This particular TOTP episode is a curious mix of hits that have been hanging around the charts for ages, one that we only saw seven days ago, two dance tracks that were all about the tunes and not the artists, a mostly forgotten Robbie Williams hit that was actually a line in the sand moment and that Elton John single. Pick the bones out of that! Well, I intend to so let’s get to it…

Tonight’s host is Jo Whiley who seems to be on permanent rotation with Jayne Middlemiss and Zoe Ball (I guess we haven’t got to the Kate Thornton/Gail Porter/Jamie Theakston era yet). We start with Chumbawamba who have spent a solid six weeks in the Top 5 with “Tubthumping” and was now on the move back up the charts from No 5 to No 3 having slipped from its original peak of No 2. It seems there was a reason for this. In the wake of the death of Princess Diana, its airplay completely crashed presumably because:

1. It wasn’t a ballad and that was the only form of musical composition deemed required at this time
2. Its lyrics about being knocked down could hardly have been more inappropriate given the events in Paris of 31st August

In the week before that date it had been the most played track on radio but in the week after it almost completely disappeared from playlists. A further week on from that and it was decided that a suitable period of time had passed and it was right back up there on the airplay charts presumably helping to boost its sales once more. And they say a week is a long time in politics.

Depending on your point of view, “Sunchyme” by Dario G is either a work of genius or musical sacrilege – I fall into the latter category. Based around the wonderful “Life In A Northern Town” by The Dream Academy (which I bought back in the day), this monster of a dance tune had been in existence for months as a bootleg but hadn’t got a formal commercial release as label Eternal Records couldn’t get clearance for the samples used in it. This delay in making it available to the masses only helped to build anticipation of its release which, when it finally happened, sent the single to No 2 in the charts. Like George Michael’s “You Have Been Loved” before it, this would also surely have been a chart topper at any other time.

I guess I can hear why “Sunchyme” struck a chord with its Dream Academy sample forming the basis of a catchy hook that sounded almost gospel-esque when chopped up in that way. Allied to a distinctive Italian house piano riff, it really didn’t matter if punters didn’t know the 1985 No 15 hit source material, the track couldn’t fail. My claim that it was committing musical heresy by treating one of the best hits of the 80s (to my ears) like that meant little to the nation’s clubbers which I suppose is fair enough. Quite why this performance comes across as the stage version of The Lion King though, I’m not quite sure. Still, I suppose it makes a change from the usual anonymous, pony-tailed blokes on keyboards behind a gyrating, spandex clad dancer.

Jo Whiley gives us a smooth segue from Dario G to the aforementioned Robbie Williams when she says “from a Northern town to South of the Border”. Not bad Jo. Now I labelled this hit as mostly forgotten earlier and I stand by that description for a number of reasons. Firstly, it’s almost as if Robbie himself wants to consign it to history – it did not feature on his 1999 compilation album “The Ego Has Landed” that was put together with tracks from his first two solo albums specifically for the American market. Then, it didn’t appear on his 2004 Greatest Hits which featured 19 tracks. Nor was it on the 2009 compilation “Songbook” that was given away free with the Daily Mail as part of a promotion campaign for Robbie’s “Reality Killed The Video Star” album. Such freebie albums are usually where lesser hits are to be found but it wasn’t a home for “South Of The Border”. It did make the cut for the 2010 Best Of “In And Out Of Consciousness” but that was a comprehensive, 39 tracks career retrospective. It was his only hit that failed to make the Top 10 for nine years and 20 single releases. So, pretty much forgotten.

And yet…it perhaps shouldn’t be as it demarcated a pivotal crossroads in his career. The relative failure of the single (it peaked at No 14) was seen by many as evidence that Robbie Williams the solo artist would not sustain. It was just a matter of time before he petered out completely and its this commonly held perception that made what came next all the more unexpected and revelatory. His next single, which according to legend was a make or break release, was “Angels”. And yet the story could have all played out very differently as “South Of The Border” was never intended to be a single. The plan was that “Let Me Entertain You” was going to be the third track taken from the album “Life Thru A Lens” but Robbie had a dose of the wobbles and didn’t feel confident enough to release something with such a provocative title. At the last minute, it was ditched for “South Of The Border”. Who knows whether, if the original plan had been adhered to, the Robbie Williams story would have been any different. Maybe. Maybe not.

As for “South Of The Border”, it’s probably a better song than its legacy might suggest. I think I prefer it to previous single “Lazy Days” which doesn’t get the same rap by virtue of a six place chart difference it would seem (it peaked at No 8). There’s a spoken word bit low in the mix in the middle eight that we don’t get in this performance (which isn’t great by the way) where Robbie talks about going for a night out on the town with various celebrities including Anthea Turner and Daniella Westbrook which always quite intrigued me. The turnaround of Williams career would be more compelling though.

Damn! It’s that studio performance by Tina Moore of “Never Gonna Let You Go” again! What am I supposed to say about this one…again? Well, what I have noticed is that so far is that Jo Whiley has only been in the studio at the same time as one of the four artists on the show so far, that being Dario G. Now, two of them are understandable in that they’re just re-showings of previous performances (including Tina Moore) but the Robbie Williams cut away suggests his appearance was pre-recorded and Jo’s intro was tacked on the end separately. Why would that be? A scheduling issue?

Anyway, from what I can work out this was Tina’s fifth week on the chart and she was actually climbing it having peaked at No 7. The positions for her hit in the thirteen weeks of it’s time in the Top 40 were:

7 – 11 – 9 – 12 – 9 – 11 – 11 – 17 – 15 – 23 – 21 – 28 – 35

Check those numbers out. It reversed its decline four times. Four! That’s quite a chart journey. It seems the general public weren’t gonna let Tina go for a while.

It’s the second of those two dance tracks I mentioned at the top of the post now as German group Bellini take to the stage or should that be the dance floor as all the five women on our TV screens were doing was peddling some not overly impressive dance moves. There’s a lot of leg shaking and twerking but not much else. Now, I assumed that said women were just some jobbing dancers put together for TV appearances to promote the single “Samba De Janeiro” but it seems they were full time members of the band. Sort of. Full time they may have been but permanent they were not. Bellini’s list of group members might not be quite of The Fall or The Waterboys proportions but I counted fifteen past and present names in their Wikipedia entry and that doesn’t include the guys behind their sound, the producer duo of Ramon Zenker and Gottfried Engels otherwise known as The Bellini Brothers.

As for the track itself, it pays a huge debt to Brazilian jazz percussionist Airto Moreira sampling two of his tracks from the 70s and was a Top 10 hit all around Europe. If I’d had to guess, I would have put its release date as a year later to coincide with the 1998 World Cup tournament which seemed to have loads of samba themed songs soundtracking its coverage. I wasn’t far off as it was used extensively during the 2008 Euros after every goal was scored and Norwich City has played it as ‘goal music’ for pretty much the last 20 years. Indeed, Bellini took their name as a tribute to Brazilian football legend Hilderaldo Bellini who won the World Cup in 1958 and 1962 which is quite odd as the guys behind the Bellini Brothers moniker were German but then I guess they were never going to name themselves after 80s German international footballer Horst Hrubesch whose surname was pronounced by most English commentators as ‘Rubbish’.

Sly & Robbie featuring Simply Red are the act that we already saw just a week ago but that performance of their cover of “Night Nurse” is re-shown again seven days on because the single has gone into the charts at No 13.

This does nothing for me and, in fact, I’d rather listen to Martin Freeman’s version in a toilet from Breeders…

I’d almost forgotten there was a fourth single from Blur’s eponymous fifth studio album but there was and here it is…”M.O.R” was, perhaps understandably, the smallest hit of those four singles with it being released over six months after the album when it peaked at No 15. Now if you’d forgotten how it goes but then thought that it was instantly recognisable when you watched this TOTP repeat, that’ll be the Bowie effect. We were given a clue by Jo Whiley* in her intro when she said “Now some boys who just keep swinging” as “M.O.R.” borrows from Bowie’s “Boys Keep Swinging” and “Fantastic Voyage” from his “Lodger” album. Bowie and Brian Eno had come up with the concept of composing multiple songs with the same chord progression for the album and those two songs were the ones that made the cut. So were Blur paying homage to or stealing that concept? Does it even matter? The truth is that at least Blur were trying to do something different and not just repeat the formula of past glories. Could Oasis say the same for their output at the time?

*Never one to miss an opportunity to show off her music credentials was she Jo! Dream Academy and now David Bowie references!

The video for “M.O.R.” features four stuntmen as the band members in a plot about escaping the police. The monikers given to the fictional ‘actors’ playing Blur are all genuine anagrams of the band’s actual names. Check these out:

• Trevor Dewane – Dave Rowntree
• Lee Jaxsam – Alex James
• Morgan C. Hoax – Graham Coxon
• Dan Abnormal – Damon Albarn

That last one is genius, better than Bellini anyway!

Obviously, “Candle In The Wind ‘97” by Elton John is still at the top of the charts. I’m not sure when the sales of the single started to slow down. It was No 1 for five weeks and sold 658,000 copies on its first day of release and 1.5 million in the first week. As of September 2017 it had sold 4.94 million copies in the UK. By those numbers, I’m guessing there must have been a tapering off even when it was still No 1. For context though, this TOTP aired just under a month after Princess Diana’s death and one day shy of three weeks since her funeral.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Chumbawamba	Tubthumping	YES!
2	Dario G	Sunchyme	No but I bought The Dream Academy original
3	Robbie Williams	South Of The Border	No but I had a promo copy of the album
4	Tina Moore	Never Gonna Let You Go	I did not
5	Bellini	Samba De Janeiro	Nah
6	Sly & Robbie/Simply Red	Night Nurse	Nope
7	Blur	M.O.R.	No but I had the album
8	Elton John	Candle In The Wind ’97	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/m0029lyt/top-of-the-pops-26091997?seriesId=unsliced