995 despite only being out for three months. Fast forward 13 years and the band’s final album “Dig Out Your Soul”, whilst still selling well and going to No 1 would go just double platinum with some parts of the music press accusing the album of being “generically Oasis”. I have all their albums bar one (2000’s “Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants”) but even I as a fan, could see that they had gone on about two albums two long.

Back in November 1995 though, they were unstoppable. Well, almost. In fact, they were stopped twice around this time and on both occasions by the same act. More of that later though. The third single to be released from the album was “Wonderwall” which has become possibly their most well known hit. I say possibly as it’s maybe a toss up between that and the following single “Don’t Look Back In Anger”. Fine margins and all that. Sadly for me, “Wonderwall” was so ubiquitous that it’s become one of those songs that it’s hard to listen to anymore. That doesn’t mean it’s not a good song or that I didn’t enjoy it at the time but merely that, for me, it’s suffered from overexposure. However, I have to also say that it sounded like a classic from the get go. Spare and brittle yet perfectly conceived and executed. It would become a staple of the busker’s repertoire. Apparently bass player Guigsy didn’t play on the actual recording of the track with Noel taking on bass duties instead. He also didn’t feature in the official promo video for “Wonderwall” as he had temporarily left Oasis due to nervous exhaustion with his place in the band and promo briefly being taken by Scott McLeod. I’m sure that’s Guigsy in this TOTP though. Maybe it was a case of timing as this performance looks pre-recorded so maybe it was done a bit before the single was released.

The song’s title was inspired by the 1968 film Wonderwall and its soundtrack album called “Wonderwall Music” by George Harrison, the first solo album by a member of The Beatles. Sometime in the early 2000s, I was working and living in York and used to attend a pub pop quiz on a Tuesday evening. One night, one of the questions was ‘What was the 60s film whose title is also the name of an Oasis single?’. I confidently wrote down “Don’t Look Back In Anger” but soon discovered I’d got confused with the 1959 kitchen sink drama Look Back In Anger based on the John Osbourne play of the same name. I’ll never make that mistake again.

As confident as I was in my incorrect answer, so was Lee Evans in his false prediction that “Wonderwall” would be No 1 soon enough. It never made it though it has sold 3.6 million copies making it the biggest selling Oasis single in the UK. As for the Mike Flowers Pop version, I’ll get to that all in good time.

After Madonna in the studio last week, seven days on TOTP executive producer Ric Blaxill had pulled off another coup – that of getting David Bowie on the show in person! OK, 1995 wasn’t peak Bowie but still; David Bowie! As much as it’s generally accepted that the 80s weren’t The Thin White Duke’s finest years, I’m not convinced that the 90s were much, if any, better. Before I go any further, I should state that whilst I like Bowie (who doesn’t?) that I’m no aficionado and so my opinions come from a place of limited knowledge – if you are a mega-fan and are offended by anything else I may write from this point, it was not my intention to irk you. So…in my humble opinion, of the four albums he released during the 90s, I would venture that none of them rank highly in the Bowie canon. His fanbase ensured that four of them went Top 10 including a No 1 in “Black Tie White Noise” but none achieved massive sales. In fact, I think I’m right in saying that Bowie’s biggest selling albums of the decade were both compilations – 1990’s “Changesbowie” and 1993’s “The Singles Collection”.

Come 1995, the latest Bowie album was “Outside” and as with any album by The Master (as Lee Evans refers to him in his intro), there’s a shit load of words written about it online which I couldn’t hope to summarise in this post. Suffice to say, the main themes are that it was inspired by Twin Peaks (and possibly Cluedo) with a concept narrative about the murder of a 14 year old girl being investigated by a detective Nathan Adler. The album (though I talk about it in the surety that I’ve never heard it) features a bewildering mix of styles including rock, jazz, electronica, industrial rock and ambient. This single – the second taken from it – “Strangers When We Meet” – was originally a track on Bowie’s soundtrack album to the BBC series The Buddha Of Suburbia based on the novel by Hanif Kureishi. That album did the sum of naff all sales wise though has retrospectively come to be regarded as a ‘great lost album’. I don’t know how much the original version of “Strangers When We Meet” differs from its later incarnation (if at all) but for what it’s worth, I quite like what we get in this performance. I don’t remember it at all but it’s a good tune if a little pedestrian for Bowie and though it will certainly never be regarded as one of his classics, it probably deserved a better UK chart placing than No 39. As ever, Bowie looks effortlessly cool here and is the natural opposite when juxtaposed to the upcoming act at No 1.

P.S. I’m saying that Bowie was still at the top of his game when his final album “Blackstar” was released in 2016. Obviously, his premature death wasn’t the same as him calling time on his career. He surely would have released more albums post 2016 had he lived on.

And so to the act that not only kept Oasis from scoring a No 1 single with “Wonderwall” but also pipped them to the accolade of having the best selling UK album of 1995. How did the abomination that was Robson & Jerome happen? Well, as with most musical abominations, it was all Simon Cowell’s fault. It was him who pursued the Soldier Soldier actors Robson Green and Jerome Flynn to release a version of “Unchained Melody” after their characters had performed the song in a plot line in the show and the phenomenal public response to the record (it sold 1.8 million copies) meant that more would follow. Cowell wasn’t going to let this cash cow go out to pasture without milking it dry first. And so, the inevitable follow up arrived and of course, it was another cover version. “I Believe” had been a massive hit in 1953 for Frankie Laine – no, like really massive – it went to No 1 on three different occasions registering 18 weeks at the top of the charts in the process. The Bachelors also had a big hit with the song when their version got to No 2 in the UK in 1964. Cowell would have known this and also that the age demographic who would buy a Robson & Jerome single would also know the song from years before. It smacks of cold, calculating strategy. R&J’s take on “I Believe” would top the charts for 4 weeks though they were unable to last the extra 3 weeks that would have been required to become the Christmas No 1. Ha! You got that calculation wrong didn’t you Cowell?! Thankfully, the song is only just over 2 minutes long so the performance here is mercifully short.

Talking of mercifully short, Robson & Jerome at least had the good sense and self knowledge to understand when to cut short their pop career. A second album and third single followed in 1996 – all of which went to No 1 in their respective charts – but these were their last releases (if you don’t count a couple of subsequent compilations shoved out by their label RCA). This means we’ve finally found an act on this TOTP that went out at the top just like Lee Evans!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Ruffneck featuring Yavahn	Everybody Be Somebody	Never happening
2	Ace Of Base	Lucky Love	No
3	The Rolling Stones	Like A Rolling Stone	Nah
4	Saint Etienne	He’s On The Phone	I didn’t
5	Whale	Hobo Humpin’ Slobo Babe	Liked it, didn’t buy it
6	Everything But The Girl	Missing	No but I must have it on something surely
7	Oasis	Wonderwall	This was one of the few of their singles I failed to buy for some reason
8	David Bowie	Strangers When We Meet	Nope
9	Robson & Jerome	I Believe	As if

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/m001xhzf/top-of-the-pops-09111995?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 23 JUN 1994

Posted on April 15, 2023 by 80stastic

It’s the final week of June 1994 and the World Cup is well under way. Republic of Ireland have already pulled off an unlikely 1-0 win against Italy and Diego Maradona had shocked the world with that bulging eyes goal celebration. Two days after this TOTP aired, he failed a drug test after the Argentina v Nigeria group game and was expelled from the tournament. He never played for his country again. The England team were watching at home like the rest of us after failing to qualify for the first time since 1978. Did we not like that! The World Cup provides the perfect opportunity for tonight’s host Simon ‘Smug’ Mayo to play to the camera by wearing a different country’s football shirt every time he does a link. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – what a nob!

We start with a band who had history when it came to rustling up a big hit out of nowhere. In 1988, Aswad bagged themselves a No 1 with “Don’t Turn Around”. There previous highest chart peak had been No 70. They would spend the next six years as infrequent visitors to the Top 40 clocking up a handful of medium sized hits. By the Summer of 1994, their last chart entry had been a rather desperate career reviving attempt – a cover of Ace’s “How Long” with Yazz. I, for one, did not see them plundering a Top 5 single any time soon but that’s what they did with the release of “Shine”. Why did this particular track spark with the record buying audience? If I knew the answer to that, I’d be a super wealthy songwriter rather than an impoverished blog writer. For what it’s worth, “Shine” (to me) seemed much more aligned with their reggae roots than the likes of the out and out pop of “Don’t Turn Around” and given the then recent trend for ragga/dancehall songs and reggae-fied pop classics in the charts, maybe this was the apposite time for an Aswad comeback. Whatever the reason, “Shine” certainly had some legs – it spent three months in the Top 40 of which half of that time was in the Top 10. I’m sure we’ll be seeing Aswad again on these repeats.

Just to prove my point about the proliferation of reggae and its various sub genres in the charts at this time, here’s Dawn Penn with “You Don’t Love Me (No, No, No)”. And if that wasn’t enough evidence to prove how parochial the charts were becoming and this TOTP in particular, here’s @TOTPFacts with a further tidbit:

Aswad later sampled "You Don’t Love Me (No, No, No)" for their track "You're No Good" a no 35 hit in 1995: https://t.co/XYmjep0ptK #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) April 7, 2023

If Aswad’s comeback was surprising then what can be said about the success of this single? Originally recorded in 1967 and based around a Willie Cobb 1960 song (which itself relied heavily on a 1955 Bo Diddley track), somehow in 1994, it was deemed essential Summer listening. NME put it at No 24 in their list of the 50 best songs of the year. However, it was a case of ‘yes, yes, yes’ for the single and ‘no, no, no’ for the accompanying album which was received much less favourably and it got no further than No 51 in our charts.

Oh this is just getting silly now. How much more Aswad can one blog post take?! The next act is Ace Of Base whose latest single is a version of the aforementioned “Don’t Turn Around”! Why?! Why did they think this was a good idea? Well, apparently it wasn’t the band’s brainwave but their record label Arista’s who wanted some extra tracks laid down for the release of the US version of their debut album. One of those tracks had been previous single “The Sign” and now it was the turn of a song written by songwriter extraordinaire Dianne Warren and Albert Hammond. It was originally recorded by Tina Turner as the B-side to her 1986 single “Typical Male” before Aswad got their hands on it. Six years later it resurfaced in the hands of Swedish hitmakers Ace Of Base who wanted to give it a makeover and reworked it in a minor key to lend it an air of melancholy. I guess they should be given some credit for trying to do something different with what was clearly a straight up and down, uptempo pop song but it’s still a big, steaming pool of piss. I think it’s the nasally vocals on it (and indeed all their records) that grate. That plus the god awful rap in the middle. Oh, and the nasty, tinny production. Yeah, I think that covers it.

Arista clearly knew their markets though and “Don’t Turn Around” went to No 4 in the US and No 5 in the UK as well as being a hit all around the world. Ace Of Base would return with yet another cover version in 1998 with their take of Bananarama’s “Cruel Summer”.

Pretty sure there’s no Aswad association with this next artist. Whilst the UK was experiencing the second coming of Bryan Adams in the form of Wet Wet Wet being No 1 for weeks on end, America also had its own version of chart purgatory in the shape of All 4 One whose single “I Swear” topped the Billboard Hot 100 for eleven consecutive weeks. Inevitably, it became a massive success over here as well and surely would have risen to the summit were it not for Marti Pellow and chums. It got wedged in at the No2 position for seven weeks unable to dislodge “Love Is All Around”. I think this was my sister and her then boyfriend’s song as I recall. No doubt it held that status for many a couple in 1994.

Not quite a one hit wonder in the UK (they had a No 33 single in 1995), they had more success in the US though no chart entries there either past 1996. Despite that, the group are still together with the original line up with their most recent album coming in 2015.

Well before Yorkshire rockers Terrorvision were singing about ‘whales and dolphins’ on their 1996 hit single “Perseverance” there was Shed Seven and their first foray into the Top 40 “Dolphin”. I seem to remember there being a lot of fuss about the emergence of this lot (who were also Yorkshire lads hailing from York itself) and the release of their debut album “Change Giver”. I hadn’t been an early adopter of the Shed buzz though. I hadn’t noticed their debut single “Mark” (to be fair, it only made No 80) and this one also seemed to have passed me by. Not sure why as it’s a decent tune and I was open to the idea of a guitar band playing a form of jangly pop. The music press seemed open to it as well, at least initially. Comparisons with The Smiths and an article in the NME describing them as ‘the UK’s brightest hopes’ alongside positive gig reviews fuelled expectations. Within months though the press had turned and the band were even criticised for their names. Not the band’s name but their actual names. Look at this:

“Do they really expect to make it big with a singer called Rick Witter?”
Sullivan, Caroline. “Feature: Blurred Vision”. The Guardian G2 (Thursday 10 November 1994): 5.

Ridiculous. Anyway, the album made a short lived but significant splash reaching No 16 but only spending two weeks on the chart. It was a start though and within two years they were cranking out some quality tunes like “Getting Better” and “Going For Gold” both of which were used to soundtrack some BBC montages of the England football team during Euro 96 at the height of lad culture. Perhaps their pièce de résistance though was “Chasing Rainbows”, the lead single from third album “Let It Ride”. They were up there with the big boys of Britpop briefly. Ah yes, Britpop. Blur Vs Oasis and all that. Except for a while it was Shed Seven Vs Oasis, a rivalry which I must admit to not being aware of at the time but which seems to be heightened by both bands releasing debut albums within a week of each other. The rivalry became a feud that was played out in the music press with comments like this from Noel Gallagher:

“If we’re The Beatles, where are The Rolling Stones… it’s not f***ing Shed Seven’.”
Simpson, Dave. “Feature: More Songs About Puberty And Power”. Melody Maker (10 September 1994): 32–34.

Ultimately, “Change Giver” couldn’t compete with the record breaking “Definitely Maybe” but it wasn’t for a lack of confidence. Rick Witter is wearing a Shed Seven T-shirt in this TOTP performance with a picture of himself on the front! “Dolphin” peaked at No 28.

https://youtu.be/LW1S-Bf_Ers

Live action films that use cartoons as their source material are rarely a good idea in my book. As far back as 1980 when Robin Williams took on Popeye, they never seemed to work. Leslie Nielsen’s turn as Mr Magoo in 1997 didn’t live long in the memory and neither did Matthew Broderick’s as Inspector Gadget in 1999. And then there’s The Flintstones. A staple of many a child of the 60s and 70s televisual schedule, the live action film starring John Goodman as Fred Flintstone actually did pretty well at the box office but it was still awful. With songs from films being big business in the 90s (think Bryan Adams / Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Whitney Houston / The Bodyguard and Wet Wet Wet / Four Weddings and a Funeral), it was no surprise that Universal Pictures wanted a huge hit to promote the film. Enter The B–52’s to record a version of the cartoon’s well known theme tune.

In many ways they were the perfect vehicle for a reworking of “(Meet) The Flintstones” having an almost cartoonish image themselves and being at the kitsch end of New Wave but on listening back to this today, it sounds horrific. Renamed as The B.C. 52’s (how amusing), they put their trademark stylings to the song like the over emphasised vocals of Kate Pierson and some wah wah guitar but it just doesn’t work for me. Shoehorning in some of the sound effects from the original into the mix like the canned drum roll that accompanies ‘Fred’s two feet’ in the cartoon sounds completely incongruous. What did I know though as the single went all the way to No 3. It would be the band’s final UK and US chart hit.

Some more pissing Eurodance next. I’m so fed up of this now. At the risk of sounding like my Dad when he used to pass judgment on the music of my youth, it all sounds the same and the bigger the crap the longer it goes on. Cappella seemed to be a poor man’s 2 Unlimited but with an obsession with inserting ‘U’ instead of ‘you’ in their song titles. “U & Me” was the third of their singles to follow this trend after “U Got 2 Know” and “U Got 2 Let The Music”. I can’t remember how they went but I’m guessing they sounded pretty similar to this one. Do you think Eurodance is just a dead form of music now? Like Latin is a dead language that nobody speaks anymore, is Eurodance a genre of music that nobody makes nor listens to any longer? We can only hope. “U & Me” peaked at No 10.

The 90s had been pretty good to Elton John so far. The decade had furnished him with his first ever solo UK No 1 in “Sacrifice / Healing Hands”, his album “Sleeping With The Past” (1990) was also a chart topper whilst “The One” (1992) went to No 2. Meanwhile, his collaborations album “Duets” had given him two Top 10 singles on the bounce. I hadn’t liked any of it though. In fact, I’d thought it was all terrible pretty much. However, that period’s success had lifted Elton out of his late 80s malaise when everything had gone a bit awry post “Too Low For Zero” and its radio friendly singles like “I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues” and “I’m Still Standing”.

What came next in 1994 some would say was his best work in years and it was all due to a Disney film. The Lion King would become an international phenomenon becoming the second highest grossing film of all time at one point behind the original Jurassic Park but also spawning a musical, sequels, a prequel and TV series. The man behind its soundtrack though was Elton and he fashioned a record that would go diamond in the US alone, achieving 10 million sales. The two big singles from it were “Circle Of Life” and this one, “Can You Feel The Love Tonight”. Both were heart strings tugging ballads the like of which Elton was more than capable of composing once he’d weaned himself off the overly saccharine which he was want to indulge in. I could appreciate the musicality of both hits from the soundtrack though I preferred “Circle Of Life” if I’m honest as did Elton who is on record as stating it’s the better song. It was “Can You Feel The Love Tonight” though that won an Oscar for Best Original Song in 1995.

The single was also a big hit in the US where it made No 4 though the reception to it in this country was somehow only worthy of a chart peak of No 14. Elton would return in 1995 with the platinum selling “Made In England” album.

It’s week four for Wet Wet Wet at the chart summit. What can I say about it this week? How about our perception of what exactly was going on here at the time? Did we have any idea that we were witnessing the genesis of a 15 weeks run at No 1 for “Love Is All Around”? Four Weddings And A Funeral was pulling in huge numbers at the box office to help promote the song in much the same way that Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves did for “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You” so maybe we should have seen it coming? Or had we consigned the whole Bryan Adams debacle to history as a one off and therefore in our minds there was no way such a run could happen again or at least certainly not within three years?

And what of chart rivals? Were there any records that looked likely to depose the Wets in those early weeks? Was it inconceivable that someone like Big Mountain (with their own song from a film) could get to No 1? How about Dawn Penn or US chart toppers All 4 One? Or even Ace Of Base who’d already scored a chart topper of their own the previous year and whose current single was a song that had been No 1 for Aswad just six years before? Marti Pellow and co would see them all off to achieve fifteen weeks atop the charts before getting bored themselves and deleting the record so that sales would eventually and inevitably decline. At least that put them marginally above Bryan Adams in the credibility stakes.

The play out song is “Night In My Veins” by The Pretenders. I’d completely forgotten that there was a follow up to “I’ll Stand By You” but here it is and it’s not bad if nowhere near as memorable as its predecessor. A catchy, melodic rock work out, it would make No 25 and was the band’s penultimate UK Top 40 entry.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Aswad	Shine	Nope
2	Dawn Penn	You Don’t Love Me (No, No, No)	No and indeed no, no
3	Ace Of Base	Don’t Turn Around	As if
4	All 4 One	I Swear	No but I bet my sister did
5	Shed Seven	Dolphin	No but I have a live album of theirs with it on
6	The B-52’s	(Meet) The Flinstones	Never happening
7	Cappella	U & Me	Negative
8	Elton John	Can You Feel The Love Tonight	Nah
9	Wet Wet Wet	Love Is All Around	I did not
10	The Pretenders	Night In My Veins	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/m001krc9/top-of-the-pops-23061994

TOTP 24 FEB 1994

Posted on February 11, 2023 by 80stastic

Musical comebacks – there have been a few across the decades, some more successful than others. Take That made a remarkable return to the charts in 2006 ten years after they had disbanded with a No 1 album and single and sold out tour dates, all without the presence of Robbie Williams in their ranks (at least initially). In 1983, Tina Turner’s “Private Dancer” album would bag her four Grammy Awards following years in the commercial wilderness after finally escaping her abusive relationship with husband Ike. And what about Elvis Presley’s 1968 TV Special which would become unofficially known as ‘The ‘68 Comeback Special’, reinvigorating his career which had declined into a spiral of those awful movies he made. Even in these BBC4 TOTP repeats, we’ve seen both Meatloaf and Duran Duran rise from the ashes of their past careers to record huge sellers in 1993.

Then there’s the less well received comebacks. When Guns N’ Roses self destructed causing a massive delay of fifteen years between albums, by the time “Chinese Democracy “ finally came out, there was little appetite for Axl Rose and his new band line up. Spandau Ballet did pull off a successful reunion in 2009 with a sell out tour, an album of re-recorded versions of songs from their back catalogue and a feature length documentary biopic Soul Boys Of The Western World. However, when lead singer Tony Hadley left for good in 2017, the band tried to carry on by replacing him with relative unknown Ross William Wild. They only lasted a handful of gigs before realising that a Hadley-less Spandau wasn’t really what the people wanted. Nor did people have any room in their lives for the second coming of Vanilla Ice who attempted a comeback in 1998 with a nu-metal influenced album called “Hard To Swallow” (indeed it was). And then there was Level 42 who kick off this edition of TOTP. Was it a return to their glory days of the mid 80s or did they illicit an indifferent reaction?

The dawn of the 90s saw the band looking every bit the 80s anachronism. Their long term record label Polydor allegedly rejected their first new material of the decade (the 1991 album “Guaranteed”) which led to the band relocating to RCA but the album wasn’t well received when it finally appeared. Could they achieve an unlikely comeback three years on just as Britpop was brewing?

“Forever Now” was the title of both their tenth studio album and lead single from it. It was also the last album to feature three members of the original line up in Mark King, Mike Lindup and Phil Gould with the latter returning to the fold for the first time since 1987. It was a short lived return for Gould who refused to tour the album due to his lack of confidence in the record company. The fan base saw the album as very much a return to form but for an uncommitted observer like me, it sounded a bit directionless. They’d added a load of horns into the mix alongside King’s trademark slap bass but it just seems to meander along without really going anywhere ultimately. Maybe channeling the origins of the band’s name (with 42 being the answer to “the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything” as per The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy), the song’s lyrics seem to ponder the existential mystery of time, coming up with the conclusion that we should all just live for the moment. However, it expresses that sentiment in the most cack-handed of ways with these words:

Holy grail, holy cow

I just want to live forever now
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Frank John Musker / Mark King / Richard Simon Darbyshire
Forever Now lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Chappell Music, Inc

Dear oh dear. Later in the year, another song would appear with the lyrics “live forever” in it. It was so much better than Level 42’s effort, you could see the difference in quality between them from space.

“Forever Now” the single did achieve a respectable peak of No 19 though whilst the album made the Top 10. The band would break up in the October of 1994 before reappearing with King and a new touring line up in 2001.

https://youtu.be/Y7Jfa_-b0GE

Level 42 weren’t the only ones in revival mode on this show as the host was also on the comeback trail. Bruno Brookes hadn’t been on the show since 1991 just before the ‘year zero’ cull but was brought back into the fold alongside Simon Mayo, Mark Goodier and Nicky Campbell by new producer Ric Blaxill. So here he was in 1994 with the same hairstyle that he had on his first TOTP appearance back in 1984. Quite remarkable. Bruno Brookes introducing Level 42 on TOTP – this really was an 80s flashback.

The next act weren’t exactly looking to make a comeback as they’d had a No 1 single less than 12 months earlier but the comparative lack of success of its follow ups had led me to believe we’d maybe already seen the last of them. How wrong I was. Ace Of Base have sold an estimated 50 million records worldwide to date making them the third best selling artist from Sweden ever behind the mighty ABBA and..ahem…Roxette. Their debut album sold 9 million copies in the US alone and it’s from that album that this track – “The Sign” – came. Sort of. As with Red Hot Chili Peppers the other week, Ace Of Base’s release history was a bit complicated. Originally entitled “Happy Nation”, it was initially released in the UK in June 1993. However, it was kept back for nearly 6 months in the US and retitled “The Sign” with that track plus two others added to it. When the title track went to No 1 over there for 6 weeks, the single was given a release in the UK whilst the “Happy Nation” album was also rereleased with those extra tracks added and retitled “Happy Nation (U.S. Version). Got all that? Good.

In my head, “The Sign” went to No 1 over here just as it had done in the US but Wikipedia assured me it was a No 2 record. Depending on your point of view it’s either incredibly catchy or intensely annoying (I’m in the latter camp) yet it many circles it is cherished. Katy Perry has acknowledged it as a big influence on her music and it regularly appears in those 50 Best Songs of the 90s polls. For me though, it was always a very slight, lowest common denominator pop song. Its Wikipedia entry refers to it as ‘techno-reggae’ whatever the hell that was. As with all of Ace Of Base’s hits, I couldn’t get along the overly nasal vocals. As for its legacy, it surely doesn’t get any bigger than Pitch Perfect?

Another comeback of sorts now as we find the rather unusual event of a record going back up the charts having already peaked once. There’s no great mystery to why this happened though. “All For Love” by Bryan Adams, Rod Stewart and Sting had entered the charts at No 7 back in mid January before making its way to a peak of No 2 and then descending the charts. However, the film it was from – The Three Musketeers – was released to UK cinemas just two weeks before this TOTP aired and so, with it playing over the end credits, people’s attention was drawn to it once more resulting in a sales spike. It’s still a shocking song though.

No comebacks here – “Stay Together” was a bit of a stop gap single though between Suede albums. Crashing straight into the charts at No 3, was this official proof that they were not just the next big thing but indeed, the current big thing? As for that by rather out there Derek Jarman reference by Bruno Brookes, here’s @TOTPFacts with the story behind it:

No, you didn't dream that, Bruno Brookes just mentioned avant garde filmmaker Derek Jarman, who died of an AIDS-related illness on 19 February 1994. Jarman directed the video for Suede's "So Young". #TOTP https://t.co/p1HxIRGrJy
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) February 3, 2023

They’ve also got the info on drummer Simon Gilbert’s 16 T-shirt:

Suede drummer Simon Gilbert's "16" t-shirt was a message in support of lowering the gay male age of consent to 16. At this point it was still 21. On 21 February 1994, the House of Commons had voted to reduce it to 18. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) February 3, 2023

Look, it takes a long time to write these reviews so sometimes I allow myself a shortcut by relying on other sources to tell the stories – OK? And anyway, Suede were only just in the TOTP studio performing “Stay Together” the other week so I’ve already said everything I wanted to say about it.

An artist next who would achieve a couple of comebacks during her time and in 1994, her career trajectory would suggest she’d be in need of one soon enough. After bursting into the charts in 1993 with a debut No 1 single in “Dreams”, Gabrielle had failed to replicate that success with the follow up singles which had peaked at Nos:

9 – 26 – 24

“Because Of You” was the last of those figures and, in its defence, it was the fourth and final track released from an album that had been out for four months already including the busy Christmas period. Even so, these were surely disappointing numbers for both artist and record company. Another reason why “Because Of You” underperformed could be that it was basically “Dreams” without the killer chorus. However, Gabrielle would pull off the first of those aforementioned comebacks two years later with a Top 5 single in “Give Me A Little More Time” and a platinum selling eponymously titled sophomore album. In 2000 she would produce an even better comeback with her chart topping “Rise” single and album.

Oh, and if you need a song called “Because Of You” in your life, there’s always this…

Here come the Breakers starting with an artist who had already made a comeback at the start of the decade after his last two albums of the 80s had seen his sales fall away dramatically. Both 1986’s “Leather Jackets” and 1988’s “Reg Strikes Back” had underperformed commercially and 1990’s “Sleeping With The Past” looked to be going the same way until a rerelease of “Sacrifice” coupled as an A-side with “Healing Hands” made Elton John relevant again by giving him his first solo UK No 1. Elton built on that success with a No 2 album in “The One” and a platinum selling “Duets” album. It was from the latter that this ghastly single was taken – a reworking of his 1976 No 1 with Kiki Dee “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” but this time fine with US drag queen and TV celebrity RuPaul.

This was just a terrible idea badly executed. Elton’s last single had been a duet with the aforementioned Kiki Dee on the Cole Porter song “True Love”. Couldn’t he have ditched that and done a revamped version of “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” with her instead? The nasty, tinny sounding production on the Hi-NRG RuPaul version here does nothing for either of the protagonists’ careers. And the video is just a cringe fest. Perhaps due to its then recent performance at the BRITS, the 1994 version of “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” peaked at an inexplicable No 7.

No comebacks here as this was one of the first chart hits for Soundgarden that took them from being just another grunge rock band from Seattle to global recognition. I have to admit to not knowing that much about Soundgarden. I knew there was a small, dingy club at Back Piccadilly, Manchester called Soundgarden as we had an Our Price Christmas do their once – caterer ran off with the food budget without supplying any actual grub – but the band? Not much. Did they do one called “Black Hole Sun”?

*checks their discography*

Yes, that was them and that track was the third single from their 1994 album “Superunknown”. The first though was this one – “Spoonman”. Nothing to do with Noel Gallagher’s quote about sibling Liam being “as angry as a man with a fork in a world of soup” nor Mr Spoon from Button Moon, it was actually inspired by something I did have some knowledge about – the film Singles. The plot revolves around the love lives of some Generation X’ers in Seattle including the wannabe rock star character Cliff played by Matt Dillon. Soundgarden and Pearl Jam worked on songs for the soundtrack with the latter’s bass guitarist Jeff Ament tasked with coming up with names for Cliff’s fictional rock band in the film. ‘Spoonman’ was one of his suggestions but in the end they went for ‘Citizen Dick’. Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell used the title as the basis for this track. It didn’t appear in the soundtrack album initially though a version was included on a 2017 super deluxe edition. It would peak at No 20 on the IK charts.

This next song is from a band not so much attempting a comeback as being at the centre of a rerelease campaign for their decade old back catalogue. “Two Tribes”, perhaps surprisingly, was the last of Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s first four singles to get the 90s remix/rerelease treatment after “Relax”, “Welcome To The Pleasuredome” and “The Power Of Love” before it. Surprising in the respect that it was No 1 for 9 weeks in 1984, the longest running No1 record in the UK during the entire 80s. Is it their most popular/well known song though? Could a case be made for “Relax” which is, after all, the 7th best selling single in the UK of all time. Or how about “The Power Of Love” what with its festive season associations and place on many a Christmas playlist? What is not surprising is that none of the singles from Frankie’s second album “Liverpool” were deemed worthy of a second outing. “Two Tribes (Fluke’s Minimix)” achieved a peak of No 16 whilst “Bang!…The Greatest Hits Of Frankie Goes To Hollywood” made No 4.

A second helping of Sting on the show now as we go live by satellite to Sydney, Australia for a performance of his latest single “Nothing ‘Bout Me”. This exemplified new TOTP producer Ric Blaxill’s approach to these live by satellite links to have artists doing a turn in front of a famous landmark (in this case Sydney Opera House). This was the final single from the “Ten Summoner’s Tales” album which brought a nice symmetry to the tracks taken from it if you include one that originally featured on the Lethal Weapon 3 soundtrack but ended up on the Sting album. Why? Well, it was called “It’s Probably Me”. Mr Sumner was obviously keen on three word song titles where the last one was ‘me’ at this time.

It’s a fairly jaunty number and was written as Sting’s retort to all the attempts by the music press to dissect his psyche every time he released an album. It suffered from being the last single from an album that had already been out for nearly a year and got no higher than its No 32 chart position it was at here. Bruno Brookes talks about Sting having “a cast of thousands” with him in this performance and there’s certainly a fair few there with him including seven backing singers! However, even that’s not the most noticeable thing about this performance. Where did you get that outfit sir?!

https://youtu.be/x8jTa6ksKVI

So here’s a bit of a thing as UK music fans get their first look at Beck. What an interesting artist this guy is but he would probably say that the least interesting thing about him is his debut hit “Loser”. There’s so much to unpack and discuss about Beck but I’m pushed for time again this week so let’s start by dispelling a couple of myths:

He is not related to the Hanson brothers of “Mmm Bop” fame. His surname is spelt Hansen.
“Loser” is not a stoner rap or anti-establishment slacker anthem that speaks of Generation X ennui. The ‘loser’ theme is, according to Beck himself, merely a description of his lack of skill as a rapper, made up on the spot when he was writing the song.
It has nothing to do with Nirvana nor Kurt Cobain’s death a few weeks after it was a hit despite their label Sub Pop selling T-shirts emblazoned with the word ‘LOSER’ on them.

It remains, however, a great track in my humble opinion despite Beck declaring it interesting but ultimately unimpressive. It would not be indicative of his future musical direction though with many fans of the song being caught out by the rest of his material. A bit like when those people who loved “More Than Words” by Extreme being disappointed at the rest of their funk metal back catalogue perhaps?

“Loser” with its bizarre lyrics (“beefcake pantyhose” indeed!) would go Top 10 in the US though we were slightly more conservative in our liking of it over here where it peaked at No 15. By the way, I’ve no idea who these old fellas are up there on stage with Beck or why they are there but they’re great all the same.

https://youtu.be/KJ7mEbf29lk

There is a rather tragically poignant version of the song in the TV series Glee. Both the actors featured in the performance are now no longer with us. Cory Monteith died in 2013 of an accidental drug overdose whilst Mark Salling committed suicide by hanging in 2018.

No comebacks apparent in the No 1 slot as Mariah Carey holds steady for another week with “Without You”. The popularity of her version led to a surge in sales for parent album “Music Box” which had been out for six months already giving her the double whammy of a No 1 single and album simultaneously. Curiously, despite eight of her previous ten singles going to No 1 in the US, it peaked at No 3 over there. Mariah would eke out another UK Top 10 hit from “Music Box” in “Anytime You Need A Friend” before undertaking another cover of a love song when she duetted with Luther Vandross on Lionel Richie’s “Endless Love”. She would end 1994 by releasing that Christmas song.

The play out song this week gives us one final comeback and how unlikely was this one?! Anyone who had a bet on the Charleston dance craze being back in 1994 must have coined it in. “Doop” by Doop was a mash up of ragtime, the aforementioned Charleston and some house beats and would be at No 1 in the UK soon enough. Criminally, it denied Bruce Springsteen what would have been his first and so far only solo UK chart topper.

Although the bpm are completely different, it does put me in mind of this intensely creepy single that was released in 1982. A synth pop version of Irving Berlin anyone? Although UK record buyers were unable to resist the ‘charms’ of Doop in 1994, back in the 80s we had a bit more taste as this drivel bombed over here whilst going to No 4 in the US.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Level 42	Forever Now	Nah
2	Ace Of Base	The Sign	Never happening
3	Bryan Adams, Rod Stewart and Sting	All For Love	See 2 above
4	Suede	Stay Together	Could have but didn’t
5	Gabrielle	Because Of You	Nope
6	Elton John and RuPaul	Don’t Go Breaking My Heart	As if
7	Soundgarden	Spoonman	No
8	Frankie Goes To Hollywood	Two Tribes	Bought it in 1984 but not 1994
9	Sting	Nothing ‘Bout Me	I did not
10	Beck	Loser	See 4 above
11	Mariah Carey	Without You	Negative
12	Doop	Doop	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/m001hqvk/top-of-the-pops-24021994

TOTP 26 AUG 1993

Posted on October 9, 2022 by 80stastic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Under The Gun” peaked at No 19.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

14 – 14 – 16 – 18

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

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

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

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

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

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

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001crzw/top-of-the-pops-26081993

TOTP 03 JUN 1993

Posted on August 31, 2022 by 80stastic

In a recent post I made a reference to the ex-footballer Chris Waddle who had just been voted the 1993 sports writers’ Player of the Year. As this is a music blog, I obviously had to mention Waddle’s almost surreal attempt at pop superstardom in 1987. I even inserted a clip of him performing on TOTP. Unfortunately that seemed to cause the misapprehension amongst some that I was mixing up my TOTP years. As such, I need to be careful in this intro as I am going to talk about his partner in crime, Glenn Hoddle. You see, the day after this TOTP aired, Glenn was appointed as the new manager of my beloved Chelsea. Back in 1993, this was big news for Chelsea fans. Growing up, I’d seen my team managed by a succession of useless gaffers like Ken Shellito, Danny Blanchflower and Geoff Hurst. The latest incumbent Ian Porterfield had been similarly challenged. Hoddle, by contrast, was in demand after taking unfashionable Swindon Town into the Premier League. Plus, he brought some glamour with him. At 36 years of age, he was young for a manager and of course he had been a pop star (of sorts) in the 80s. Let’s see if there’s anyone in this show who can hold a light to Glenn in his “Diamond Lights” pomp…

…oh God no! Not him! I knew it must be coming as it’s one of the big hits of 1993 but I always, always hated it. I talk of Haddaway and his Eurodance song “What Is Love”. This guy was like a German Sydney Youngblood in that both served in the forces before deciding they’d give this pop star lark a go – Haddaway was in the Navy (you can sail the seven seas) and Youngblood the US Army. His debut single was pretty much No 1 in every country in Europe apart from the UK where he had to be satisfied with a No 2. Yes, it was catchy but all those Eurodance hits were catchy – it didn’t guarantee any measure of quality though. It’s not even that Haddaway couldn’t sing as the guy clearly had some pipes on him. It’s just that there seems to be a never ending conveyor belt of this sort of stuff this year and even by early June I was sick of it all. Yes, I guess it’s got a bit more soul to it than something like “No Limit” but that stabbing synth riff used to make my skin crawl.

The other reason I couldn’t take Haddaway seriously was that, having spent three years in Sunderland as a student, hearing his name immediately sent the synapses in my brain firing to arrive at the North East phrase of ‘hadaway n’ shite’ – a proclamation of negativity or disbelief to put it politely.

Look, if I want a song called “What Is Love” there’s one right here which is infinitely more preferable to me…

Isn’t this No 1 yet? Must surely be next week then. UB40’s version of “(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With You” has exploded sales wise – we were shifting loads of it in the Our Price store in Rochdale where I was working – though I was never quite sure why. It just sounded so clunky and mechanical and…well…ham-fisted in its production. All the charm of the song seemed to have been sucked out of it. Nothing wrong with putting a completely different spin on a song of course but it felt like they put as much love into it as they would have writing a shopping list. Compare their laborious take on the song with this joyous version from 1986 by Lick The Tins…

I know the UB40 version was on the soundtrack to the film Sliver but surely that wasn’t responsible for its popularity was it? I’ve never seen the film but it was an erotic thriller so surely didn’t have that mainstream appeal of something like Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves and we all know what that film did for Bryan Adams. Surely the age rating it would have been given would have precluded some potential record buyers from even getting into the cinema? I’m guessing that the promo video for the single is based around CCTV scenes featured in the movie some of which clearly indicate that Sharon Stone’s character has gone further than just crossing her legs as per her Fatal Attraction character. I’m no prude but I’m surprised the BBC didn’t edit them out.

Right here comes Jamiroquai to “Blow Your Mind” except that this track was hardly going to do that. It’s just a watered down version of their first hit “Too Young To Die” isn’t it? A jam session that’s been told it’s a song and believed the messenger. Jay Kay just scats his way through it with a lot of Fast Show jazz club free-styling – the wearing of his trademark silly hat doesn’t convince. Neither does the staging of this performance. Why has the stage been made to look like someone’s living room? There’s two sofas with members of the band sat precariously on arms and a backrest (that’s the sort of thing I’d tell my child off about) plus a fruit bowl on a coffee table possibly featuring plastic fruit. Why? How is that a depiction of blowing your mind? Just nonsense.

“Blow Your Mind” peaked at No 12, a chart position so high that it is the only thing that is mind blowing about the whole release.

Now, host Tony Dortie informs us that the next artist should have been performing live in the studio but she’s unwell so we have to make do with the video for “Lords Of The New Church” by Tasmin Archer. On reflection, surely this track should have been the follow up to her No 1 smash “Sleeping Satellite” rather than the excellent but commercially challenged “In Your Care”? It’s much more up tempo and certainly more radio friendly and, according to Tasmin herself, was written about a new breed of politicians in the early 90s and definitely not the 80s post punk band of the same name.

All of the above theory though is debunked by the chart position the single attained – a lowly high of No 26, ten places lower even than its predecessor. Was Tasmin losing her audience already at this point? If so, could it have been halted if the release order of “In Your Care” and “Lords Of The New Church” had been reversed? We’ll never know but what is a fact is that she suffered from a case of diminished returns when it came to her five hit singles whose chart peaks were:

1 – 16 – 26 – 30 – 40

I’m not sure what’s going on in the video which seems to revolve around a man in a gold lame suit and a Stetson hat travelling through Nevada on his way to Las Vegas. Perhaps a studio performance from Tasmin might have sold the record more. When you consider that she was scheduled to do just that but couldn’t due to ill health, was that single event a sliding doors moment in her career? Yeah, I’m probably reading too much into that aren’t I?

Here come this week’s Breakers starting with Sade and their (Sade are a band not a singer remember) single “No Ordinary Love”. A little bit of a chart curio this one. I’d forgotten this but this was actually the second time it had been a Top 40 hit in under a year. How so? Well, originally released as the lead single to fourth album “Love Deluxe”, it had peaked at No 26. Sade had even performed it in the TOTP studio. However, subsequent singles from the album had failed to chart and sales of the album were less than its predecessor. In fact, much like Tasmin Archer, Sade had suffered from diminished returns as well but with their albums. “Love Deluxe” sold half of what third album “Stronger Than Pride” sold which in turn sold half of sophomore album “Promise”. All of them performed less well than the iconic debut “Diamond Life”.

As such, were Epic Records in a panic about their artist’s commercial value and that’s why they rereleased a single that had proven to be popular (albeit in a small way)? Maybe but it seems more of a case of opportunism as the rerelease* was surely due to the inclusion of the song in the film Indecent Proposal. Yes, if a song was in a film in 1993 it was more than likely to be an erotic thriller and probably this one. Strangely though, despite featuring in the actual film proper, it didn’t make it onto the official soundtrack. Maybe that’s why the promo video doesn’t include any clips from the film in it – probably some complicated licensing issues. Ah yes, the promo video that sees Sade Adu as a mermaid. Hmm. I wonder what angle the director was going for?

The rereleased “No Ordinary Love” peaked at No 14.

*When is a re-release actually a re-entry? Apparently the 1993 version had the same track listing and catalogue number as its 1992 counterpart.

And talking of Indecent Proposal…here’s a song that is on the official soundtrack to the film. We saw Lisa Stansfield on the show in person last week performing “In All The Right Places” and that exposure has helped propel it into the charts at No 13. As she’s in the Breakers section, it’s the video this time which does include scenes from the film. As I mentioned last week, rumours persisted at the time that Lisa had been offered the Demi Moore role in the film. Whether she was or not, what is true is that she did finally get to appear in a film some six years later when she starred in musical comedy Swing opposite Hugo Speer. I’ve never seen it but it gets decent reviews online so it might be worth a watch plus she recorded most of the music for it.

So who remembers this? “Three Little Pigs” by Green Jellÿ? Yeah, I know. You’ve tried to forget it. I really wasn’t excited by the concept of a comedy rock band from America I have to say but that’s what this lot were having been around since 1981. One of their early songs was called “I’ve Got Poo-Poo On My Shoe” so we shouldn’t have been surprised by this god awful retelling of the Three Little Pigs fairytale. They had form.

The musicianship is intentionally bad (that’s part of the joke you see) whilst much was made of the ‘hilarious’ stop motion clay animation video. It was hardly original though was it? We’d already seen this sort of parody single back in the 80s from the likes of Weird Al Yankovic and The Firm, the latter of which had also used the same video technique to great effect on their No 1 single “Star Trekkin’”. I didn’t get why this was so popular (the single went Top 5) unless it was kids buying it thinking they were being rebellious.

They followed this up with a cover of “Anarchy In The UK” that they interlaced with references to The Flintstones. Again, not original as The Screaming Blue Messiahs beat them to it by about five years with their “I Wanna Be A Flintstone” hit.

Ah, some proper music now or as host Tony Dortie describes it “some solid musical nourishment” courtesy of A–ha who are back with new single “Dark Is The Night”. Nothing to do with the Shakatak single of the same name, this was the trio’s first UK Top 40 hit since “Crying In The Rain” three years before and was the lead single from their fifth studio album “Memorial Beach”.

By 1993, A-ha’s days of being teen pin-ups were well behind them but then they’d never really pursued that anyway. It was kind of a byproduct of their Scandinavian good looks. However, they definitely seemed determined to shed that image with a song like “Dark Is The Night” which is such a more mature sound than something like “Touchy” or “Take On Me”. I liked it but not too many others seemed to. Its chart trajectory petered out at No 19 whilst the album got no higher than No 17 and produced no further hits. The commercial failure of the project convinced the band to take a seven year hiatus before returning with the “Minor Earth, Major Sky” album.

That means that this could well be the last time we see A-ha on TOTP which also means one final chance for me to indulge in an activity I had been doing since I was 17 and which I was still doing in 1993 despite it being my 25th birthday three days after this TOTP aired. I am, of course, referring to ‘Morton Harket hair watch’. My fascination with Morton’s barnet had been with me through A Levels, Polytechnic and even getting married. My aim – to get my hair to look like his. Here he seems to have grown it and let it flop with no product aided quiff to be seen. Surely I could achieve that?! Sadly, even if I could, my complete lack of cheekbones meant I would never pull off the Morten look convincingly.

https://youtu.be/Whk9qSC3D-Y

As the Tory party leadership contest draws to a close and we stand at the dawn of a new PM, what better act to mark the event than P.M. Dawn?! You think I’m done with the crappy puns? Hell no! It seems now that it is “More Than Likely” that Liz Truss will be the next UK Prime Minister. Heaven help us all. OK, now I’m done – back to the matter at hand. This was the very last of six UK Top 40 hits for both artists concerned here P.M. Dawn and Boy George though this one only just made it peaking at No 40 despite this TOTP appearance at Disneyworld no less. It’s not quite as bonkers as New Order on the set of Baywatch on Venice Beach but it’s up there. It’s a decidedly odd vista, the two of them togged up in completely inappropriate clothes for the weather, sat down metres apart for the whole performance with the Disney castle towering above them in the background. @TOTPFacts has the story behind the location:

This PM Dawn/Boy George performance in Disneyworld apparently took place during a layover on George's flight from London to Buenos Aires for his first South American tour. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) August 26, 2022

The song itself is another gorgeous P.M. Dawn melody which suits Boy George’s vocals perfectly. It really should have been a bigger hit. I had a promo copy of parent album “The Bliss Album…?” which includes a rather wonderful version of “Norwegian Wood” by The Beatles:

It all ended tragically for the original line up of the group. DJ Minitemix was accused of sexually assaulting a 14 year old relative and was subsequently fired from the band whilst Prince Be died of renal disease in 2016.

This is starting to feel like overkill now as we get the third song on the show from the film Indecent Proposal and a fourth from an erotic thriller if you include UB40’s from Sliver. A Breaker last week, Bryan Ferry is in the studio this week (with everyone’s trusty sidekick bass player alongside, the ubiquitous Gail Ann Dorsey) to perform “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow”. As with P.M. Dawn and Boy George earlier, this would be Bryan’s final UK chart single although he would continue to have big selling albums.

As usual, Bryan is effortlessly cool but it all looks a bit too comfy and predictable for me. The reaction he provoked with his debut TOTP appearance in 1972 with Roxy Music performing “Virginia Plain” is a million miles away from what he’s doing here. Maybe it’s unfair to compare them. Maybe.

https://youtu.be/qx9jD87obTA

I’m not sure that I ever knew until now that “All That She Wants” hitmakers Ace Of Base were a family group (well almost). Three of the four members were siblings – they’re basically the Swedish Corrs. It got me thinking about other famous family bands. There’s Oasis obviously plus the Campbell clan of UB40 (pre and post their splintering). The Beach Boys featured three brothers and a cousin and then of course there’s The Osmonds and The Jackson 5. How about Kings Of Leon or the Bee Gees? There’s been a few. Where do Ace Of Base rate in this list? For me, they’re below The Partridge Family* and they weren’t even a real family! I’d almost even have Glenn and Chris before them. Almost.

*Yes, I know Shirley Jones was David Cassidy’s stepmother.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Haddaway	What Is Love	Hadaway and shite!
2	UB40	(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With You	Nah
3	Jamiroquai	Blow Your Mind	No but my wife had the album
4	Tasmin Archer	Lords Of The New Church	Nope
5	Sade	No Ordinary Love	Negative
6	Lisa Stansfield	In All The Right Places	No
7	Green Jellÿ	Three Little Pigs	Pigshit – no
8	A-ha	Dark Is The Night	No but I have it on a Best Of CD
9	P.M. Dawn / Boy George	More Than Likely	No but I had a promo copy of the album
10	Bryan Ferry	Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow	I did not
11	Ace Of Base	All That She Wants	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/m001bdx1/top-of-the-pops-03061993

TOTP 27 MAY 1993

Posted on August 25, 2022 by 80stastic

When I started doing this TOTP blog five and a half years ago I never imagined it would last this long. My starting point was January 1983, the year that saw music competing as my chosen interest alongside football. I was 14 years old in January 1983 and by the time of this TOTP show in late May 1993, I was just about to turn 25. Funny how the gap between those ages seems like a chasm in terms of maturity and growing up and yet the same ten year period between the ages of say 44 and 54 (how old I am currently) doesn’t seem anywhere near as seismic.

And what if you look at those ten years in terms of the charts comparing 1983 to 1993 – how different were the Top 40s? Sure, the names will have changed but how about the music trends and movements? I guess the biggest difference is the predominance of dance in all its myriad forms within the charts but in terms of quality? Well, I’m not getting into that in one short intro to be honest. Suffice to say, I have watched, listened to, dissected and given verdict on hundreds of artists, songs and genres after rewatching these old TOTP shows and the whole thing has been frankly bewildering. Let’s see if anyone on this episode can make sense of it for me…

I don’t think I’m going to get any answers from the opening act. Stereo MCs are one of the most mystifying bands ever. A platinum selling No 2 album that yielded four Top 20 singles and then nothing for nine years. The gap until “Deep Down & Dirty” meant that the album gained almost mythical status about whether it would ever come out (see also “Chinese Democracy” by Guns N’ Roses). And yes I know that their career didn’t start with “Connected” and that they had released two albums before it but unless you’re a really committed fan of the band, surely they don’t register with most people.

“Creation” was the fourth and final of those “Connected” singles and it’s of a very similar vein to its predecessors but I have to say I don’t recall it. To be fair, I bet I’m not alone. I kind of like the way that they found a formula that worked and just stuck to it – no mixing things up with a slower ballad for this lot.

“Creation” peaked at No 19, the same position as its immediate predecessor “Ground Level” and one place lower than “Connected” – they were pretty consistent you have to admit. And then they weren’t in terms of releasing music at least. Why the nine year wait for “Deep Down & Dirty”? Well, the band toured “Connected” until 1994 and had gone back into the studio after finishing the dates but inspiration failed to strike. Instead of recording they busied themselves by forming their own label and signed and released music by new artists. They also did remixes for the likes of U2 and Madonna and then things like starting families were also a factor. Basically, life got in the way to paraphrase John Lennon’s famous quote. However, a small part of 1992/93 will always belong to Stereo MCs.

Are you kidding me?! Tina Turner with “I Don’t Wanna Fight” again?! Is this the third week on the trot?

*checks BBC4 schedule*

It is! Seriously, what am I supposed to say about this record for a third consecutive time? Well, supposedly the song was originally offered to Sade but I really can’t imagine what a version of it by the makers of “Smooth Operator” and “Your Love Is King” would have sounded like. This had happened before with another of Tina’s biggest ever hits and the title of the biopic from which “I Don’t Wanna Fight” was taken. Here’s Bucks Fizz with the story (no really – Bucks Fizz!)

What else? Oh yeah, it was written by Lulu more of whom later. The What’s Love’s Got To Do With It soundtrack would give Tina two further hit singles and she would return in 1995 with the theme tune to the James Bond film Goldeneye.

If it’s 1993 then Suede must be along in a minute and, right on cue, here they are with their new single “So Young”. The bright new hope for British music were confident enough in themselves to release a fourth and final single from their debut album that had already been out for two months and to be fair to them, they were right to have faith in the track. This was pure anthem, so sky-scraping in its stature that the press didn’t seem to notice the ‘chase the dragon’ heroin reference in its lyrics (wonder what The Shamen thought given the fuss over “Ebeneezer Goode” the previous year).

Watching this performance back, the band don’t radiate zeitgeist other than via Brett Anderson’s effortless other worldliness. Matt Osman’s enormous frame was always an obstacle to the notion of cool whilst Bernard Butler shakes his mane vigorously whilst rocking back and forth in away that suggests he might benefit from being sedated. Two years later though, he would let rip in similar fashion whilst performing “Yes” with David McAlmont on Later With Jools Holland and I would think it was one of the greatest things I’d ever seen. Such are the vagaries of music, taste and opinion.

“So Young” entered the Top 40 at No 22 and exited it the following week suggesting that they were a fan base phenomenon but by 1996, they would release the No 1 album “Coming Up” which would generate five Top 10 singles. The moral of the story? Don’t believe the hype but do trust the process.

Back to the aforementioned Lulu now as we find Louchie Lou & Michie One with their version of the Scottish singer’s most famous tune “Shout”. I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again – I despise “Shout” and have little time for Lulu. As such a ragga version of the song was not going to enthral me. Retitled as “Shout (It Out)”, I would have placed this as being released years earlier, say 1986, if asked but I think that’s my brain playing tricks on me again as that’s when a re-release of Lulu’s version was a hit all over again. If I’d thought about it and indeed listened to the track again then surely I would have come to the conclusion that 1993 was the optimal year for the Louchie Lou and Michie One version to have been a hit seeing as it was a ragga/rap restyling of it. Ragga had a grip on the UK charts in this year thanks to the deadly three ‘S’s of Shaggy, Shabba and Snow. In fact, it was probably a bit of cynical marketing from their record label – jump on the bandwagon but use a well known record to get a head start on the rest of the field. Or maybe I’m being too harsh on Louchie Lou and Michie One, casting them as record company puppets. After all, I don’t know anything about them and how they came to be on TOTP with a hit record. Wikipedia just says they met at a Rebel MC concert in 1991.

What I did find out though was that their album was full of similar ragga-fied treatments of well known songs with versions of Kool And The Gang’s “Get Down On It” and “Somebody Else’s Guy” by Jocelyn Brown. Their only other major hit though was when they appeared on Suggs’ hit cover of Simon And Garfunkel’s “Cecilia”. It might have been crap but it did give us this rather memorable TOTP intro from Chris Eubank:

I’m still in pursuit of some insight into how the musical changes over the course of the ten years of these TOTP repeats came to be but I’m not sure I’ll get any sense out of Lenny Kravitz given the psychedelic tip he seems to be on with his latest single “Believe”. This is a full blown, trippy wig out with Lenny channelling his inner “Hey Jude” and singing about the power of positive thought, self belief, God and, of course, love. The BBC producers have picked up on the vibe and added some kaleidoscope effects for good measure.

Lenny’s really thrown the kitchen sink at this one with strings and a lush orchestration all in the mix. It’s not that it doesn’t work or isn’t a decent tune but for me it just fails to be the soaring anthem it strives to be. Maybe I wasn’t the only person to think this judging by its chart peak of No 30. I’m guessing that wasn’t the high that Kravitz was hoping for given the effort and time that seems to have gone into its creation. Still, the whooping studio audience seemed to enjoy it but maybe that was less organic and more at the floor manager’s direction.

Three Breakers this week starting with the second cover version on the show tonight. Bryan Ferry wasn’t averse to doing his own version of other people’s songs – his first ever solo album “These Foolish Things” was a collection comprised entirely of covers – and in 1993 he returned to that blueprint with his “Taxi” LP. After lead single “I Put A Spell On You” had made decent head way up the charts by peaking at No 18, the follow up would surely have been expected to do the same. It nearly did when “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” made it to No 23.

It wasn’t the first Gerry Goffin /Carole King song Ferry had covered. The aforementioned “These Foolish Things” album contained his take on their song “Don’t Ever Change” and he revisited their canon of work for this single. The Shirelles scored a No 1 with it in 1961 but the version I prefer is Carole King’s herself as it appeared on her iconic “Tapestry” album. And Bryan’s take on it? Yeah, he does it justice I think.

As it’s Ferry, there is of course a glamorous model in the video with not many clothes on whilst he mooches about the set. This particular model was Anna Nicole Smith. If that name rings a bell it’s probably due to the 1993 Playmate of the Year’s controversial marriage aged 27 to 89 year old billionaire J. Howard Marshall who died just eighteen months after their wedding. Smith herself would die aged just 39 after an accidental drug overdose.

Yeah, look I’m behind with these reviews so I haven’t got the time to ponder about Megadeth and their “Sweating Bullets” single OK? I will say this though. If you’ve ever wondered what might have become of Ed Sheeran had he been into trash metal instead of his stultifying brand of pop music, here’s your answer.

We arrive now at the seventh and final* Guns N’ Roses single to be pulled from their “Use Your Illusion” albums a whole 22 months after the first single “You Could Be Mine” appeared. Amazingly, all six singles to this point made the UK Top 10 and this final one only missed completing the set by one place. “Civil War” was that track although it was actually the lead song from a UK only EP.

*The song “Estranged” from “Use Your Illusion II” was released after “Civil War” in January 1994 but not in the UK

“Civil War” had been in existence for a while initially featuring on the 1990 charity album “Nobody’s Child: Romanian Angel Appeal”, but it would also be included on the track listing for “Use Your Illusion II”. An anti war protest song, it features a sample from the film Cool Hand Luke starring Paul Newman in the titular role in its intro:

Feeling that the song still needed more embellishment, Axl Rose whistles the tune from American civil war song “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” in the intro and coda. In a presumably unintentional but rather neat act of symmetry, this final “Use Your Illusion” track was originally made available as the B-side to the aforementioned “You Could Be Mine”, the very first single released from that double album project.

The song itself is another epic sounding rock track which almost leaves you exhausted by the end of it. The spare, whistled opening could deceive on first listen that this was going to be a wistful, acoustic affair akin to “Patience” but it’s actually more in common with “November Rain” or “Don’t Cry”. Yes, you could level accusations of being overblown, bloated and lyrically naive at it but it works pretty well for me, even the corny, dumb closing line “What’s so civil ‘bout war anyway?”.

The band would release an album of punk covers called “The Spaghetti Incident” in November of 1993 and then there was precisely nothing (bar their much derided cover of “Sympathy For The Devil” from the Interview With A Vampire soundtrack) until that aforementioned “Chinese Democracy” album fifteen years later.

Look out Suede! You might be the hip, young band for disaffected youth in 1993 but here come the original purveyors of angst flavoured, doom pop who recorded the album for miserable, misunderstood and introspective teenagers in 1983 with “The Hurting”. Well, here they come sort of anyway. It’s not quite the Tears For Fears we knew and loved on show here for this is TFF without Curt Smith who left the band acrimoniously in 1991. I guess he was burnt out after the mind numbingly laborious process that was the recording of the “Seeds Of Love” album.

Left to his own devices, remaining member of the duo Roland Orzabal decided to carry on under the band’s banner and delivered the “Elemental” album and its leading single “Break It Down Again”. In direct contrast to the song and album titles, Roland didn’t break it down into elements, he threw everything at it including…what…is that five cellos being played on stage up there? And, unlike Lenny Kravitz earlier, he pulled it off. In fact, not having listened to “Break It Down Again” for a good while, it’s actually a far better tune than I remember. It’s got an interesting, choppy structure (shame the producers used it as a marker to cut the song off in mid flow in this performance) and Roland’s voice is bloody good. I don’t think he gets the credit probably for his vocal talents. Back in the 80s, I always preferred the softer, purer voiced Curt Smith to take on singing duties but I think he’s won me over finally here. As an aside, conversely I liked the idiosyncratic tones of Andy McCluskey’s voice to the angelic sounding Paul Humphreys’ in OMD.

Ah yes, that phrase ‘back in the 80s’ brings me full circle to the question in the intro as to how chart music had changed in the decade between 1983 and 1993. Maybe Tears For Fears encapsulate the whole discussion. Ten years on from “The Hurting” they were still going out to bat and knocking it out of the park. All that had really changed was the personnel and hairstyles. Too simplistic a view? Yeah probably.

“Break It Down Again” made the Top 20 (just) and the album went Top 5, a good enough return to convince Orzabal to carry on and release another Curt-less album, the much less well received “Raoul And The Kings Of Spain” before Smith returned to the fold in 2000. Their current album “The Tipping Point” is possibly my favourite of 2022 so far. And yes I think that’s the ubiquitous Gail Ann Dorsey up there on bass who was on the show with the aforementioned Bryan Ferry the other week.

1993 was turning out to be quite the year for Lisa Stansfield. She started it with a Top 10 hit in “Someday (I’m Coming Back)” from The Bodyguard soundtrack, scored a No 1 as part of the “Five Live EP” duetting with George Michael on “These Are The Days Of Our Lives” (still in the Top 5 at this point by the way) and now here she was with another hit from another soundtrack.

“In All The Right Places” was the song chosen to promote the film Indecent Proposal, an erotic drama starring Demi Moore, Woody Harrelson and Robert Redford. Erotic dramas were all the rage at the time with Basic Instinct and Sliver also doing the business at the box office in this period. It’s rumoured that Lisa Stansfield herself was considered for the Demi Moore role but that could be cobblers I suppose.

Certainly not cobblers was Lisa’s performance here as she just dons her stylish black dress and gets on stage alone to belt out the song. She appears to have copied Brett Anderson’s Bob haircut though (or is it the other way round). The song is an accomplished, sultry ballad that suits Lisa’s voice perfectly. As well as appearing on the soundtrack, it also made it onto her third studio album “So Natural” which was released in the November.

Oh and was there some actual thought put into the running order for this TOTP? Bryan Ferry’s version of “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” was also on the Indecent Proposal soundtrack.

Ace Of Base are at No 1 for the second of three weeks with “All That She Wants”. Just like the TOTP producers who seemed to have planned their running order this week, I’ve also put some thought into this post and not just thrown it together. Ace Of Base recorded a song called “Cecilia” (which I referenced earlier) for their third album “Flowers” which was written by them as a deliberate continuation of the Simon And Garfunkel song. Want to hear it? Nah, me neither.

The show ends with a weird outro from host Mark Franklin. Why on earth is he sat at a table with a random woman whom he does not introduce, both with a glass of red wine poured out before them whom he ‘cheers’ just before the credits roll. Wait. What? How? Why? Etc etc…

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Stereo MCs	Creation	I did not
2	Tina Turner	I Don’t Wanna Fight	No
3	Suede	So Young	No but I had the album
4	Louchie Lou & Michie One	Shout (It Out)	Never happening
5	Lenny Kravitz	Believe	Nope
6	Bryan Ferry	Will You Love Me Tomorrow	No but I had a promo copy of the album
7	Megadeth	Sweating Bullets	Sod off!
8	Guns N’ Roses	Civil War EP	No but I have a Greatest Hits album with it on
9	Tears For Fears	Break It Down Again	Didn’t but probably should’ve
10	Lisa Stansfield	In All The Right Places	Negative
11	Ace Of Base	All That She Wants	See 7 above

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/m001b6p1/top-of-the-pops-27051993

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 09 OCT 1998

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TOTP 07 AUG 1998

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TOTP 24 JUL 1998

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TOTP 25 JAN 1996

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TOTP 09 NOV 1995

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TOTP 23 JUN 1994

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TOTP 24 FEB 1994

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TOTP 26 AUG 1993

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TOTP 03 JUN 1993

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TOTP 27 MAY 1993

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