Aerosmith

TOTP 20 NOV 1998

Those pesky BBC4 programmers have slipped an extra TOTP repeat into the schedule this week meaning I have three shows to review rather than the usual two. I think it’s to make up for the fact that they only showed one last week due to the snooker coverage and so, in order to get the 1998 shows to sync with 2025 real time, they’ve had to go with three this week. As if that wasn’t enough, this one features nine instead of the standard eight acts. I’ll never get all my Christmas shopping done at this rate!

Anyway, our host is the increasingly annoying Jamie Theakston and we start with a repeat showing of last week’s performance by the now trio of East 17/E-17 and their hit “Each Time”. With a debut chart position of No 2 and a solid second week of sales sustaining it in the Top 5, this single looked like it would foreshadow a new period of success for the group after the recent negative publicity surrounding Brian Harvey’s ‘drug interview’ and the trauma of chief songwriter Tony Mortimer’s departure. It would prove to be a false dawn though as the poor chart showing of parent album “Resurrection” indicated that there wasn’t a big appetite within their fanbase for a slimmed down version of the band with a new R&B direction and a truncated name. Subsequently, the group were dropped by their label Telstar Records in 1999. Bizarrely, the album would be released by Demon Music Group in 2013 but retitled as “Greatest” despite not actually being a collection of their biggest hits and also ignoring the fact that there were already four Best Of albums in existence by this point. Crucially though, none of those albums contained the word ‘greatest’ in their title. What a shady practice.

2025 Update: It was reported in the press this week that songwriter Tony Mortimer earns about £97,000 in royalties each year from “Stay Another Day”. What a Christmas pension pot!

What was it about the mid to late 90s and Bee Gees cover versions? Take That, Boyzone, N-Trance, Adam Garcia and 911 all had hits with their treatments of classic songs by the brothers Gibb and now here were Steps adding their name to that list with their take on “Tragedy”. As with the 911’s cover of “More Than A Woman”, this was taken from a Bee Gees tribute album but was released as a double A-side with a track called “Heartbeat” from the group’s debut album “Step One” (it would also appear as the first single on their follow up “Steptacular”). I’m sure I can’t be the only person who could genuinely claim to have never heard “Heartbeat” possibly because you couldn’t escape from “Tragedy”. This single just sold and sold and sold and then the next day it would do the same all over again. It would spend a whopping 23 weeks on the UK Top 40 and 15 consecutively inside the Top 10 including (after a wait of two months) one at No 1. It sold more than all their previous three singles put together and was surely the piece of concrete evidence that Steps were going to be around for quite some time.

So why did the nation go barmy for the Steps version of “Tragedy”? Well, it was a tightly produced and faithful-to-the-original cover of a dance classic which helped and maybe the younger elements of their fanbase didn’t even know it wasn’t a Steps original but I think what really propelled it to its commercial heights was the dance that went with it. Involving hand gestures that framed the face, shoulder twists and arm raises, it maybe wasn’t as iconic as vogueing as popularised by Madonna but it was up there. It looks pretty impressive in this performance anyway. I reckon we’ll see loads of this one in future repeats so I’ll leave it there for now.

2025 Update: Steps performed at Blackpool recently as the musical interlude for Strictly Come Dancing to promote the opening of the Steps musical.

Despite being released originally in 1989 and again in 1991, come 1998 the story of “Sit Down” by James still had another chapter to be written in the form of a remix and yet another release. The rather unimaginatively titled “Sit Down ‘98” was commissioned by the band’s label Mercury to help re-promote sales of their first “Best Of” album (which had hit the shops in the March) in the run up to Christmas. As far as I can tell though, this version never actually made it onto said Best Of nor was there a rerelease of it with the ‘98 remix added onto the track listing. It was what was known as a standalone single. Wouldn’t it have been better just to rerelease the hit version of “Sit Down” from 1991 if Mercury wanted to associate it with the Best Of album? I’m guessing that wouldn’t have been creative enough for Tim Booth though and so we got an Apollo 440 mix of the classic track which probably made sense at the time given their high profile and whilst their treatment of “Sit Down” is interesting, it does lose some of its charm in the process it seems to me. It would appear not to have stood the test of time either. Do you ever hear it played on the radio instead of the hit version? Nor did it have the desired effect of re-energising the Best Of album’s sales. As far as I can tell, it spent the whole of November and December skirting around between Nos 75 to 60 in the charts. Could you say the whole idea was ridiculous and touched by madness? Only if you’re trying to squeeze in some pathetically obvious “Sit Down” references to finish this bit off like I am.

2025 Update: In an unexpected turn of events there’s another Strictly Come Dancing story – I’ve just seen “Sit Down” performed by James on the results show. It wasn’t the ‘98 remix obviously but just like in 1998, the band have a new Best Of album out to promote called “Nothing But Love: The Definitive Best Of”.

I’ve checked and this is the fifth time “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing” by Aerosmith has been on the show over a period of just under three months. FIVE times in THREE months! Those two numbers are remarkable! Firstly that a hit that never got higher than No 4 could be on that many times but secondly that it was in the charts for that long! Actually, I should be more precise with that chart figure – it spent nine consecutive weeks inside the Top 10 and 18 (EIGHTEEN!) on the Top 40 in total. This week it was at No 8 but, given that this was the fourth time of seeing that satellite concert performance, were there not any other songs in the Top 40 that could have taken its place in the running order? Hang on, I’ll check…

…well, Marilyn Manson was a new entry at No 12 but maybe he was seen as not a safe enough choice. Further down the chart there are the likes of Tina Cousins, Karen Ramirez and Air but I think I would like to have seen the song at No 39 get a look in – “All I Want” by Puressence. That was never going to happen though.

2025 Update: A collaboration between Aerosmith and Yungblud topped the album charts just a week or so ago thus becoming the band’s first ever UK No 1 album some 38 years after their chart debut. Quite extraordinary.

I was right in what I said in the last post! There is someone from the Fugees on the show every week! After Wyclef Jean last time, we get Pras in this TOTP. In fact, Pras was also on with Wyclef Jean alongside Queen in that appearance seven days prior so the show really was full of Fugees around this time. “Blue Angels” is the track that Pras is promoting and although it features a sample from Frankie Valli’s “Grease”, there’s another film that is mentioned in the lyrics that caught my attention, one that I’d never heard of before but which seems to have been quite the influence on many a hip hop artist. 1984’s Beat Street was set in South Bronx with a plot surrounding the hip-hop lives of a pair of brothers and their group of friends. Now I’ve never heard of nor come across this film before but it had a cultural reach I would never have imagined. In Germany for example, which was still divided into East and West at this point, it had a particularly seismic impact. Released in the former to supposedly highlight the evils of capitalism, it instead promoted the more visual images of hip-hop and ushered in an emerging scene there. The film has been name checked in tracks by the likes of The Notorious B.I.G., Jay Electronica and AZ.

Now clearly, a white 16 year old living in Worcester in the West Midlands at the time of its release (that’ll be me) was never going to be its target audience but the fact that it bypassed me completely is surprising. I mean, I was aware of the breakdancing phenomenon at least if only via the hits of Break Machine. Did it not get UK distribution? Maybe not. Still, it’s opened my eyes a little. This blog was never meant to be educational but I seem to be learning about things I was never aware of as a by product of it.

2025 Update: In November this year, Pras was sentenced to 14 years in prison for his part in an alleged criminal conspiracy re: the illegal transfer of funds into the Barack Obama 2012 presidential campaign.

The first of three new hits now starting with Robbie Williams who made a rather cringeworthy cameo appearance during the James performance earlier trying to convince us all that he was a rock god axeman. After his first No 1 single “Millennium” earlier in the year, presumably hopes were high that he would repeat the trick with follow up “No Regrets”. However, it would debut and peak at No 4 when it was eventually released ten days after this TOTP performance. Why didn’t it go straight to the top of the charts when many press reviews had picked it out as one of the strongest tracks on parent album “I’ve Been Expecting You”? The answer possibly lies with that old issue of timing. Said album had already been out for a month by the time “No Regrets” made it into the shops so perhaps punters who might have shelled out for the single had already bought the album and didn’t feel the need to buy both? Perhaps anticipating that outcome, was that why record label Chrysalis made the single a double A-side with Robbie’s version of “Antmusic” by Adam And The Ants making up the other track? Wait, Williams did a version of “Antmusic”? I don’t recall this! I have to check this out…

…Oh dear God! That’s horrible! Just awful! What was he thinking?! What was Adam Ant thinking letting him butcher it?! Anyway, back to “No Regrets” and I have to say I never really liked it that much. It didn’t have the quirky charm of “Millennium” and always struck me as a bit miserable to be honest. Maybe its source material of his time in Take That meant it was inevitably going to create a less than joyful sound given how it ended and that it was all a bit raw at the time. The overly dramatic ending when Robbie says “Guess the love we once had is officially – dead!” always seems a bit…well…overly dramatic to me, like it was trying too hard. The third single from the album released in March 1999 – “Strong” – was a much more radio friendly, pop track that maybe should have been the song to follow up “Millennium” it always seemed to me. By comparison, “No Regrets” sounded like an album track. Just my opinion of course – I could have it completely wrong but I have no regrets about sharing it.

2025 Update: And now another Yungblud story! This week the singer revealed that he had received a letter of support from Robbie Williams after admitting to mental health struggles.

Blimey! This is a bit of a thing! Madonna on TOTP in person! Seriously, this hardly ever happened. I checked the wonderful Top Of The Pops Archive website which gives a breakdown of appearances by every artist and this is as only the fourth time ever that she was in the studio over a fifteen year period (not including repeats of performances in things like year end specials or anniversary shows). How had executive producer Chris Cowey managed to pull this coup off? For the record, her previous appearances had been performing “Holiday” and “Like A Virgin” (the one with the pink wig) in 1984 and “You’ll See” in 1995 but here she was again to promote the fourth single of her “Ray Of Light” album called “The Power Of Good-Bye”. As with Robbie Williams before her, this was actually a double A-side with the other track being “Little Star”, another song from the album but I only recall “The Power Of Good-Bye” being played on the radio. It’s essentially a ballad though one that sounded nothing like a traditional slow song with acoustic guitars, strings and almost hypnotic electronic beats. This was the William Orbit effect coming into play again as it had done across the whole of the album which he co-produced and which almost redefined how a pop song could sound.

As for the performance here, Madge has sleek, shiny black hair (almost a negative of that pink wig) and a sheer black outfit but, despite the sombre appearance, you can see that, in 1998, she still retained the presence of one of the most famous people on the planet with those in the studio audience stretching out their hands just to get a touch of her as if she was a deity with life healing properties. I can’t shake the feeling that she has been totally usurped by Taylor Swift in the present day. At the end she still had the grace and humility to say thank you and touch some of those aforementioned outstretched hands. They were simpler times for us all back then.

2025 Update: Just a day ago, Madonna was pictured with her ex-husband Guy Ritchie for first time since their divorce in 2008 when they both attended the latest art show of their son Rocco in London.

After a string of medium sized hits to this point, the Stereophonics suddenly exploded with the release of “The Bartender And The Thief” which debuted at No 3. The lead single from sophomore album “Performance And Cocktails”, it’s a high-octane, relentlessly driving rock track that barely draws breath at any point but which has enough melodic hooks to make the trip totally worth it.

Written by Kelly Jones after an observation in a bar in New Zealand whilst waiting for a plane, it expresses the idea that the bartender must see multiple different characters and their changing moods as they transcend from sober to drunk during the course of their shift. Its success would help propel the album to the top of the charts and nearly two million sales in the UK. Four more hits from it would follow including two further Top 5 placings – Stereophonics were officially big news. As with their debut album “Word Gets Around”, I seem to recall playing “Performance And Cocktails” lots in the Our Price store where I was working, so much so that my wife would scratch that itch for me by buying it me for Christmas that year. The Apocalypse Now themed video for “The Bartender And The Thief” reminded me of a long night with school mates watching that film at one of their houses when I was 17. You can read that particular story here if you feel so inclined…

TOTP 12 MAY 1983

2025 Update: The band are currently on tour playing a number of Arena dates in December.

Cher is No 1 again with “Believe” for a fourth of seven weeks. This run at the top really wasn’t the norm back then. Only Run D.M.C. vs Jason Nevins and “It’s Like That” could rival it in 1998 which had six weeks at the top. At the time of this chart, “Believe” was only the fifth single in two years to have spent more than three consecutive weeks at No 1 which just goes to show the power it was wielding over the record buying public.

2025 Update: Cher has denied rumours she is ready to marry her boyfriend who is 40 years younger than her ahead of her 80th birthday next year. And who is her boyfriend? The aforementioned rapper AZ. Sometimes the planets just align and the blog writes itself!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	East 17	Each Time	Negative
2	Steps	Tragedy / Heartbeat	I did not
3	James	Sit Down ’98	No but I had that first Best Of album
4	Aerosmith	I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing	Nah
5	Pras	Blue Angels	Nope
6	Robbie Williams	No Regrets	No
7	Madonna	The Power Of Good-Bye	No but my wife had the album
8	Stereophonics	The Bartender And The Thief	No but I had the album
9	Cher	Believe	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/m002nd33/top-of-the-pops-20111998

TOTP 06 NOV 1998

Posted on 12 Days Ago by 80stastic

We’ve got through the October TOTP repeats and the end of the year is finally appearing upon the horizon and not a moment too soon – 1998 has been a real slog. Our host is Kate Thornton who seems to have styled her hair on Billie’s barnet but more of her later. We start though with Alanis Morissette whose video for her hit “Thank U” we saw on the previous show. There was no way the BBC would have let her recreate her look from that promo what with her being naked and all so she’s gone for pigtails and…well…clothes for this appearance. I have to say that her song’s lyrics includes some of the most eloquent words ever to appear in a hit record. Look at these:

Disillusionment
Frailty
Consequence
Masochistic
Divinity
Unabashedly

However, my favourite lyric is “transparent dangling carrots” which could also be a description of those pigtails of hers. However, she then spoils it all by wailing the following in the outro…

Yeah, yeah
Oh, oh, oh
Yeah, oh, oh
Yeah, oh, oh, whoa
Yeah, no, oh, oh

No, oh, oh, oh
No, oh, no, oh
No, oh, no, no
No, oh
No, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh
Ooh

Source: Musixmatch

Songwriters: Glen Ballard / Alanis Nadine Morissette

Thank U lyrics © Universal Music Corp., 1974 Music, Arlovol Music

Oh. And indeed no. Or yeah.

Ah, it’s the aforementioned Billie and she does indeed have hair that looks like Kate Thornton’s or is it the other way around? Billie is here to perform her former No 1 single “Girlfriend” and when I say former I mean literally about a month ago. So why is she back on the show now that she’s at No 10 in the charts? I can only assume it’s because her single has remained at No 10 for two consecutive weeks. “Do you have a minute?” Billie sings. No, not really. Not after all this time. I can’t give you one minute more. Sorry. Next!

If I thought Billie was in overkill territory, how do I describe the decision to feature “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing” by Aerosmith again?! Excessive? Or just plain ridiculous? By my reckoning, this was its ninth week on the chart and it had just dropped from No 7 to No 8 having been as high as No 4 a month before. In terms of its appearances on TOTP, this was its fourth of five meaning yes, executive producer Chris Cowey wasn’t done with the song yet. Once more it’s that satellite performance that is shown presumably because of all the TOTP branding that can be seen all over the stage – Cowey was trying to sell the show into other territories around this time. As for our theme of female hairstyles, has any male rock star’s locks looked more like a woman’s than Steven Tyler?

What on earth is going on here?! Kate Thornton has just propositioned a young woman to go to bed with her! WTF?! Well, yes, precisely. It’s all to do with the next hit song in the show which is “Would You…?” by Touch And Go. The story behind this one is that Touch And Go were a jazz pop ensemble led by one David Lowe who would go on to forge a career composing music for television, radio and commercials including the theme tune to the BBC News and has worked on such shows as The One Show, Panorama, Cash In The Attic and Grand Designs. In 1998 though, he was behind this almost novelty single which took a Herb Alpert trumpet solo and added the flat toned voice of a woman speaking the lines “I’ve noticed you around / I find you very attractive / Would you go to bed with me?”, hence the intro from Kate Thornton. It’s all rather bizarre but the sort of strange curio that could often flummox the UK record buying public into shelling out its hard earned cash to purchase it. And buy it they did, 200,000 copies worth to send it to No 3. Designed to be the ultimate icebreaker for supposedly reserved and tongue-twisted types in nightclubs (surely not!), its lyrics were inspired by a 1978 psychological study. If that’s piqued your interest, then here’s @TOTPFacts with the story behind the statement:

The lyrics of “Would You…?” echo questions from a psychological study first conducted in 1978 by psychologist Elaine Hatfield, designed to test how receptive men and women are to sexual invitations. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) November 28, 2025

Women and men approached other students on campus, opening by saying, “I have been noticing you around campus. I found you to be very attractive.”…” #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) November 28, 2025

… They then proceeded to ask one of three questions: “Would you go out with me tonight?”
“Would you come over to my apartment tonight?” “Would you go to bed with me tonight? #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) November 28, 2025

When women asked men, the “Yes” results were 50% (go out with me)/69% (come over)/75% (go to bed with me).
When men asked women, the “Yes” results were 56% (go out with me)/6% (come over)/0% (go to bed with me). #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) November 28, 2025

Those results remind me of an interview with Paddy McGuinness who said of the game show Take Me Out which he presented that they had to have women picking a man as if it had been the other way round, all the men would have just kept their lights on permanently.

It might have escaped your attention with everything else going on in the world (it did mine) but just last month one Prakazrel Samuel Michel was sentenced to 14 years in prison. Well, put like that it might not ring any bells but what if I said Pras of hip hop group the Fugees was sent down on criminal conspiracy charges for alleged illegal donations to President Barack Obama 2012 presidential re-election campaign? Yep, that’s the attention grabbing headline. Back in 1998 though, Pras was onto his second solo hit after the hugely successful “Ghetto Superstar” (That Is What You Are)”. After interpolating “Islands In The Stream” for that track, he once again used some very familiar source material as the basis for “Blue Angels” by sampling “Grease” by Frankie Valli. For me, this didn’t work nearly as well as its predecessor. It just didn’t have that immediate hook that pulled in pop and rap fans alike. There’s some very verbose rapping going in which somehow manages to reference the Bosley character from the Charlie’s Angels TV series which must be a first. However, by the end, as so often happens with these rap performances on the show, it descends into the artist shouting “wave your hands in the air like you just don’t care”. I bet Pras dreams of being so carefree in his current situation.

For me, one of the more surprising success stories of 1998 was Another Level. Yes, you could argue that although we’d had loads of boy bands in the UK during the 90s, we hadn’t had many with an R’n’B slant so maybe there was a gap in the market? On the other hand, there had been many a US R’n’B boy band in our charts and, indeed, we had one British example of the genre in Damage so was there room for another one? There proved to be at least another level needed on the UK R’n’B boy band car park and it was taken by…erm…those Another Level boys. Having already had two big hits this year (including the No 1 “Freak Me” no less), a third was always on the cards and so, just in time for the Christmas market, a ballad was released. Cynical? Maybe. Guaranteed sales? Certainly. Having said that, “Guess I Was A Fool” only spent four weeks on the Top 40 and just one inside the Top 10. Maybe that was because we’d seen the likes of this track all before done much better by groups like Boyz II Men whom Another Level seemed to be doing their best impression of here. A handful of hits would follow in 1999 for the AL boys but the game was up by the new millennium as they failed to progress to the next level (I’ll stop now).

The era of M People is nearly through but unlike the near title of that book by Edgar Rice Burroughs and subsequent 1977 film, I don’t think it has been a case of ‘The M People That Time Forgot’ (ahem). Nineteen charting singles in seven years plus three Top 3 albums is a pretty decent legacy to leave behind. Sure, not every one of those nineteen hits was a top drawer banger (anyone for their cover of “Itchycoo Park”? Thought not) but some of them were the most memorable hits of the whole decade. I’m thinking “One Night In Heaven”, “Moving On Up”, “Search For The Hero” etc but by the end of their run, some of the hits didn’t quite match up to their predecessors. Take “Testify” for example. Released as a new track to promote their first Best Of album, it’s not terrible but it’s not terrific either. My sixteen year old son would describe it as “meh” or “mid” I’m sure. I’m not sure that the title being a legal term and all is particularly suitable for a ballad or maybe it is. After all, a couple getting married to prove their love to each other also creates a legal contract in law between them. Maybe I’m just remembering it being used by Smash Hits magazine to describe the likes of Billy Idol pulling a fist clench move in concert and describing it as “testifying on stage”. “Testify” was the 18th of those 19 hits peaking at No 12 meaning that there might just be one final appearance for the group to come.

P. S. Whilst we’re talking about women’s hairstyles (as we were), mention must go to Heather Small and her various (mostly towering) looks that she has spotted down the years. Quite remarkable.

Cher is No 1 for a second week of seven with “Believe”. So, I guess we should address the issue of her vocals. Much was made in the press at the time that it was due to a vocoder which was a reasonable claim given its previous usage in music production. As far back as 1969, Sly and the Family Stone used it on a song on the album “Strand!” before electronic pioneers Kraftwerk took up the mantle alongside experimental jazz fusionist Herbie Hancock. Come the 90s, French electronic music duo Daft Punk consistently used the vocoder in their work so it didn’t seem too much of a stretch that it could feature on a global smash albeit from an unlikely source in Cher. However, that wasn’t actually true. The vocal effect had been achieved using the extreme settings of Antares Autotune, pitch correction software designed to correct sharp or flat notes in vocal performances. Keen to keep their technological discovery to themselves, the produces made the vocoder claim. However, the manual for subsequent releases of the software refer to that use of it as ‘The Cher Effect’.

After last weeks host Jamie Theakston referred to Cher as being no spring chicken but remaining a game old bird (or something like that), Kate Thornton doubles down on the ageist remarks by pointing out that the singer (no stranger to a variety of hairstyles herself down the years) was still two years older than her Mum. Was there meant to be a compliment in there Kate? If so, I’m not sure that there was.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Alanis Morissette	Thank U	No
2	Billie	Girlfriend	It’s a no
3	Aerosmith	I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing	I did not
4	Touch And Go	Would You…?”	No thanks
5	Pras	Blue Angels	Nope
6	Another Level	Guess I Was A Fool	Never
7	M People	Testify	Nah
8	Cher	Believe	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/m002ms9d/top-of-the-pops-06111998

TOTP 25 SEP 1998

Posted on November 20 by 80stastic

I’ve long talked about the number of hits featured in these TOTP repeats that I can’t recall despite working in a record shop at the time. However, I sometimes think that the proliferation of new entries ushered in by first week of release price discounting worked against the show and my poor, overworked memory. Six of the eight hits on this TOTP are new entries (including an obligatory new No 1) and I don’t think any of them featured on the show again. This rapid turnover of songs is not conducive to prolonged residence in the brain.

Anyway, Jayne Middlemiss is our host and we start with one of the two non-new entries this week – “Crush” by Jennifer Paige. Now, I should probably give some thanks at this point to Jennifer as she didn’t give the world a load of minor hits as a follow up to her one big smash that I would have no doubt not been able to remember either. No, with her it was one huge song and then nothing. A classic one hit wonder. That hit though has proved to be remarkably hardy and must provide Jennifer with not insubstantial royalties. Aside from any airplay it continues to receive (of which there must be plenty), it has also featured in many a TV show and film soundtrack including Sabrina The Teenage Witch, Beverly Hills 90210, Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City (that’s what it says here!) and The Crush (natch). It’s also been covered in long running Fox comedy-drama series Glee but then hasn’t just about every song ever recorded? You might even say it was caught up in the crush. Ahem.

Now, if you looked at Lutricia McNeal’s UK chart stats (and I have), then you would understandably get the impression that she pretty much disappeared from public view after the end of the 90s. The latter part of that decade had given her four hits (including three Top 10s of which “Someone Loves You Honey” – which obviously I don’t remember – was the last) but then nothing. Correction, not nothing – nothing in the UK. In other territories, Lutricia continued to have success especially Sweden, Germany and Japan. Although she hasn’t recorded an album since 2004, she has released a number of non-album singles and continues to perform live at festivals across Europe. All of which proves that, even today, someone (still) loves her honey. As minimal as it is, that’s all I’ve got for this one. Sometimes, ain’t that just the way.

Now, this one I do remember but then, wouldn’t most people be able to recall a song with the word ‘sex’ (or derivative of) in the title? Through pop music history, any hit that dared to go there was almost guaranteed some form of notoriety and more often than not success. Look at this list of such songs:

“I Want Your Sex” – George Michael (No 2)
“Let’s Talk About Sex” – Salt-N-Peppa (No 2)
“I Wanna Sex You Up” – Color Me Badd (No 1)
“Sexual Healing” – Marvin Gaye (No 2)
“Sex On Fire” – Kings Of Leon (No 1)
“I’m Too Sexy” – Right Said Fred (No 2)
“You Sexy Thing” – Hot Chocolate (No 2)
“Do You Think I’m Sexy?”. – Rod Stewart (No 1)
“Sex On The Beach” – T-Spoon (No 2)

Add to that list “Generation Sex” by The Divine Comedy. The lead single from sixth studio album “Fin De Siècle”, it features a spoken word intro by TV presenter and newspaper columnist Katie Puckrik (who seemed to be everywhere in the 90s) before Neil Hannon’s distinctively theatrical vocals annunciate some typically satirical lyrics about millennial attitudes to sex, promiscuity and the hypocrisy of the media. Lines like “telephoto lenses that chase Mercedes-Benzes” and “a mourning nation weeps and wails” seem to reference the death of Princess Diana just over a year before. Then there’s “Generation Sex injects the sperm of worms into the eggs of field mice so you can look real nice for the boys” which must be one of the most out there lyrics of the decade and yet you understood the intended meaning. It’s all delivered with Hannon’s trademark impish, tongue-in-cheek style and deservedly returned a Top 20 hit. In early 1999, perhaps the band’s most famous tune “National Express” with perhaps Hannon’s most famous line (“It’s hard to get by when your arse is the size of a small country”) would give them their biggest ever hit. The Divine Comedy were on a roll.

It’s time for the second non-new entry on the show and it’s “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing” by Aerosmith. Again. It’s a third week on the trot for this one and you could be forgiven for thinking someone at TOTP (*cough* Chris Cowey) was determined to make this a big hit by giving it repeated exposure even when its chart status didn’t warrant it. The band even get their own, specially recorded intro for it this time though, ironically, given the name of their hit, it’s so blink-and-you-miss-it that it really wasn’t worth the effort. I said in a recent post that I hadn’t ever seen the film the song was taken from – Armageddon – all the way through but there was another rival film released in 1998 that had a very similar plot that I’ve never seen a second of. Deep Impact told the tale of humanity’s attempts to abort a comet on a collision course with Earth that could cause mass extinction. Although Deep Impact would be the sixth highest grossing film of the year, it ultimately lost out to Armageddon which topped that list. Crucially perhaps, although it had a soundtrack composed by James Horner, it didn’t have a huge hit single associated with it as its rival did so yes, Armageddon didn’t miss a thing whilst Deep Impact did miss a trick.

No, I’ve got nothing for this one either. Deetah and her song “Relax” anyone? Nothing to do with Frankie Goes To Hollywood, this rap hit was all based around a sample from the unlikely source of the Dire Straits track “Why Worry” from their blockbusting “Brothers In Arms” album. Eh? Dire Straits and rapping? I know. I did say it was unlikely. Or was it? Hadn’t we already seen a rap track in the charts in this year from Sweetbox that was based on “Air On The G String” by Johann Sebastian Bach? Well, yes we had (that was meant to be a rhetorical question) so if a German Baroque period composer who had been dead for nearly 250 years could be used for a contemporary rap hit, why not Dire Straits? What’s that? Because their sound was more dead than Bach? Ouch! For the record though, having listened to Deetah’s track, I don’t mind it. No idea what she’s going on about mind.

If asked, how many Eels songs could you name? I could do one without cheating I think which would be their first hit “Novocaine For The Soul”. There have been others though – follow up “Susan’s House” also went Top 10 whilst 2000’s “Mr. E’s Beautiful Blues” missed three-peating that feat by just one place. Then there’s this one – “Last Stop: This Town”. The lead single from what would prove to be a difficult second album in “Electro-Shock Blues”, it would spend just this solitary week in the Top 40 when it debuted at No 23. And yet it warranted a TOTP appearance and therein perhaps was the issue; it felt a bit like TOTP was chasing its tail rather, a perception that was magnified by the emergence of cd:uk and its more up to date chart format. With the case of an artist like Eels, despite having had two big-ish hits 18 months previously, there must have been doubts that such a streak would continue and the fact that their first new material since entered the chart much lower was maybe a good indicator of their trajectory. I guess what I’m saying is…actually, I’m not sure what I’m saying. I spend enough time slagging off Chris Cowey for platforming the same old hits week after week and here I am slagging him off for showcasing new entries!

Maybe I should just talk about the music because it’s a pretty good tune. Written by Mark ‘E’ Everett about the suicide of his sister (a subject which informed the content of much of the album), it’s an interesting yet tuneful* bit of alternative rock. Its chord structure reminds me of something else as well…is it “Closing Time” by Semisonic? Or is it (whisper it) “MMMBop” by Hanson? Surely not.

*I’m not too sure how tuneful the bass guitarist’s singing is though

OK, I’m still trying to organise my thoughts about what I’m trying to say about the show seemingly wanting to feature all these new chart entries and I’m still not sure what that is. Whatever it is though is amplified by following Eels with PJ Harvey. Maybe it’s that it appears that Chris Cowey was trying to hard to prove the show’s (and his?) eclectic music credentials? “Look, we’re not all about bands like Boyzone and Five. Here’s some more serious artists” Cowey seemed to be saying and I should be welcoming that but it’s confusing after all those boy band and pop fluff repeat performances. Maybe I’m just a natural moaner.

Anyway, the reasoning behind P J Harvey getting a look in this week according to Jayne Middlemiss is that “when you get a chance to get this turn on, you always say yes”. That clears that up then. Did PJ not like playing pop music shows? Or was it that she rarely had a Top 40 hit? “A Perfect Day Elise” was just Polly Harvey’s fifth in five years and it’s peak of No 25 made it her highest charting ever. What to say about this one? That it’s ’interesting’? I think that’s the kindest thing I can say. Alternatively, I could say it’s relentlessly miserable. I keep thinking I should explore her back catalogue more – she does have an MBE for services to music after all – and then I hear a track like “A Perfect Day Elise” and I think “No, I’m alright thanks”.

Was it inevitable that after Geri Halliwell splintered the Spice Girls by leaving the group earlier in 1998 that it would usher in solo careers for every member? All five would have hits in their own right but if I’d had to say who was the first, I’m not sure I would have gone with Mel B. I’d have maybe plumped for Geri (who has the most No 1s of them all totalling four) but I’d have been wrong. Maybe Mel B was first past the post because she had someone else doing the heavy lifting for her? Supposedly, rap artist Missy ‘Misdemeanor’ Elliott just rang her up while she was on tour with the Spice Girls and said that she had a song all ready for her and would she record it. Within a month it was all done including the memorable green hue video. Simples!

Sadly, the track – “I Want You Back” – wasn’t very memorable. In fact, I would say it was one of the weakest No 1s of the whole year. Elsewhere, it didn’t get anywhere near the top of the charts with No 6 in Holland being its second best chart position. Clearly in the UK we were still under a Spice spell. Either that or it’s that pesky first week discounting again creating an inflated demand for it. It certainly didn’t hang around too long. Just one further week in the Top 5, one inside the Top 20 and then three at the bottom end of the Top 40. Apparently, it was taken from the soundtrack to a film called Why Do Fools Fall In Love which was a biopic of 50s teenage pop sensation Frankie Lyon but I have zero recall of that. Having been first out of the traps as a solo artist, it would take Mel B nine months to release a follow up (her dreadful cover version of Cameo’s “Word Up”) by which point Mel C had released “When You’re Gone” with Bryan Adams and Geri Halliwell had announced herself on the solo stage with No 2 single “Look At Me” and suddenly it wasn’t just all about Mel B. Even a name change to Mel G following her marriage to Spice Girls dancer Jimmy Gulzar (as referenced by Jayne Middlemiss in this TOTP) couldn’t return her to the top of the charts with “Word Up” stalling at No 13. What I will say about her debut solo hit though is that it pulls together nicely a couple of this post’s themes by including the words “deep impact” and “sex” in its lyrics.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Jennifer Paige	Crush	It’s a no
2	Lutricia McNeal	Someone Loves You Honey	Negative
3	The Divine Comedy	Generation Sex	No but I had their Greatest Hits with it on
4	Aerosmith	I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing”	Nope
5	Deetah	Relax	Nah
6	Eels	Last Stop: This Town	Good song but no
7	PJ Harvey	A Perfect Day Elise	I did not
8	Mel B	I Want You Back	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/m002lvjt/top-of-the-pops-25091998

TOTP 18 SEP 1998

Posted on November 17 by 80stastic

There was something going on with the scheduling and timing of shows at this point in TOTP history. The programmes were less than 30 minutes long it seems because the BBC had embarked upon a programme of repeating episodes of Fawlty Towers straight after our weekly dose of chart songs. As they were 35 minutes long, TOTP was truncated to allow them to fit. The Fawlty Towers episode being shown following this particular show was ‘Waldorf Salad’ which is one of my favourites. The scene where the American guest tells Basil to lay it on the line to his chef (who Basil has let go home early) that he’ll “bust his ass” if he hasn’t got the ingredients to make a Waldorf salad is just brilliant.

The other thing happening was that TOTP was being repeated in a late night slot, after midnight on Sunday morning, similar, I guess, to how these BBC4 repeats get shown again in the early hours. There’s something odd about the late night repeat of this show but we’ll get to that in time. Kate Thornton is our host and guess what? The first song of the night is last week’s No 1 which is no longer No 1 but which is being shown anyway. This was a standard and established Chris Cowey tactic by now as he fought to battle the constant flow of changing chart toppers. I get it (sort of) – why only show a big selling record just once especially if it hangs around the Top 10 for a while after debuting at No 1? However, the optics of this practice are odd – ending one show and beginning the next with the same song (and in some cases the same performance). Maybe that’s exaggerated though in these BBC4 repeats with two shows aired back to back. Was it not so noticeable at the time of original broadcast when seven days of viewers’ lives had passed since the last time they’d seen a performance of that song?

This week’s last week No 1 (if you get my drift) is “Booty Call” by All Saints who have dropped from the summit to No 7 in just one week which doesn’t bode well for a long lasting hit. Hang on, let me check the official charts database…

…no, it didn’t hang around the charts long at all. Just five weeks in the Top 40 in total and only two of those inside the Top 10. In fairness, it was the fourth single lifted from their album which had been out for about 10 months by this point so the fact that they’d got to No 1 at all was an achievement (or clever first week of release price discounting you might argue). The group (or record label London) weren’t done with that album just yet though and an improbable fifth single was released from it in late November and it made it to No 7. Presumably, this was to give the album a sales boost just before Christmas and also allowed them to add a promotional sticker to saying something along the lines of ‘includes the No 1s Never Ever, Under The Bridge/Lady Marmalade and Booty Call plus the Top 10 hits I Know Where It’s At and War Of Nerves’. I seem to recall that reorders of the album at this point did actually have such a sticker applied to them and it was green in colour to match the cover artwork. The things you remember. Now, where did I put my house keys?

Next up an American band whom I’m guessing, traditionally wouldn’t have had the ingredients for a Waldorf salad at the top of their rider list for their gigs. Anyway, Kate Thornton is suggesting to us that Aerosmith have put on a concert just for TOTP which can’t be right can it? She seems pretty convinced though; in fact she’s “full on” sure about it as she’s says the phrase twice in the space of a few seconds in her intro to “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing”. Come on Kate – I thought you were a safe pair of hands.

As with All Saints, this was only on the show just last week as well. Now, after double checking the chart stats in this one, I can confirm that despite all the success this single had globally, in the UK it actually went down the charts from No 12 to No 14 this week in 1998. Despite that fall, Chris Cowey had it back on the show and this extra exposure would catapult it into the Top 10 where it would spend the next two months, peaking at No 4. So, the question is, would the worldwide success the song received have been replicated in the UK without Cowey’s decision to ignore them descending the charts and have them on the show again for a second consecutive week? And what was the reasoning behind that decision? Here’s a third question though – am I overestimating the influence and pull that TOTP wielded at this point? I fear I may be. Back in the 80s, the show could make or break a hit but in 1998 was that still the case? I’m not sure. Probably the fact that the film it was taken from – Armageddon – had been released in UK cinemas by this point maybe had something to do with the song’s success. Still, it’s best to consider all angles with these things. I wouldn’t want you to miss a thing after all.

Returning to Fawlty Towers, a writer in The Guardian once described Jarvis Cocker as having “long Basil Fawlty legs” and you can see where they were coming from as the two do share a similar physicality. Said physicality is centre stage in this performance which would prove to be a valedictory one for Pulp for the 90s. Yes, “Party Hard” was their last hit of the decade and also the final single to be released from their “This Is Hardcore” album. Following “Different Class” was always going to be a big ask but I’m not sure anybody would have predicted the disparity in sales that would unfold. “Different Class” went four times platinum selling over a million copies whilst “This Is Hardcore” would sell a tenth of that. This was reflected in the chart positions of the latter’s four singles which achieve the following peak positions:

8 – 12 – 22 – 29

In the case of “Party Hard”, its chances were hamstrung by the second CD single including remixes of the track that were too long to count as sales according to recently introduced chart eligibility regulations. Talk about an own goal. Written about clubbers having to come to terms with ageing out of the nightlife scene, it’s a decent song but hardly one of their most memorable. All the reviews I’ve read about it point to Jarvis’s vocal sounded (deliberately?) like David Bowie but if I hadn’t read that beforehand, I’m not sure I would have picked up on it. Maybe I’m just not a big enough Bowie aficionado. I did pick up on the strange look this performance has with the cheerleading-type dancers and the studio audience holding helium filled balloons behind the band which lends the balloons an unnatural look as if they were lollipops or something. I’m not completely convinced that it all hangs together cohesively to be honest. And talking of honesty, when was the last time I was in a nightclub? I think it was in Manchester in 1999 when I would have been 31 which does seem to be too old for that type of thing on reflection.

There are plenty of examples of music stars whose offspring have followed their parents into the charts. Off the top of my head there’s Billy Ray Cyrus/Miles Cyrus, Bob Marley/Ziggy Marley, Frank Sinatra/Nancy Sinatra and John Lennon/Julian Lennon. There’s a sub genre though that isn’t so easy to name examples from. Parents who were in a pop group whose children also went on to be in bands with their own siblings. How many are there out there? There’s Wilson Phillips, 3T and…erm…The Osmond Boys? Well, add to that list Alisha’s Attic who were sisters Shelley and Karen Poole, the daughters of Brian Poole of Brian Poole and The Tremeloes fame. Having established themselves as a bona fide chart artist in 1996/97 with four hit singles and a Top 20 album, the time had come to progress that success with a second album and they had a very consistent yardstick to live up to. Look at these chart peaks for those first four singles:

14 – 12 – 12 – 12

As it turned out, the lead single from that sophomore album would continue the streak admirably by going to No 13. “The Incidentals” was its title and it was more, thoughtful, tuneful, well constructed pop on which they had made their name. However, it didn’t really push any musical boundaries and was reliant on their fanbase wanting more of the same. Initially they did with parent album “Ilumnia” also going Top 20 but by the time of third album “The House We Built” in 2001, times and tastes had changed and it disappointed commercially with the duo splitting soon after.

Both sisters went on to be very successful songwriters for other artists including Kylie Minogue, Lily Allen, Rita Ora, Sugababes, Boyzone and Westlife. Shelley is also a member of alt-country band Red Sky July with her husband Ally McErlaine (ex of Texas) who my wife caught recently as support for Eddie Reader at the Cottingham Folk Festival. Very good they were too apparently.

Whilst looking into the career history of the Honeyz, I discovered that they had appeared on ITV’s The Big Reunion show in 2013. The premise of the show was to get seven acts who were big in the 90s to reform and rehearse for a comeback show at the Hammersmith Apollo. Basically, it was a steal of MTV’s Bands Reunited from a decade earlier. Anyway, some of The Big Reunion episodes are on YouTube so I checked the Honeyz one out and one of the revelations that came out was that one of the members of the band couldn’t really sing, used to have her microphone turned off when performing and was only recruited for her looks! I’ll leave you to guess who that was but it got me thinking about members of bands throughout musical history who didn’t really do anything. Now, I’m not saying I agree that the people on the list below contributed nothing at all but that in some people’s/the media’s perception, they didn’t:

Sid Vicious (Sex Pistols)
Andrew Ridgeley (Wham!)
Bez (Happy Mondays)
Paul Rutherford (Frankie Goes To Hollywood)
Craig ‘Ken’ Logan (Bros)
Anyone in Boyzone who wasn’t Ronan Keating or Stephen Gately

OK, the last one is a bit facetious but you get my point. As for the Honeyz, OK it was Naima Belkhiati who had her microphone turned off (allegedly), the one on the left in this performance. There, she’s been “Finally Found” out.

No! Surely not?! It can’t be?! The aforementioned Boyzone are on the show AGAIN?! WHY?! That’s five out of the last six weeks they’ve featured. Yes, OK “No Matter What” was No 1 for three of those appearances and it stayed at No 3 for three consecutive weeks after that but even so!

Look, I’ve nothing else to say about this one. Instead, here’s Basil Fawlty to describe my frustration at its reappearance with actions saying much more than my words ever could.

Right, this is the point where this episode gets a bit complicated as previously mentioned. The version of the show that I watched and that exists currently on iPlayer featured T–Spoon and a track called “Sex On The Beach” which was at No 2 in the charts. However, back in 1998, the version that aired in the show’s usual early evening slot had Steps “One For Sorrow” on in place of T-Spoon. When the late night repeat aired in the early hours of Sunday morning, it was T-Spoon and not Steps who featured. So what gives? Well, apparently the BBC had received complaints from listeners to the Radio 1 Chart Show the previous Sunday when “Sex On The Beach” was played having debuted at No 2. Apparently, the lyrics “I wanna have sex on the beach, come on move your body” which are repeated throughout were the cause of the offence and so the BBC took the decision to not show it in the pre-watershed show at 7.30 as originally intended. However, presumably to pacify all those involved in the T-Spoon hit, a performance was recorded and it was shown (instead of Steps) in the late night rerun. Was the BBC right to take such action? On reflection, it seems a peculiar hill to die on. There have been far more controversial records to have charted and appear on the show than this one surely?! Just recently, a 1998 TOTP repeat included “Horny” by Mousse T – was that not cut from a similar cloth? Or was it the use of the word ‘sex’ that rattled the BBC powers that be? If so, how come “Generation Sex” by The Divine Comedy was on the very next week? I’ve checked out the rest of the lyrics and I’m not convinced they were a danger to the moral well being of the nation’s youth to be honest. Most of it I can’t understand anyway but there’s a reference to ‘ding-a-ling’, a term which didn’t stop Chuck Berry having a No 1 hit in 1972 based on the double entendre. Anyway, what’s surely more offensive is the way the thing sounded which was atrocious. I think I spotted the following influences in its composition:

The naffness of Peter Andre
The ‘toasting’ style of Chaka Demus and Pliers
The hollow production of Ace Of Base
The inane sing-along chanting of Inner Circle’s “Sweat (A La La La La Long)”

It’s hardly a ringing endorsement. As for T-Spoon, they defended themselves by stating that “Sex On The Beach” referred to the name of the infamous cocktail but nobody was really buying that. The whole thing was a sorry episode from start to finish.

Robbie Williams has bagged his first No 1 single with ”Millennium” and to celebrate that he’s performing the song in a dress and not just any dress but a sheer, floor length gown through which you could see his undergarments. I guess the obvious question is ‘why?’. So I asked AI. It had an answer for me which I could have guessed if I’d thought about it a bit more. According to AI it was a “provocative and attention-grabbing choice…designed to be memorable and push boundaries”. Yes, probably. Or was he just copying David Beckham wearing a sarong skirt just a few months earlier which caused a tabloid frenzy? In any case, he wasn’t the first nor the last music star to don a dress. David Bowie was famously photographed in a cream and blue satin dress whilst reclining on a chaise lounge for the cover of the UK release of his “The Man Who Sold The World” album. In 2020, Harry Styles was the first male to feature on the cover of Vogue magazine and he did so wearing a Gucci dress and just to come full circle on this post, although I don’t think Basil Fawlty ever wore a dress, I’m pretty sure John Cleese has at some point in his career.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	All Saints	Booty Call	It’s a no from me
2	Aerosmith	I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing	Negative
3	Pulp	Party Hard	I did not
4	Alisha’s Attic	The Incidentals	Nope
5	Honeyz	Finally Found	Nah
6	Boyzone	No Matter What	Big NO
7	T-Spoon	Sex On The Beach	As if
8	Robbie Williams	Millennium	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/m002lvjr/top-of-the-pops-18091998

TOTP 11 SEP 1998

Posted on November 12 by 80stastic

In the 1997 ‘epilogue’post, I hinted that my mental health had taken a dip that year and that in 1998 it would turn into a full blown crisis. I think the BBC4 TOTP repeats schedule has arrived at the beginning of that time. I was working as the Assistant Manager of the Stockport branch of Our Price where I had been for three and a half years but our manager, whom I’d had a good working relationship with, had recently been transferred to another branch. I think she requested a move as she’d had enough of Stockport after a year – it was a big unit and took a lot of managing and could be quite stressful at times. We also had a HMV down the road so we had a lot of pressure on us to generate decent sales under stiff competition. I didn’t blame her for having had enough and she duly transferred to a smaller store with a staff of just four and get this, their names were Lisa, Lisa, Lisa and Elisa!

Anyway, that meant my store needed a new manager and, having done that role temporarily the year before, I wasn’t about to put my hat in the ring again. The new manager appointed was somebody I’d worked with before much earlier in my time at Our Price so I felt reassured that it was someone I already knew and had got on with OK. It turned out that he had changed quite a bit in the intervening years and was much more hard nosed and ruthless in his dealings with people. I won’t give his name as that would be unfair but some ex-colleagues who may be reading this can probably guess his identity. Suffice to say things went badly wrong very quickly and never recovered. Our relationship was a train wreck. We had totally opposite views on how to treat people and his approach to me was “you go home when the job is done” rather than by what time the clock says. Going to work became a daunting task progressing to being something to actually be worried about. In a couple of months, I’d reached breaking point and one morning I just couldn’t get out of our flat to go to work and kept pacing around it, over breathing and basically having a panic attack. It led to me being off work for five weeks and being transferred to a smaller store I had worked at previously. I didn’t go back to Stockport for 18 years after that morning, long after I’d left record retail behind. I’m not saying that the manger was solely the reason for my mental health issues; it was probably an accumulation of a lot of things but he was certainly a catalyst. Given all that, I’m guessing I might not like too many of the songs in the charts at this time as they could have negative associations linked to them? Let’s see…

How wrong could I be as we start with a banger from a perhaps unexpected source. “Everybody Get Up” is, for me, easily the best thing Five ever did (even if the pickings are slim). Famously based around samples from “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll”, that track was originally released by The Arrows in the 70s but is better known for the version by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts from 1982. Whoever in the Five camp came up with the idea to plunder that song was a genius with the boy band’s track brimming with bravado and swagger and making use of the rapping skills of J and Abz to full effect. I’m not entirely sure what the lyrics are all about but there’s a definite nod to a number of film titles including Lost Boys, Armageddon, The Fifth Element and Hound of the Baskervilles. There also some rather left field name checks for Fujian wrestler Jimmy ‘Superfly’ Snuka and American mafioso and crime boss John Gotti. Actually, scrap the left field description of Gotti as Wikipedia tells me that he has a whole host of cultural references both pre and post the Five single including in tracks by House Of Pain, Notorious B.I.G., Jay-Z and the hit single “King Of New York” by Fun Lovin’ Criminals. Who knew? Clearly not me. Something else I didn’t know until now is that Abz doesn’t rap the line “I’m lyrically black” which I’d always misheard and thought was a strange thing to say but “I’m lyrically blessed” which does make more sense.

A proper one hit wonder next (in the UK at least) but in the case of Jennifer Paige, her song was enduring enough to still be played on daytime radio to this day. “Crush” was a huge international hit – check out its numbers:

No 1 in three countries – Australia, Canada and New Zealand
Four weeks at No 3 in the US selling 700,000 copies
No 4 in the UK and France going gold in both territories

You could hear why it had all that success. A very accessible sound with broad mainstream appeal, confident vocal delivery and that winning hook of the little breathy sigh that punctuates the chorus. All very well constructed and yet…I didn’t like it much. I possibly should have but it didn’t grab me – competent but not commanding. Jennifer couldn’t build on the success of “Crush” much like those who had come before her including Alannah Myles, Paula Cole, Meredith Brooks, Billie Myers and Donna Lewis. After losing both her parents within two weeks of each other, Paige retreated into herself and lost her love of performing, choosing instead to write for others but she did release a crowd funded album in 2016. Incidentally, her full name is Jennifer Paige Scoggins and her surname was presumably considered an obstacle to promotion by her record company and so dropped from her stage name. Fast forward three decades and we seem a little more forgiving off such monikers…

Sometimes I forget when reviewing these TOTP repeats that they were different times when they were recorded and broadcast and things that would raise an eyebrow if not outrage today, were seen as perfectly acceptable back then. For example, I don’t think I would have been staring at the TV, mouth gaping at tonight’s host Jamie Theakston saying “More top transatlantic totty now” in his segue between Jennifer Paige and the next artist Sheryl Crow but I can’t imagine someone on the BBC saying the phrase ‘top totty’ nowadays – bias issues and ‘errors of judgement’ when it comes to editing yes but people saying “top totty”? I doubt it…unless it was Boris Johnson of course.

Anyway, Sheryl Crow. She’s on the show for a second time to promote her latest single “My Favourite Mistake” which has entered the charts at No 9 after her pre-release TOTP performance the other week. Heavily rumoured to be about her ex-Eric Clapton (which Crow denies), in an interview on the Songfacts website with her writing partner Jeff Trott, he speculated that marriage between the two had been on the cards but that their relationship didn’t last as Clapton would have wanted a very traditional marriage with Sheryl in a housewife role which she was clearly never going to agree to. Clapton is well known for holding some dodgy views. In 1976 during a concert in Birmingham, he voiced vile, racist comments, endorsing politician Enoch Powell and using the National Front slogan ‘Keep Britain White’. Using the phrase ‘top totty’ seems pretty small fry compared to that.

Just as with Boyzone on the previous show, last week’s No 1 is getting a repeat despite dropping down the charts and for similar reasons – they had an album coming out on the Monday after this TOTP aired. I’m not convinced that’s a valid reason but then I guess that’s down to record company marketing and promotion strategies. The lucky recipients of this additional exposure are Manic Street Preachers and their single “If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next” which was the lead single from that aforementioned album “This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours”. My main memory of that album wasn’t that it was the band’s first chart topper nor that it produced four hit singles but that it had a part in getting me chucked out of a record shop. Let me explain. It wasn’t the store I worked in but a rival one. Remember I said we had an HMV just down the road from us? Well, it wasn’t them either. No, it was another retailer who I believe were called Music Zone. I think that the chain had began in Stockport as a one shop operation but had expanded with stores in other town centres. Indeed, they bought all of MVC’s failing stores in 2005 to become a 104 unit empire. I’m not sure if the Music Zone in Stockport in 1998 was the original shop or not (somebody reading this might be able to confirm) but I recall that you had to climb a set of stairs to get into the shop and that they also sold a load of miscellaneous items like badges as well.

Anyway, original shop or not, this store had relaunched in Stockport around 1998 and it had come to our attention at Our Price that they were knocking out some chart CDs for around £9.99 and severely undercutting us in the process. During an Area Manager visit, the topic was discussed and a visit to Music Zone was proposed to see what was going on. Myself, the Area Manager and the store manager (yes, that one) donned our coats and went for a snoop, trying not to look too conspicuous. It turned out that Music Zone had somehow got their hands on some cheap imports of certain chart titles of which the newly released Manics album was one. The Area Manager and our store manager took a copy of it to the counter and demanded to know who was supplying them with this stock at which point the Music Zone manager told us to leave his store and called for security to make sure we left the premises. And that’s the story of how the Manic Street Preachers helped to get me thrown out of a record shop.

Up to this point, if the average punter in the street had been asked what was Aerosmith’s biggest hit, I’m guessing they might have gone for “Dude (Looks Like A Lady)” or their collaboration with Run-D.M.C. on “Walk This Way” or perhaps their debut 1973 hit “Dream On” but all three of those hits were about to be blown out of the water by a song that they didn’t write themselves. Penned by the prolific and legendary songwriter Diane Warren, “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing” was the theme song to the sci-fi film Armageddon starring Bruce Willis, Liv Tyler and Ben Affleck. Warren originally envisioned it being sung by someone like Celine Dion who had, of course, already one huge ballad from a movie to her name. Another artist in the frame was U2 who again had their own track record when it came to soundtrack songs having contributed “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me” to the Batman Forever movie. However, once Steven Tyler’s daughter Liv was cast in the film, attention turned towards Aerosmith.

Although, their late 80s/early 90s comeback had re-established them as a rock super power, by 1998, their fortunes, if not waning, were stalled rather by Tyler’s ACL injury which forced the band off the road in the April. With momentum lost, they needed a commercial boost once Tyler returned and boy did they get it with “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing”. No 1 around the world including America where it topped the charts for four weeks, it is easily their biggest selling hit ever. A huge, strings drenched ballad, it even had what sounded like an overture at its beginning just to up the ante and leave the listener in no doubt about the scale of what was coming. I think they pull it off admirably too. Would U2 have done it better? No, I think it would have been different but not better. As for Celine Dion, I’m guessing it would have been unlistenable (for me) in her hands/voice. As for the film, I didn’t catch it at the cinema and I don’t think I’ve seen it all the way through from start to finish but have seen the ending so I’m unlikely to seek it out for a full viewing though anything with Steve Buscemi in it is usually with doing so.

Here’s a hit the lyrics of which include some pretty high brow literary references and yet there seems to be a disparity between them and the name of the band performing the song. Shakespeare, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and…erm…Hole. Just me? OK then. How about the title of the song itself and those heavyweight literary names? “Celebrity Skin” was also the name of a pornographic magazine specialising in celebrity nudity. Still me that finds it a bit jarring? The lead single and title track from their third studio album, this was seen as a definitive move towards a more commercial sound. It’s still blistering, in your face indie rock but perhaps the contribution of Smashing Pumpkins leader Billy Corgan (including the guitar riffs) had an effect. It would give the band their second biggest hit in the UK. Right, my last attempt to highlight the incongruity of those literary references and the song – it soundtracks the ‘tongue twizzler’ scene in American Pie. Gulp!

That last bit got a bit unintentionally overly sexual but I’m afraid that the theme continues with the new No 1 which is “Booty Call” by All Saints. A third consecutive chart topper for the group, we all know what that the title refers to. Then there’s the fact that Melanie Blatt is clearly pregnant and unless it was an immaculate conception then she’d clearly had the birds and the bees chat. I didn’t like this one much and thought it easily the weakest hit they’d had so far. It was just a groove rather than a song and they seemed to be trying too hard to be En Vogue rather than All Saints. I did appreciate the jerky, slow motion dance moves the group were doing in this performance – was this for the benefit of Melanie whose movements were understandably restricted?

A few years ago, I went on a work colleague’s stag do in Leeds. I didn’t know that many people there but it was a good night anyway. Why am I telling you this? Because it transpired the next morning that one of the party had actually made a booty call in the early hours of the morning. It was quite the revelation not the least because it made me realise that a booty call was actually a thing that real people do and not a culturally concocted myth. I’m so naive.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Five	Everybody Get Up	Like it as I did, I couldn’t bring myself to buy a single by Five. I’m a music snob as well as naive
2	Jennifer Paige	Crush	I did not
3	Sheryl Crow	My Favourite Mistake	Nah
4	Manic Street Preachers	If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next	No
5	Aerosmith	I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing	Like Armageddon, I gave it a miss
6	Hole	Celebrity Skin	Nope
7	All Saints	Booty Call	No but I think my wife and the album

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002lj3r/top-of-the-pops-11091998

TOTP 07 MAR 1997

Posted on February 5 by 80stastic

We’ve entered a new phase of TOTP history with this repeat as it marks the changing of the guard of the show’s executive producer role. Outgoing was Ric Blaxill* who been in the post for three years following the ‘Year Zero’ revamp debacle and in his place would come Chris Cowey who had worked on The Tube in the 80s and been the producer of its (sort of) 90s successor The White Room. I’m assuming that Blaxill’s rather sudden departure was due to the viewing figures for TOTP being down to two million though in fairness to Blaxill, the show being moved to a Friday night at 7.30 and going up against Coronation Street was probably the biggest factor in that outcome and that may have been a decision made way above him.

*Blaxill makes a valedictory cameo appearance at the end of the previous show when the Spice Girls are messing about with Ian Wright. He’s wearing a T-shirt that says ‘Bye TOTP Bye’

Cowey was brought in to reverse that trend and he did with viewing figures rising to five and a half million within the six year period he was executive producer. How did he do it? In his own words:

“There wasn’t any one fact why it worked. It was a million and one tiny fixes”

Sunderland Echo, Published 17th Jan 2024

One such fix was a phasing out of the ‘golden mic’ slot which saw celebrities from the world of music and showbiz taking over as presenters. Instead, a regular roster of hosts was assembled being sourced from BBC youth magazine show The O–Zone and existing Radio 1 DJs. This was no return to the ‘Smashie and Nicey’ days of the 70s and 80s though with the DJs being sourced from the cooler, edgier end of the spectrum like Jo Whiley and Zoe Ball. I know that both are no longer seen as cool or edgy in 2025 but they possibly were back in 1997. Look, they were young at least and we should all be thankful that neither was Simon Mayo – OK?! Erm… where was I? Oh yeah, Chris Cowey. Well, he was all about live performances so artists appearing on the show were encouraged to sing live and he also saw the potential to take the TOTP brand abroad which resulted in localised versions of the show being broadcast throughout Europe. He would also favour a bit of nostalgia when he reintroduced a revamped version of the classic “Whole Lotta Love” theme tune and a new logo and title sequence. All of that’s to come though as Cowey wouldn’t officially take over until the Summer of 1997* so I’m assuming there was an interim period where a caretaker producer (or series of producers) was in charge of the show. The credits for this one says the director was one John L. Spencer.

*Credit to loyal blog reader Essor for that info

As for tonight’s edition, it was the aforementioned Jo Whiley as solo host for the first time introducing Eternal as the opening artist tonight. Now you can say what you like about this lot but you can’t deny that they were prolific in their output. “Don’t You Love Me” was their twelfth consecutive UK chart hit in just over three years of which all but two went Top 10. Taken from their platinum selling “Before The Rain” album, it was (at the time) the highest charting of the lot. I recall thinking back then that this was quite classy sounding but I think I may have misjudged it. For a start it rips off the bassline from the Dennis Edwards track “Don’t Look Any Further” (which I knew from The Kane Gang version) and which M People had taken to No 9 as recently as 1993. Secondly, it’s all a bit overwrought with lyrics about homelessness and poverty completely over cooked by adding a children’s choir at the song’s climax along with a harpsichord for some reason. Then there’s all the pointy, angled choreography that accompanies this performance. The song’s subject matter is hardly something to dance along to. It just looks odd and jarring. For all my misgivings and despite the threat posed by the phenomenon of the Spice Girls, Eternal were about to score their only chart topping single with their very next release – “I Wanna Be The Only One”.

Around 1994, I started losing sight of Erasure’s output after they’d been a constant presence in my pop music life since 1985 and their first ever single “Who Needs Love Like That”. By 1997, I could hardly see them at all. “Don’t Say Your Love Is Killing Me” was their 26th UK chart hit but it was also their first not to make the Top 20. It was from their eighth studio album called “Cowboy” the title of which I didn’t recall so I looked it up and I didn’t even recognise its front cover! And I worked in a record shop! I really did have a blind spot when it came to Vince and Andy at this point.

As for this particular single, it kind of feels like it should be better than it is. Some of the trademark Erasure components are in place like a catchy chorus and a jaunty synth pop backing but it just doesn’t quite hang together right for me. Sort of like Erasure by numbers but the finished composition is a bit wonky. Bits of the electronic bleeps in the production sound like they’ve been lifted directly from their 1988 hit “Stop” whilst it goes all “Telstar” by The Tornados towards the end with what sounds like a clavioline prominent. The end effect feels like it’s all been thrown together somewhat. “Don’t Say Your Love Is Killing Me” would be Erasure’s last hit of the 90s but they would return in the new millennium with yet more new material.

The first video of the night comes courtesy of the Bee Gees and their hit “Alone”. Apparently there were two different promos shot for this single – one for the US and another for all other territories. Not sure why. Anyway, the latter features the brothers performing against a clearly green screen created background of a futuristic styled spinning room intercut with images of a woman floating in zero gravity removing her spacesuit – an obvious homage to the movie Barbarella. And that’s it. Nothing else. One single idea to base the whole video on. Wikipedia tells me that the US promo features the band in the recording studio intercut with footage of them from throughout their career and images from the UK video. Both were directed by Nick Eagan who has designed some iconic single and album covers for the likes of Dexys, The Clash, INXS and Duran Duran but he was clearly phoning this assignment in. “Alone” would peak at No 5 on the UK charts.

Any hopes that Peter Andre’s pop career might be a flash in the pan have been dashed over and over as the buffed up goon is onto his fifth UK hit in just under a year. At least this one didn’t go to No 1 like his previous two singles. I think we missed having to endure “I Feel You” which topped the chart not long before Christmas but no such luck this time around as the title track from his album “Natural” is straight in at No 6. This was more of the same nasty, knowing R&B dance pop with lyrics designed to get his female teenage fanbase dreaming of clandestine meetings with their hero. Just to ramp up the sexual tension, there’s even a bit in it that steals from another godawful hit from the 90s with carnal referencing lyrics – “I Wanna Sex You Up” by Color Me Badd. Horrible, wretched stuff. Andre’s ‘music’ really was desperate like going into the only cubicle in a public toilet that’s free when you’re dying for the loo and realising that the bloke who was in there before you has made the most unholy stench and you are left with the despairing choice of soiling yourself or breathing in that rancid air – that level of desperate. Just naff off mate.

Jo Whiley is a bit gushy introducing the next artist though I’m not surprised that she’s jumped on this particular bandwagon. “The muso’s muso. He can do no wrong” she says. Who can she be talking about? Well, it’s Beck of course. Just about everyone I ever worked with during my time in record shops were crazy about Beck. He was effortlessly cool (even when he looked geeky) and his music was a stylish antidote to all that generic dance music and seemingly endless conveyor belt of boybands. This one – “The New Pollution” – was no exception. The third single from his “Odelay” album, it was featured a syncopated (is that the right word?) take on the bass line from “Taxman” by The Beatles forming a wicked groove that pulled you in from note one. The lyrics seem a bit oblique (“She’s got a carburettor tied to the moon”) but I’m guessing it has some sort of environmental message judging by the title or is that too literal a take? A bigger Beck fan than I will put me straight I’m sure. I like all the performers on stage all dressed head to toe in white jumping about at the end like they’re in some sort of Woody Allen movie (or possibly a Madness video). “We salute the godlike genius of Beck” says Jo Whiley at the song’s end. I’m not sure I’d go that far but he was pretty cool. Far too cool for the likes of me though not my record shop colleagues nor my wife who bought the album.

Some smooth, R&B soul next courtesy of Babyface. Given that nickname by funk legend Bootsy Collins on account of his youthful looks (his real name is Kenneth Edmonds), it made me wonder how many other people were given that moniker. Well, there’s ‘Baby Face’ Nelson, the 1930s gangster and Ole Gunnar Solskjær, the ex-Manchester United player and manager who was nicknamed ‘The Baby Faced Assassin’. And that’s where the well runs dry. There’s plenty of people who were known as ‘Baby’ – Emma Bunton was ‘Baby Spice’ for example – but ‘Baby Face’ or indeed ‘Babyface’? I’m not so sure. It appears that not only are there not that many who go by the name of Babyface but even those that do are not that well known to some people. At the 2025 Grammy Awards that took place a few days ago, Babyface was being interviewed on the red carpet when hot new star Chappell Roan walked past. The Associated Press reporters immediately forgot they were interviewing the 13 times Grammy winning producer and recording artist and shouted out “Chappell” clearly smelling a much bigger interview in their eyes. Babyface was extremely magnanimous by allowing the reporters to pursue Roan without taking offence. The fallout from the incident showed that others had taken offence though including Dionne Warwick who tweeted her disgust at the incident and the panel on US talk show The View who balked the disrespect shown to Babyface and the apparent lack of knowledge as to his accomplishments…

Quite right too. Well said. His 1997 hit “Every Time I Close My Eyes” however was never going to inspire me to interview Babyface if I’m honest. Just not my thing and the presence of Mariah Carey on backing vocals and Kenny G* on sax wasn’t going to sway me either.

*No I’m not going to go into my Kenny G story again! It’s in the blog archives if you must relive it!

Despite their longevity, this was only the second ever TOTP studio appearance by Aerosmith. Surprising? Maybe not. Up to this point, they had only achieved seven UK Top 40 hits of which none had gone higher than number 13 and they were still over a year away from Top 5 international smash “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing”. However, an eighth in “Falling In Love (Is Hard On The Knees)” earned them another not just a No 22 chart placing but a visit to the BBC Elstree Centre in Borehamwood. The pop kid that I was, Aerosmith had not been a band that had crossed my path in my youth with my first engagement with them coming via their 1986 collaboration with Run DMC on “Walk This Way”. After that, they occasionally piqued my interest with tracks like “Dude (Looks Like A Lady)” and “Cryin’” but I was hardly a huge fan. Such was my lack of commitment that I don’t even remember this one at all but listening to it now, it’s not a million away from the aforementioned “Dude (Looks Like A Lady)”, being that bluesy yet camped up rock n’ roll sound that they made their name on. As to what the song was about, well, it’s not so hard to work out is it?! No, he wasn’t singing about proposing!

“When I grow up, I want to be a rock chic!” trills Jo Whiley after that Aerosmith performance. Hmm. Anyway, No Doubt are No 1 for the last of three weeks with “Don’t Speak”. What’s the link between this song and the artist we’ve just seen Aerosmith? Listen to the intro to this and see if it reminds you of something…

Yep, very similar. Anyway this week we get the promo video for “Don’t Speak” with its plot about the media focus on singer Gwen Stefani whilst the rest of the band are ignored. This wasn’t a narrative of pure fiction though. Tensions in the band had been riding high perhaps not helped by bassist Tony Kanal and Stefani’s romantic relationship breaking down. That wasn’t the only relationship breakdown in the camp though. Legend has it that the band were on the verge of splitting at the time of shooting the video but they decided to go through with it as a sort of healing treatment – group therapy if you will. I’m guessing it worked as the band carried on until 2005 and are back together today after a couple of sabbaticals.

As Comic Relief was only one week away, we end the show with the official song for that year’s campaign – “Who Do You Think You Are” by the Spice Girls. For the promotion of the song and the event, a video was shot which harked back to 1989’s Comic Relief. I say ‘harked back’ but I mean totally pinched the idea from. I refer to the appearance of Kathy Burke, Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders. Back in 1989, Bananarama were tasked with delivering the charity’s single – a cover of “Help” by The Beatles – which was credited as being by Bananarama and Lananeeneenoonoo who were a spoof group made up of…yep…Kathy Burke, Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders. The concept was revisited in 1997. As the Spice Girls had five members, two other celebrities were drafted in namely Lulu and actress, comedian and writer Llewella Gideon. For Lananeeneenoonoo read the Sugar Lumps (a name which would have made more sense if the Sugababes had been around then). I didn’t find this skit funny back in 1989 and was even less enamoured of its 1997 counterpart but hey – it was for charity.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Eternal	Don’t You Love Me	Negative
2	Erasure	Don’t Say Your Love Is Killing Me	Nope
3	Bee Gees	Alone	I did not
4	Peter Andre	Natural	As if
5	Beck	The New Pollution	No but my wife and the album
6	Babyface	Every Time I Close My Eyes	Not my bag at all
7	Aerosmith	Falling In Love (Is Hard On The Knees)	Nah
8	No Doubt	Don’t Speak	Good tune but no
9	Spice Girls	Who Do You Think You Are	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/m0027fvx/top-of-the-pops-07031997?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 04 NOV 1993

Posted on November 13, 2022 by 80stastic

Finally it’s that time of the year. No, not bonfire night that was upon us in 1993 but that cherished but fleeting period that us synchronists look forward to – when the BBC4 TOTP repeats and the present day month match. November 1993 meet November 2022. We can watch these old shows safe in the knowledge that the tunes featured were from almost exactly 29 years ago. Indeed, when the second TOTP was aired on the Friday just gone they synchronised to the very day – 11th November. Perfect! I’m getting ahead of myself though. Let’s trawl through the 4th November show to see what fireworks and bangers await…

We start with the first of two Scottish electronic dance bands featured tonight (what were the chances eh?). I speculated in a previous post about why The Time Frequency felt the need to include the definite article in their name. Reading up on them some more, it seems founding band member Jon Campbell was in an 70s synth band called Thru The Fire and when they broke up, he kept the initials of the name as a template for his next project. Well, that’s what Wikipedia tells me but it seems a bit of a lame reason to me. Anyway, after scoring a Top 20 hit earlier in the year with “The Power Zone EP”, the decision was taken to rerelease their debut single “Real Love” which had missed the charts the previous year. A remix was made of it and it was shoved back out into the market under the title of “Real Love ‘93” – there was very little imagination around in record label offices when it came to naming rereleases it seems. Lacking in imagination they may have been but their business case was sound and the rerelease became the band’s biggest ever hit when it peaked at No 8. To me though, it sounded like the poor relation to “Insanity” by Oceanic.

https://youtu.be/2LFM8cZWvCQ

The performance here with the two dancers dressed in full metal robot outfits brought back memories of a rather cheesy but somehow endearing chart hit from 1985…

https://youtu.be/Xfoxz6aBNsI

Next a song that I would have thought was a much bigger hit than it was. However, its chart peak of No 7 doesn’t tell the whole story. I’m talking about “Hero” by Mariah Carey which was the second single taken from her “Music Box” album. We sold loads of this over Christmas ‘93 when I was working in the Our Price in Altrincham, Cheshire and if you check out the single’s chart run, it backs up my claim. It just wouldn’t go away. Yes, it only had three weeks inside the Top 10 but it had another seven where it ricocheted around the Top 20 between positions 18 and 11. It actually stood solid for three consecutive weeks at No 18 before going back up the charts. It reversed its decline in sales another time during its chart life to move back into the Top 10 having fallen out of it the previous week. These were not normal chart manoeuvres. It eventually fell out of the Top 40 around mid January ‘94. Why was it so durable? It could be that ballad at Christmas time always being a winner theory in action again. Maybe it was to do with the lyrics about self-belief, inner courage and finding the hero within oneself that struck a chord with record buyers.

Its durability would lead to longevity. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks of 2001, Mariah re-recorded the track as a medley with a song from her “Glitter” album called “Never Too Far” and released it as a charity single. In 2008, the X Factor finalists covered the song to raise funds for the Help For Heroes and Royal British Legion charities. It would become a sales phenomenon selling 100,000 copies in its first day of release and becoming the best selling single of that year. They performed the track with Mariah in one of the live shows.

Proper rock legends next though their list of UK chart hit singles up to this point belied that status. Not counting their collaboration with Run-D.M.C. on 1986’s “Walk This Way”, “Cryin’” was only the fifth ever Top 40 hit for Aerosmith up to that point in time. It was, however, their third hit on the bounce (all from the “Get A Grip”) album). “Livin’ On The Edge” (like ex-Home Secretary Priti Patel, the band had a habit of dropping their ‘g’s at the end of words) had made No 19 and “Eat The Rich” No 34 earlier in the year. “Cryin’” would be the biggest of all three when it peaked at No 17 over here though it was more successful in the rest of Europe going Top 10 just about everywhere and even topping the charts in Norway.

This was the band in proper power ballad mode but with that bit of Aerosmith cheek thrown in for good measure. Or as Steven Tyler described it:

“It was country – we just Aerosmith’d it.”
“The 20 Songs That Can Represent The Career Of Aerosmith”. Society of Rock. Retrieved May 23, 2022.

I have a distinct memory of a young Zoë Ball, early in her TV career, interviewing Tyler on some music programme about how to be a rock music fan (or something) and her finishing the piece by wandering off camera singing “Cryin’” whilst performing the Chuck Berry duck walk though her version of it made her just look like she was constipated.

Though the TOTP producers have pulled off a coup here by having the band in the studio, it means we don’t get to see the award winning video that promoted the single. Featuring a sixteen years old Alicia Silverstone plus pre fame Stephen Dorff (Backbeat) and Josh Holloway (Sawyer from Lost), it won three MTV video awards in 1994.

As host Tony Dortie says, 1993 saw loads of solo female artists break through with the likes of Dina Carroll, Gabrielle and Michelle Gayle all having big chart hits. Add to that list Pauline Henry. Late of The Chimes parish but now striking out on her own, her cover of Bad Company’s “Feel Like Making Love” (note the ‘g’ in making Aerosmith and Priti Patel!) was her second and biggest hit when it peaked at No 12. Just about as far removed from The Chimes’ soulful take on U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” as it could be, Pauline really belted out this raucous rock standard. Fair play to her by the way for daring to take on the mighty vocals of Paul Rodgers – if it was a football match, it would certainly go to extra time.

Sadly for Pauline, her single success didn’t translate into album sales and her debut LP staggered to a high of No 45. A second album of more cover versions resulted in two minor hit singles before Pauline decided on a change of career and studied for a Bachelor of Law degree and a masters in Intellectual Law Property.

After dicking about with the Breakers feature for a couple of weeks, the section is now firmly re-established by the TOTP producers with five acts in it this week. We start with a collaboration between Faith No More and Boo–Yaa T.R.I.B.E. (that’s the second time I’ve had to type a rap act’s name in that format this post!). “Another Body Murdered” was a track from the soundtrack to the film Judgement Night, a crime thriller starring Emilio Estevez, Cuba Gooding Jnr and (joy oh joy for us synchronists again!) Stephen Dorff. The soundtrack followed an idea by Cypress Hill manager Happy Walters that each track should pair a rock artist with a rap act. Alongside the Faith No More Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E. (third time!) meet up, there was Teenage Fan Club and De La Soul and Living Color and Run-D.M.C. (fourth time!!) to name but two. Critical reaction to the premise has been mixed. Some saw it as laying the groundwork for bands such as Korn and Limp Bizkit to thrive (was that a good thing?) whilst others saw it as jumping on the Anthrax/Public Enemy collaboration “Bring The Noise” bandwagon. I have to say judging by the twenty-five seconds of “Another Body Murdered” we get here, I’m unlikely to search out the soundtrack album though that meeting of Teenage Fan Club / De La Soul does sound interesting.

Just to prove Tony Dortie’s point about UK female solo artists in 1993, here’s another one and like Pauline Henry before her, she had a solid CV behind her already. Juliet Roberts first came to chart prominence ten years prior with Funk Masters’ Top 10 hit “Its Over” before she became the vocalist for Smooth jazzers Working Week. Critical acclaim but little commercial success led her to move on finding work as a session singer for the likes of Cathy Dennis and rather improbably Breathe before taking the plunge on her own. Having breached the Top 30 with her hit “Caught In The Middle” earlier in the year, she was back with another tilt at it with “Free Love”. It would attain a similar chart peak of No 25.

Sadly for Juliet, also like Pauline Henry, a collection of middling hit singles didn’t convert into a hit album and her debut effort “Natural Thing” could only manage a high of No 65. Her last chart entry came as vocalist on David Morales’s “Needin U II” in 2001, a title that makes Aerosmith and Priti Patel look like linguistic experts.

By late 1993, Soul II Soul had reached the point in their career where diminishing returns were starting to set in. “Club Classics Vol. One” and the track “Back To Life” especially had made the band global superstars but four and a half years on their commercial fortunes, though by no means flatlining, were not what they were as the 80s ended and the 90s began. The remedy? A Best Of album of course and so it was that “Volume IV The Classic Singles 88-93” was put together and released for the Christmas market. I actually liked the fact that they continued with the ‘Volume’ theme even though this wasn’t a studio album and included tracks that had already been part of the previous volumes. Except this one. “Wish” was a brand new track recorded to promote the collection as was the established trend (see also contemporary chart peer “Please Forgive Me” by Bryan Adams). The album sold well enough going to No 10 in the charts but subsequent releases failed to reverse the sales drift.

As for “Wish” itself, I’m no Soul II Soul expert but it seemed to me to promise a lot but deliver little or as a rather posh sounding woman I heard on Radio 4 recently delightfully put it whilst describing Liz Truss, it was ‘all fart and no shit’.

Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston on the same show?! One year on from the sales phenomenon that was her cover of “I Will Always Love You” comes the final single released by her from The Bodyguard soundtrack. “Queen Of The Night” was the fifth track taken from it recorded by Whitney (though seventh including other artists) and it stood alone from the other four in its sound. With three of those four being big ballads and the other a cover of Chaka Khan’s “I’m Every Woman”, there was space for something different and “Queen Of The Night” was. Or was it? A few critics at the time cited its similarities to En Vogue’s “Free Your Mind” and Janet Jackson’s “Black Cat” with its hard rock guitars and Whitney’s growly vocals though personally I think it just about stands up on its own legs.

The video is pretty much the performance of the song in the actual film – the scene where Whitney’s character has to be rescued by Kevin Costner when the security arrangements at her gig are shown to be lacking and a riot breaks out. The Bodyguard film generally gets slated as being substandard with Costner especially being highlighted for a wooden performance but I always quite liked it and thought Whitney gives a decent and convincing turn but then if she couldn’t play a pop star diva then what character could she play?

“Queen Of The Night” peaked at No 14. We wouldn’t see Whitney in the charts again for two years when she would return with songs from another soundtrack for a film in which she starred, Waiting To Exhale.

The final Breaker comes from Culture Beat who are straight into the Top 10 with “Got To Get It”. I’ve shared this anecdote before but I’m going to use it again – well, if Culture Beat can recycle their No 1 single “Mr Vain” and just blatantly release it as the official follow up as if it’s a brand new song then I’m certainly allowed to use a story twice! I was in the last days of working at the Our Price in Stockport when this single came out. On the day of release, a young girl came up to the counter and asked for the single by Culture Beat. As “Mr Vain” had still been selling and had only just dropped out of the Top 40 the other week, I thought I’d better check which one she meant and so asked her “Got To Get It?”. Her reply? “I just really like it”. Lovely stuff.

It’s time for the second of those two Scottish electronic bands now as The Shamen are in the studio with “The SOS EP (Comin’ On)”. This was the sixth single released from their “Boss Drum” album that had been out for nearly fourteen months by this point. Those singles attained the following chart peaks:

6 – 1 – 4 – 5 – 18 – 14

Not too shabby you’d have to say. This was peak era Shamen. They were never as big again with only four more Top 40 hits throughout the entire decade none of which got higher than No 15. I have to say I don’t remember “Comin’ On” (they must have attended that Aerosmith songwriting class) but it sounds better than I was expecting. Sort of starts out a bit like The Prodigy and then spins into an infectious dance anthem but with a pop song structure. By the way, what had happened to Colin Angus’s hair. Were those long tresses real or extensions?

A conversation between Soul II Soul’s Jazzie B and Wet Wet Wet’s Marti Pellow* sometime in early Autumn 1993:

*with massive apologies to anyone reading this who is Scottish

JB: Marty my man! How’s it hanging?

MP: Jazzie! Och, aye, no bad ye ken. How urr ye?

JB: You know me man. A happy face, a thumpin’ bass, for a lovin’ race!

MP: Aye.

JB: Marti man. You look down. What gives fella?

MP: We hae nae got a record oot for Yule. Oor label ur nipping us tae sort it oot.

JB: No worries man. Put a Best Of album out.

MP: Crakin’ yin! Och hing oan, whit aboot a single tae promote it?

JB: Just knock a new track out one afternoon. That’s what we did. Any old shite will do.

MP: Aye Jimmy!

It could have happened like that! Anyway, the Wets Best Of was called “End Of Part One: Their Greatest Hits” and was a big seller over Christmas ‘93 originally peaking at No 4. The following year, the band did a Bryan Adams and were at No 1 for fifteen weeks with “Love Is All Around”. To cash in, their label Mercury added it to the album and rereleased it at which point it returned to the charts straight to No 1. As for that new track, “Shed A Tear” was duly shoved out to promote it. I have zero recall of it but it sounds like it possibly was recorded in an afternoon with band’s collective thumbs up their bums and minds in neutral. It peaked at No 22.

Watching the performance here, the front three Wets (including Marti) all have ponytails whilst the keyboard player looks like he’s trying to grow his hair to catch up but his naturally curly locks are hampering his endeavour. Drummer Tommy Cunningham looked the same as he ever did and continues to do so to this day. Maybe it’s a drummer thing – Blur’s Dave Rowntree has similarly always maintained the same look.

Meatloaf still bestrides the charts like a colossus with the epic rock ballad “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)”. As with my Culture Beat anecdote, I’ve told this story before but the big guy’s at No 1 for weeks yet so I’m having to resort to recycling. My mate Robin has a friend who is a musician who has toured with the likes of Westlife. His own band was booked to play at the wedding of one John Hartson, the ex-professional footballer and now pundit. His best man was one of my footballing heroes, ex-Chelsea striker Kerry Dixon. Apparently the drinks flowed and everybody over indulged…including the groom. So pissed was Hartson that when Robin’s friend’s band finished their set, Hartson asked them to play one more song, especially for his new wife. The song Hartson chose to dedicate to her was Meatloaf’s “Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad” the lyrics of which include:

I want you, I need you, there ain’t no way I’m ever gonna love you

Now don’t be sad, ‘cause two out of three ain’t bad
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Jim Steinman
Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad lyrics © Carlin America Inc, Warner Chappell Music, Inc

Oh…my…God.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	The Time Frequency	Real Love ’93	Never happening
2	Mariah Carey	Hero	Nah
3	Aerosmith	Cryin’	Nope
4	Pauline Henry	Feel Like Making Love	I did not
5	Faith No More / Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E.	Another Body Murdered	No
6	Juliet Roberts	Free Love	Negative
7	Soul II Soul	Wish	Definitely not
8	Whitney Houston	Queen Of The Night	It’s a no
9	Culture Beat	Got To Get It	I didn’t unlike that young girl I served
10	The Shamen	The SOS EP (Comin’ On)	Like it, didn’t buy it
11	Wert Wet Wet	Shed A Tear	No. not a patch on their earlier work
12	Meatloaf	I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)	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/m001dzyf/top-of-the-pops-04111993

TOTP 08 APR 1993

Posted on July 27, 2022 by 80stastic

Right, I haven’t done this for a while and it doesn’t always go down well as this is a music blog but I’m just going to delve quickly into what was happening in the football in April 1993 as I have a specific memory of this time. The race for the very first Premier League title is hotting up as Manchester United, Aston Villa and surprisingly Norwich City are all in with a shout. It’s all a bit nip and tuck with United just behind Villa as they head into the weekend fixtures two days after this TOTP aired. I’m working in the Our Price store in Rochdale still and around 4.30 ish on a Saturday I would find some reason to nip upstairs into the back room where the shop radio was located to try and catch the last bit of action and results from the footy. This Saturday was no exception and the big game being covered was Man Utd against Sheffield Wednesday. It’s a crucial game in the title race and United find themselves 0-1 down late into the game – a disaster for their title challenge if the score stays the same.

Meanwhile, in another North Western Our Price store (Bury I think) is one Mick Jones. I knew Mick from when he worked in the other Manchester store in Piccadilly whilst I was down the road in Market Street. Mick was/is a big United fan but he had a problem that day – he had no access to finding out the score. Now this sounds ridiculous in 2022 where everything is at our fingertips and available on our mobile phones. Need to know the score? No problem- there’s plenty of score update apps available or there’s the goals as they go in coverage of shows like Sky Sports’ Soccer Saturday with Jeff Stelling or the BBC’s Final Score with Jason Mohammad. Back in 1993, such resources were not around and so we all relied on the good old radio. Sadly, poor old Mick couldn’t get a signal for the shop radio where he was and so was left completely in the dark.

Somehow I became aware of his predicament (a phone call about work presumably) and, taking pity on him, was phoning him up with score updates. As the game reached the 86th minute and with United still behind, an unlikely saviour appeared in the shape of centre back Steve Bruce. A header from a Dennis Irwin cross pulled United level and so I was straight on the blower to Mick. Relief but they really needed a win. In the final minute Bruce did it again and I was back in the phone with the good news for Mick. Salvation and although it wasn’t my team Chelsea winning (we lost 0-1 at Southampton that day), I felt like I had been a Good Samaritan at least with my score update service. The win sent United top and they would stay there until the end of the season winning their first league title for 26 years.

The football theme continues (very tenuously) with the first band on tonight’s show who are called Sub Sub (geddit?). Their single “Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use)” was one of those records that had no choice but to be a massive hit. Imprinted on your brain from the very first hearing it was immensely immediate and yet also had a baked in credibility courtesy of being released on the Rob’s Records label. Rob, of course, was the late Rob Gretton, former manager of Joy Division and New Order and co founder of Factory Records. I’m pretty sure that a work colleague called Paul introduced me to this track as he was intent on buying anything that the label released. Their other acts included Mr Scruff and A Certain Ratio.

Anyway, Sub Sub were brothers Andy and Jez Williams and school friend Jimi Goodwin who had become regulars at the legendary Manchester club The Haçienda in the early 90s and were inspired to record music of their own. Their 12” single “Space Face” was an underground club hit but it was “Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use) that the band’s name would become associated with. And what a tune to be known for! A retro disco sound that sounded box fresh at the same time featuring Philly soul strings, wah-wah guitar and the vocals of Melanie Williams, it was just impossible to ignore. That lolloping bass line was courtesy of a record the Williams brothers won at a fair (no really) and it was this from the musical Hair (you can hear it if you listen closely enough)…

Sub Sub went to No 3 and stayed inside the Top 10 for six weeks. I could have sworn that the record came out in 1994 but here I am showing that my memory isn’t what it once was again. Now I was very careful with my words earlier when I said that “Ain’t No Love Ain’t No Use)” was what Sub Sub are best remembered for as the Williams brothers and Jimi Goodwin are surely more well known for something else. After a fire burnt down their recording studio in 1996, they literally rose from the ashes and reinvented themselves as rock band The Doves who would go onto have three No 1 albums and score hit singles like “There Goes The Fear” and “Pounding”.

It’s the Sybil video for “When I’m Good And Ready” that gets to soundtrack the Top 40 rundown to No 11 this week. This is the third time this song has been on the show so I’m kind of out of things to say about it. The normally reliable @TOTPFacts has taken the week off as well so I can’t even pinch any of his content.

Erm…how about this? Twelve years on, Sybil performed on the ITV show Hit Me Baby One More Time which showcased pop stars of yesteryear singing their biggest hits alongside a cover of a (then) contemporary song. The watching TV audience voted for a weekly winner to go through to the grand final. In her heat, Sybil was up against Kelly Marie of “Feels Like I’m In Love” fame, the lead singer from Cutting Crew, those three Cleopatra girls and Chesney Hawkes. The winner? Nobody but nobody could defeat the legend that is Chesney Hawkes! If you’re interested though (and I’m certainly not) here’s Sybil doing her contemporary cover of Shania Twain’s “I’m Gonna Getcha Good!”…

Another song we’ve seen before next as Jade are back in the studio to perform their hit “Don’t Walk Away”. I can’t find a clip of this performance but it’s almost identical to the previous one even down to the long white drapes set. The only difference is that the trio have black, customised hot pants on this time as opposed to full length black leggings.

This uniformity didn’t translate into everlasting unity though. After the group petered out in 1997, the three members formed their own careers. However, when a reunion was planned last year as part of a retro concert called 90s Kickback, original lead vocalist Di Reed wasn’t invited to perform. No explanation was given by her former band mates Tonya Kelly and Joi Marshall who instead recruited one time The Voice contestant Myracle Holloway and rebranded themselves as ‘The Ladies Of Jade’. Attempts by Reed to contact Kelly and Marshall went unanswered and Reed was said to be considering action about the legality of her band mates use of the name Jade but remained hopeful it wouldn’t come to that. It all sounds a bit Spandau Ballet/ Bucks Fizz esque to me where they all ended up in court. I guess it just goes to show that bands of the longevity and democratic nature like U2 are the exception and not the rule.

https://youtu.be/IKGd_KiRAWg

Woah! Wasn’t expecting this! David Essex on TOTP in 1993! Right, I need to fess up straight away that I love David Essex mainly due to his starring role in the two wonderful films That’ll Be The Day and Stardust which are two of my favourite movies of all time. He’s also made some great pop tunes and seems like a thoroughly decent sort. By the 90s though, the hits had dried up. Indeed his last Top 40 appearance had been in 1985 with “Falling Angels Riding”. So why was he suddenly back on the show? Well, it was due to an unexpected hit album called “Cover Shot” which was, unsurprisingly, a covers album that, with the aid of a TV ad campaign, would rise to No 3 in the charts, his biggest hit since his mid 70s heyday. The album featured some fairly uninspired choices of songs by the likes of The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, Cat Stevens and this one – “Here Comes The Night” by Van Morrison’s band Them.

Despite my stated admiration of Essex, I have to admit this isn’t his finest hour. His distinctive voice just about holds up but the whole thing felt like a big anachronism in 1993. David still had his long locks back then but never mind his barnet, check out the mahoosive mullet on his bass player. He still thought it was 1985 apparently. I’m glad David found some success at this time but I just wish it had been with a better project.

Wasn’t Robin S on the same show with Sybil the other week as well? I think she was. Back then, Sybil had a trio of backing dancers/singers to enhance her performance whilst Robin S took to the stage in complete solitude. This time however, she seems to have half inched Sybil’s entourage as she’s now got three dancers behind her. I wonder how the logistics of these things were decided upon? How was it deemed OK for Robin S to have no backing singers one week but three the next? Who sorted all this stuff out? The TOTP production team? The artist’s management? The label? Whatever the mechanics behind it all, “Show Me Love” was up to No 6 which would be its peak position despite this performance.

https://youtu.be/9TdupT5JbDc

The Breakers section is jam packed with four tunes this week meaning each of them hardly get any airtime at all. As with the thought process behind the number of backing singers earlier, I wonder how the amount of Breakers was worked out each week? Sometimes it’s as low as two and I’m sure it’s been as high as five on occasion. Was it all just down to Head Producer Stanley Appel to have the casting vote?

However it was worked out, Dr. Alban was the first artist to make the cut this week. Yes, “It’s My Life” wasn’t the only hit he had. There was another one but only one. “Sing Hallelujah!” was its name and it was actually a hit on four separate occasions around Europe including in Hungary this year. In the UK though, once was enough and no wonder as this was a steaming pile of horseshit. I think the thing about the good doctor was that he was actually a really bad rapper. His voice was monotone and he garbled his words. This track had a gospel choir added to some perfunctory Italian house piano lines which we were somehow expected to be wowed by. Hadn’t (MC) Hammer already done that trick with the infinitely better “Do Not Pass Me By”?

“Sing Hallelujah!” made it to No 16 on the UK charts but surely Dr Alban’s legacy is his association with a Tampax advert.

Not only do we have David Essex on the show tonight but there’s also one of his 70s contemporaries. Yes, after last week’s in the flesh performance, Barry Manilow has crashed into the charts at No 22 with “Copacabana (At The Copa) 1993 Remix”.

Copacabana is of course a real place being a neighbourhood located in the Brazilian city of Rio De Janeiro and is famed for its 2.5 miles of beaches . Its New Year’s Eve celebrations are renowned across the world and in 1994 included a concert by Rod Stewart that was attended by…this can’t be right surely?…3.5 million people!

As for Manilow , Bazza’s no slouch in the touring department. Wikipedia lists twenty seven tours in his own right not including residency shows nor his early career stints as the opening act for the likes of Helen Reddy and Roberta Flack.

Encouraged by the success of the “Copacabana” remix, a follow up single was released, this time a remix of “Could It Be Magic” which grazed the charts at No 36. Maybe in 1993, people had become to used to the Take That version? This was Barry’s last UK Top 40 entry. Similarly, David Essex would only have one more visit to the charts in 1994 when a duet with Catherine Zeta Jones covering “True Love Ways” made No 38. Both would continue to be big live draws to this day though.

Next to a legendary US rock band but one which had a curious relationship with the UK charts. My knowledge of Aerosmith was non-existent until 1986 saw them team up with Run-DMC for their genre-bending hit “Walk This Way” but in my defence, they’d never had a song in the UK Top 40 to that point. That hit revitalised their career in the US and they released their “Permanent Vacation” album to commercial and critical success the following year.

Meanwhile, back in the UK we had returned to our habit of steadfastly ignoring them. None of the singles from “Permanent Vacation” were hits here. Fast forward a couple of years and we finally saw fit to give them another hit in the form of “Love In An Elevator” which was taken from the “Pump” album and which made No 13. After that had been and gone though, we reverted to type and ignored all the other singles from the album. As the new decade dawned, UK record buyers decided that maybe we’d made a mistake in not buying some of their previous stuff and so a rerelease from the “Permanent Vacation” album became a Top 20 hit. That song was “Dude (Looks Like A Lady)” and was possibly rereleased off the back of it featuring heavily in the Robin Williams movie Mrs Doubtfire. And so to 1993 and it was time to indulge Steven Tyler, Joe Perry et al in another hit single. This time it was “Livin’ On The Edge” from the album “Get A Grip”. Was that the one with the cow’s udders on the cover?

*checks Wikipedia*

Yeah, thought it was. Anyway, the single was written in response to the Los Angeles riots incited by the acquittal of the white police officers who beat black motorist Rodney King. Nearly thirty years later and the world was to witness such tragic scenes again in America with the killing of George Floyd. Aerosmith had already made their position clear on the political and societal mood in the country that the Donald Trump era had ushered in when they sent a cease and desist letter to the president after “Livin’ On The Edge” had been played at one of his rallies in 2018. Good on ‘em.

As for how the song sounded, it didn’t seem too dissimilar to “Love In An Elevator” to me but it was criticised in the press for sounding too much like Bon Jovi! The single made No 19 at which point the UK decided it did rather like Aerosmith after all and made five of the six singles released from “Get A Grip” Top 40 hits. We seemed to have taken the album’s title to heart.

The final Breaker sees the the Lazarus like return of Duran Duran carry on at a pace with the release of “Come Undone” which would furnish the band with another hit following the surprise success of “Ordinary World”. A further example of their new, mature yet radio friendly sound, it wasn’t as immediate as its predecessor to my ears but became a rapidly established ear worm once heard a few times.

The track was actually a very late addition to their eponymous album referred to as the “Wedding Album” and was cooked up musically by Nick Rhodes and Warren Cuccurullo with the lyrics hastily developed by Simon Le Bon. I always quite liked the line “Happy Birthday to you was created for you” a lyric that Le Bon literally inserted as it was his wife Yasmin’s birthday at the time. Despite appearances to the contrary in the video, apparently John Taylor doesn’t play on the track as the bass line was created by a synth in his absence.

As I write this, the band have just played at the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games in their home city of Birmingham. Not everyone was watching though. Here’s comedian Mark Lamarr…

I'm reliving my youth tonight. Ah, those wonderful nights throughout the 80s when I avoided watching Duran Duran at all costs. Takes me right back.
— Mark Lamarr (@lamarr_mark) July 28, 2022

Harsh! If you follow the thread, Lamarr doesn’t hold back on his dislike of the band. “Come Undone” peaked at No 13 in the UK and No 7 in the US.

Wait! What? There was more than one hit from The Beloved’s “Conscience” album? I’ve been thinking these past thirty years that only “Sweet Harmony” had made the charts but here’s indisputable proof that I was wrong. “You’ve Got Me Thinking” made No 23 and was actually a double A-side with “Celebrate Your Life” (which I had no idea about either). Watching this performance back though, I’m realising that it’s quite the tune. Understated yet hypnotic, it perfectly fits Jon Marsh’s idiosyncratic vocal style. Yes, the performance is hardly scintillating with everyone on stage sat down throughout but that kind of feels right for such a blissed out tune somehow. A nice little find I think which you don’t get to say too often in these TOTP repeats.

To rack up one infamous TOTP appearance would be enough for most bands but two? I guess New Order weren’t most bands. Their 1983 appearance on the show to perform “Blue Monday” live has become almost legendary and will often appear on those When TV Goes Wrong list type programmes. It was a shambles but the band’s reputation came out of it intact on account of them being seen as edgy, daring heroes for trying to subvert the show’s by then stuffy, established format. Fast forward ten years and they were back with another turn that would go down in the annals of TV history for being…well…just bizarre.

After the collapse of the aforementioned Factory Records in 1992, New Order signed with London Records, something they were able to do without impediment as they didn’t actually have a formal contract with Factory. Indeed, the reason that a proposed buy out of Factory by London failed to happen was due to the fact that Factory didn’t own their artists’ material. The first release on their new label (indeed their first since “World In Motion” in 1990) was “Regret”. The lead single from their sixth studio album “Republic”, it’s surely one of their most well known songs thanks in part to that distinctive, stop start intro. It easily fitted into daytime radio playlists just as “True Faith” had done six years earlier and ended up being a huge hit when it peaked at No 4.

But aside from all that, there was this…the TOTP performance from Venice Beach, LA on the set of Baywatch. What. The. F**k? How did this happen? Well, the band were touring America in support of the album and wanted to keep the single selling as it was helping to get their Haçienda nightclub out of the financial shit. TOTP were always keen on a performance they could promote as an exclusive and so the band plotted and planned about what was the most extreme and ludicrous setting they could come up with for their appearance. They settled on the TV series Baywatch, a show as ludicrous as New Order’s proposal. Most of the cast bailed out that day except one man, a man of no inconsiderable musical career himself – David ‘The Hoff’ Hasselhoff. Rumours abound (though denied by the band) that he wanted to somehow join in musically with the performance – possibly the only thing that could have made the whole shebang even more out there. As it was, the sight of four pasty skinned Mancs miming next to extras in thong bikinis on a golden beach with frisbees flying about and a game of volleyball going on behind them was ludicrous enough. I’m sure I read somewhere that The Hoff proved to be a lovely guy and when some photos were taken with the band afterwards for posterity, he stood in a hole dug in the sand so as not to tower over the band too much.

Did I think the performance was mad at the time? Probably not. I probably just foolishly thought well, David Hasselhoff is famous and New Order are famous so why wouldn’t they know each other? With the hindsight of thirty years, it was all clearly bonkers!

It’s a second week at the top for The Bluebells and “Young At Heart” but instead of being in the studio as they have been on both previous appearances, we get the video this week. I actually like the fact that they didn’t bother making an updated promo and we just get the original from 1984, Clare Grogan and all. There’s also a cameo from Scottish actress Molly Weir who would have been known back in 1984 for her role as Hazel the McWitch in barmy childrens show Rentaghost. In 1993, I doubt she would have been as widely recognised. And is that Craig Gannon in the band line up who would go onto replace Andy Rourke in The Smiths briefly and whom Morrissey would label as ‘undiscussable’? I think it is.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Sub Sub	Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use)	Thought I did but singles box says no
2	Sybil	When I’m Good And Ready	Nah
3	Jade	Don’t Walk Away	No
4	David Essex	Here Comes The Night	Not released as a single
5	Robin S	Show Me Love	Not my bag
6	Dr. Alban	Sing Hallelujah!	Never happening
7	Barry Manilow	Copacabana (At The Copa) 1993 Remix	Nope
8	Aerosmith	Livin’ On The Edge	Negative
9	Duran Duran	Come Undone	No but I have it on something I think
10	The Beloved	You’ve Got Me Thinking	No but it’s a lost gem
11	New Order	Regret	No but I regret it now
12	The Bluebells	Young At Heart	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/m0019dvp/top-of-the-pops-08041993

TOTP 22 FEB 1990

Posted on November 6, 2020 by 80stastic

Welcome to TOTP Rewind where in February 1990, the charts seem to be a curious mixture of ~~old fogeys~~ established stars and fresh out of the box new acts (mainly peddling dance tunes). I have to say that despite its stuffy BBC image, TOTP does try and reflect this in its chosen turns for this particular show. Mark Goodier is our guide through this week’s wares and we start with Tina Turner and her single “Steamy Windows” which was also the single that closed the previous week’s broadcast. This seems to be have been an established practice at this point in the year with the likes of FPI Project and Halo James having done the same thing. Unlike last week though we get Tina in the flesh this time as opposed to the video.

I’m thinking Tina deigning the UK with her presence would still have been a big deal at this time – Goodier seems excited enough proclaiming her the “first lady of rock ‘n’ roll”. Certainly her commercial trajectory was in the ascendancy with her “Foreign Affair” album being a No 1 hit in this country and eventually going five times platinum whilst one year later her “Simply The Best” collection album would go eight times platinum! Given all that, the show’s producers do seem to have rather thrown her performance away right at the top of the show. Maybe they wanted a crash bang wallop beginning but I would have thought they might have built up to it a bit more and put it in the middle somewhere.

Here, Tina seemed to have toned down a notch the jerky strutting style she employed although she does get in a high kick or two. I would have expected her to have really gone for it considering the nature of the lyrics she was singing …and if we’re going to get a bit smutty, I am reliably informed by a friend that there is a clip of Tina and David Bowie performing on stage together where Bowie whispers to Ms Turner “You broke my cock”. I think it might be this clip below around 3.15 where Tina throws her head back in laughter…

Moving away from filth and innuendo to something much more wholesome…death. The back story to Chris Rea‘s song “Tell Me There’s A Heaven” includes some horrific details. Here’s @TOTPFacts:

Chris Rea was inspired to write "Tell Me There's a Heaven" after his six-year-old daughter saw news footage of a riot in South Africa, which showed "this horrible thing of throwing lighted tyres over people" and "one guy burning to death". #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) October 30, 2020

Rea’s daughter’s Grandfather (Rea’s father- in- law) didn’t know how to explain to the child what she had witnessed on screen so he just said ‘That man has gone to heaven’. When Rea checked on his sleeping daughter later he said to himself ‘Grandad told you there’s a heaven, I’d like someone to tell me there’s a heaven, too’.

The actual song itself is very affecting I think. The heavy strings backing gives it a cinematic quality – I could imagine it turning up as the soundtrack to a emotionally drenched scene in a Spielberg flick – while Rea’s gravelly voice imbues a solemn and reflective timbre.

Anyway, all of that didn’t cut that much mustard with the UK record buying public and the single peaked at No 24.

On their way to No1 we find Beats International with their mash up tune “Dub Be Good To Me”. Of course, nobody called it a ‘mash-up’ back then so what did they call it? From my admittedly limited research, it seemed to be referred to just as a cover version (of SOS Band’s “Just Be Good To Me”) that they renamed. Norman Cook revealed at the time that he thought that vocalist Lindy Layton was destined to be the ‘British Madonna’ – a prediction that proved to be wide of the mark. Lindy did ultimately go solo but despite a debut hit single with a cover of Janet Kaye’s “Silly Games”, it was a case of diminishing returns after that. Even a short spell signed to PWL didn’t restore her chart fortunes to any great extent. She continued to work in the music industry though with the likes of Hardknox and (with a certain amount of symmetry) Dub Pistols.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UWHBnLr2AI

Lindy already had a showbiz career before she found herself in Beats International of course. There were appearances in Grange Hill and Casualty and erm…this memorable advert:

Right, I have no recollection of this next song at all. Cliff Richard with “Stronger Than That” anyone? Well, according to Mark Goodier, it has some ‘brilliant choreography’ in the video! Yeah, never a good sign that is it when a single is introduced with more fanfare about the dancing than the actual song. The bad omens prove to be true as “Stronger Than That ” is a stinker, a total turd of a record. Yes, the dancing is very in sync (apart from when Cliff sneaks in his trademark swaying arms movement into the routine) but once you’ve said that, well….Goodier reckons that it will be a Top 5 record but it actually peaked at No 14 which is staggering for a song so antiseptically banal.

Incidentally, I’m pretty sure the long haired, blonde guy on Chapman stick in the background is ex-Kajagoogoo bassist Nick Beggs. Well, it was a paying gig I suppose.

Right, after three very established artists in Tina Turner, Chris Rea and (god help us) Cliff Richard, we get four Breakers that are all new acts, two of which I don’t remember at all. First up are Thunder who were a bunch of London hard rockers who carved out a decent career for themselves in the 90s with a run of fourteen consecutive Top 40 chart hits (though none of them got any higher than No 18).

“Dirty Love” was the first of those and always seemed to me to be very heavily modelled on T Rex’s “Get It On” (which itself was Marc Bolan’s attempt to re-write Chuck Berry’s Little Queenie”). I think it’s that guitar riff that ends every chorus. To be fair to Thunder, they’re not the only ones to have tried it on for size. By my reckoning, you’ve also got Oasis (on “Cigarettes And Alcohol” and “Some Might Say”), Robbie WIlliams (“Old Before I Die”) and Andy Taylor of Duran Duran (“Take It Easy”). Taylor seemed particularly obsessed with recreating “Get It On”. He recorded a cover version of it with Power Station and was also the producer on “Dirty Love”. Listen to “Take It Easy” below and you’ll clearly hear his influence on Thunder’s track. He may have even had an influence on the band’s name as his debut album in 1987 was called “Thunder” and the band chose that as the name for their new group after disbanding Terraplane in 1989 before recording some demos with Taylor later in the year.

I saw Andy Taylor live in 1990 (no really). I had just moved to Manchester and he was playing The International 2 venue just around from our flat. It was an odd gig. Andy was determined to come over as a rock god but the audience kept asking him to play “Hungry Like The Wolf”. He wasn’t amused.

Back to Thunder and for a while there they seemed on the cusp of massive commercial success. Their “Laughing on Judgement Day” album debuted at No 2 on the chart and was subsequently certified gold. They eventually called it a day in 1999 before reforming in 2002 and have been sporadically active ever since. Their latest album was released as recently as 2019.

Next up are Electribe 101 with “Talking With Myself” which was their very first single release when it came out independently in 1988. Having signed to major label Mercury, it was re-released as a follow up to “Tell Me When the Fever Ended” and peaked at No 23 thereby becoming their highest ever charting single. It was very much in the same vein as its predecessor I thought – not an unpleasant sound but I couldn’t get worked up about it either. When I first started work at Our Price later in 1990, just about everyone else on the staff seemed to adore Electribe 101. I was never in the ‘in crowd’!

When singer Billie Ray Martin was young she was obsessed with The Beatles and had four teddy bears called John, Paul, George and Ringo. Apparently Paul’s head fell off one day after Billie had been smooching with him excessively. Blimey! Don’t tell the ‘Paul is dead’ conspiracy theorists!

OK, this happens to me occasionally – that state of affairs of having zero recall of one of the artists featured on these TOTP repeats. Here’s another in Jamie J. Morgan. I read up about this guy and it seems he wasn’t your standard lame chancer, one hit wonder at all. He was a photographer shooting covers for The Face, advertising for Levi’s and album covers for Culture Club, Soul II Soul, Sade and Neneh Cherry for whom he helped write her hit ‘Buffalo Stance’. He also dabbled in video-directing producing the promo for “Swallowed” by Bush. He continues to work within the music and fashion industries and his work was showcased in a book and an exhibition at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum in 2000. Impressive stuff. However….

…his vile version of the Lou Reed classic “Walk On The Wild Side” is, well…just that, vile. Given a nasty, generic dance treatment it sounds like a parody and Morgan’s nasal vocals do nothing to dispel that image. It could be Sacha Baron Cohen up there doing one of his comedy characters. The Salt ‘N’ Pepa style rapping bits in the middle can’t rescue this complete mess of a track. Somehow it rose all the way to No 27. Sometimes it’s best to stick to what you’re good at – diversifying isn’t always the way to go.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQ0BWYaNwr4

The second of the Breakers that I can’t recall now. “Probably A Robbery” was the only Top 40 hit for electronic pioneers Renegade Soundwave but, having researched them, it seems that their legacy far outweighs their commercial achievements. Combining dance beats with samples and electro-industrial noise, they created a buzz in the clubs with tunes such as “The Phantom” and “Ozone Breakdown”. Both tracks featured samples with the former using a loop from The Clash’s “White Riot” and the latter taking from the film The Warriors. So they were kind of Big Audio Dynamite meets Beats International then? Not really as their influence would extend to artists such as The Prodigy, The Chemical Brothers and Grooverider. Actually, I quite like this having listened to it back.

“Probably A Robbery” peaked at No 38.

There then follows a very lame attempt at humour made by Mark Goodier when he introduces the next act. Comparing the name Guru Josh to a curry – presumably he was referring to a Rogan Josh? On a sliding curry scale of hilarity with a phaal being shit your pants funny it would be a korma. “Infinity (1990’s… Time for the Guru)” was their track and, even at the time, it seemed a poor choice of title to me. Why include a specific year allied with a defining clause that states this is your time? Surely this was counter productive to future sales / plays?

The performance here is pretty weird and showcases the issues that TOTP had with these non vocal dance tunes. How do you curtail a dance floor anthem into a visual, three minute studio performance for a time restricted main stream popular music show? The short answer is ‘not without difficulty’. The powers that be employed some dancers to mime playing violins before going full on dance mode in the background whilst Mr Josh (real name Paul Walden) did some crowd baiting egotistical nonsense upfront. It’s not a good or convincing look.

“Infinity (1990’s… Time for the Guru)” sounded like a piss weak version of an 808 State tune to me and I let it pass me by without the need for further investigation.

Sadly, Paul Walden took his own life on 28 December 2015 at the age of 51.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wl9iL7pGfWg

Not content with his curry joke in his intro, Goodier has another crack at humour as the song finishes by making a quip about Guru Josh seemingly wearing their pyjamas in the performance we have just seen. Mark, mate – have you clocked the shirt you’re wearing?

The next act is…wait…what? Adam Ant? In the 90s? Yes indeed. Hardly seen since his ill advised Live Aid performance of his then new single “Viva La Rock” in ’85, Adam had actually been trying his luck at acting over the pond in the US since then. Adam the actor hadn’t really worked out for him though and he slipped into a period of depression. In his autobiography Stand And Deliver, he quotes a diary entry from 1989:

“I’m disgusted at my chronic jealousy of others less talented than myself on MTV or in films. So like some bitchy brat I cry + kick + scream for attention. ‘Love me – I’m great’ is my demand from everyone. It’s terrible, disgusting. But it drives me on…….I can’t accept defeat the way I suspect many feel I should after the decline of Vive Le Rock. I’m not an actor or a rock ‘n’ roll star. I’m Adam Ant. Whatever that may be.”

‘Whatever that may be’ turned out to actually be a damned good pop star and he made an unexpectedly successful return to the Top 40 with his single “Room At The Top”. The lead single from his “Manners & Physique” album and lending its title from the John Braine novel, listening back to it now, it sounds quite the anachronism against the rest of the charts back then but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. The track was produced by ex Prince bassist André Cymone and I think you can hear a little bit of the purple one’s influence on it though it doesn’t overshadow Adam’s trademark style.

Adam was 35 at the time of this appearance, he is now in his mid 60s which prompted this tweet when BBC4 repeated the TOTP broadcast….

Adam Ant will be 66 on Tuesday, which means he now qualifies for THIS year’s old age pension. #totp
— Mark Gillies (@5goalthriller) October 30, 2020

Gold standard stuff. I didn’t mind “Room At The Top” but actually preferred his follow up single “Can’t Set Rules About Love” which I came close to buying but I didn’t quite follow through on that particular commitment. It seems many others did the same as it stalled at No 47. Adam would return to the UK Top 40 for the final time in 1995 with his single “Wonderful”.

Back to Goodier who rounds off a pretty dismal presenting stint by fluffing his lines when announcing the name of Sinéad O’Connor ‘s new album. It’s the final week at No 1 for Sinéad with “Nothing Compares 2 U” and whilst I suggested in my last post that the BBC seemed to be getting bored with her reign at the top as they only showed two minutes of her in the previous show, I’ve had to revise my stance as they have got her back in the studio for another performance. They had been relying on re-showing the first one she’d done weeks before.

Say what you like about Sinéad (and many people certainly have done over the years) but “Nothing Compares 2 U” remains one of the stand out songs of the 90s.

The play out video is “Dude (Looks Like A Lady)” by Aerosmith. I already knew this song as it had been out before back in ’87 when it had got a fair amount of airplay but just missed the UK Top 40. Why was it re-released in 1990? I’m not sure. Was it to do with being used in that infamous scene in the Mrs Doubtfire film?

*checks internet*

Nope. That movie didn’t come out until 1993. I give up then. It was definitely written with the ubiquitous Desmond Child though (the man responsible for huge hits for Michael Bolton, Bon Jovi and Alice Cooper). Persistent accusations that the song is transphobic have always been refuted by Childs who describes the song as “accepting” because of the lyric ‘never judge a book by its cover, or who you’re going to love by your lover’. The band themselves had feared repercussions with Joe Perry saying ‘I don’t want to insult the gay community.’ Childs’ response was ‘Okay, I’m gay, and I’m not insulted. Let’s write this song.’

I don’t see it as transphobic I have to say but find it a fun (if slightly dumb) kick ass rock tune. The re-release of “Dude (Looks Like A Lady)” peaked at No 20.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVs3nkhA8_Q

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Tina Turner	Steamy Windows	Nope
2	Chris Rea	Tell Me There’s A Heaven	No
3	Beats International	Dub Be Good To Me	No but my wife had their album
4	Cliff Richard	Stronger Than That	I’d have rather shat myself
5	Thunder	Dirty Love	Not at the time but I may have it on iTunes now
6	Electribe 101	Talking With Myself	I did not
7	Jamie J. Morgan	Walk On The Wild Side	Negative
8	Renegade Soundwave	Probably A Robbery	It’s a no
9	Guru Josh	Infinity (1990’s …Time For The Guru)	Nah
10	Adam Ant	Room At The Top	No but I nearly bought the follow up
11	Sinéad O’Connor	Nothing Compares 2 U	Don’t think so
12	Aerosmith	Dude (Looks Like A Lady)	No

Disclaimer

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000nwtf/top-of-the-pops-22021990

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

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

Some bedtime reading?

https://michaelmouse1967.wixsite.com/smashhits-remembered/1990-issues

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 20 NOV 1998

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TOTP 06 NOV 1998

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TOTP 25 SEP 1998

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TOTP 18 SEP 1998

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TOTP 11 SEP 1998

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TOTP 07 MAR 1997

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TOTP 04 NOV 1993

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TOTP 08 APR 1993

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TOTP 22 FEB 1990

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Some bedtime reading?