Annie Lennox

TOTP 08 JUN 1995

Posted on November 24, 2023 by 80stastic

I was never a member of the TOTP studio audience. Despite watching the show religiously since about 1982, it was never really an ambition of mine. It didn’t actually look like that much fun, being herded around a studio, told where to stand and when to cheer in the faint hope you would end up in shot behind the presenter so you could mouth “Hello Mum” to the camera or just generally act daft. Obviously, there was the appeal of occupying the same space as and being up close and personal with a pop star or band but you were completely at the mercy of the running order for whatever show you got tickets for. Take this one for example. June the 8th, 1995 was not a vintage episode. The biggest star in the studio that week by a mile was Annie Lennox. Of the other five acts actually there in person, two are fairly anonymous dance groups, one is a band just breaking through but who would come to be seen as a second tier Britpop artist, a singer who would be remembered for just one song that isn’t this one and two actors turned unlikely and unlikeable pop stars. It’s not a great haul is it?! Even the host is just a Radio 1 DJ (Nicky Campbell) rather than a ‘golden mic’ guest presenter. I think I would have felt short changed had I have been in the audience that week.

We start with one of those dance groups in Loveland who had notched up three middling sized hits before this one – “Don’t Make Me Wait” – took them to No 22 in the charts. Their resident vocalist was Rachel McFarlane who sings on this track but her status within the group seemed to be constantly up for debate. Sometimes their records were described as ‘Loveland featuring Rachel McFarlane’ and sometimes they carried the legend (as this single did) ‘featuring the voice of Rachel McFarlane’. Wonder what that was as all about? A legal / contractual thing? As for the song, it’s a pretty standard house dance tune, the like of which I thought had mainly been in the charts in the early part of the decade. Indeed, it puts me in mind of Ce Ce Peniston’s 1992 hit “Finally”.

Next that aforementioned Britpop band. Although I referred to them as second tier, I did rather like Dodgy and even had one of their albums. I think I used that phrase to distinguish them from the likes of Blur, Oasis, Pulp and Supergrass who I saw as the real vanguard of the movement. In 1995 though, I didn’t really know too much about Dodgy other than their name as someone I’d worked with at the Our Price store in Market Street, Manchester knew them personally. After a debut album with an awful title (“The Dodgy Album”? Seriously?) in 1993 that didn’t set the world alight – it peaked at No 75 in the charts – they regrouped and came back the following year with “Homegrown” that performed much better achieving gold status in the UK. It also provided the band with three Top 40 singles the first of which was “Staying Out For The Summer” which made No 38 in October 1994. Perhaps realising that they’d made a balls up with the release date, label A&M authorised a second assault on the charts in, you know, the Summer and the song was back in June 1995.

It’s a pretty cool track and I was reminded of that recently. To explain, I recently started volunteering as an usher at Hull Truck Theatre and one of the first plays I worked was called Pop Music by Anna Jordan. Set at a wedding where the two characters meet years after they were at the same school together, it tells the story of their lives since; the highs and mainly lows and how pop music has soundtracked their life landmarks. It’s a great play and the version I saw (six times) featured two wonderful actors. Their time on stage is accompanied by a constant playlist of pop songs including a selection from the Britpop era. The first one to feature? Yep, “Staying Out For The Summer”! My time watching the play reminded me what a great (and possibly underrated) tune it is. Sure, it displays its Beatles influences pretty heavily but that’s not a bad thing in most people’s book is it? Dodgy would return in 1996 with their biggest album and single in “Free Peace Sweet” (the one I had) and “Good Enough” respectively. Nigel Clark and Andy Miller would look pretty different from this TOTP appearance sporting peroxide blonde, bouffant locks. Dodgy barnets anyone?

It’s a time for a repeat of that performance by Bon Jovi of “This Ain’t A Love Song” now. Filmed in Milan, this was shown the other week as an ‘exclusive’ but is recycled here as the single is at No 7 in the charts. TOTP had history when it came to re showing Bon Jovi exclusives – the Niagara Falls one for “Always” was on about three times. Maybe executive producer Ric Blaxill thought the band was too big a name to just show it once. To be fair, despite having become globally successful in the 80s with an image of being one of those ‘hair metal’ bands, the stats say that they were more successful in the 90s. In the UK for example, they only had one Top 10 single between 1986 and 1989 out of nine releases. By comparison, the band’s first nine singles of the 90s yielded six Top Tenners. “This Ain’t A Love Song” would become the seventh and the fifth in a run of eight consecutive Top 10 placings. OK, the album sales might tell a different story but TOTP was historically based around the singles chart and this ain’t an album blog so…

That second dance act now and it’s yet another from the seemingly eternal conveyor belt of German Eurodance artists. Following on from Snap!, Real McCoy, Haddaway, Culture Beat, Captain Hollywood Project and preceding Sash!, Fragma and ATB came Jam & Spoon. This duo (real names Rolf Elmer and Markus Löffel) had been having hits all over Europe since 1992 but the UK had proved a tough nut to crack. Indeed, this hit “Right In The Night (Fall In Love With Music)” had already had a tilt at our charts the year before but had to be satisfied with a peak of No 31. As was the trend around this time for minor hits being given a second chance, it was rereleased to become a Top 10 hit. The track would be revived in 2008 by an artist who is also on this very TOTP. All will be revealed later.

As these things go (and I certainly wasn’t a fan of Eurodance), this one isn’t the worst example of the genre and the flamenco guitar interlude serves to distinguish it from some of the dross we’d heard this decade so far. A word on vocalist Plavka. She started her career singing as a soprano with the Santa Monica opera before decamping to London to join electronic dance pioneers The Shamen on their “En-Tact” album and then working with Jam & Spoon. That’s quite the varied career.

Now if we thought Bon Jovi was a big name worthy of an exclusive performance repeat, what about this fella? Not just perhaps the most famous person on the planet at the time but he’s brought his superstar sister along for good measure. I can only be talking about Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson (and indeed I am). “Scream” was their much talked about duet and a taster of Jacko’s forthcoming double album “HIStory: Past, Present And Future Book I” a studio album of new material coupled with his first Greatest Hits package. Much was expected of “Scream” and its $6 million video and the single did debut on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart at No 5, no other single before it had entered the chart at a higher position. However, it got no further than that peak and it was a similar story in the UK where it topped out at No 3. The reason why? Was it a backlash against Jackson following the recent child sex abuse allegations brought against him by Jordan Chandler and his family which were settled out of court by Jackson at a cost of $23 million. Certainly host Nicky Campbell felt emboldened to make a few jibes at the King of Pop calling him “dodgy” and declaring that he had written bigger cheques than the cost of the “Scream” video recently. All fairly distasteful given the nature of the source material. Back to the point about “Scream” and its failure to top the charts though. I think the main reason for its disappointing sales was the fact that it wasn’t very good. There’s hardly a proper song structure in there, rather it was mostly a riff and some trademark Jacko squeals.

As for the video shown here, it appears to be a hastily cobbled together montage of previous videos and clips of Jackson in concert owing to the fact that the official promo wasn’t ready for release yet. Ric Blaxill would have to show it the following week when it was slipping down the charts from No 3 to No 5, thereby breaking the show’s own rule about not featuring songs that were going down the charts. That’s how big a name Michael Jackson was. Eat your hearts out Bon Jovi!

The answer to that query about who did a cover of Jam & Spoon’s “Right In The Night (Fall In Love With Music)” now – yes it was “Saturday Night” hitmaker Whigfield who gave us her take on it in 2008. Wanna hear it? OK…

Hmm. Not bad. Possibly better than the original. Back in 1995 though, Whigfield was pursuing a much more pop vein with this, her third hit, “Think Of You”. Not as annoying as “Saturday Night”, this would still worm its way into your brain and take root for the Summer once heard. Impossibly catchy (some might even say cutesy), it would take her to No 7 in the chart. A one hit wonder she may be remembered as but the reality was that she wasn’t anything of the sort. Two more chart entries would follow this year though one was an ill advised cover of Wham!’s “Last Christmas”. You know that Christmas game Whamageddon where you try and avoid hearing said song from 1st to 24th December? Yeah, I don’t think there will ever be a game called Whigageddon.

After launching her cover versions album “Medusa” with a little known track from the 80s that never even made the UK Top 40, Annie Lennox went to the other extreme in her choice of follow up single by going with one of the most famous No 1 songs of all time. Procul Harum’s “A Whiter Shade Of Pale” was a chart topper around the world in 1967 and went on to sell 10 million copies. In comparison, “No More ‘I Love You’s’” released by The Lover Speaks in 1986 made it to the dizzy heights of No 58 despite being absolutely wonderful. Annie’s version, though not bad at all, was inferior to the original and so it was to be with “A Whiter Shade Of Pale”. Some may say that she was always onto a loser taking on a song which sits on such a pedestal.

The performance here is a continuation on a theme from the drag ballet dancers that accompanied her for “No More ‘I Love You’s’” though this time they are dressed in French maid costumes. The Minnie Mouse headgear is still there though. Annie would release a third single from the album, a cover of Bob Marley’s “Waiting In Vain” which I came across the other day as it is featured in the rather charming John Cusack film Serendipity. Knowing that I would be writing about Annie in this post, that discovery was…well…serendipitous.

No Jacko style video premiere issues for this next song. U2 had not released anything since 1993 before they contributed “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me” to the Batman Forever soundtrack. Apparently the film’s director Joel Schumacher tried to shoehorn in a cameo role for Bono in the guise of his MacPhisto alter ego which he used during the Zoo TV Tour. When that didn’t materialise, Bono agreed to give a song to the soundtrack instead. And it was quite a song. Worked up from a demo from the “Zooropa” sessions and playing on the title of the song made famous by Mel Carter in 1965 and revived just the year before by Gloria Estefan, it swoops and soars around a jagged riff which does admittedly sound very similar to “Children Of The Revolution” by T-Rex.

The video directed by Kevin Godley and Maurice Linnane works pretty well I think even if the animation would be seen as clunky by today’s standards. Working in the MacPhisto / The Fly characters alongside clips from the actual film, it has a certain charm I think. Oh yeah, the film. Was it any good? Well, for me it was inferior to the Michael Keaton movies but so much better than the Batman And Robin flick with George Clooney as the Caped Crusader. Val Kilmer played it straight without the idiosyncrasies of Keaton’s portrayal but then he was probably wise not to try and outdo Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones as The Riddler and Two-Face respectively.

The single would lead a charmed chart life spending eight consecutive weeks inside the Top 10, even going back up the charts after falling initially when the film hit UK cinemas on July 14th. It also benefited from another song from the film being in the charts at the same time as Seal’s “Kiss From A Rose” was rereleased after peaking at No 20 in 1994 but making it all the way to No 4 a year later. I think both singles helped raise the other’s profile.

And so it came to pass that the musical legend that was Michael Jackson wasn’t able to dent Robson & Jerome’s hold on the No 1 spot* as their version of “Unchained Melody” reigned supreme. This was just getting silly now.

*Not only that, he couldn’t even dislodge Pulp from the No 2 position.

The play out tune is “Are You Blue Or Are You Blind?” by The Bluetones. The first chart entry for another band forever associated with Britpop, it would peak at No 31. This was the sound of a band gearing up for the big time. Within eight months they would have a No 2 single in “Slight Return” and a No 1 album in “Expecting To Fly”. I think their success is sometimes overlooked and get remembered by those that didn’t invest in the band just for that one song. In fact, they would have thirteen Top 40 singles in total and two further Top 10 albums after “Expecting To Fly”.

The band continued to release new material and tour long after Britpop had withered before splitting in 2011 only to reform four years later.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Loveland	Don’t Make Me Wait	I did not
2	Dodgy	Staying Out For The Summer	No
3	Bon Jovi	This Ain’t A Love Song	Nope
4	Jam & Spoon	Right In The Night (Fall In Love With Music)	Nah
5	Michael Jackson / Janet Jackson	Scream	Never happening
6	Whigfield	Think Of You	Negative
7	Annie Lennox	A Whiter Shade Of Pale	Sorry Annie but no
8	U2	Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me	Liked it, didn’t buy it
9	Robson & Jerome	Unchained Melody	As if
10	The Bluetones	Are You Blue Or Are You Blind?	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/m001sfw6/top-of-the-pops-08061995

TOTP 16 FEB 1995

Posted on September 28, 2023 by 80stastic

The BBC4 TOTP repeats schedule is missing the 9th February show as it included the video for convicted sex offender R Kelly’s “Bump N’ Grind” over which the chart countdown played. It isn’t the only thing missing as on 17th February 1995 the Vauxhall Cavalier belonging to Richie Edwards of Manic Street Preachers was reported as abandoned near the Severn Bridge. Edwards had been missing since leaving the London Embassy Hotel on 1st February. Attending police found evidence that the car had been lived in but although it had been left near a notorious suicide spot, there has never been any conclusive evidence that Richie committed suicide. Despite numerous sightings of him over the years, his whereabouts and status have never been confirmed until 2008 when he was officially ‘presumed dead’ although he is still listed as a missing person.

So much has been written about the story of Edwards disappearance that it has almost become legend. As such, it’s hard to recall initial reactions to the news but it remains a huge event not just for Manics fans but also in rock history. What I do recall is that there was much discussion about what the remaining members of the band would do next. Ultimately they decided to carry on and returned in 1996 with possibly their most well known album “Everything Must Go”.

Continuing the ‘missing’ theme, looking at the running order for this particular TOTP, it strikes me that there’s something else absent and that’s the presence of Britpop. Isn’t 1995 meant to be the year it exploded? So where are all its representatives? Now you might be thinking to yourself, “What’s this guy on about? What about Elastica?!” Yes, that’s true. Before the show has even started, you’ve got Justine Frischmann and co announcing their presence on the show tonight in the message to camera slot. However, check out some of the rest of the artists on the running order:

Elton John
Annie Lennox
Celine Dion
Gloria Estefan

Hell, there’s even a classical violinist on the show albeit she was a rather unusual flavour of that particular genre.

Not mentioned in that list are tonight’s opening act who are Alex Party. This Italo House collective had a minor hit the year before with “Alex Party (Saturday Night Party)” but it’s this one – “Don’t Give Me Your Life” that is surely the one they are known for if, indeed, they are remembered at all. Now I’ve had my say on all these generic dance tunes clogging up the charts around this time and nearly all of it has been negative. What can I say? I’m a pop kid at heart not a dance head. However, it did seem to me that within this one there was almost the semblance of a proper song structure. I’m sure I can detect verses and a bridge into a chorus. This wasn’t the norm was it or hadn’t I been listening to all the other dance hits properly? True, said chorus incorporates a deadly annoying bleeping synth riff that seemed to be a feature of the genre but tiny credit where it’s due I suppose. “Don’t Give Me Your Life” would peak at No 2 in the UK selling 400,000 copies along the way.

The first of four songs that we’ve only just seen next – that’s the fall out from missing an episode I suppose. I went into quite some detail about Scarlet and their biggest hit “Independent Love Song” in the last post so what to say about them this time?

Well, maybe that it seems to me that they’re not talked up enough as being a commercially successful group from Hull; after all my adopted city isn’t full of them. Yes, of course, there’s The Housemartins and The Beautiful South and Mick Ronson but after that? Everything But The Girl met at Hull University and took their name from a Hull shop but neither Tracey nor Ben were actually from Hull. Kingmaker had a smattering of Top 40 hits between 1992 and 1995 but I would suggest they are ignored in a similar fashion to Scarlet. Who else? The Paddingtons were tipped for superstardom at the start of the new millennium but never really lived up to those expectations. Any more? Wait, what?! Throbbing Gristle? The industrial music pioneers led by Genesis P-Orridge were from Hull?! I never knew that! Mind you, if you’ve ever heard any of their stuff, I’m not surprised the good people of Hull don’t big them up.

So, back to Scarlet. Sure, they only had two UK Top 40 chart hits but, on the other hand, they had TWO UK CHART HITS! How many of us can lay claim to that?! Oh and why does host Mark Goodier say he feels overdressed in reaction to Cheryl Parker’s flamboyant, Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen-esque studio outfit. Surely he means underdressed or is he being ironic? Probably lose the irony and stick to the straight down the line script that you’ve built a career on eh Mark, there’s a good chap.

Hi, is that the fumigators? Good. I’ve got an urgent job that needs doing. There an horrendous stench in the TOTP studio due to the presence of a massive stinker at No 19 in the charts! I don’t mean to be disrespectful but Gloria Estefan’s version of “Everlasting Love” is malodorous in the extreme. The third track released as a single from her “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me” album, this is one of the worst covers I think I may ever have heard. OK, not the very worst. Nothing can can hold a candle to Paul Shane butchering “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” but it’s still absolutely awful.

I think it’s just the utter laziness with which Gloria approaches the song. That homogenous Eurodance sound has just been applied lavishly to this classic pop song made most famous by The Love Affair who took it to No 1 in 1968. Those Italo House piano flourishes just seem so incongruous and make the thing sound so clunky.

The performance here does nothing to aid the song either. It’s another underwhelming live by satellite exclusive, this time from Miami (obviously) but I’m not convinced that the whole thing isn’t just filmed against a green screen with a fake background added in. Also, Gloria’s backing band look like the uncoolest collection of musicians ever assembled. In short, the whole thing was a bad idea with a botched execution. Must do better.

And so to the aforementioned classical violinist. There are examples of classical music crossing the divide into the pop charts but as Mark Goodier alludes to in his intro, it didn’t happen often. Off the top of my head, there’s “Nessun Dorma” by Luciano Pavarotti but that was off the back of the BBC’s Italia 90 coverage. Then there’s Ravel’s “Balero” but again that was due to another sporting event – Torvill and Dean’s gold medal winning skate at the 1984 Winter Olympics. Of course, there have been pop hits inspired by classical music. How about “World In Union” by Kiri Te Kanawa which was based on a movement from Holst’s The Planets (again though that hit came about as part of the promotion of the 1991 Rugby Union World Cup). There’s always “Fanfare For The Common Man” by Emerson Lake & Palmer I guess which was an adaptation of composer Aaron Copland’s work of the same name. OK, there’s been a few but it must be a tiny percentage that have occupied the charts compared to pop/rock acts over a 70 year period.

Seeking to change all that was a then 16 year old Singaporean-born classical violinist called Vanessa-Mae. Hailed by some as the female Nigel Kennedy, she made her first professional appearance aged just 10 and by 1995 she was already onto her fourth album. However, it was that album -“Violin Player” which would send her into the Stradivarius stratosphere with sales of 1.2 million worldwide. The album was produced by Mike Batt of Wombles and “Bright Eyes” fame and the lead single from it was “Toccata And Fugue”, a take on J.S.Bach’s “Toccata And Fugue In D Minor”.

Now, and I deliberately omitted this one from my list above, we had already seen a version of this piece in the UK Top 40 back in 1980 when Sky took “Toccata” to No 5. This though was the golden era of classical/pop music crossovers – I think this was also when that horrible Hooked On Classics phenomenon was about.

In 1995 with Eurodance and Britpop dominating, the prospect of a classical artist breakthrough seemed unlikely. I guess that Vanessa-Mae wasn’t your average classical artist. Was there some negativity from the classical music world to how she was promoted at the time? I see to think there was. Certainly her performance here was challenging the accepted and expected norms of the genre. Backing dancers lifting her up in the air and then appearing to do ‘The Locomotion’ dance? The insertion of a sample that says “Fasten Your Seat Belts” halfway through? And what about Vanessa-Mae’s outfit? Leopard print top and micro skirt? Remembering she was just 16 at the time was there any outcry about that back then or was it not seen as a big deal as the era of ‘lad culture’ approached? The single made No 16 which was a position not to be sniffed at given its musical style. The rest is history. By 2006, she was listed as the wealthiest entertainer aged under 30 in the UK.

Maybe spare a thought for Ed Alleyne-Johnson though. The one time New Model Army member and violinist recorded “Purple Electric Violin Concerto” three years before “Violin Player” and fused a classical instrument with a more pop/rock vibe to great effect and critical success but nowhere near the commercial sales of Vanessa-Mae. Then again he didn’t look like her either.

Phew! I didn’t anticipate having so much to say about Vanessa-Mae. Consequently, the next act might be given the briefest of write ups especially as, like Scarlet before them, they’ve already been on before. I refer to MN8 who are up to No 5 with “I’ve Got A Little Something For You”. There was some debate online recently in the wake of their appearances on TOTP as to what that little something actually was. I say debate but it’s pretty clear they were singing about their penises isn’t it? Oh and there’s this titbit about member Dee Tails. He became an actor and has played four different Star Wars characters. What’s that? Make a joke about light sabres. I wouldn’t stoop so low!

It’s right wing nutter masquerading as Home Secretary Stella Braverman’s current nemesis now. In the Tory government’s quest to turn the nation against each other by vilifying nurses, doctors, teachers, rail staff etc, I didn’t see Elton John as an obvious target for them. As if the world wasn’t mad enough. Anyway, back in 1995, Elton was on a hot streak. Unlike the second half of the 80s when he couldn’t buy a hit, the 90s had already provided him with eleven Top 40 singles including two No 1s. Even that though wasn’t enough to satiate Elton and less than a year after his “The Lion King Soundtrack” album came out, he released his next one called “Made In England”. The lead single from it was “Believe” which received critical acclaim but to me sounds like a rewrite of his 1992 plodding ballad hit “The One”*. Seriously, Elton could have knocked this one out whilst polishing his multiple music awards. In fact, “Believe” was nominated for a Grammy for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance but didn’t win.

*Interestingly, the B-side of the single is the aforementioned “The One”. Hmm.

The black and white promo with Elton travelling in a zeppelin was probably bigged up at the time as a feat of video production but it hasn’t aged that well. “Believe” peaked at No 15 but to be honest, I couldn’t recall what it sounded like before listening to it and I’ve already forgotten how it goes now. Still, anyone who gets up the nose of Suella Braverman is OK by me.

Another song now that I wrote loads about in the last post and also an example of how your brain shifts and re-edits events over time. I described Annie Lennox’s hair during her performance of “No More ‘I Love You’s’” as being a bit Minnie Mouse-esque. There was clearly something lingering in my mind that triggered that comment and here it is. Actual Mini Mouse headgear! I must have forgotten Annie wore some for real! She’s lost the drag queen ballerinas for this one and replaced them with some guys who look like they’ve raided Scarlet’s wardrobe with their ruffled shirts.

Something else I talked about in the last post was what I felt was an odd decision from Annie to make her second solo album a collection of cover versions. I’ve since discovered that the reason for her decision is that she felt emotionally spent after pouring everything into debut album “Diva” and a covers album was a way of releasing an album without the same emotional investment and also allowing her to spend more time with her children. That work/life balance worked for Annie as she went one better than Elton John by winning the Grammy she was nominated for when “No More ‘I Love You’s’” won Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.

And so to this week’s ‘exclusive’. After looking completely ill at ease during the message to camera piece at the top of the show, Elastica look much more comfortable on stage performing their single “Waking Up”. This was their third consecutive Top 20 hit but rather unbelievably given the band’s profile, it was also their last. True, they did release their first album a month on from this that went to No 1 and broke records for a debut album in the UK so chart-wise, that was their biggest achievement but it’s still surprising. Or is it given that the band didn’t release another single in the UK until 2000* by which point Britpop had long since burnt out?

*I’m not including the 6 track EP released in 1999 that was a collection of demos and rarities.

So why was there such a big gap between releases? Well, after their album came out, they embarked on a huge round of touring (they went round North America four times). The punishing schedule led to bass player Annie Holland leaving the band citing exhaustion. This put into action a flurry of line up changes which, allied with Justine Frischmann’s heroin addiction, proved to not be conducive to the recording of new material. Record label issues and a poor reaction to second album “The Menace” led to the band calling it a day in 2001.

With that all said, I guess it’s time to confront the elephant in the room, the dreaded ‘P’ word – plagiarism. All three of Elastica’s hit singles faced accusations of copying other artists’ work. “Line Up” and “Connection” sounded a bit too similar to songs by post-punk rockers Wire whilst “Waking Up” bears an undeniable resemblance to “No More Heroes” by The Stranglers. This led to litigation action from several music publishers which were settled out of court. Does that tarnish the Elastica legacy or their place in musical history (however big or small that might be)? Personally, I don’t think so but maybe I’m being hypocritical as Ed Sheeran can get to f**k with his song stealing ways as far as I’m concerned.

It’s a second week at the top for Celine Dion with “Think Twice”. Somehow, despite this being its fourteenth week on the Top 40, “Think Twice” had managed to position itself in pole position just as Valentine’s Day rolled around. This may just have been a factor in not just seeing off competition from Annie Lennox who was strongly tipped to replace it but also in helping Celine to capture the album top spot in the shape of “The Colour Of My Love”. February 1995 – what a time we were all having!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Alex Party	Don’t Give Me Your Life	No
2	Scarlet	Independent Love Song	Surely I bought this? No?
3	Gloria Estefan	Everlasting Love	Everlasting shite more like. No
4	Vanessa-Mae	Toccata And Fugue	Nope
5	MN8	I’ve Got A Little Something For You	Negative
6	Elton John	Believe	I did not
7	Annie Lennox	No More ‘I Love You’s’	No but I have the original by The Lover Speaks from 1986
8	Elastica	Waking Up	I didn’t as it goes
9	Celine Dion	Think Twice	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/p00fsvgs/top-of-the-pops-16021995

TOTP 02 FEB 1995

Posted on September 26, 2023 by 80stastic

OK, we’re moving into a new era of TOTP with this particular edition. It’s taken a whole year but executive producer Ric Blaxill has finally turned his attention to the show’s logo, theme tune, titles and set. The much ridiculed ‘weather vane’ title graphics are gone and replaced by just seven seconds of some golden hued torsos indulging in vaguely musical activities involving a microphone and headphones and finally holding up a plaque with the new logo on it. It’s all very underwhelming. The logo itself was soft launched on the retro archive spin off show Top of the Pops 2 five months previously and is a much more basic design than its immediate predecessor with the ‘of’ and ‘the’ rather oddly highlighted within a blue box. As for the theme tune – “Red Hot Pop” composed by Erasure’s Vince Clarke – it’s main riff reminds me of something I can quite put my finger on…give me a moment…got it! The intro to “Rasputin” by Boney M! No really! It does! Blaxill hasn’t chucked everything out though. He’s retained the increasingly pointless artist to camera piece at the very top of the show (this week it’s Luther Vandross telling us Stingray like ‘not to go anywhere for the next half hour’) as well as the ‘golden mic’ presenter feature. As it’s a special week, he’s got a big name in to do the honours – it’s Kylie Minogue in a scorching hot, red latex dress! Blimey!

We hardly have time to take that image in before we’re into the first act though who are M People with “Open Your Heart”. This would turn out to be the band’s seventh in a run of eight consecutive Top 10 hits and was the second single release from their “Bizarre Fruit” album. Given those numbers, clearly the record buying public hadn’t had enough of the M People formula just yet though they were arguably teetering at the top of the hill named success and about to start coming down the other side.

“Open Your Heart” ticked all the usual boxes – perky backing, uplifting chorus, powerhouse Heather Small vocals, parping sax courtesy of Mike Pickering and yet I don’t remember this one at all which suggests to me that I, at least, was tiring of M People. Their next single release was “Search For The Hero” which would deviate from the template rather and remains one of their most well known tunes. Could it be that even the band themselves had got a little bored with their sound?

Ah, now then. It’s time for that weird period of 90s pop when there were a flurry of hits that were all based around a riff that went ‘nah, ne, ne, nah, ne, ne, ne, nah, ne’. This example comes from MN8 whose debut single “I’ve Got A Little Something For You” went all the way to No 2 and was the first of seven UK chart hits.

Off the top of my head there’s “This Is How We Do It” by Montell Jordan which was a hit in the early Summer of 1995…

Then a year later the abysmal Peter Andre recycled the riff to score a No 1 no less (no really) with “Flava”…

There’s possibly more examples but anyway, back to MN8 who…erm…emanated from Surrey and comprised of KG, G-Man, Kule T and Dee Tails (I’ve no idea what there real names were but I bet they are along the lines of Kevin, Keith, Gordon and Dean). Coming on like Ultimate Kaos’ hormone filled, elder brothers (the six pack exposing strip in this performance was a bit gratuitous lads), this lot briefly threatened to be a big deal. Tour support slots with Boyzone, East 17 and even Janet Jackson only strengthened the notion. However, after their deal with Sony expired, the band concentrated on live shows and then took time out to decide what they wanted to do next. We weren’t talking a few weeks here though – the lads’ sabbatical is now at 25 years and counting. Apparently they did reconvene in 2013 to record an album that remains unreleased.

This inactivity hasn’t affected the band’s ego though. Also in 2013, G-Man declared in an interview on BBC1 Xtra of MN8’s legacy, “How are you going to write a story about the best acts of the past fifteen years and not mention us”. G-Man’s confidence clearly wasn’t matched by his ability to count – at the time of the interview, MN8 hadn’t released any new material for sixteen years. Ah.

Here’s another ‘Na-na-na-nah’ song and it’s a third outing on the show for the video for “Here Comes The Hotstepper” by Ini Kamoze next. Although there is an obvious emphasis on the word ‘Hotstepper’ given its appearance in the song’s title and chorus (it’s patois slang for someone on the run from the police), there’s also the reappearance later in the lyrics of a phrase that I only knew from Kris Kross and their 1992 hit “Jump”. I refer to ‘Mack Daddy’ (or is it ‘Daddy Mack’?). So what did this one mean? Well, apparently it’s another patois term and means ‘a conspicuously successful pimp’! Did Kris Kross’s parents know what they were rapping about?!

In the ocean of mainly sub standard dance tunes that was the UK Top 40 at this time, here’s a life buoy of a tune that I have a particular connection to. Scarlet were Cheryl Parker and Jo Youle who met at Wolfreton school in Hull. Now Hull, of course, is where I have been living for the past twenty years but that’s not the connection I was talking about (obvious though it is). No, it’s that my wife (who is also from Hull)…no, she doesn’t know Cheryl or Jo (that really would be obvious)…no, it’s that my wife had heard of them well before “Independent Love Song” was a hit.

I’m not sure where but she’d heard one of their early singles released on indie label Haven Records “Shine On Me Now” and liked it so much she asked me to try and find out about it/them what with me working in a record shop and all. Clearly my research skills weren’t up to the job as we don’t own that single. However, I did try honest. Look, here’s the note that I made of it in my Filofax (yes, I had one!).

Anyway, three years later, Scarlet were signed to WEA and their second major label single release (the first was “I Really Like The Idea” recorded with third member Joanne Fox who left before success hit) propelled them into the charts. And what a song! It swoops and soars, ebbs and flows and has an epic chorus. It stood out like a firework against the dark night sky to me. It really should have got higher up the charts than No 12. In fact, Scarlet should have had a much bigger career but they only had one more chart hit after “Independent Love Song” – the follow up single “I Wanna Be Free (To Be With Him)” which made it to No 21. They released two albums “Naked” and “Chemistry” – the former made No 59 whilst the latter disappeared without trace. Jo Youle is now chief executive of Missing Persons, a charity that gives support to those searching for lost loved ones whilst Cheryl Parker started SongwritersWorldwide, a website for new acts to find songs.

By the way, I finally found “Shine On Me Now” (if only YouTube had been around back then). A version of it appeared on “Naked” retitled as just “Shine”.

It’s time for Luther Vandross now who, as previously mentioned, did the message to camera piece at the top of the show earlier. He’s here to perform the latest single from his covers project “Songs” which had been a No 1 album and had already given him a Top 3 single courtesy of his duet with Mariah Carey on “Endless Love”. The track chosen as the follow up was “Always And Forever”. Nothing to do with the debut album of last week’s hosts Eternal* but a hit for Heatwave in 1977.

*The Eternal fall out story broke just after I’d published hence why I didn’t comment on it in the post

It’s a bit of a dirge to be fair and Luther’s straight down the middle version doesn’t do anything to alter my opinion. It was written by Rod Temperton who hailed from Cleethorpes (just down the East coast from Hull) who also wrote “Thriller”, “Off The Wall” and “Rock With You” for Michael Jackson! However, for me his masterpiece remains Heatwave’s “Boogie Nights” which has one of the best intros ever…

I’ve been critical in the past of the live by satellite exclusive performances that TOTP promoted going all the way back to the 1991 ‘year zero’ reboot I believe. My main issue with them was that there wasn’t anything very…well…‘exclusive’ about them with the majority being filmed in empty theatres and concert venues (presumably in the middle of the night due to time differences) that could have been from anywhere and were certainly no better than a turn in the TOTP studio. I get that it was a way for the artist to appear on the show if they couldn’t be there in person due to touring or promotional commitments but surely these satellite slots weren’t even as good as an expensively produced video were they?

Well, I can’t accuse this particular satellite performance of being anaemic but I’m not sure it’s entertaining either. It’s just…well, bonkers. Beaming in from Japan, are REM performing “Crushed By Eyeliner” on a stage along with a crowd of extras some of whom are dancing on a podium. Having watched the official promo video, perhaps they are trying to recreate it on stage. Perhaps. But the three stooges in bear costumes?! What the f**k was that about? It all just smacks a bit of “look at us being so zany and subverting the mainstream”; so much so that rather than promote the single, it distracts from it. Still, Blaxill didn’t miss the chance to promote the TOTP brand by emblazoning the new logo on the arse of one of the bears!

“Crushed By Eyeliner” was the third single from the band’s “Monster” album and it was probably the last one of theirs that I took any real notice of. I kind of lost sight of REM after this. Their final two albums of the 90s – “New Adventures In Hi-Fi” and “Up” – passed me by completely. This track is still a winner though and its No 23 peak probably doesn’t do it justice.

“How many of you remember the original?” asks Kylie and the end of this next track. Me Kylie! Me! And it was better than this bastardised version! Back in 1982, Pigbag went all the way to No 3 with “Papa’s Got A Brand New Pigbag”, an instrumental with a genuinely once heard never forgotten brass riff. The success and legacy of the track (its distinctive refrain was even adopted as a football terrace chant especially by QPR fans) meant though that Pigbag became one of those artists where the song became bigger than the band. In fairness, they did their best to make sure that fate didn’t become them when they pushed their post punk anarchist agenda by being escorted out of the TOTP studio after one of the band performed steaming drunk on a live show and swore at a BBC producer after the cameras stopped rolling. Pigbag split in 1983 but their hit refused to go away.

Fast forward to 1995 and here it is again remodelled by Perfecto Allstarz as “Reach Up (Papa’s Got A Brand New Pigbag)”. Whereas Pigbag struggled to be known as a band and not a song, Perfecto Allstarz weren’t a band at all but rather a vehicle for Paul Oakenfold and his Perfecto brand. The trance DJ and record producer would dominate the 90s dance world and work with everyone from Moby to The Rolling Stones via his Perfecto remix team and record label. His remix of U2’s “Even Better Than The Real Thing” was the first time I heard the name Perfecto and a fine remix it was too. “Reach Up” though was awful. The original was a classic that I would argue couldn’t be improved upon and certainly not by adding a strangulated house style vocal imploring us to ‘Reach Up’ to it. And what was with the skeleton costumes? Maybe Blaxill had watched Live And Let Die that week and run with the idea…

I feel as if I should make more of a big deal of Celine Dion finally making it to No 1 with “Think Twice” after twelve weeks on the Top 40 including three consecutive at No 2 but seeing as it’s going to be the UK’s chart topper for the six more after this, I can’t really be bothered.

OK, this is new (sort of). Instead of playing out with the No 1 record we’ve got a preview of a new song that wasn’t even released until the Monday following this broadcast. Annie Lennox (or Annie Lenn-ox as Kylie curiously pronounces her surname) had been away from the charts for two years since the runaway success of her debut solo album “Diva” and with no sign of Eurythmics getting back together she moved onto a follow up. Nothing out of the ordinary there except that as her sophomore effort, she chose to record a set of cover versions. Wasn’t that the sort of thing an artist would do to fulfil a contractual obligation with a record company? Whatever reason was behind the decision, Annie chose to cover songs from the likes of Paul Simon, Bob Marley, Neil Young and, in an act of musical heresy, The Clash. Entitled “Medusa”, it received mixed reviews in the music press though just about everyone agreed that the lead single was actually rather good. Given the stellar names of the other artists whose work Annie covered, the choice of taking on obscure 80s act The Lover Speaks was straight out of left field. Or was it? The Lover Speaks were the duo David Freeman and Joseph Hughes who sent a demo tape to Dave Stewart of Eurythmics who signed them to his publishing house. He sent their demo to Chryssie Hynde who sent it to producer Jimmy Iovine who got them signed to A&M. You don’t even need all six steps of separation to draw a line back to Annie.

Now then, back in the Summer of 1986, big things were being predicted for The Lover Speaks. They were being touted as The Walker Brothers of the 80s and their debut single “No More ‘I Love You’s’” was attracting lots of airplay. I think I first heard it on the Gary Davies show on Radio 1 as he seemed to play it everyday and what a glorious thing it was. My friend Robin described it as “a poppy Cocteau Twins” and I think he’s spot on. A shimmering diamond of a song that was full of melody and drama that pulled at your heartstrings every time you heard it (well, mine at least). I was so impressed I bought their album but in truth, a bit like Annie’s “Medusa”, nothing else on it matched its quality. As with many a single that I adored in the 80s though, “No More ‘I Love You’s’” didn’t even make the Top 40 peaking at No 58.

Given all of this, despite Annie’s version not being anything near as good as the original, I was pleased when it became a huge hit peaking at No 2. A song that good deserved to be heard by a wider audience. I’d had similar thoughts back in 1987 when Alison Moyet released a very poor version of “Weak In The Presence Of Beauty”, a wonderful song which was originally released by Floy Joy also in 1986 and which also failed to become the huge hit it deserved to be when it peaked at a lowly No 85. And guess what? It turns out that The Lover Speaks collaborated with Alison on her album “Raindancing” from which “Weak In The Presence Of Beauty” came. Kevin Bacon’s got nothing on The Lover Speaks!

Now, as I recall, there was quite a bit of reaction to Annie’s performance on this TOTP but then I guess that’s what she wanted. I mean, you don’t take to the stage with four drag queen ballerinas by accident do you? Annie herself though is rather out there as well. The extravagant headwear that made her look like Minnie Mouse and the weird performing as if under duress when being buffeted by the ballerinas towards the end? All very strange but at least it made for a memorable appearance.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	M People	Open Your Heart	No
2	MN8	I’ve Got A Little Something For You	As if
3	Ini Kamoze	Here Comes The Hotstepper	No but I think my wife did
4	Scarlet	Independent Love Song	Call the fuzz! Where’s my copy of this gone?!
5	Luther Vandross	Always And Forever	Nope
6	REM	Crushed By Eyeliner	Nah
7	Perfecto Allstarz	Reach Up (Papa’s Got A Brand New Pigbag)	NO!
8	Celine Dion	Think Twice	I did not
9	Annie Lennox	No More ‘I Love You’s’	No but I had The Lover Speaks album with the original on

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/m001qp2q/top-of-the-pops-02021995

TOTP 25 FEB 1993

Posted on July 1, 2022 by 80stastic

After having last week off due to Glastonbury, we’re back with a double helping of BBC4 TOTP repeats to review. To be honest, I wouldn’t have said no to another week’s holiday. I’ve only just caught up and suddenly were off again! At least there’s only eight artists on the show this week as there aren’t any Breakers and, with one notable and entirely permissible exception, they’re all in the TOTP studio.

We start with Bizarre Inc with a track I don’t recall at all entitled “Took My Love”. As with previous hit “I’m Gonna Get You”, it features Angie Brown on vocals and was taken from their album “Energique”. Actually, I don’t remember the album either. I thought they were a singles band.

*checks Bizarre Inc discography*

Nope. I don’t recognise that album cover but then I probably didn’t sell many copies of it in the Rochdale Our Price I was working in as, despite the presence of three hit singles, it only got as high as No 41 in the charts. In fact, did any of the dance acts from this period have big selling albums? Did the likes of Altern 8, K-Klass, Felix, Shut Up And Dance, Rozalla, Kym Sims, U.S.U.R.A. etc translate their singles success into album sales? Check these stats out:

Artist	Album	Chart peak
Altern 8	Full On… Mask Hysteria	11
Felix	#1	26
K-Klass	Universal	73
Kym Sims	Too Blind to See It	39
Rozalla	Everybody’s Free	20
Shut Up And Dance	Death Is Not the End	38
U.S.U.R.A.	Open Your Mind	Did not chart

OK, it’s not an exhaustive list but all of these acts had decent sized hit singles in the proceeding twelve months to this point and I’d have to say I don’t see a massive crossover trend for the parent albums. Anyway, back to Bizarre Inc and I didn’t find this track anywhere near as effective as their previous hits. It followed the same formula but didn’t quite have the same immediate impact. Also, what was the deal with the synths on swings? Didn’t another dance act use this prop on the show recently? I’m sure they did but I’m not going back in the archives to check who it was. Just chalk it up to another failed attempt by the TOTP producers to make dance acts look visually interesting.

“Took My Love’ peaked at No 19.

https://youtu.be/x-gOzlWnwcg

From a single I don’t remember at all to one which always brings to mind early 1993 when I hear it these days. The repositioning and relaunch of Annie Lennox as a solo artist after Eurythmics went on a decade long sabbatical had gone as well as it could possibly have been expected to. Her debut solo album “Diva” went straight in at No 1 and furnished Annie with two Top 10 singles. Then, just nine days before this TOTP aired, it won a BRIT for Best British Album. Annie won another for Best British Female Artist. It was heady stuff but she still wasn’t finished.

“Love Song For A Vampire” was a track Annie recorded for the Francis Ford Coppola directed film Bram Stokers Dracula starring Gary Oldman, Anthony Hopkins, Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves. For me, it was easily the best thing about the film. I just couldn’t get past Keanu’s disastrous English accent or the odd way that Oldman glided around the set as Dracula. The sexual imagery seemed like it existed just to create a headline and the whole thing just felt like a big letdown and a missed opportunity to reboot the classic tale.

Annie’s song (no, not John Denver’s) though was a fine piece; with her vocals being hauntingly beautiful and yet unsettling at the same time. Its unusual structure helps to create that feeling of otherworldliness that resonates from it. It doesn’t have a chorus as such and is built around a constant, pressing synth refrain. The track wasn’t on “Diva” so not wishing to miss out on a chance to plug it again, her record label made it a double A-side with “Little Bird” which was from the album. It was “Love Song For A Vampire” though that got all the airplay and it was an enormous hit peaking at No 3.

For Annie’s turn here, it looks like the TOTP production team have been busy repurposing sets from previous performances by other artists. We saw those candles and burning torches just the other week when Sting was on and the dry ice coming from that little run of steps looks familiar as well though I can’t think who else used that as a prop. They’ve added a window behind Annie presumably for a vampire to fly through. Thankfully there are no fake bats anywhere to be seen on stage.

https://youtu.be/HBmLGUlMJLA

Of course, Annie’s song (still not John Denver) isn’t the only hit single to come from a film about vampires in the 90s…

The only act not in the studio tonight is Michael Jackson and in all honesty I don’t think the show can be criticised for not pulling off the coup of a personal appearance by the self styled King of Pop himself. Despite it being 1993, in true Jacko tradition, he’s still releasing songs from an album that came out two years ago. “Give In To Me” was the seventh single of nine in total to come from “Dangerous” and was released an astonishing fifteen months after the album. That didn’t seem to matter though as it scaled the UK charts all the way to No 2 (it wasn’t released as a single in the US).

Jackson’s profile was higher than usual though even by his phenomenal standards at this time owing to the recent broadcast of his Oprah Winfrey interview that host Tony Dortie references in his intro. Maybe that helped shift a few units. I’m sure the tabloids would have been full of comment about Jacko’s explanation of his ever whitening skin which we now know was due to a condition called vitiligo and nothing to do with deliberate skin bleaching. Nobody was buying it at the time though (his explanation not his single).

As for the song itself, it just sounded like a rehash of previous hit “Dirty Diana” from the “Bad” album to me. As if to confirm my opinion, the CD single came with “Dirty Diana” as an extra track along with another song that included a heavy metal guitar solo in “Beat It” from “Thriller”. That came courtesy of Eddie Van Halen whereas the solo on “Give In To Me” was the work of Slash from the aforementioned Guns N’ Roses. As with previous single “Heal The World”, the 7” came in a poster bag sleeve. I hated those things! Such a faff to put back together if you dared to open it up to look at the poster.

The ubiquitous Dina Carroll next who seemed to be on the show every other week around this time. Having released three singles in 1992, none of which got any higher than No 26, Dina was back on the chart trail in 1993 with a song called “This Time”. Nothing to do with the Bryan Adams song of the same name nor indeed the England World Cup squad of 1982’s ditty ( I would have liked to have heard Dina tackle that one!), this was another slushy sounding ballad just like previous single “So Close”. It could just as easily have been sung by the likes of Eternal.

I’ve said it before but why were her record label A&M pissing about with these nice but average tracks when they could have just released “Don’t Be A Stranger”. The album had just come out but they didn’t release the ace up their sleeve until nine months later. I’ve never worked in marketing nor promotions but the strategy behind Dina’s release schedule still leaves me baffled.

“This Time” peaked at No 23 thereby becoming Dina’s worst performing single at the time. Even then, A&M didn’t turn to “Don’t Be A Stranger”, instead opting for the uptempo “Express” as the next single. You deserve a big, Johnny Rotten style raspberry for that A&M!

https://youtu.be/T2bJs7MR0YM

We arrive now at one of the names that I will always associate with 1993 though the artist concerned has gone onto successes way past those twelve months. I speak, of course, of Shaggy or as I think of him, one of the three ‘S’s – the unholy trinity of Snow, Shabba Ranks and his good self. Now when I was growing up, the name Shaggy only meant one thing – Scooby Doo’s best mate. Not in 1993 though. Shaggy was a chart sensation with his ragga / dancehall take on obscure ska song “Oh Carolina”. With samples of James Brown and the Peter Gunn theme thrown into the mix alongside Shaggy’s gruff vocals, it sounded fresh and new in 1993 despite actually having quite the retro roots.

Needless to say, I didn’t like it. I couldn’t be doing with all that growling, wind-it-up, raggamuffin ‘toasting’ Shaggy did although the song was as catchy as hell. In his defence, I would say that if I had to choose (with a gun to my head), I found Shaggy to be the most tolerable of the three ‘S’s. My Dad taught me as a kid that the three ‘S’s referred to your daily ablutions routine – shit, shower and shave. If I had to associate those with the musical three ‘S’s of 1993, I think I’d go:

Shit – Shabba Ranks (because he is/was)
Shower – Shaggy (because you felt dirty after listening to his record)
Shave – Snow (because he looked like he needed one to get rid of his bum fluff)

Back to “Oh Carolina” though and I always thought that it sounded like Shaggy was singing “yer arse” in the chorus. You know that bit is immediately after the words “Oh Carolina”? There. The actual lyrics are “Prowl off, jump and prance” but if you watch The Story of 1993 video on iPlayer, Shaggy suggests that him and his mates in their youth used to sing an expletive in there when listening to the original by the Folkes Brothers.

A success all around Europe, “Oh Carolina” was nowhere bigger than in the UK where it went to No 1 so we’ll be seeing it again soon and for that reason I’ll leave the Shaggy discussion there for now.

https://youtu.be/raZ5vIGcCs0

Here comes another young female solo artist who was a big deal for a short while in the 90s but who, like Dina Carroll before her, didn’t quite manage to sustain a career of longevity. Tasmin Archer scored one of the biggest hits of 1992 with her No 1 single “Sleeping Satellite” but, of course, that’s a double edged sword. Yeah, the initial success is great but how do you follow it up? If your next single doesn’t go to No 1 as well, it’s deemed to be a failure and you’re all washed up already. Even if you manage to repeat the trick and bag another chart topper, it only prolongs the eventual fall. Look at the case of Frankie Goes To Hollywood – three No 1 singles straight off the bat. A phenomenon. Then the fourth only goes to No 2 and the band are immediately written off as being down the dumper.

Given that piece of history, poor Tasmin was really up against it. Many may have thought that she didn’t give herself a decent chance by choosing a follow up single that dealt with the subject of child abuse and includes the radio unfriendly line ‘son of a bitch, you broke my heart’ in the lyrics. That view though assumes songwriting to be a commercial transaction – write an unchallenging, catchy tune, get a hit. Tasmin chose another path, the path of songwriting as an art. It was a brave choice and one that didn’t bring in the sales but which should have sustained her credibility as a serious recoding artist. I’m not sure it did.

The song in question was “In Your Care”, written from the point of view of a child experiencing abuse. It was angry in tone and delivery with Tasmin spitting out the ‘son of a bitch’ line. The first time you heard it, the moment was genuinely arresting. Another unusual decision was for a new artist to allow their second ever release to be a charity single but that’s just what Tasmin did with the profits from it going to Childline. You couldn’t argue that it’s subject matter wasn’t on point but was it too much for record buyers? After all, previous Childline singles had been much more jolly Beatles covers by the likes of Wet Wet Wet and Tom Jones. The latter had only just been in the charts the other week back then so maybe there was even a case of charity fatigue?

To try and signpost the gravity of the single, the TOTP producers have put a grainy, black and white picture effect at the beginning and end of the performance. I’m not sure it really makes its point. Still, nice to see a double bass on the show.

“In Your Care” peaked at No 16.

Has anyone, anywhere ever referred to Bryan Ferry as ‘The Guvnor’ before as host Tony Dortie does here in his intro? ‘The Guvnor’?! This is Bryan Ferry we’re talking about Tony! Not Viz comic mobster Big Vern, not self styled hard man footballer Paul Ince who actually went by the nickname of ‘The Guvnor’. It’s Bryan f*****g Ferry Dortie! He studied fine art at Newcastle University, he’s the archetypal lounge lizard, one of the most stylish rock stars of all time. You make him sound like Grouty from Porridge, the top dog feared by his fellow inmates who intimidates even the prison wardens. Dear God!

Anyway, rant over. Ferry is on the show to plug his new single, a cover of the Screamin’ Jay Hawkins song “I Put A Spell On You”, the lead single from his latest album “Taxi”. This was Bryan’s first album since 1987’s “Bête Noire” though there had been a compilation album in between called “The Ultimate Collection” which had given him a hit single in the form of the rereleased “Let’s Stick Together”. As with much of his 70s solo output, “Taxi” was essentially a covers album (the very last track is a Ferry original) that actually did pretty well going to No 2 in the charts and achieving gold sales status. I remember being mildly surprised at its success as it seemed an anomaly in a musical landscape dominated by dance music but then, as we saw earlier, albums by dance acts never sold that well. As well this single, the album included tracks by the likes of Lou Reed, Carole King and a version of the Christian hymn “Amazing Grace”. I think I may have had a promo copy of the album though I’ve no idea where it is now.

The staging of the performance here is suitably pretentious for a Ferry production with dancers strutting about pointlessly while Bry tinkles the ivories on the piano. Is that Gail Ann Dorsey up there with him on bass? I think it is – well you can’t deny the class she brings to the proceedings I guess.

Although much of his back catalogue is outstanding, this does sound a bit dreary on reflection. It managed a chart high of No 18 but if you want a different (and in my opinion superior) take on the track, here’s the aforementioned Annie Lennox…

Those cheeky rascals 2 Unlimited are still ripping up the charts with their lowest common denominator dance anthem “No Limit”. It really was amazing how this lot managed to have so many hits (fourteen in the UK!) when their songs were so flimsy. There really is not a lot of flesh on the bones of “No Limit” but that didn’t seem to matter to the masses who sent it to No 1 for a whole five weeks!

https://youtu.be/8pmwsZ3J-uI

They’ve got a couple of masked up dancers in for this performance and the one on the right looks oddly familiar. Oh, I’ve got it. The smaller monster in this clip from 70s sci-fi show Space 1999 – dead ringer…

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Bizarre Inc	Took My Love	Nope
2	Annie Lennox	Love Song For A Vampire / Little Bird	No but wife had the Diva album with Little Bird on it
3	Michael Jackson	Give In To Me	Nah
4	Dina Carroll	This Time	No
5	Shaggy	Oh Carolina	Didn’t do it for me – no
6	Tasmin Archer	In Your Care	Great song but it’s not in the singles box
7	Bryan Ferry	I Put A Spell On You	No but I had that promo copy of the album. No idea where it is now
8	2 Unlimited	No Limit	Never!

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0018s7m/top-of-the-pops-25021993

TOTP 20 AUG 1992

Posted on March 23, 2022 by 80stastic

Right – a correction to start off with. I said in the last post that we’d missed the 6th August show due to the Adrian Rose consent issue. That was incorrect. It was because of the BBC’s coverage of the Olympics taking over the schedule. Presumably there was no slot left for even just 30 minutes of pop music. Thanks to those people who pointed this out to me.

So, on with the show (if that’s OK with you Mr BBC). This week’s ‘highlights’ include some British rockers, the return of a Mod hero and as it’s TOTP in 1992, a video exclusive from Michael Jackson (yawn).

We start though with some more of that horribly naff dance sound that added a lazy backbeat to an old classic tune and sold it to the masses by the bucket load. Was there a name for that sub genre of dance music? Who said ‘shite’?!

After pilfering KC And The Sunshine Band’s “Please Don’t Go” for their surprise No 1 a few weeks before, this time KWS have covered a song written by one Harry Wayne Casey – yes, Mr KC himself! This was starting to look like an unhealthy obsession! The chosen track was “Rock Your Baby” as made famous by George McRae who took it to the top of the charts here and in the US in 1974. I guess it made sense as a safe bet for another hit but they must have known there was a very short life span for this sort of thing and that they would be a fairly insignificant footnote in pop history. Surely they didn’t expect anybody to be talking about them and their hits in say 30 years time? Oh…which is exactly what I’m doing right now isn’t it? OK, how do I get out of this then. I need a Boris Johnson style dead cat on the table distraction. Ah, how about a realisation that I’ve remembered who KWS remind me of? Yes, that’ll do nicely. OK, well do you recall back in 1983 a guy called Forrest? He had two hits off the back of covers of old 70s soul hits “Rock The Boat” by The Hues Corporation and “Feel The Need In Me” by the Detroit Emeralds. And then promptly disappeared never to be heard of again. KWS were like a 90s version of him.

There seemed to be a trend around this time for overly energetic brass sections backing artists performing in the TOTP studio. The other week Jimmy Nail had some with him on stage and now KWS have four guys doing their own little dance routine mid song. They’re like a 90s version of The Shadows but with saxophones instead of guitars. One of them has a trumpet rather than a sax and he looks a bit like M People’s Mike Pickering. It couldn’t be could it?

KWS’s version of “Rock Your Baby” peaked at No 8.

It’s a live satellite link up now, this time from Boston where we find “Pornograffitti” artists Extreme. After the world wide success of “More Than Words” and a slot at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, the band’s profile had never been bigger but with a bigger profile came even bigger expectations. The pressure was on for their next album to rack up even more sales. So how do you follow up success with bigger success? What you don’t do is record a ‘concept’ album but that’s exactly what the band did. “III Sides To Every Story” contained 15 tracks split into three sections (the titular ‘sides’) each with their own name – ‘Yours’, ‘Mine’ and ‘The Truth’. The sides were differentiated from each other by their musical style and lyrical subjects – ‘Yours’ featured hard rock, ‘Mine’ displayed a more sensitive side with the band experimenting with different arrangements and instruments whilst ‘The Truth’ showcased their prog rock credentials and featured a track split into three parts (‘III Sides’ geddit?) entitled “Everything Under The Sun”. Not at all pretentious. The album sold poorly in comparison to predecessor “Pornograffitti” and the three singles released from it did not include anything like the huge mainstream crossover hit that “More Than Words” was.

The first of those three singles was “Rest In Peace”. Inspired by peace protests against the Gulf War, it offers up the rather unpalatable theory that sometimes war is necessary, or at least that war is complicated and can’t be reduced to such simple terms. Was it possible to convey such a subject effectively during the course of a rock song? This was no “Get The Funk Out”. Was it too much of a leap for fans of their previous work? Certainly in America it failed spectacularly to replicate the success of “More Than Words” for example which had been a No 1 record. “Rest In Peace” peaked at No 96 over there though it did top the Billboard Album Rock Tracks chart (whatever that was). We were more receptive to it in the UK where it reached a surprising high of No 13.

The performance here stands out due to the kid sitting in front of the drum kit for its entirety. Who was he and why was he there? Twitter offered up several opinions as to his identity ranging from a young Caleb Followill of Kings Of Leon to Eminem to the band’s manager’s son. It just looks odd.

As for the track itself, I thought it was OK and preferable to some of the crud in the Top 40 but that they were taking themselves way too seriously. I could have well done without the overindulgent Jimi Hendrix tribute riff towards the end. In any case, I’m really not convinced that the world needed an Extreme concept album at all.

It had to happen eventually. In the long, tortuous and indeed torturous search for how to stage a dance act on TOTP, the producers have finally turned to podium dancing. The lucky recipients of this innovation were Felix who are in the studio to perform their Top 10 hit “Don’t You Want Me”. It’s your basic, standard set up of the singer, the obligatory guy behind some turntables but now there’s added dancers positioned on towers of TV screens overlooking the stage. The banks of monitors are showing the promo video which intercuts with the performance whilst the studio audience are ‘avin’ it large like they’re at an actual rave. It sort of almost works until you notice the outlandish costumes of the dancers. There’s one that has an actual full face mask over their head! It reminds me of Cillian Murphy’s The Scarecrow from Batman Begins. The only time I’ve been in a nightclub with podium dancers was in Rochdale in the mid 90s, a place called Xanadu’s. Think it was a work colleague’s leaving do. Very scary but even there the posers on the podiums didn’t look like one of Worzel Gummidge’s mates.

“Don’t You Want Me” peaked at No 6.

After the dissolution of The Style Council in 1989, Paul Weller, without a record deal for the first time in his professional career, went on a two year hiatus from making records. As 1990 became 1991, he was back on the road under the title of ‘The Paul Weller Movement’ playing small venues with a set list derived from his Jam/Style Council back catalogue. There was also a spattering of new material like “Into Tomorrow” which was released as a single and returned Weller to the Top 40 but in a minimal way when it peaked at No 36. It was hardly the comeback of comebacks. However, he had more tunes up his sleeve and the small success of “Into Tomorrow” was enough to convince him and new label Go Discs to release more recordings. “Uh Huh, Oh Yeh” was the next single (released purely under his own name without the ‘movement’ suffix) and this time it really did fell like he was back. Previewing his first, eponymous solo album, it felt like a return to form and duly went Top 20.

Weller looks lean and dressed down in this performance and though his Steve Marriott influenced haircut probably drew a few guffaws back then, he looks the epitome of cool compared to the haggard, raggedy Iggy Pop impersonation he peddles today.

I’m not sure what my Weller-obsessed elder brother made of it but I’m guessing he bought it along with the rest of The Jam army who still couldn’t quite let go of their hero. The album made the Top 10 and paved the way for the reinvention of Weller as ‘The Modfather’ with the release of the “Wildwood” and “Stanley Road” albums (both of which I bought actually) as Britpop dawned.

By the way, check out the saxophone player who requires not one but two saxes for this performance one of which is the biggest I have ever seen! Uh huh, oh yeh. Nudge nudge, wink wink.

From Paul Weller to “Jam” (nice!) as it’s time for yet another Michael Jackson video exclusive! By my count that’s the fourth of this calendar year and the fifth in total from the “Dangerous” album. I’m not quite sure it really deserves that ‘exclusive’ label though on account of the fact that the single (and therefore the video) had already been released in the US back in July (the US and European release schedules weren’t in sync). Presumably millions of people globally had already seen this promo by the time it was shown over here. I suppose we didn’t have access to all the TV channels we do today not to mention YouTube so maybe people in the UK hadn’t been able to catch it before now? I don’t know- it was all a long time ago. What I do know is that this glut of what seems like monthly Jacko videos is starting to get on my wick. It’s like he was trying to outdo The Wedding Present’s 1992 singles release project.

I suppose I do have to talk about the video then. Well, this one is set in a run down neighbourhood in Chicago where Jacko teaches basketball superstar Michael Jordan to dance whilst, in return, he shows The King of Pop how to shoot some hoops – as you do. This sort of shit happens all the time obviously. Just the other week Adele was down our street teaching Mo Salah how to sing from his diaphragm whilst he showed her some keepy uppy tricks. Just preposterous nonsense. There’s some cameos from rappers du jour Heavy D and Kris Kross but the whole thing feels like the track was written to be a video rather than a song in its own right. It’s just a vehicle for Jacko’s dance moves – there’s not a proper song in there.

They’ll be one more Jackson single release before 1992 is up -the sickly ballad “Heal The World” whist “Jam” peaked at No 13.

In the light of Extreme’s new direction that we witnessed earlier, there is a vacancy in the acoustic rock troubadour circuit. Early applicants for the role are Thunder with their new single “Low Life In High Places”. This was the lead single from their second album “Laughing On Judgement Day” which would debut at No 2 when released (only kept off the top spot by Kylie Minogue’s first “Greatest Hits” album). Thunder had been churning out Top 40 hits since the turn of the decade (this was their sixth in eighteen months) and the release of “Laughing On Judgement Day” would be the crowning glory of their popularity.

“Low Life In High Places” – a social comment on homelessness in New York – is very much an acoustic number for the first two thirds of its running time but then bursts into more familiar heavy rock territory on the final lap. It’s as if the band are suffering from imposter guilt and don’t really believe they can pull this acoustic lark off and, losing their nerve, revert to type as full on electric heavy rockers. If that bloke who shouted “Judas!” at Bob Dylan at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in 1966 had been in the studio audience he would have spontaneously combusted. Talking of which, were the pyrotechnics when the track goes electric really necessary?

One last thing. What was it with performers having two instruments in this show? After Paul Walker’s sax player earlier, Thunder have a guitarist with an acoustic guitar and an electric one!

“Low Life In High Places” peaked at No 22.

Back to the usual three Breakers tonight after last week’s five song extravaganza starting with Bobby Brown. After flogging his 1988 “Don’t Be Cruel” album to death, Mr Whitney Houston’s only chart appearance had been his frankly bizarre collaboration with boy next door Glenn Medeiros on “She Ain’t Worth It” back in 1990. Now though he was back with a new single “Humpin’ Around” and new album “Bobby”.

I have to say I don’t recall this one though I do remember another single that was released from the album called “Two Can Play That Game” which was a hit a whole two years on from “Bobby” coming out when remixed by K-Klass. That one hung around the charts for ages being a hit twice. “Humpin’ Around” though – I’ve got nothing. It was a medium sized hit peaking at No 19 over here but going Top 3 in America. Apparently it was originally entitled “Fuckin’ Around”. Given Bobby Brown’s rap sheet, why am I not surprised.

It’s “Crying” by Roy Orbison and K.D. Lang next and my timeline for this song is a bit skewed so let’s start at the beginning. Originally a No 1 hit on the Cashbox chart in the US for Orbison on his own in 1961, it was taken to the top of the UK charts in 1980 by American Pie-ster Don McLean’s cover version. Fast forward seven years and The Big O re-recorded it with then little known country singer K.D.Lang for the soundtrack of the film Hiding Out starring Jon Cryer (Duckie from Pretty In Pink). The song was a middling No 28 hit in the US though it was much bigger in Lang’s native Canada where it reached No 2. It also won a Grammy award for Best County Collaboration with Vocals. In 1989, it was recycled as the B-side to Orbison’s single “She’s A Mystery To Me”.

OK, that’s all fine but why was it then released in the UK in 1992? Was it related to Lang’s breakthrough album “Ingénue” being released that year? Was K.D. a known name in the UK by this point? In my head, 1992 was the year that non country music fans became aware of her but apparently her best known song “Constant Craving” wasn’t a hit until the following year when it was rereleased. Again my memory is failing me. Whatever the truth of the matter, “Crying” the duet was a No 13 hit.

They’re still doing that thing with the Breakers where they feature a song that we have already seen in full as an ‘exclusive’ performance. I’m sure this was down to negotiations between the record pluggers and the producers with the major labels jostling for prime time TV slots but it seems like a missed opportunity to highlight Top 40 entries that we would otherwise miss. The latest artist to benefit from this policy is Annie Lennox who is in the charts with her “Walking On Broken Glass” single.

The video to this one is based on the 1988 film Dangerous Liaisons starring John Malkovich who has been roped into appearing in the promo alongside Hugh Laurie who is basically reprising his Prince Regent role from Blackadder III. The costumes alone must have made it quite expensive to film. Would major film stars like Malkovich have done a music video for free or would they charge a fee?

“Walking On Broken Glass” peaked at No 8.

Thunder’s nemesis now as Kylie Minogue has turned up to promote that Greatest Hits album of hers. The first of two new singles released to promote it, “What Kind Of Fool (Heard All That Before)” was her last original song to be released on PWL before she left for pastures new (her very last PWL release was a cover of Kool And The Gang’s “Celebration”). You could hardly describe it as going out on a high on account of the fact that it’s dreadful. It sounds like it should have been a Sonia B-side. Even Kylie herself can’t stand it apparently and she hardly ever performs it live. It peaked at No 14 – it was very lucky to make even that chart placing. A real backwards step after some of her recent work had been a lot more mature. What a waste of everybody’s time.

Snap! remain at No 1 with “Rhythm Is A Dancer”. In the comments about this song on the Songfacts website, someone called Sioraf said this about the infamous ‘serious as cancer’ line:

“Cancer is very serious though. Nobody calls Waterfalls tasteless for mentioning HIV.“

Sioraf mate. The TLC song ‘mentions’ HIV as part of a whole narrative about discouraging self destructive behaviour and raising the issue of AIDS and safe sex. They do so in an affecting, insightful and subtle way – in fact, the acronym HIV is never used but rather the line “three letters took him to his final resting place”. The Snap! track on the other hand just drops the word ‘cancer’ into a rap as it rhymes with ‘dancer’ – there is literally no comparison. Honestly.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	KWS	Rock Your Baby	Nope
2	Extreme	Rest In Peace	I did not
3	Felix	Don’t You Want Me	Nah
4	Paul Weller	Uh Huh, Oh Yeh	I think this might be in the singles box you know
5	Michael Jackson	Jam	Negative
6	Thunder	Low Life In High Places	No
7	Bobby Brown	Humpin’ Around	Buy it? I don’t even remember it
8	Roy Orbison and K.D. Lang	Crying	Didn’t happen
9	Annie Lennox	Walking On Broken Glass	No but my wife had her Diva album
10	Kylie Minogue	What Kind Of Fool (Heard All That Before)	No but my wife had that Greatest Hits album
11	Snap!	Rhythm Is A Dancer	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/m0015f91/top-of-the-pops-20081992

TOTP 13 AUG 1992

Posted on March 19, 2022 by 80stastic

The curse of Adrian Rose has struck again meaning we have missed another show and therefore gone straight to the middle of August 1992 and what an exciting time it was. Two days after this TOTP aired, the all new, singing and dancing (literally in the case of Sky Sports cheerleaders the Sky Strikers) FA Premier League started. My beloved Chelsea prepared for this new era by signing striker Robert Fleck from Norwich City for a club record £2.1 million just 24 hours previously. It would prove to be a disastrous waste of money as Fleck scored just 4 goals in 48 appearances for Chelsea and started a ongoing trend of the club buying big reputation forwards that would turn out to be flops.

Tonight’s opening act similarly came with a big reputation as pop’s next big thing and although they suffered a few flops initially, they would eventually find the form to bag themselves a shed load of massive chart hits and certainly more than the four times Fleck rippled the net.

Having scored their first chart hit with “It Only Takes A Minute” just a few weeks before, Take That weren’t hanging around when it came to a follow up. Now I always thought that like its predecessor, “I Found Heaven” was a cover version but it isn’t. It was written by producer Ian Levine and singer Billy Griffin, the guy who replaced Smokey Robinson as lead vocalist of The Miracles. It turns out that the band always hated the track with a passion. Gary Barlow described it in his autobiography as “truly fucking awful” and “the worst song of my and Take That’s career”. Ouch! It is the only song recorded by the group, aside from covers, that was not written by themselves. It features both Barlow and Robbie Williams on joint lead vocals hinting at the competition that was to define their relationship as the band’s fame grew. Poor old Jason Orange didn’t get to sing on it at all apparently as his vocals weren’t considered good enough. Bit like when Robert Fleck didn’t play for Chelsea for six months after being dropped as he was basically pants.

“I Found Heaven” peaked at No 15. Though not completely disastrous, given that “It Only Takes A Minute” had gone to No 7, this probably wasn’t the result that their management team and record label had hoped for. At the very least it must have increased the pressure on their next single release to outscore its predecessor. In the end, they turned to the Gary Barlow penned ballad “A Million Love Songs” to provide another winner and it duly did the business returning them to the Top 10 and securing their continued success. Their cover of Barry Manilow’s “Could It Be Magic” would give them a fourth consecutive hit when it went all the way to No 3 over Xmas. In comparison, it took Robert Fleck the best part of two years to put the ball in the net four times for Chelsea.

Fleck wasn’t the only striker involved in a high profile transfer around this time. On 7th August, Manchester United signed Dion Dublin from Cambridge United for £1 million. Like Fleck, the future Homes Under The Hammer presenter didn’t have a great time at his new club as a broken leg restricted him to just 12 appearances for them. He still scored more than double the goals Fleck did in those games but that’s not the point. The reason I mention him is because I was working in the Our Price store in Market Street, Manchester at the time of Dixon’s signing and one day he came into the shop! My colleague Justin was a big United fan and soon came onto the shop floor to ask him for his autograph. For some reason Justin decided to get him to sign a picture of Dublin’s team mate and England star Bryan Robson. Why Justin thought that was appropriate or why he had a picture of Robson with him at work I know not. Dion seemed to take it all in good humour though and duly signed.

Back to the music and we find one of the more curious hits of the year. A dance version of a Gerry Rafferty easy listening classic? Are you sure? It seemed an insane proposition but then I have personally witnessed in the flesh Robert Fleck score for Chelsea so anything is possible. Seen by some purists as the lowest form of dance music, the masses disagreed and sent “Baker Street” by Undercover spiralling up the charts to No 2.

So who were these chancers? Well, they were a London trio consisting of vocalist John Matthews plus Steve Mac and John Jules who rode a wave to short lived fame much in the same way that KWS did with their cheesy cover of KC and the Sunshine Band’s “Please Don’t Go” earlier in the year. What with those two and, as referenced by host Tony Dortie in his intro, East Side Beat’s danced up treatment of Christopher Cross’s “Ride Like The Wind” in ‘91, this was fast becoming a very lucrative craze.

The unlikely nature of these hits could not be explained by watching the acts performing them on TOTP. Look at this appearance by Undercover for example. Jon Matthews is hardly shimmering with star quality though he has turned up in his best grown up party clothes bless him. The whole thing reeks of the entertainment on a ferry crossing. Actually, I’m not that far off from the truth with that observation for Undercover were a part of the story of that inaugural Premier League season. Whilst watching the documentary Fever Pitch: The Rise Of The Premier League, I noticed that amongst the razzmatazz that Sky brought in to help launch their coverage which included cheerleaders and giant inflatable sumo wrestlers, they also had pop acts do a turn at half time. The idea was that they could do better than the traditional military band that was wheeled out for cup finals during the break. Guess who is clearly sighted as the entertainment in one of the clips? Yep, Undercover.

They would repeat the trick with their next release, their version of Andrew Gold’s “Never Let Her Slip Away” which would be a No 5 hit. One final chart entry (Gallagher and Lyle’s “I Wanna Stay With You”) followed before the game was well and truly up.

One final thing – when Tony Dortie describes it as the “drum ‘n’ bass version of Baker Street“ – what was he thinking?! Here’s Tony with the answer:

I think you'll find I have no idea what I'm talking about, so ignore anything I type x
— Tony Dortie (@TonyDortie) March 19, 2022

From football to the Olympics as the one chart hit that everyone could have predicted happening this year did indeed…erm…happen. I couldn’t stand “Barcelona” by Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballé first time around in 1987 and its inevitable rerelease for the ‘92 Olympics in Barcelona didn’t change my opinion. What I had never realised was that the track had always been intended to soundtrack the games but had been recorded as early as it was as the selection process for the Olympic theme took place in 1988. As well as being the official song of the games, the BBC used it for the music to their coverage of the action. It was inescapable.

The video shown here has some inserted sporting footage highlighting Team GB successes including Linford Christie, Sally Gunnell, Steve Redgrave and Matthew Pinsent and the Searle brothers Greg and Jonny and their very emotional cox Garry Herbert.

There is a football connection with “Barcelona” as it was performed by Caballé along side a video of the sadly departed Mercury before the 1999 Champions League final between Manchester United and Bayern Munich at the Camp Nou stadium in Barcelona. I didn’t see that performance though as I was working in Our Price in Altrincham that day and was rushing from pub to pub to try and find one that wasn’t packed out already to watch the game.

And another Tony Dortie conundrum – why does he call it Basss–er–lona?

Breaking news! Check this out! More Dortie madness! Dion Dublin and Tony Dortie joined together by the power of #Laterz!

Wow this is madness can some1 please tweet her and ask coincidence or what… hey @GRB1 can you help our #totp Friday Hustlers get to the bottom of this..I've actually never ever heard any1 else ever say #Laterz on TV besides me B4 https://t.co/HmM9fd1SoC
— Tony Dortie (@TonyDortie) March 20, 2022

Stand by for another Twitter outpouring of swooning and lust as it’s time for Betty Boo again! “Let Me Take You There” is her latest single but little did we know it would be her last ever chart hit. I think I’ve commented on what happened to Betty (real name Alison Clarkson) before but in the light of her return to making music under her own name this year, The Guardian did an interview with her just days ago. They asked her about disappearing from the world of pop and the circumstances behind it. She’d lost her Mum, Dad and Aunty within a short space of time and so retreated into family life, looking after her Gran. As Alison described it:

“To be a pop star you have to be full-whack all the time and I just melted.”

The last time she was on the show, Betty had an all female backing band but this time the TOTP producers have got her completely solo and performing against some sort of Summer beach background complete with palm trees, a deck chair and sea shells. They’ve obviously decided it’s a Summery song and should be styled accordingly. Would you wear that check outfit Betty has on to the beach including high heels though?

“Let Me Take You There“ peaked at No 12.

We might all have been forgiven for thinking this would be the last we would see of 2 Unlimited. A run of three Top 5 singles all taken from their “Get Ready!” album was brought to an end when a fourth single release “The Magic Friend” didn’t make the Top 10. Had we finally got fed up of their brand of brainless Euro techno rave? This one was particularly banal with it seemingly just consisting of a collection of disparate synthetic noises held together by a headache inducing synth riff, some Jean Michel Jarre flourishes and Ray chanting “The magic friend is what I am”. To mix it up a bit Anita would chime in with “The magic friend is what he is”. Ah, I see what she did there. I for one did not predict them returning the following year with a No 1 album and single in “No Limits”. The year of TOTP repeats for 1993 is shaping up to be utterly dreadful.

There’s five Breakers this week – one more than Robert Fleck’s two year total goal tally for Chelsea! We start with Queensrÿche who I knew little of then and my knowledge hasn’t improved over the last 30 years. What I did know though was that they weren’t from Germany as Tony Dortie informs us – they’re from Bellevue, Washington in the US Tony!

Apart from sounding like a song title Muse might come up with, “Silent Lucidity” was a single from their “Empire” album which is the only album of theirs that I could name but I certainly don’t remember how it went. Let’s have a listen now…

…hmm. A lot more melodic sounding than I was expecting. I thought they were a heavy rock act. Must have been one of their more reflective moments. “Silent Lucidity” was the band’s biggest hit peaking at No 18.

For the first half of 1992, if you were browsing the racks in your record shop of choice, the chances were that when you got to the divider that said The Smiths on it you’d find an empty space. They was certainly the case in our shop anyway. After Rough Trade went bankrupt at the end of the 80s, the band’s back catalogue was purchased by WEA Records (later to become Warner Music). As they planned a whole re-issue strategy for the band’s music, once any existing copies were sold they could not be reordered. I guess the plan was to aggrandise The Smiths material thereby creating a whole new appetite for it.

The first release that WEA put together was a compilation called “Best…1”. At the time, one of my work colleagues was Our Price legend ‘Knoxy’ who’s brother worked for Warner and who was heavily involved in The Smiths re-issue project. He may have even been responsible for choosing which tracks would go on “Best…1”. It was a thankless task as the band’s fan base were/are very protective of and precious about their heroes’ material. These things mattered. The album was finally released the Monday after this TOTP aired and despite mostly unfavourable reaction from fans and press alike to the track listing which seemed a bit random and included B-sides and album cuts as well as singles, it went straight to No 1 on the album chart. A second volume followed in November but only managed a high of No 29.

“This Charming Man” had been decided upon as the single to promote the album – their first chart hit and one of their most recognisable songs. It made sense I guess. So much has been written about the track (including by me in my TOTP 80s blog) that I don’t intend to regurgitate its history again here. Suffice to say that the 1992 rerelease went to No 8 in the singles chart making it, at a stroke, the band’s biggest ever hit.

Who’s this? Felix? Felix da Housecat?

*checks Wikipedia*

No, that’s someone else apparently. This Felix was a guy from Chelmsford, Essex called Francis Wright and who was responsible for this dance anthem “Don’t You Want Me”. Unlike Betty Boo’s recent return to pop music with her “Love Action (I Believe In Love)” sampling new single, this was nothing to do with The Human League. As with many these dance tunes, I remember the riff but I couldn’t have told you the artist or track details. Maybe that was the whole point – if you were off on one in a club, just recognising the riff might be enough to trigger you into action on the dance floor? Did you need to know who was behind the tune or what it was called? I dunno. I wasn’t in any clubs at this time as I was skint.

“Don’t You Want Me” was a hit three times in the 90s in various remixes but none were bigger than this 1992 original which made it to No 6.

They’re doing that weird thing with the Breakers again in allocating one of the slots to an act we’ve already seen on the show in full due to an exclusive performance or in the case of Jon Secada, the US charts feature. “Just Another Day” is up to No 8 this week which surely makes it a bona fide big hit rather than a Breaker?

The video is Jon performing with his band mainly in black and white apart from when he’s cavorting about on a beach when the film turns a sepia tone. Apparently Gloria Estefan turns up at the end of the video but I can’t be arsed to watch the whole thing just to confirm or deny this on account of the whole thing being terminally dull.

The final Breaker is a duet from Luther Vandross and Janet Jackson taken from the soundtrack to a film I never got round to seeing – Mo’Money. People seemed to go crazy for “The Best Things In Life Are Free” as it soared up the charts to No 2 though it did very little for me. It was one of those songs that also hung around the charts for ages clocking up 13 weeks in total. Apparently this was a New Edition reunion of sorts with Bell Biv DeVoe and Ralph Tresvant appearing on the track (the latter’s involvement though was restricted to one spoken line).

The video doesn’t actually feature Luther or Janet (even though the lyrics do when they name check themselves) but instead has the leads from the film Damon Wayans and Stacey Dash lip synching to it set against the backdrop of a fairground.

The best things in life are free eh? Someone should have told Chelsea in 1992 – Robert Fleck wasn’t free at £2.1 million and he certainly wasn’t the best.

It’s another ‘exclusive’ performance again and a second one this year for Annie Lennox I believe. “Walking On Broken Glass” was the third single from her “Diva” album (we seem to have missed her second single from it “Precious”) and like lead single “Why”, it was a huge airplay hit. Radio ubiquity aside, there were no other similarities with its predecessor certainly not in musical terms. Sprightly where “Why” was downbeat, its spiky, jagged strings lay down an engaging foundation for Annie to layer her soulful vocals on.

The staging for this one with orchestral string backing and a shed load of candles works pretty well. The show did seem to throw some resource at these ‘exclusive’ slots I have to say. Annie herself looks great. She recently released a no filter/no makeup photo of herself at 67 years of age and she still looks amazing.

BBC4 had a mini Annie evening last Friday showing a gig of hers from 2009 at LSO St Luke’s and an interview from 1992 to promote her “Diva” album. In the interview she said that she wasn’t missing Dave Stewart after two years of not working with him but give it another seven years and the two would reconvene for one final Eurythmics album in 1999 called “Peace”.

“Walking On Broken Glass” would go Top 10 just as “Why” had and as I recall helped instigate another wave of sales for an album that had already been out four months.

There’s a Top 10 countdown in the proper place in the show finally as we segue in a timely fashion into the No 1 record which is Snap! with “Rhythm Is A Dancer”. Taken from the group’s “The Madman’s Return” album, I had always assumed it was the lead single from it but it wasn’t. There was a single before it called “Colour Of Love” which was a massive hit all around Europe…except here. In the UK it was a flop peaking at a lowly No 54.

Not even we could resist the follow up though which went to No 1 in a dozen or so countries. Apparently rapper Turbo B had insisted on “Colour Of Love” being the lead single as he hated the ‘serious as cancer’ lyric in “Rhythm Is A Dancer” but the group’s producers had disagreed. They won the battle for the follow up single though and the rest is history. Turbo B would leave the band before the third single “Exterminate!” was released.

Postscript: Robert Fleck left Chelsea in 1995 to return to Norwich City. He played four times for Scotland scoring zero goals (obvs). After a spell in football management , he now works as a Teaching Assistant at a school for children with special needs. He also funded trips for 18 months for a child with a terminal condition. Robert Fleck then. Terrible Chelsea striker but one of life’s good guys.

Laterz!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Take That	I Found Heaven	Of course not!
2	Undercover	Baker Street	No
3	Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballé	Barcelona	Barce-no-na
4	Betty Boo	Let Me Take You There	No but I had a promo copy of the album
5	2 Unlimited	The Magic Friend	Hell no!
6	Queensrÿche	Silent Lucidity	Nah
7	The Smiths	This Charming Man	No but I have Hatful of Hollow with it on
8	Felix	Don’t You Want Me	No I didn’t
9	Jon Secada	Just Another Day	Nope
10	Luther Vandross and Janet Jackson	The Best Things In Life Are Free	Negative
11	Annie Lennox	Walking On Broken Glass	No but my wife has the album Diva
12	Snap!	Rhythm Is A Dancer	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/m0015f8z/top-of-the-pops-13081992

TOTP 26 MAR 1992

Posted on February 6, 2022 by 80stastic

We’ve missed another TOTP repeat broadcast due to the Adrian Rose issue and so find ourselves at the fag end of March 1992. So who is this guy enraging the community of TOTP repeat completists and why won’t he let the shows he presented in be re-shown? I have touched on this subject before when it first became apparent it was an issue at the end of the 1991 programmes. This is the seventh of fifteen that we will miss because of it so a recap feels in order.

It seems Adrian Rose now goes by the name of Adrian Woolfe and is the founder and co-CEO of Studio 1, an international production, distribution and licensing company. His bio on their website shows that he was part of the creative team at Celador that developed Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and was responsible for implementing a brand and marketing roll out strategy for it and managed the show’s intellectual property rights into 107 countries. All this wanky business jargon are the words in his bio not mine by the way! OK, so he’s now a big shot in the entertainment business. Still doesn’t explain his reluctance to have his TOTP past repeated. Apparently ‘he has his reasons’ which is the only rather cryptic explanation emanating from his camp. Whatever they are, it all happened 30 years ago and he’s clearly made a success of his post show career so what’s up with this? Of course, it is Adrian’s prerogative and his ‘crime’ of upsetting some music nostalgia enthusiasts is hardly one to trouble the Met (mind you nothing seems to be worthy of the Met’s due diligence these days) but still. It all seems rather unnecessary.

OK. Enough of Mr Rose/ Woolfe. Onto the shows we do have access to and we start this one with TOTP stalwarts Erasure who are now into their seventh year of appearances on the show. “Breath Of Life” was the fourth and final single from their “Chorus” album and I have to say it’s not the single that immediately comes to my mind when I think of Erasure in 1992. No, that honour would go to their “Abba-esque” EP that would provide them with their first and so far only UK No 1 single. Still, “Breath Of Life” was a bona fide Top 10 hit peaking at No 8 so maybe it doesn’t deserve to be so overlooked. Having said all that, it’s not one of their stronger efforts for me. It seems to have pinched the title of that Squeeze single “Take Me I’m Yours” for its chorus and has a keyboard riff that sounds like it could have been from an early Depeche Mode single; not surprising I guess given Vince Clarke’s musical origins.

As for the performance, usually Erasure seemed to put a lot of thought into the staging of their TOTP appearances but here they seem to just have a mock up of the surface of the moon behind them and some backing singers in very glittery dresses. Also, what was the deal with Vince’s massive synth?! It looks like Cape Canaveral back there.

After their mention in my last post surrounding the hirsute Fred being in the audience of a play I saw whilst visiting my mate Robin in London, Right Said Fred are on the show in performance mode. Not in the studio though as we get the “great” (as presenter Claudia Simon describes it) video for latest single “Deeply Dippy”. The release of this track saw the band at the peak of their popularity when it went to No 1 in the UK.

I have to admit that the first time that I heard this, I found it vastly underwhelming though it’s actually infinitely better than “I’m Too Sexy” which is ultimately a novelty song. Some perspective is needed here obviously. This is Right Said Fred we’re talking about but “Deeply Dippy” does sound quite accomplished in comparison. It actually builds nicely to an uplifting (fair)brass section emboldened climax courtesy of the Average White Band. There’s even some shades of subtlety in there with some shifts of tempo and some gentle guitar noodling. To be fair(brass), the Freds were professional musicians with the brothers having played with the likes of David Bowie and Bob Dylan. They weren’t just some stooges brought in to front the act.

The video is the usual montage of Right Said Fred japes with the band generally just arseing about in various locations surrounded by various leggy models (“see those legs man”). According to an interview with Richard and Fred Fairbrass on the Songfacts website, the promo was deemed too ‘gay’ for US audiences and their American label made them shoot another one. They might as well not have bothered as it sank without trace and the band are still known as a one hit wonder (for “I’m Too Sexy”) over there. Apparently the woman in the green dress is the wife of the Fred who was in the audience of that play I saw down in London a couple of weeks before. I wonder if she was with him.

Meanwhile, back in the studio, we find Annie Lennox who looks like she nipped in on her way to a red carpet event such as the Oscars so sparkly and glamorous is her dress. Never afraid of messing around with gender roles and appearances, Annie’s hair and make up are designed to challenge with their nod to the gothic. After her ‘exclusive’ performance two weeks ago of her debut solo single “Why”, she’s back on the show after crashing into the Top 10 with it. By the way, I’m not counting her 1988 hit single “Put A Little Love In Your Heart” with Al Green from the film Scrooged on account of the fact that…well…she wasn’t solo was she?

Annie doesn’t need any backing musicians nor singers (not even Al Green) up there with her and does the whole thing on her own with just some studio lighting and a smoke machine for company. The audience come in with their applause a tad too early though (presumably on instruction from a floor manager) so that they drown out Annie’s final “You don’t know how I feel” line. Boo!

As with most celebrities, there is a Half Man Half Biscuit song that name checks Annie called “Paintball’s Coming Home” but it took me many a listen to hear the reference. If you don’t know the song, maybe you’ll get it first time…

Next, one of the most ridiculous songs of the whole decade in my book. Def Leppard had not been in the 90s at all up to this point. Presumably they had spent the first two years of it trying to write a follow up album to their monster hit “Hysteria” from which they released just about every track as a single. What they came up with was “Adrenalize” the lead single of which was “Let’s Get Rocked”.

This song was just an appalling waste of everyone’s time. The band’s for recording it, the radio stations for having to play it and the public for having to listen to it. What’s so wrong with it? Well, it’s just dumb ass, bombastic, cliched rock for one but it’s most heinous crime are the lyrics. Yes, I know that lead singer Joe Elliott is assuming a role within it and isn’t singing in the first person per se but it’s still ludicrous to hear a then 31 year old Sheffield man singing about being asked by his Dad to take out the trash and tidy his room and also refer to himself as a ‘dude’. I just couldn’t take it seriously. He then goes on about trying to get his ‘baby in the mood’ before coming out with a double entendre Finbar Saunders would have baulked at “ I suppose a rock’s out of the question”. Good grief!

Just like a Tory minister defending Boris Johnson’s latest gaff, the band had a go at justifying it. Here’s Joe Elliott courtesy of @TOTPFacts.

"We ended up writing this song, lyrically, which summed up the character of Bart Simpson – but [also] the character of any 16-year-old kid that's going through one of those phases with his father." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 28, 2022

Nice try but I wasn’t buying it (metaphorically and literally). As if the song wasn’t bad enough, the video looks like a nasty knock off of the promo for “Money For Nothing” by Dire Straits. Back in 1985 that video had blown our minds but by 1992 we’d all seen Michael Jackson’s “Black And White” which made “Let’s Get Rocked” look like caveman scribblings.

The follow up single was the equally risible and bad taste “Make Love Like A Man”. Oh come on now! None of this seemed to bother their fans though who sent “Let’s Get Rocked” to No 2 in the UK and the album “Adrenalize” to the top of the charts both sides of the pond. Well if people can accept and believe Boris Johnson’s lies then buying this shit is hardly a great leap.

This week’s ‘Exclusive’ performance comes from the current US No 1 act Vanessa Williams. Just like Shanice a few weeks before her, Vanessa seemed to appear from nowhere with the song that she will always be known for even though technically she isn’t a one hit wonder. “Save The Best For Last” was No 1 in the US at the time of this TOTP performance even though it had only just sneaked into our Top 40 which I guess was the justification for its ‘exclusive’ billing. A tale of two people having made eyes at each other over the years without acting on it and then finally getting it together, it was a decent ballad but oh so boring. The twee lyrics didn’t help. Whenever I hear it now I’m still convinced that she’s going to sing “sometimes the cow jumps over the moon”.

Vanessa is also an actress and has appeared in loads and loads of film and TV projects like Eraser, Perry Mason, The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air, Ally McBeal and possibly most famously as The Queen Of Trash in The Adventures Of Elmo In Grouchland. Alright alright. That last one should be as Wilhelmina Slater in comedy drama Ugly Betty. Oh and that comment about Vanessa technically not being a one hit wonder? She also had a UK No 21 hit in 1995 with the song “Colors Of The Wind” from the soundtrack to the Disney animation Pocahontas. “Save The Best For Last” would miss the top spot over here when it peaked at No 3.

A happy face, a thumpin’ bass for a loving’ race! Soul II Soul are this week’s “mega exclusive” as co-host Mark Franklin describes it and they are back with new material which to my ears was a lighter, more uplifting sound than their previous work. “Joy” was the lead single from their third album “Volume III Just Right” and their trademark thumpin’ bass was replaced by a ‘new vibration rocking the nation’. Other changes included new vocalist Richie Stephens and the addition of a gospel backing choir and a prominent brass section. Jazzie B was still there of course but there was no sign of Caron Wheeler who had embarked on a solo career as the new decade began although she did contribute vocals on one track on “Volume III Just Right”.

It seemed like a solid return for the band when “Joy” peaked at No 4 but subsequent singles from the album failed to even pierce the Top 30. Whilst the album sold steadily, its gold status compared very unfavourably to the triple platinum high of debut “Club Classics Vol. One” from just three years before. The Our Price I was working in had a promo cassette single of “Joy” which I snaffled away for my wife who liked the song. No idea where it is now though.

Now then, to the Breakers of which there are four this week and also of which none of them will feature on the show again. I’m seriously starting to doubt the wisdom of this feature. First up are, like Soul II Soul, another band who are returning with new material after a significant break. The Cure’s last studio album had been 1989’s “Disintegration” with the gap between that and its follow up being plugged by the remix album “Mixed Up”. Come 1992 and they returned with their very first and so far only chart topper “Wish”. Prefacing the album was the single “High”.

It sounded like very traditional Cure fare to me. Good but hardly anything we hadn’t heard before. We played the album in store and my memory of it was that it was pretty gloomy. And then came track 7. “Friday I’m In Love” was joyous and would become one of the best loved and most played songs of their whole back catalogue. However, that’s all for another post. The video for “High” was probably better than the song for me with its cloud imagery giving me very strong Monkey vibes. Not sure what I’m talking about? Watch this…

As he did the other week, Mark Franklin fails to name check all of the artists in this week’s Breakers section. He only refers to three of the four that appear. This suggests to me there wasn’t an autocue so was it scripted like this? If not, was Mark just incapable of holding four names in his head at once? Anyway, the act he doesn’t mention is this one. “Do Not Pass Me By” would be the very last of eight UK Top 40 singles that Hammer would have. I never knew this but it’s actually a reworking of a 19th century hymn called “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior”. Interesting. I maybe shouldn’t be surprised given the career that Hammer (real name Stanley Burrell) went on to have as an ordained preacher. In all, if we’re just looking at the UK, Hammer’s reign as the forefather of ‘pop rap’ lasted just 18 months or so. The largest part of his legacy remains his pants. “Do Not Pass Me By” peaked at No 14.

How do you follow up an unexpected No 1 hit? Well, if you’re Wet Wet Wet, you release a better song than your chart topper which they duly did in “More Than Love”. Previous single “Goodnight Girl” had gloriously returned the band back into mainstream success and so they weren’t about to waste their shot at being pop stars all over again. Instead of re-releasing one of the two singles preceding “Goodnight Girl” from the album “High On The Happy Side” that hadn’t been massive hits, they went with another album track that was a solid, mid tempo, singalong pop song. If Gary Barlow had written this, it would have been regarded as an instant pop classic. As it is, it’s one of the Wets least remembered hits not helped by its unspectacular No 19 chart peak.

The rather basic video seems to have been storyboarded purely to allow Marti Pellow to show off his luxurious locks. In fact the whole band have gone in for the very long hair look except drummer Tommy who seems to be almost bullied by his hirsute band mates given his thin head of hair. Tommy always strikes me as being very much in the same mould as Blur’s Dave Rowntree. The member of the band that garners the least attention but is the most dependable. Drummers. They aren’t all Keith Moons or John Bonhams.

Manic Street Preachers? Again? Weren’t they on just the other week performing “You Love Us”? Yes they were but with momentum building and their reputation preceding them, here’s another single called “Slash ‘N’ Burn”. Released exactly two months after its predecessor, this was another track from their “Generation Terrorists” album, the fourth of six in total. Its strident guitar riffs were inspired by Guns ‘N Roses apparently who also seemed to inspire the song’s title given the inclusion of that ‘n’ instead of ‘and’. It got me thinking how many other times ‘n’ has been used in music history. Obviously there’s Salt ‘n’ Pepa but any others? Erm…Jack ‘n’ Chill?

It’s a sixth week at the top for Shakespear’s Sister. As it’s parent album “Hormonally Yours” is coming up to its 30 years anniversary and is getting a deluxe 2 CD re-release, there was a Guardian article about “Stay” over the weekend. In it, Siobhan Fahey says that the look she was going for in the video was “an unhinged Victorian heroine meets Suzi Quattro meets Labelle!”. Well, obviously. She also admits that she’d been on the vodka in the shoot and was half cut by the time her scenes were being shot. That might explain her maniacal grin as she descended the stairway.

I recall that when their album was released it was heavily discounted in Our Price so that the CD was just £9.99 which was pretty cheap for a chart CD back in the day. Why do I remember this stuff when I can’t remember where I’ve just put my glasses? F**k knows.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Erasure	Breath Of Life	I did not
2	Right Said Fred	Deeply Dippy	Didn’t mind it, certainly didn’t buy it
3	Annie Lennox	Why	No but buy wife had the album
4	Def Leppard	Let’s Get Rocked	C’mon get real!
5	Vanessa Williams	Save The Best For Last	There was more chance of the cow jumping over the moon
6	Soul II Soul	Joy	No but I had that promo cassette single
7	The Cure	High	Nope
8	Hammer	Do Not Pass Me By	Nah
9	Wet Wet Wet	More Than Love	See 3 above
10	Manic Street Preachers	Slash ‘N’ Burn	‘N’-egative
11	Shakespear’s Sister	Stay	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/m0013vgg/top-of-the-pops-26031992

TOTP 12 MAR 1992

Posted on February 3, 2022 by 80stastic

In recent years the calling of a general election has been a relentlessly regular occurrence. Between 2015 and 2019 the country had to go through this process three times. Back in 1992, we hadn’t had one for five years but the day before this TOTP aired, sitting Prime Minister John Major announced that there would be a General Election in April.

Whilst I would no doubt have taken notice of this statement, I would have been more focussed on my imminent trip down to London. Yes, despite being permanently skint living in Manchester on a record shop worker’s wages, I had somehow managed to squirrel away enough money for a trip to the capital.

I was staying with my friend Robin and he’d got us tickets to go and see my beloved Chelsea play. See, there’s the proof above. As ever with Chelsea in those days I came away disappointed:

Those Chelsea tickets weren’t the only tickets Robin got for us that weekend. His sister is an actress and was appearing in a play that weekend so along we popped. I can’t remember exactly what it was about but my main recollection was that it was decidedly weird. When Robin reminded me of this event recently we had a strange WhatsApp conversation which went like this:

Robin: Remember seeing The Fall with Right Said Fred?

Me (incredulous): Absolutely nothing. The Fall supported by Right Said Fred?!

Robin: No we watched a play called “ The Fall”, only 8 people were in the audience and one was the ‘Freddie with porn star hair.

So there you have it. A weekend of footballing disappointment and a close encounter with a genuine pop star (sort of). Right Said Fred aren’t on this particular TOTP but are on in two week’s time. Damn the gods of synchronicity!

Suppose I’d better get in with the music then and tonight’s opening act are Gun with “Steal Your Fire”. In keeping with the major political announcement of the day before, presenter Tony Dortie keeps it topical with a reference to the contents of Norman Lamont’s briefcase. I’m guessing as Lamont was Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time, this would have been to do with interest rates (I’m certainly not going anywhere near that Julian Clary reference!) though I doubt at the time I was following the Exchange Rate Mechanism that closely. Now I’d quite liked this lot with their hits “Better Days” and “Shame On You”, the latter of which I’d even bought. By 1992 though, I’d completely lost track of them. I remember second album “Gallus” coming out and the cover of it but I’m not sure it was ever played in the Our Price I worked in (there wasn’t much of a rock fraternity amongst the staff) so I’m not familiar with it at all, not even this single. Having listened to it back though, it seems that Gun were, like Margaret Thatcher before them, ‘not for turning’ when it came to their musical direction. “Steal Your Fire” stuck rigidly to the formula.

The single peaked at No 24 which at that point was the band’s biggest chart hit but their peak would come in the Summer of ‘94 when they took their cover of Cameo’s “Word Up” into the Top 10.

One of the stories of the 1992 Top 40 was the blatant (and amusing) attempt by The Wedding Present to manipulate them. Yes, decades before the charts were hijacked by the X Factor and social media galvanised campaigns to artificially create hits, David Gedge and co were already at it.

Their cunning plan was to match Elvis Presley’s chart record of having twelve Top 30 hits in one calendar year, something The King had achieved in 1957. To do this, they released a limited edition single every single month in 1992. The limited stock quantities (only 10,000 were pressed for the UK and 5,000 for the rest of the world) created a frenzy amongst their fan base and crucially a brief but significant sales spike each month propelling every single into the Top 30 for one week before dropping like a stone once copies were exhausted. A genius ruse from Gedge! Meanwhile back in the record shops it was causing carnage as desperate fans tried to ensure they didn’t miss out. Even our shop which was a two trading floor city centre store would only get a handful of the singles which fans wanted to pre-order. That’s fine but woe betide the staff on release day if the system went wrong and all copies were sold before those pre-orders were picked up. Like I said, carnage.

The TOTP appearances that this practice created for the band – they were on the show four times in 1992 – only added to the chaos. Here’s Gedge himself courtesy of @TOTPFacts:

"…. So you’re on Top Of the Pops the Thursday after and the record was unavailable. It was a bit of a charade, really. I think we turned them down once and lied – 'Our bass player’s got a poorly arm' or something.” #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 28, 2022

For the record, “Three” was neatly the third of these monthly single releases despite Gedge’s confusing jumper with the number four on it (oh you little scampi Dave!). They weren’t just called ‘One’ to ‘Twelve’ though. “Three” peaked at No 14.

Tony Dortie’s nicked one of my phrases! I’m sure I referred to a ‘rave conveyor belt’ in a recent post. Tony is using it in reference to the next act who are Toxic Two performing their one and only hit “Rave Generator”. Now I know I say this a lot and in my defence we are talking about tunes from 30 years ago but I genuinely did not know of the existence of this until just this moment. It seems to be a mash up of “French Kiss” by Lil Louis and “Pacific State” by 808 State.

As there are hardly any lyrics in it (there’s a sample of someone saying ‘How do you feel now?’) the show has the perennial problem of how to stage the performance of it. They’ve gone for some zoom in zoom out camera trickery, some overlaid special effects and a panoramic view of the studio audience to try and create the impression that we are witnessing a rave in full flow. Oh and those dancers in leotards who look like they’re doing a yoga class on speed. Were people really dancing like that in clubs around this time?

There’s a noise in “Rave Generator” that reminds me of the blast sound from a Blake’s 7 ray gun. Maybe it was the same sound. After all, the aforementioned 808 State used sound library clips. Here’s @TOTPFacts again:

Like "Pacific State" by 808 State, it also makes use of the sound library on the E-mu Systems Emulator II (an early sampler) – specifically the loon sound on disk #22, "Wind Chimes/Birds/ Stream". #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 28, 2022

“Rave Generator” peaked at No 13.

The grunge bandwagon rolls in with Nirvana’s follow up to “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. Now it’s never occurred to me before and so I must have missed this story at the time but there was some controversy around “Come As You Are” and it wasn’t to do with Kurt Cobain’s lyrics about guns. No, it was to do with the fact that the song bore very strong similarities to the track “Eighties” by Killing Joke. And it does. Now I’ve made the connection I can’t unhear it. Apparently Killing Joke considered legal action against Nirvana but sacked it off as a bad idea after Cobain’s suicide in 1994. Or maybe it was because there’s a case to be made that Killing Joke weren’t innocent of plagiarism themselves and that they based their song on a Damned track called “Life Goes On”. Maybe they didn’t want to draw too much attention to that with a high profile law suit.

At the time though, if I’d have been asked about similarities between “Come As You Are” and another song I’d have replied ‘Yes, it sounds like “Smells Like Teen Spirit” only less frenetic’.

Cobain’s hometown was a place called Aberdeen, Washington but the story I draw your attention to isn’t that there’s somewhere with the same name as Scotland’s Granite City in America but that the sign welcoming you to Aberdeen includes the line ‘Come As You Are’.

“Come As You Are” peaked at No 9.

Who’s next? Clivilles & Cole? Who were they then? Well, they were the guys behind C+C Music Factory of course ( C+C geddit?) but for some reason they felt the need to release this single – “A Deeper Love” – under their own names. I’m not sure what the criteria was for that decision. Was it because “A Deeper Love” was a change in musical direction and therefore wouldn’t have sat comfortably under the C+C Music Factory name? My dance head credentials are really good enough to make that assessment. Sure, I can tell that “Things That Make you Go Hmmm…” was of a much more popper flavour than “A Deeper Love” but was it really that different from “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)”? I’m sure someone out there could tell me ‘Of course it is and here’s why…’. Anyway Clivilles & Cole it was (although co-host Claudia Simon confusingly refers to them as just C+C) and singer Deborah Cooper was chosen to front it. The only other track that Clivilles & Cole released under their own names was this cover of U2’s “Pride (In The Name Of Love)” who was the flipside to “A Deeper Love”.

The performance here includes the return of the bubble machine that we saw when Manic Street Preachers were on the show the other week. There you have it then. In the world of TOTP 1992, there was seemingly little difference between house anthems and alternative rock.

“A Deeper Love” peaked at No 15.

It’s the video for Eric Clapton‘s “Tears In Heaven” next. I went into the back story of this one in the last post so I don’t propose to go through it all again now not least because it’s already well known to most people.

However, what I didn’t say was that the track was co-written with one Will Jennings who also wrote “Up Where We Belong” for the soundtrack to An Officer And A Gentleman which was sung by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes. Joe of course was in the Breakers section last week alongside Clapton. Yeah, this little bit of pop trivia really should have gone in last week’s post shouldn’t it. Once again I curse the gods of synchronicity! Jennings also wrote “My Heart Will Go On” from Titanic which gave Celine Dion a huge No 1 hit. Maybe any more references to Will Jennings are best left alone then.

“Tears In Heaven” peaked at No 5 in the Uk and No 2 in the US.

The Exclusive performance this week comes from Annie Lennox who is embarking on a solo career after her and Dave Stewart decided to put Eurythmics on an indefinite hiatus. Striking out on her own would prove to be a very successful decision for Annie with debut album “Diva” going four times platinum in the UK. In hindsight it seems ridiculous to imagine anything other than further success for Lennox but I can’t recall whether that was the general perception at the time. Surely Annie herself must have experienced some self doubt given that she had spent the last 15 years working with Dave Stewart? If she did have any nerves about being on stage alone, Annie certainly conquers them in this performance. The closing “You don’t know how I feel” line is delivered with real conviction.

If she did then the chart performance of debut single “Why” must have settled her nerves. A soulful ballad with a hint of gospel with existential dilemma lyrics, it was a hit all around Europe including the UK where it peaked at No 5. Some critics described it as her attempt to write her own version of “My Way”. I’m not sure about that though the first person lyrics give it a very personal touch.

Annie would score a total of eight hit singles throughout the 90s including four Top Tenners.

The Breakers are a bit weird this week. There’s only two of them and they’ve both already been on the show as performances via satellite. U2 were on the 27 Feb show that we missed due to the Adrian Rose issue whilst Mr. Big were only on last week. Were they not actually in the Top 40 when we saw those satellite performances and therefore they’ve been allocated as Breakers because now they are? Seems a bit rum to me.

Anyway, it’s Mr. Big up first with their drippy ballad “To Be With You”. This is the official promo video as opposed to that satellite performance and it’s as dreary as the song. It’s just the band sat around in a railroad car performing the track. Halfway through it changes from black and white to colour. That’s it. Now when I was a student at Poly, we had to make a video as part of one of the course’s modules and one of the visual effects that we used was switching from black and white to colour. It may have even been my idea. However, we were just a bunch of clueless 18 year olds messing about not a professional video director. Surely whoever was for this promo could have come up with something better than this? Very poor.

And so to the twice aforementioned U2. Now there seems to be three different videos for “One”. TOTP shows the version directed by Mark Pellington which has a buffalo running in a field (an image that would be reused for the cover of their second greatest hits album “Best Of 1990 – 2000”). A second video directed by the band’s long time official photographer Anton Corbijn depicted the band in drag and featured Bono’s father Robert Hewson. The video was pulled after the band announced that royalties from the single would go to AIDS charities and they were worried that the drag theme might link AIDS to the gay community in a negative way. Finally a third video was shot by Rattle And Hum director Phil Joanou which was basically Bono sat at a table in a club smoking and drinking interspersed with footage of the gang performing the song.

I have to say that “One” is up there as one of my favourite U2 songs and is certainly my fave from the “Achtung Baby” album. I even performed my own version of it at my guitar class many years ago. Thankfully I don’t think any recordings of it exist. The lyrics resonate with the line ‘We’re one but we’re not the same’ pithily conveying the notion that humanity has to get along for the world to survive. It should surely have been a bigger hit than its No 7 chart peak. Its legacy though has outlasted that commercial peak and it regularly features in various ‘the greatest song of all time’ polls.

Shakespear’s Sister remain at No 1 with “Stay” and this week we get to see its famous video. Inspired by the 50s American independent sci fi film Cat-Women Of The Moon, it depicts Marcella Detroit at the bedside of her comatose lover willing him to regain consciousness before Siobahn Fahey appears as some sort of grim reaper/ angel of death figure come to take him to the after life. A physical fight between Detroit and Fahey ensues (a metaphor for the man’s struggle between life and death presumably) in which the former wins out and her lover awakes. I think it’s the demonic look on Fahey’s face that makes the video so memorable.

As with the video for “November Rain” by Gun N’ Roses last week, this promo was also lampooned by French and Saunders, just as Baddiel and Newman had done.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Gun	Steal Your Fire	Nah
2	The Wedding Present	Three	Even working in a record shop couldn’t secure me a copy
3	Toxic Two	Rave Generator	Hell no!
4	Nirvana	Come As You Are	No
5	Clivilles & Cole	A Deeper Love	Not for me thanks
6	Eric Clapton	Tears In Heaven	Nope
7	Annie Lennox	Why	No but my wife had the album
8	Mr. Big	To Be With You	Negative
9	U2	One	No but I had the album
10	Shakespear’s Sister	Stay	I didn’t

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/m0013vgd/top-of-the-pops-12031992

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 08 JUN 1995

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TOTP 16 FEB 1995

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TOTP 02 FEB 1995

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TOTP 25 FEB 1993

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TOTP 20 AUG 1992

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TOTP 13 AUG 1992

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TOTP 26 MAR 1992

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TOTP 12 MAR 1992

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