Blur

TOTP 15 JUL 1993

Posted on by 80stastic

The day after this TOTP aired, Jurassic Park opened in UK cinemas. A ground breaking film both in terms of box office receipts and its revolutionary use of CGI, it’s hard to explain to people who weren’t there at the time quite what a big deal this film was. The hype and sense of excitement around it was palpable. I was working in the Rochdale Our Price at the time and there was only one other record shop in the town. The manager of it used to come into our store all the time and I recall him telling me that he’d been to see Jurassic Park the night before and how blown away he’d been by it. He specifically went on and on about the scene where the T-Rex has a torch light shined in its face and the pupil in its eye dilates. Like I said, it’s hard to explain now how advanced the film seemed to an audience like me who had been brought up on the special effects of Ray Harryhausen in the likes of Jason And The Argonauts and Clash Of The Titans. Of course, that original film spawned a whole franchise with the latest film coming out just this year. I wonder if any of the artists on this TOTP could be described as dinosaurs back in 1993?

I don’t think Dannii Minogue would have qualified as a dinosaur back in 1993. She was still only two years into her fledgling pop career. However, things weren’t going quite as well as they had been in 1991 for Dannii. After scoring two Top 10 successes and a couple of Top 20 singles from her debut album, the hits had dried up rather. Her version of The Jacksons’ “Show You The Way To Go” had spluttered to a high of No 30 whilst follow up “Love’s On Every Corner” had missed the Top 40 altogether. However, 1993 afforded an ideal opportunity for Dannii to kickstart her career as a disco revival was in full swing. Now bearing in mind that she’d already scored a disco styled hit with a version of Stacy Lattisaw’s 1980 hit “Jump To The Beat”, it made perfect sense for Ms Minogue to go there again and so she did with a cover of Melba Moore’s 1976 hit “This Is It”. It did the job too easily being the biggest of the five singles taken from her sophomore album “Get Into You” when it peaked at No 10. The album itself though bombed, vastly underperforming when it peaked at No 52 after her debut “Love And Kisses” had gone Top 10. It would be another ten years before she would return there with “Neon Nights”.

Dannii gives her usual energetic performance to sell the song backed with some equally perky dancers though why they have a backdrop of a sprawling metropolis lit up at night and some palm trees I don’t know. Even more confusing is what Dannii’s then fiancé is doing on the show. Host Tony Dortie introduces him at the end of the song with news of the couple’s impending nuptials. Julian McMahon was his name and he met Dannii on the set of Home And Away. According to Wikipedia, he appeared in the video for “This Is It” but sadly their marriage only lasted eighteen months. It can’t have been his dance moves that first attracted Dannii – in his brief time on screen here he looks like a pissed uncle at a wedding and even after the song has stopped continues to bob up and down like a pigeon’s head when walking. All very odd.

Ah, Tony Dortie has joined me on the Jurassic Park references. “We’ve got no dinosaurs on the show tonight, just Paul Weller’s prehistoric haircut” he chortles to himself. Blimey! If he thought the 1993 version of Weller’s barnet was bad, what would he have made if its current incarnation?

Anyway, this felt like the point in Weller’s solo career where he achieved full lift off. His debut solo album had reminded people of his abilities as a songwriter after it had looked like the 90s might just pass him by. However it was his second album “Wild Wood” which would go platinum in the UK and show that Weller was a force still to be reckoned with. It’s worth remembering that he was only 35 at the time so we shouldn’t have been surprised at his re-emergence and that reports of his musical death were greatly exaggerated.

“Sunflower” was the lead single from the album and I’d forgotten what a strong song it is. It whipcracks away with a spiky rhythm and rapier like guitar riff – mesmerising stuff. It reminds me in parts of a song that Weller himself covered whilst in The Jam – “Big Bird” by Eddie Floyd.

The simple yet effective video with its quick cutaways and a camera revolving around Weller imbues it with even more urgency and energy. “Sunflower” peaked at No 16. It should have been higher.

OK, no real dinosaur connections with 4 Non Blondes other than to say on the soundtrack to Wayne’s World 2, the running order has “Out There” by Dinosaur Jr. followed immediately by “Mary’s House” by – yes – 4 Non Blondes. Tenuous I know.

I can’t find a clip of this particular performance of “What’s Up?” so I have had to use one from a previous week but Linda Perry has swapped her rastacap style headgear for something that Slash might have worn. It hasn’t affected her vocals though as she belts the song out. Whatever you thought of the song (and many didn’t like it), Linda had some pipes on her. Her performance here has echoes of Shakespear’s Sister “Stay” in that Perry has a touch of Siobahn Fahey about her. Not her voice as I’d have to say that is superior to the ex-Banana’s (sorry Siobahn!) but for her twisted, almost demonic delivery especially when she opens her eyes wide amongst all that eye shadow.

Now there’s some I’m sure who would have been happy to describe Deacon Blue in 1993 as dinosaurs (not me obviously). How did they fit into a dance obsessed chart with their well crafted pop songs about hardship, hope and heartbreak? Well, the truth is that they did try to fit in with fourth studio album “Whatever You Say, Say Nothing” being co-produced by legendary dance DJ Paul Oakenfold (somebody I once worked with told me I looked like Oakenfold – I don’t). This new musical direction received mixed reviews and commercially underperformed compared to all three of its predecessors.

Now I would count myself as a fan of the band and have a few of their records but I really don’t remember a fourth single from “Whatever You Say, Say Nothing” but here it is. “Hang Your Head” was the lead song of a four track EP and was very un- Deacon Blue like with its driving beat and rock guitar licks – it was no “Dignity” – but actually it sounds OK to me. Not enough of the wonderful Lorraine McIntosh in this performance though.

A Best Of album came out the following year but the band split after that before reforming five years later. They continue to record and perform live with their last album being as recent as 2021.

This week’s Breakers start with Jon Secada who’s chart career wasn’t quite extinct in 1993 but surely that dinosaur-destroying asteroid was on its way. Having scored an unlikely Top 5 hit with “Just Another Day” the previous year, Jon stalked another hit raptor like and came up with a trio of them though none got any higher than No 23. This one, “Do You Really Want Me”, was the last of them and from the few seconds afforded it on the show sounded like a lost squawking seagull. Where’s an asteroid when you need one?

Ah, now. Here’s an interesting one and an example how quickly the pop world can turn. Back in 1991, Jesus Jones bestrode the charts T-Rex* like, the dominant species of the Top 40. Then that aforementioned asteroid hit in the form of the music press who decided that the band had been the inkies’ darlings for long enough and that they were crap after all.

*I’m meaning the dinosaur here but I guess my point would also work with Marc Bolan’s band.

To their eternal credit, the band carried on regardless and are still together today. Back in 1993 though, “Zeroes And Ones” was the final single to be lifted from their “Perverse” album and would prove to be their last ever UK Top 40 hit. It also provides the title for an upcoming Best Of album due out in October 2022. As for the track itself, it’s pretty standard Jesus Jones fare and I must admit it passed me by at the time.

Also on the end of a music press backlash were Blur who had experienced a slump after the success of debut album “Leisure” and a poorly received US tour. Unlike Jesus Jones though, Blur were able to evolve from their dinosaur state to become one of the 90s (and beyond’s) biggest bands. Enabling that leap from the thrills of “Leisure” to the glories of “Parklife” was inbetweener “Modern Life Is Rubbish”* from which “Chemical World” was the second single to be released. Although it didn’t pull up any trees at the time sales wise, it has retrospectively been labelled as one of the defining albums of Britpop with its Small Faces and The Kinks influences and lyrics that spoke of the experience of British life.

Immediately though, it didn’t appear as if Blur’s fortunes had been reversed. These were the chart peaks for every single release since “There’s No Other Way” made the Top 10 in 1991 until “Girls And Boys” did the same in 1994:

24 – 32 – 28 – 28 – 26

“Chemical World” was responsible for the penultimate entry in that sequence but it probably deserved better. If Paul Weller would come to be seen as one of the Godfathers of Britpop then Blur (alongside Oasis of course, where else would they be?) were its pin up boys. Blur’s and our own worlds would look very different just twelve months later.

*I actually picked up the “Modern Life Is Rubbish” album whilst on holiday in New York. Naturally it was in the bargain bin.

Being a musical dinosaur was the last thing that you could accuse Utah Saints of in 1993. They were at the cutting edge of making groundbreaking, mainstream dance music with their penchant for sampling pop records from the likes of Eurythmics and Kate Bush and repurposing them. However, after three consecutive Top 10 hits, was the writing on the wall for them when fourth single “I Want You” only made No 25? All of them came from their eponymous debut album but apart from a couple of stand alone singles, there was nothing then until 2000 – the equivalent of the Jurassic period (56 million years) in the world of pop.

Why did “I Want You” fail? Well, maybe sampling thrash metal band Slayer’s “War Ensemble” was just a little too niche to secure the band a fourth massive crossover hit. Just a thought.

Like Jesus Jones and Blur before him, Kenny Thomas was facing the challenge of following up on initial success with more hit-worthy material. Even host Tony Dortie talks about the soul crooner being under pressure to do so in his intro. “Stay” was the song that was chosen to relaunch Kenny but unlike the aforementioned Shakespear’s Sister and their track, it wasn’t a resounding success peaking at No 22.

Kenny’s music left me cold at the best of times but this one made me fell like I was locked in a freezer. Sorry Kenny but if this song was a scene from Jurassic Park, it would have been the bit where the guests on the island take a tour in those electric vehicles and none of the dinosaurs appear prompting the two kids to say “I don’t see anything. Do you see anything? There’s nothing there.”

Now, in much the same way that the dinosaurs were wiped off the surface of the earth by that asteroid, the next act seem to have been expunged from the history of 90s music in that you hardly hear them mentioned at all nowadays. In 1993 though, Oui 3 were bona fide chart stars with three Top 40 singles to their name. OK, none of them got any higher than No 17 and two of them were actually the same song (one single was re-released eight months after it initially came out) but that’s three chart hits all the same. That re-release was their Buffalo Springfield sampling song “For What It’s Worth” which, as he told us in his intro, was Tony Dortie’s favourite single of the year to that point. What he didn’t tell us was the name of Oui 3’s new hit which was “Break From The Old Routine”. Bet their record label weren’t too impressed by that. Schoolboy error Tony!

I liked both singles and my wife enjoyed them so much she bought their album “Oui Love You”. Not many other people did though as it peaked at No 39. A second album was never released and after one final minor hit (“Facts Of Life” – No 38) and a couple of stand alone singles that flopped, it was all over – Oui 3 were no(n) more. What I hadn’t realised until now was that one of the band was Blair Booth who was one third of late 80s collaboration Terry, Blair and Anouchka featuring Terry Hall and who were responsible for the marvellous non-hit “Missing”:

Oui 3 though were nothing like Terry, Blair and Anouchka, coming on, as they did, like Stereo MC’s cooler, more laid back cousin. The rapping was on point (though I’m no judge of what makes a good rapper to be fair) and they had what I can only describe as some good grooves. I would have been interested to see what that second album would have sounded like.

Despite having been around for the best part of a decade by 1993, Madonna was nowhere near being a dinosaur what with all the controversy over her “Erotica” album making her still seem exciting and contemporary. Fast forward to 2022, and Madge is plodding around the music landscape like a ponderous brontosaurus desperately seeking Susan validation that she is still relevant.

Anyway, “Rain” was her latest single and the last to be released in the UK from “Erotica”. I’ve said before that when I first heard the album that was the track that stood out to me as a potential hit single. I was right as well but it took a while. As it turned out it would make No 7 meaning that all five of the singles from “Erotica” made the Top 10 over here. Well, there was the evidence if you needed any that Madonna wasn’t a dinosaur back then.

Compared to the other singles, “Rain” felt like it didn’t really belong on the album. It was in many ways a very standard, though lushly produced, big ballad. The lyrics are based around that well worn literary (and indeed cinematic) metaphor of rain being a cleansing agent and washing away previous sorrows to be followed by the sunshine and redeeming warmth of a new love. Or are they? This was a track from “Erotica” remember so were lines like “I feel it…It’s coming…Rain…Feel it on my fingertips” actually referring to something rather more sexual? Does the video give us any clues? Well, it’s much safer than something like “Justify My Love” being a sort of film within a film with the plot depicting Madonna as the star of a promo being directed by composer Ryuichi Sakamoto no less. There is a scene of her kissing a man behind a glass screen while water falls but it’s pretty tame stuff. What do I know though as it won two MTV Video Awards for Best Art Direction and Best Cinematography.

Take That are straight in at No 1 with “Pray”. Straight in! To think just a couple of years before when Gary Barlow popped into the Our Price store in Market Street, Manchester where I was working, my colleague Craig followed him round the shop floor mouthing “nobody buys your records” behind his back!

To say that the group were very much seen as five individuals with each one having a devoted fan base (I’m guessing!), what comes across in the performance here is that the other four very much look like Barlow’s backing dancers. The lead vocals were shared out more equally over subsequent releases. As I recall, Mark Owen took centre stage on “Babe”, Robbie Williams did “Everything Changes” and Howard Donald got the job on “Never Forget”. Did Jason Orange ever get a go to show us his vocal talents? I’m not sure he ever did. No wonder the poor lad ended up leaving the band.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1Dannii MinogueThis Is ItNot likely
2Paul WellerSunflowerNo but I had the Wild Wood album
34 Non BlondesWhat’s Up?No but I found a copy of their album behind a filing cabinet when shutting down the Our Price in Market Street, Manchester
4Deacon BlueHang Your HeadNo
5Jon SecadaDo You Really Want MeAs if
6Jesus JonesZeroes And OnesNope
7BlurChemical WorldNo but I had the album Modern Life Is Rubbish
8Utah SaintsI Want YouI didn’t actually
9Kenny ThomasStayNever happening
10Oui 3Break From The Old RoutineNo but my wife had their album
11Madonna RainNah
12Take ThatPrayAnd 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/m001c1qq/top-of-the-pops-15071993

TOTP 29 APR 1993

Posted on by 80stastic

What happens to pop stars when the fame slides away and, as that infamous Bros documentary put it, when the screaming stops? Well, some stay in the world of entertainment but reinvent themselves as actors or DJs. Statistically there must be some I guess who can’t handle it and slide into a world of drink and drugs. There must also be a large number who just get ‘ordinary’ jobs like the rest of us. There can’t be many though that became even more famous as a professor of particle physics and the public face of anything scientific. I talk, of course, of Professor Brian Cox who famously was also, in his youth, the keyboards player in D:Ream. And yes, D:Ream are on the show tonight. And yes, I didn’t mention Brian Cox in the last post when his band were in the Breakers section knowing I could leave that discussion for this week. Seen by many as the natural successor to the likes of David Attenborough (even though their fields aren’t remotely the same), he’s certainly more famous now for making science hip than making hit singles. I wonder if they’ll be any more pop stars on tonight’s show who became famous for something other than pop music?

So we start with Prof Cox and D:Ream who are having a mini career before they go massive next year. It’s a curious chart history. 1993 brought them four hit singles yet none got any higher than No 19. The following year, they also had four hit singles but two of them were included in those hits from 1993. This time those repeated singles went to No 1 and No 4. In total there were nine single releases from their “D:Ream On Vol 1” album but across just six tracks with “Things Can Only Get Better” being released twice (once for the Labour General Election campaign of 1997) and this song “U R The Best Thing” three times! I guess their record label must have had unshakable faith that they really were going to be big.

Cox looks unrecognisable here with a mane of long hair which he keeps swishing from side to side and a sleeveless tartan suit (God in heaven! What was he thinking?!). Mind you, wasn’t lead singer Peter Cunnah partial to a tartan suit as well? Maybe we’ll see that it a future TOTP. I used to work with someone who had a drinking mug with Brian Cox’s face on it as she was a fan. The slogan emblazoned all around the mug? Me Love Cox. When I pointed out the obvious double entendre, it had genuinely never occurred to her!

It’s that REM single next that even if you weren’t a fan of the band or even pop music in general had to admit was a pretty good song. “Everybody Hurts” had that elusive quality to be able to cut through all different strata of society and be affecting. With its themes of dealing with depression and suicidal thoughts and its melancholy sound, it was an obvious choice for it to soundtrack a 1995 awareness campaign by The Samaritans.

Fifteen years on, it was covered to raise money for victims of the Haiti earthquake. Multiple artists were involved in the project including Mariah Carey, Rod Stewart, Take That, Kylie Minogue and Westlife and, with a nice link to D:Ream, was the idea of then Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown who contacted Simon Cowell to put it together. It became the fastest selling charity record of the 21st century in Britain. Somehow I can’t imagine Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak (whichever one ends up in No 10) initiating something similar. Raising money for suffering people that don’t even live in the UK? That wouldn’t go down well with the Tory membership at all. “Ooh bit of politics!” as Ben Elton would have said back in the day.

I don’t think you could make a case that any of the members of REM eclipsed their fame as rock stars after the band dissolved but Michael Stipe has branched out into film production acting as executive producer on movies such as Being John Malkovich and Velvet Goldmine.

SWV were in the charts in 1993 with a song that wasn’t “Right Here”? Really? The Michael Jackson sampling hit is my only memory of the trio from that year but here they are with a different hit called “I’m So Into You” which would make No 17 on our charts. After En Vogue and latterly Jade, here were the Sisters With Voices as the latest US R&B import seeking to replicate their success at home across the pond.

Listening back to this track hasn’t stirred my grey cells into action – zero recall of it – but then I was distracted by their decision to turn up for the show dressed as Shaky in double denim. Quite extraordinary. One of the trio, Tamara ‘Taj’ George, became a model after the band split and then found fame as a reality TV star on Survivor in 2009.

Anyone fancy some panpipe techno? Nah, me neither but there is some on the show courtesy of Dance 2 Trance and their hit “Power Of American Natives”. In later life, the backing dancer on the right found fame as bad boy Darren Osbourne in Channel 4 soap Hollyoaks. OK, I’m made that shit up but he does look a bit like him doesn’t he?

I’ve talked long and hard before about the three ‘S’s of shite that blighted the charts in 1993 – Shabba, Shaggy and Snow. There was though another artist that I could have shoehorned in to make this unholy trio a frightful foursome of crud if I’d allowed songs instead of artists beginning with ‘s’ to be included. The song I speak of is “Sweat” or rather “Sweat (A La La La La Long)”. This heinous piece of cod reggae by Inner Circle could rot your brain when exposed to it for just a few minutes with its infuriatingly catchy drone-a-long chorus. The good people of the UK had resisted its dark arts when originally released six months earlier but a rerelease due to it being No 1 all over Europe proved overwhelming and it duly went to No 6 in our charts.

The band themselves had been around in various incarnations since 1968 (!) but had only grazed the UK Top 40 once in 1979 with something called “Everything Is Great”. Talk about a misnomer. They came up with a song with a much more apt name in “Bad Boys” (where bad means crap and not good as per Michael Jackson) which became a big hit when it was used as the theme song to US TV series Cops and later to soundtrack the Will Smith / Martin Lawrence Bad Boys film franchise.

It’s three Breakers this week starting with Big Country. No if we thought D:Ream were into recycling with their multiple rereleases of tracks as singles, then what do we make of the bagpipe guitar rockers? Where D:Ream simply got the in demand remix team of Paul Oakenfold and Steve Osborne aka Perfecto to come up with a new version of “U R The Best Thing”, Big Country did the spade work themselves and totally re-recorded a song that had already been on a previous album.

“Ships (Where Were You)” was originally a track on poorly received and underselling 1991 album “No Place Like Home” but Stuart Adamson and co weren’t happy with the piano led, string quartet enhanced version that they had laid down and so went back into the studio to add those guitars. Now sounding more like a recognisable Big Country track, it became the band’s second consecutive Top 40 hit when released as the second single from “Buffalo Skinners”, the first time they had achieved that feat since 1986.

The video is a pretty pedestrian affair with the fans looking like they’ve caught the MTV Unplugged bug with all of them sat down for the entire performance. Surely that would have worked better with the string quartet 1991 version?

Next a band at a careers crossroads. It seems strange to recall now but in 1993 Blur we’re not in a good place. The glory of their 1991 breakthrough single “There’s No Other Way” had long since dimmed to be replaced by a press backlash. The band themselves were miserable after an unhappy experience touring the US to apathetic audiences. The possibility of being dropped by record label Food was real. A decision was taken to take a new direction that channeled the spirit of English 60s bands like the Small Faces and The Kinks as a reaction to the grunge era that they’d witnessed on their American tour. The result was the album “Modern Life Is Rubbish”, a collection of songs that didn’t generate massive sales but which have retrospectively been bestowed with love and respect and a sense of importance in configuring the rise of Britpop.

“For Tomorrow” was the lead track and was written with the intention of being a hit single as it was felt by Food that the album didn’t have any. Written about Primrose Hill the top of which affords a view of the whole of central London, it peaked at No 28, the band’s third lowest charting single until 2012. However, it is a fan favourite being voted the fifth best Blur song ever in a fanbase vote.

Whilst the album underperformed commercially, it was an essential and necessary step on the way to their most celebrated album “Parklife”. Oh and Inner Circle? That’s how you write a song with a ‘La La La La’ chorus!

Now here’s an artist I never really got…at all. However, she was very much seen as the darling of the indie world around this time and her career has been littered with accolades. Her trophy cabinet (presuming she has one) houses three Rolling Stone Magazine awards, two Mercury Music Prizes – she remains the only artist to have won it twice – an NME Outstanding Contribution to Music award and an MBE for services to music. Who am I taking about? PJ Harvey of course.

Back in 1993, she’d already made a name for herself with her debut album “Dry” which had made No 11 in the charts and would end up selling 60,000 copies. It was also extremely well received in the ‘serious’ music press. Maybe that’s what put me off her. I never really felt a part of that scene. While I was coming to the conclusion that she wasn’t really for me, PJ (Polly Jean) was already onto her next album. Sophomore release “Rid Of Me” came out the week after this TOTP aired and was trailed by the single “50ft Queenie”. This sounded like a racket to me back then and the intervening thirty years have done nothing to change my mind. I wasn’t the only person who wasn’t a fan. My mate Robin who worked at the BBC had got himself into the audience for a Later…with Jools Holland when one of the guests was PJ Harvey. So unimpressed was he by what he saw that as the camera panned round the studio audience during her performance, he gave his verdict with a double middle finger gesture (or ‘the rods’ as Robin described it). I’ve looked through a number of Later…shows featuring ol’ PJ but have not been able to spot Robin’s rods. He has a particularly bad track record of being at BBC music shows. He once found himself stranded at a recording of TOTP – he’d thought that Morrissey was on but it turned out to be Kenny Thomas instead.

“50ft Queenie” peaked at No 27.

A genuine rock god next. Robert Plant needs no introduction from me mainly because I’m not qualified as I never really got the boat to Led Zeppelin island but just to give this some factual context, this was Robert’s third solo Top 40 single over a ten year period. His first had come in 1983 with the paean to toilet humour “Big Log” whilst his second was 1988’s “Heaven Knows” which I don’t remember at all. “29 Palms” though I do recall as the album it was taken from – “Fate Of Nations” – we had a CD promo copy of at the Our Price store where I was working at the time. I wouldn’t normally have been interested in a Robert Plant album but I took this one as me and my wife had just purchased our very first stereo that had a CD drive! Yes, just a mere eight years (!) after Dire Straits’ “Brothers In Arms” was single-handedly driving the adoption of the CD as the format of choice for music buyers, we finally joined the digital recording revolution. The problem was we didn’t have any actual CDs to play on our newly acquired stereo. All our music was either on vinyl and then latterly cassette. Given this, I figured I’d claim the Plant promo CD to test out the CD player. To be fair, I don’t think anybody else I worked with was likely to want it.

And so it came to pass that one of the first CDs I ever had was a Robert Plant solo album. I had it for years and maybe played one track on it once (the single obviously) and in the end I gave it away to a friend who liked, yep, that one song. So about “29 Palms” – did I like it? I wouldn’t have changed station if it came on the radio but I certainly wouldn’t have bought it either (remember, the CD I had was a free promo – no monetary transaction was necessary). I think I preferred “Big Log” though from my school days. There’s a bit in it that’s been bugging me because it reminded me of another song but I couldn’t place it but I’ve got it now – it’s “Heaven” by Bryan Adams. That’s probably heresy to Led Zep fans but that’s what I’m hearing. It’s rumoured to be about Canadian singer Alannah Myles of “Black Velvet” fame whom Plant toured with. Alternatively, it’s about the town of Twentynine Palms in the Mojave desert or more specifically its radio station. Either way, at least Robert ensured there was no room for any “Big Log” style faeces innuendo with this one…unless you can think of any.

“29 Palms” peaked at No 21.

The 1993 Eurovision Song Contest is only two weeks away so it’s about time we got another glimpse of our entry for this year who is of course Sonia. The UK was in a run of runner up finishes with three of the previous five contests seeing us finish in second place. Sonia would make it four out of six with “Better The Devil You Know” but we would come nowhere near winning again until 1997 when Katrina And The Waves brought the crown back to the UK despite Katrina herself being American.

Back in 1993 though, Sonia found herself unlucky enough to be competing in an era where the contest was dominated by Ireland who were in the middle of a trio of wins between 1992 and 1994. A bit like Andy Murray playing elite tennis when Nadal and Federer were in their pomp. Well, sort of if you can get on board with the idea of music being competitive. Then again, what was the Top 40 singles chart if not a competition?

Not only did Sonia miss out on Eurovision glory but “Better The Devil You Know” was also her final ever Top 40 hit. She had eleven in all but I’m betting most of us would struggle if she was the ‘Three In Ten’ artist on Ken Bruce’s Popmaster. After the hits stopped, Sonia starred as Sandy in the West End revival of Grease and also as Lily Savage’s wayward daughter Bunty in The Lily Savage Show. I don’t think any of those projects outdid her fame as Sonia the pop star though. Certainly appearing in Channel 5’s Celebrity 5 Go Caravanning was unlikely to be people’s abiding memory of her.

P.S. Did Sonia and SWV plan their Shaky style outfits beforehand?

There’s a new No 1 as The Bluebells are no more and are replaced by George Michael and Queen with the “Five Live” EP. A charity record in support of The Mercury Phoenix Trust that fights HIV/AIDS around the world, the five tracks were:

  1. “Somebody To Love” – George Michael and Queen
  2. “Killer” – George Michael
  3. “These Are The Days Of Our Lives” – Queen, George Michael and Lisa Stansfield
  4. “Calling You” – George Michael
  5. “Dear Friends” – Queen

Tracks 1 and 3 were recordings of the live performances from the 1992 Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert with the first being the one that received all the airplay. The EP went straight in at No 1 making it the eighth charity record to do so at the time since Band Aid in 1984. It was also George Michael’s third No 1 single as a duet after “I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)” with Aretha Franklin in 1987 and “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me” with Elton John in 1991. It would become the 11th best selling single of 1993. It also was top of the charts for three weeks so I’ll leave it there for now. Oh, one more thing. We’re all agreed that George’s fame post Wham! outstripped his pre Wham! fame yeah?

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1D:ReamU R The Best ThingNo
2REMEverybody HurtsNo but I had the Automatic For The People album
3SWVI’m So Into YouNah
4Dance 2 TrancePower Of American NativesAs if
5Inner CircleSweat (A La La La La Long)God no!
6Big CountryShips (Where Were You)I did not
7BlurFor TomorrowNo but I had the Modern Life Is Rubbish album
8PJ Harvey50ft QueenieNever happening
9Robert Plant29 PalmsNo but I had that promo copy of the album
10SoniaBetter The Devil You KnowNope
11George Michael and QueenFive Live EPDon’t think I did

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/m0019tp0/top-of-the-pops-29041993

TOTP 08 AUG 1991

Posted on by 80stastic

Whilst we are into Autumn in the real world in 2021, back in TOTP Rewind and 1991 it’s still the Summer and this particular show reinforces just how bizarre the charts were back then. We have a couple of metal bands (albeit one is singing an acoustic ballad), a pair of electronic dance acts, some acid jazz, some hip hop, some singer songwriter types, an indie rock band who would become Britpop legends, yet another soap star chancing their arm as a singer, a joke rapper, Michael bloody Bolton and with it being 1991, we also have Bryan Adams of course. Pick the bones out of that lot.

As for me, the worry of the Our Price store I was working in being sold and what that meant for my job security had been resolved by this point I think as the decision to sell the unit was reversed. Phew! My wife had set herself up working as a freelance dressmaker so the work she was doing meant that we had two incomes for the first time in a while. I’m guessing we still didn’t have too much spare cash for record buying though. I wonder if any of the songs on tonight’s show would have been on my shopping list?

Nicky Campbell is tonight’s host and he’s employing his usual ‘I’m cleverer than you with my flourishes of vocabulary’ schtick. The first act he introduces are De La Soul and their “A Roller Skating Jam Named “Saturday”” single.

This pretty much marked the end of the trio as chart entities in the UK with only one more minor Top 40 hit during the 90s and none in the last 20 years. The reach of their music has not been helped of course by being hamstrung in terms of digital platforms like Spotify due to the sample heavy nature of their early back catalogue. Said samples were only cleared for physical music distribution and the wording of the contracts negotiated didn’t take into account the impact of unforeseen technologies. Disputes with the owners of their catalogue Tommy Boy Records further complicated matters and negotiations to bring those early hip hop classics to online listeners are ongoing with new owners Reservoir Media. For now though, type De La Soul into Spotify and you won’t find anything earlier than 2004 on there.

I mentioned in a post that me and my wife still often quote the ‘Saturday, it’s a Saturday’ lyric to this day when the weekend rolls around but there’s another reason this song still reverberates which is the Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah reference which of course is in Disney’s Song Of The South film. For years I was convinced that the lyrics were ‘plenty of sunshine, plenty of rain’ when they are actually ‘plenty of sunshine coming my way’. Why I was under this impression I have no idea but I argued my corner for years with my wife in the pre-internet days. Not for the first time, she was right and I was completely and utterly wrong.

“A Roller Skating Jam Named “Saturday” peaked at No 22.

Campbell starts blathering about ‘funked up fairytales’ when introducing Extreme. I’m not quite sure what the point is that he’s trying to make. I think he just lost his way trying to say that their single “More Than Words” is a rather delicate ballad as opposed to their usual funk metal style but gets bogged down in his own nonsense. Bloody pseud.

As for Extreme themselves, they’re up to No 2 but are the latest in what will become a long line of acts to hit the Bryan Adams bottleneck and never get to No 1. Incidentally, that list includes 2 Unlimited, Right Said Fred, Heavy D And The Boyz and The Scorpions. Given that extremely low bar, I’d say Extreme perhaps had the most plausible case to take before the court of pop injustice although I’d have also been OK with “Let’s Talk About Sex” by Salt ‘N’ Pepa making it to the top which was the final No 2 single to be Adams’d.

Apparently Extreme’s management didn’t see “More Than Words” as a hit record and only released it as a single after guitarist Nuno Bettencourt badgered the label leading them to testing it in several markets and territories to check out audience reaction. They’d wanted a more traditional sounding power ballad with crashing drums and kitchen sink production values. Bettencourt won out though AMA the rest is history with it making up for just missing out in the UK by going to No 1 in the US.

Campbell tells us how he’s all about ‘real’ music next referring to the next act as a songsmith in a techno-led age crafting songs like an ornament rather than a computer print out. He really was a pretentious, verbose wanker back then. So who could he have been waxing lyrical over? Why Beverley Craven of course who’s back in the charts with “Holding On”, her follow up to No 3 hit Promise Me”. Unfortunately for Beverley, she couldn’t turn her lyrics into reality as she failed to hold onto her previous success when the single peaked at No 32 despite the TOTP exposure.

Beverley wrote a song for her then baby daughter Mollie on her second album “Love Scenes” called…erm…”Mollie’s Song” and her daughter repaid her years later by appearing on ITV dating show Take Me Out causing her Mum to have to endure the embarrassment of performing on Take Me Out: The Gossip. Ungrateful kids eh?

If Extreme weren’t going to do this hard rock thing properly then stand aside as the real deal is here. “Enter Sandman” by Metallica is just huge whether you’re a devotee of that genre or just a music fan. Absolutely massive. I would certainly put myself in the latter category and my knowledge of Metallica at this point was limited at best. I knew they had released a few albums as we stocked them in the Our Price store I was working in but they were never played on the shop stereo. Not really seen as suitable playlist material for a mainstream record shop chain. I still held this view two years later when I was Assistant Manager at the Altrincham store as Xmas approached.

Whilst I was upstairs with the manager having a no doubt very important meeting planning something or other, the staff downstairs on the counter thought this was a perfect time to test my stress levels by playing some inappropriate music in the shop. After a couple of tracks had led me to ringing down to the counter and telling them to play something more shop friendly, they decided to really push my buttons by playing “Enter Sandman”. I was verging on apoplectic by this point but I could see the funny dude once I had calmed down.

“Enter Sandman” was the lead single from their self titled fifth album otherwise known as ‘The Black Album’ on account if it’s all black cover. Surely they must have taken inspiration from Spinal Tap’s “Smell The Glove”?

“Enter Sandman” peaked at No 5 on the UK chart.

The Shamen are back in the studio next to perform their hit “Move Any Mountain: Progen 91”. A retitled re-release of their 1990 “Pro>Gen” single, it was taken from their “En-Tact” album which had made a high of No 31 on the charts at the back end of the previous year but somehow, the success of “Move Any Mountain” didn’t trigger a renaissance period for the album and it struggled to a second peak of No 45 despite re-entering the charts for a seven week run.

I’m guessing it was the curse of the record label practice of temporarily withdrawing an album that had been out for a while before releasing it off the back of an unexpected hit single. That was happening all the time in 1991. The band needn’t have worried as the following year’s “Boss Drum” would go to No 3 and be certified platinum.

The second of those two singer songwriters on the show now as Amy Grant proves she was not a one hit wonder after all. “Every Heartbeat” was her follow up to No 2 hit “Baby Baby” and was also taken from her “Heart In Motion” album. It’s pretty twee stuff though I have to say, one of those airhead, superficial songs that would be on an album called ‘The Best Songs To Convince Yourself That Life Isn’t Shit After All Whilst You Do The Ironing…Ever!’. Or something.

Any would have one further UK hit single in 1995 when she covered Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” and took it to No20, five places higher than the peak of “Every Heartbeat”.

I’d completely forgotten that Blur had a second Top 40 hit in 1991. I’d been labouring under the misapprehension that there was a sizeable gap between “There’s No Other Way” and their “Modern Life Is Rubbish” sophomore album but here’s “Bang” to show that there was a second hit single from debut long player “Leisure” after all.

I must have not watched this TOTP as surely I would have remembered “Bang” as the one with the chicken placard. What the hell was that about?! Cue lots of comments about Damon Albarn waving his big cock about on Twitter. There were also lots of tweets about Graham Coxon’s Oxford That University t- shirt (he didn’t actually go there) but I was more impressed by drummer Fave Rowntree’s Teenage Fanclub t-shirt.

As for the song itself, it’s just a poor man’s “There’s No Other Way” isn’t it? Even the band themselves weren’t keen:. Here’s TOTPFacts with the story:

“Bang” peaked at No 24.

Some more wise ass word play next from Nicky Campbell as he introduces Young Disciples and their one and only hit “Apparently Nothin’”. This lot were essentially a springboard for the solo career of well connected soul singer Carleen Anderson (Bobby Byrd was her stepfather and James ‘The Godfather Of Soul’ Brown was her actual godfather).

Talking of being well connected, isn’t that Mick Talbot of The Style Council up there on keyboards? Yes it is but why? How? Well, their album was recorded at Solid Bond Studios (Paul ‘The Modfather’ Weller’s personal studio) and both he and Talbot featured on it. Simples.

The album was shortlisted for the inaugural Mercury Music Prize but lost out to Primal Scream’s “Screamadelica”. Being in such exalted company makes you wonder why the band weren’t bigger than they were or at least why they didn’t last longer. Maybe it really was all about Carleen Anderson as the band split after she left in 1992.

“Apparently Nothin’” peaked at No 13.

I hate the way they’ve started putting the Breakers just before the No 1 song. It keeps killing me into a false sense of security that I’m nearly done. Also nearly done (thank f**k) are Technotronic whose appearance here in the Breakers will be their last on the show possibly ever. I think the only other UK chart entries they had were remixes of “Pump Up The Jam” years down the line so with a fair wind at our backs we might just be about to steer a Technotronic free course through the rest of the decade.

For the record, this one was called simply “Work” and featured someone just called Reggie. Who was Reggie? She’s the singer on this one I believe and also collaborated with “Last Night A DJ Saved My Life” hitmakers Indeep though to be honest she might as well have been Reggie Perrins for all I care. Just as the founder of Grot walked off into the sea never to be seen again (sort of), Technotronic are finally doing the decent thing and disappearing.

Ah shit. It’s Michael Bolton again, this time with the title track from his “Time Love And Tenderness” album which would produce five hit singles for him in this country! My Michael Bolton story has been well documented in previous posts so I don’t propose to wheel it out again here. Despite his sanitised image as a shaggy dog haired singer of bland soft rock ballads, Bolton did mix it up a bit with some of his song titles. “Said I Loved You…But I Lied” is not your archetypal love song message but my favourite is “Can I Touch You…There?”. WTF?!

Now if we thought that the whole soap star to pop star thing that dominated the end fo the 80s would disappear come the new decade, we were wrong. In 1990 we had Neighbours and Home And Away Aussie actor Craig McLachlan chancing his arm with an attempt at being a serious musician and now here was the UK’s very own Sophie Lawrence giving it a whirl with a version of Donna Summer’s disco classic “Love’s Unkind”. Sophie, of course, played Diane Butcher in EastEnders from 1988 until 1991 (her last few appearances in the soap coincided with her attempt at pop stardom in fact).

I remember wondering at the time whether Sophie’s character was popular enough to be able to attract an audience of pop fans. I mean no offence but she was hardly Kylie Minogue / Charlene Robinson was she? I mean she wasn’t even the most well known of the Butcher family I would wager being outshone by her Dad Frank (played by Mike Read) and her dopey brother Ricky (Sid Owen). Maybe I wasn’t a big enough EastEnders fan to truly understand her draw. To be fair to her, she looks like a pop star in the video; like a cross between Olivia Newton John and Debbie Gibson. Sadly for Sophie, her pop career didn’t\’t extend beyond this one single and she returned to acting after her moment in the charts.

Bryan Adams is still No 1 with “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You” obviously. He hasn’t even got into his stride yet. I think by this point he was selling twice the number of copies of any other record in the Top 10. I recall a colleague called Pete in the Our Price I worked in struggling to keep up with demand. When asked by the manager if he had any more copies on order as we had sold out again, Pete turned to me and whispered “No, I thought I’d leave it” in his best sarcastic tone. I would encounter my own singles buying crisis a few years later when I found myself being in charge of orders in the week of the Blur v Oasis battle but that’s for a future post.

And so we come to the joke rapper. No not Honey G of the X factor. It can only be Vanilla Ice who is back in the charts with “Satisfaction“. This take on the Rolling Stones classic “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” was Ice’s fourth UK Top 40 hit. Fourth? Who’d have thought he’d had so many hits? Well, not the BBC who included him in their One Hit Wonders programme which aired on BBC4 just before this TOTP repeat. As if all the pro-government news reporting wasn’t enough, now the Beeb do this!

Order of appearanceArtist TitleDid I buy it?
1De La SoulA Roller Skating Jam Named “Saturday”Nope
2ExtremeMore Than WordsI did not
3Beverley CravenHolding OnNah
4MetallicaEnter SandmanNo
5The ShamenMove Any Mountain: Progen 91Liked it, didn’t buy it
6Amy GrantEvery Heartbeat Negative
7BlurBangAnother no
8Young DisciplesApparently Nothin’ Yes it’s in the singles box but I think my wife actually made the purchase
9TechnotronicWorkF**k off!
10Michael BoltonTime, Love And TendernessNever happening
11Sophie LawrenceLove’s UnkindDitto
12Bryan Adams(Everything I Do) I Do It For YouIt’s a no
13Vanilla IceSatisfactionAs if

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000znwm/top-of-the-pops-08081991

TOTP 09 MAY 1991

Posted on by 80stastic

It’s early May 1991 and UK comedian Bernie Winters (of Schnorbitz fame) has just died. During his career, he portrayed vaudeville entertainer Bud Flanagan whilst Bud’s comic partner Chesney Allen was played by Leslie Crowther…and guess what? It turns out that Chesney Hawkes is named after Chesney Allen! And that, dear reader, is one of the most tenuous links I have ever come up with to tie together the news of 1991 with the charts of that year. It’s especially tenuous as Chesney’s reign at the No 1 has just come to an end the other week and effectively also his time as a pop star. So who was in the charts then around now? Let’s find out….

Tonight’s host is Gary Davies who had been a TOTP presenter for nigh on a decade by this point. You have to give him points for longevity. However, before the year’s end, he would lose that gig as the ‘year zero’ revamp kicked in. In fact, he was the last Radio 1 DJ to host the show in its old format. Tonight’s he’s got some sort of yin and yang design top on which probably looked pretty cool in 1991. Probably.

The first act he introduces are Electronic with “Get The Message” but for some inexplicable reason, the version they choose to mime to here is a remix of the single and not the radio edit. The remix in question is a DNA Groove Mix (yes those blokes who remixed “Tom’s Diner” by Suzanne Vega in 1990) but it sounds limp next to the radio version. I’d even go as far as piss weak. Whose idea was this?! Bernard Sumner doesn’t seem to know how to deliver this version of the song so we get a lot of arms raised with a clenched fist and some really loose noodling around dance steps. He looks as unsure what to do as I did on my one and only (gets another Chesney reference in!) visit to The Haçienda.

“Get The Message” peaked at No 8 and was the first of just two Top 10 hits for the band.

One of the biggest stars of the last 12 months is up next as Seal is back in the studio with his new single “Future Love Paradise“. This was his second solo single after “Crazy” at the end of the previous year and was actually the lead track from an EP called “Future Love EP”. It was very much in the same vein as its predecessor although not quite as immediate I would suggest. Not content with sounding a bit like “Crazy”, Seal also went back to his uncredited No 1 with Adamski “Killer” for some inspiration, repurposing the line ‘Don’t you know that racism has a minimum future kids, Can only lead to no good’ for inclusion in the lyrics to “Future Love Paradise”.

Seal is still rocking his leather trousers for this performance though he has added the affectation of a guitar as well. As the song kicks in, he finally uses it as a musical instrument rather than a fashion accessory to do some fairly unimpressive fake strumming. Still, it was a pretty solid follow up I always thought. An Our Price colleague called Mark loved this, purchasing it on the day of release. No messing about for Mark. However, its sales in general were decent rather than spectacular and it shuddered to a halt outside the Top 10 at No 12. A bit of a comedown from the No 2 high of “Crazy” and, of course, that No 1 in “Killer”. Maybe punters were waiting for the album that Gary Davies plugged in his intro.

Another follow up to a recent huge hit next as Roxette attempt to repeat the success of their No 4 record “Joyride” with new single “Fading Like a Flower (Every Time You Leave)“. This one had much more of a rock ballad feel to it than the pure pop moment that was “Joyride” – almost “Listen To Your Heart Pt II” in fact. All the usual soft rock elements are present and correct including some guitar licks that sound a bit like “Wind of Change” by Scorpions and the obligatory final flourish key change. It’s all very professionally done and that but a little too formulaic maybe?

As with Seal, it couldn’t replicate the success of its predecessor and exactly like Seal, it also peaked at No 12.

*How much longer is this Top 5 albums feature going to go on for?! The premise of TOTP is that it was based around the singles chart! It’s not that hard is it?! Oh well, the Top 5 albums for April 1991 were

  1. Eurythmics – “Greatest Hits”
  2. Simple Minds – “Real Life”
  3. Roxette – “Joyride”
  4. Rod Stewart – “Vagabond Heart”
  5. REM – “Out Of Time”

Pretty mainstream stuff I guess (if you are counting REM as part of the establishment now). Personally I had got very excited about the release of the first ever Eurythmics Best Of album though. It sold and sold throughout the year and looked nailed on to be the biggest seller of 1991 until Simply Red released “Stars” and it was pipped at the last. Bloody Hucknall! So much to answer for.

A live performance next from a new act now as Beverley Craven‘s time in the spotlight has arrived. Although she seemed to appear overnight as a fully fledged singing star, she’d actually been paying her dues for some years before this point. She’d been playing London pubs and writing songs since she was 18 (she was 27 at the time of this TOTP performance) and having finally been picked up by Epic Records, she had been sent to LA to work with some established songwriters and to learn her craft playing in bars and restaurants over there. Her first attempt at recording her debut album was with one Stewart Levine who was the man responsible for producing the Simply Red albums “Picture Book” and “A New Flame”. He was also the guy behind the aforementioned “Stars” album. Another man with so much to answer for then. A little bit of cosmic karma struck Levine though when Beverley didn’t like what he had done with her songs and with Epic also rejecting the recordings, a new producer was hired. Ha! Go on Bev!

New producer Paul Samwell-Smith met with more approval and the album, simply titled “Beverley Craven”, was released in July 1990….and nobody even noticed. Four singles were released from it and they all sank without trace. However, she had gone down well in Europe and so a British tour was arranged to capitalise. The single “Promise Me” was re-released in the wake of this and with heavy promotion behind it, the charts were finally cracked. The single went Top 3 which led to the inevitable public clamour for her album that had been ignored initially. Epic however employed that annoying practice of withdrawing it from sale before re-releasing it with a fanfare and a TV advertising campaign. Cue lots of frustrated punters.

Singing the song live on TOTP was a very clever decision though, imbuing Beverley with an immediate credibility as a singer-songwriter rather than a pop star. The piano playing also helped to establish her musicianship. For a while, Beverley was huge. A further two of those early singles were re-released both becoming hits and the album (when it was finally available again) spent nearly a year in the charts. The following year, she won The Best Newcomer award at the BRITS. However, after giving birth to her first daughter Mollie, the quick follow up album that Epic required was not forthcoming, eventually arriving a year later in 1993. Although a gold seller, “Love Scenes” didn’t perform as well as her debut and after a five-year hiatus due to giving birth to two more daughters, Beverley didn’t release a third album until the 90s were nearly over. By this point, she had almost gone back tho the same public profile she had had at the start of the decade. In later years, Craven has toured with Julia Fordham and Judie Tzuke as part of the Woman To Woman show and in 2018 had to take time out to recuperate after surgery for breast cancer.

Me? What did I think about it? Yeah, I quite liked “Promise Me” in the same way that I quite liked “Get Here” by Oleta Adams. I quite liked it – is that damning with faint praise? Sorry Bev, Didn’t meant to.

UPDATE: This bloke on Twitter says that was the last one. Hurray!

Ah bollocks! It’s the return of Michael Bolton and we all know wha that means. No, not his monstrous hair but that I have to fess up, once again, to having seen him live. I know, I know. Do I have to go over this all again in detail? I was drunk in a nightclub when I agreed to accompany my work colleague Andy to see him in Sheffield but before I could check with Andy what I had agreed to, he had purchased the tickets. Honest truth that! And yes, the support was Kenny G (or as Michael referred to him, ‘The G Man’). OK. Happy now?

Right. Well, “Love Is A Wonderful Thing” was the lead single from his “Time, Love & Tenderness” album and as I remember, Andy was quite enthralled by it. Not so enthralled were The Isley Brothers who filed a lawsuit for copyright infringement against Bolton and his record company due to the similarity between his song and their own also called “Love Is a Wonderful Thing” which had been released in 1966 and was a minor hit. Like very minor. No 110 in the charts minor. Bollers denied all knowledge of The Isley Brothers’ song but in 1994, a Los Angeles jury ruled in favour of the plaintiff and against him. Aghast at the decision, the hairy one appealed the verdict and the court fight continued for nearly seven more years but to no avail. Bolton, his co-writer and Sony Publishing were ordered to turn over more than $5 million in profits from the sales of his version of the song to The Isley Brothers.

The weird thing is, the two songs don’t really don’t sound that similar at all to me. See what you think. Here’s The Isley Brothers….

…and here’s the Bolton song…

I’m really not convinced. “Love Is A Wonderful Thing” (by Michael Bolton) peaked at No 23.

If you thought you were going to get away with out some horrible dance music on the show, think again. It was 1991 after all! Your weekly dose of crappy bpm is courtesy of somebody/thing called T99 and is called “Anasthasia”. Now according to Gary Davies, it was a somebody and his name was Olivier Abbeloos who was one half of Quadrophonia who supplied last week’s dose of crappy bpm. This isn’t him though. Here’s @TOTPFacts:

Yeah, I couldn’t really care less either. The track and performance here comes over like a poor man’s KLF. Somehow though it peaked at No 14.

Still Cher at the top of the heap with “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s In His Kiss)” but what’s Gary Davies telling us in his intro? The film it’s taken from Mermaids, hadn’t even opened in the cinemas at this point? It wasn’t even due its premiere for two weeks with general release a further week away after that? So why was the song so popular? I was assuming that people had picked up on it from flocking to the cinema. Maybe it was being hammered on the radio. Well, if The Simpsons could have a No 1 song when hardly anybody in the UK had access to their TV show, then I guess Cher could have a hit from a film that wasn’t out yet. As cheesy as it is, I’d have “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s In His Kiss)” over “Do The Bartman” any day.

The play out video is “There’s No Other Way” by Blur. Now of course, the most striking thing about this video is Damon Albarn’s horrific bowl haircut. However, the rest of the band aren’t much better apart from drummer Dave Rowntree who has a sensible short style that he maintains to this day. A bit like when Peter Best didn’t get The Beatles haircut when John, Paul and George when in Hamburg. Luckily, for Dave he didn’t get kicked out of the band for not joining in like Pete did.

However, the other thing I have noted is those Japanese style blue willow plates that the meal is served on. They were everywhere in the 70s and early 80s. My Mum certainly had some (probably still does). Although it’s clearly meant to be very interesting, the rest of the video isn’t really. It’s just trying to be too clever by half. What was with the scarily huge trifle at the end and the shots of the worm? Pseuds! At least they were talked into changing the band name from Seymour to Blur.

“There’s no Other Way” peaked at No 8.

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

Order of AppearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1ElectronicGet The MessageNo but I must have it on something surely?
2SealFuture Love ParadiseNo but I had the album
3RoxetteFading Like a Flower (Every Time You Leave)Nope
4Beverley CravenPromise MeI did not
5Michael BoltonLove Is A Wonderful ThingI promise you I didn’t
6T99AnasthasiaNo
7CherThe Shoop Shoop Song (It’s In His Kiss)Yes but it was all an honest mistake!
8BlurThere’s No Other WayDon’t think I did

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/m000y2fg/top-of-the-pops-09051991

TOTP 25 APR 1991

Posted on by 80stastic

The record company release schedules were very busy back in April 1991 as there are 10 songs new to the charts on this particular TOTP. Also having a busy old time of it was one David Icke who had resigned from the Green Party and then held a press conference to announce to the world that he was a son of the Godhead and that the world was going to end in 1997 after a period of tidal waves and earthquakes. Four days after this TOTP aired, he appeared on Wogan and gave an interview that was catastrophic to his career and credibility.

The following month, a crowd of youths gathered outside Icke’s home and went all Life Of Brian by chanting “We want the Messiah” and “Give us a sign, David”. Oh dear.

He resurfaced when the pandemic struck suggesting that there was a link between the COVID-19 and 5G mobile phone networks. To think he just used to be that fresh faced sports presenter on Grandstand when I was a kid. I remember the media storm surrounding Icke at this time and in particular the reptilian conspiracy theory he promoted that shapeshifting lizard like aliens control Earth by taking on human form and gaining political power to manipulate human societies. Didn’t he even say that the Queen was a reptile? Fast forward 30 years and we are overrun by conspiracy theories including QAnon and the anti vaccination protesters in London this weekend. Icke and his son were at the latter by the way. Have we / Icke learned nothing?

Hopefully there will be no trace of a conspiracy theory or any playing of records backwards to reveal satanic messages in any of tonight’s acts…

…we start with EMF and their latest single “Children”. The third track to be taken from their “Schubert Dip” album, it was very much still in the same vein as previous hits “Unbelievable” and ‘I Believe” and maybe that was the problem. They were starting to sound a bit samey. Certainly there was a downturn in commercial fortunes with this one as it failed to make the Top 10 as its predecessors had and indeed only just scraped into the Top 20 at No 19. I mean, there was nothing wrong with it per se but watching the performance back, was there a tiny bit of melancholy in lead singer James Atkin’s eyes indicating that maybe this pop star lark wasn’t all it was cracked up to be?

A second album “Stigma” was released in 1992 but did little to reverse their decline in popularity and indeed was only in the charts for two weeks (its predecessor had charted for 19 weeks). By the time of 1995’s third album “Cha Cha Cha”, they had resorted to teaming up with another of tonight’s acts Vic Reeves for a version of The Monkees “I’m A Believer” which although a big hit (No3), failed to revive their career. Follow up single “Afro King” (which was actually fantastic) missed the charts and they disappeared before resurfacing in the new millennium for a series of reunions.

Just when I thought we’d got away without any conspiracy theory stuff, host Nicky Campbell (who seems to be on one tonight) hooks us back in with the old ‘what does EMF stand for?’ conundrum. Many a theory had been posited about this including ‘Epsom Mad Funkers’ but it was generally believed to be ‘Ecstasy Mother F*****s’. In any case it certainly wasn’t ‘Exciting New Music’ as Campbell jokes. Just lame. To be fair to Campbell, he did tweet this when the repeat was shown on BBC4 thereby demonstrating a bit of self knowledge at least:

I don’t remember this one at all …except I do. What am I talking about? Well, the track is “Ring Ring Ring (Ha Ha Hey)” by De La Soul which I have no recall of but the chorus is nicked from “Name And Number” by Curiosity Killed The Cat which is still in my memory banks (some might say unfortunately). This was the lead single from their second studio album “De La Soul Is Dead” but the only single I remember from that was the next one called “A Roller Skating Jam Named “Saturdays”” and its ‘Saturday, it’s a Saturday’ chorus.

Wasn’t there some fuss about the album’s title and also its cover with its fallen over, broken flower pot and strewn flowers image? Did some critics read into it that it meant that the trio were splitting up? In actual fact, it was meant to refer to a change in musical direction and the dead imagery referred to the death (or at least a deliberate distancing from) the “D.A.I.S.Y.” (Da Inner Sound, Y’all) scene. Although the album sold pretty well (it went Top 10 in the UK), it seems to me that it is nowhere near as revered as their iconic debut “3 Feet High And Rising”.

“Ring Ring Ring (Ha Ha Hey)” peaked at No 10.

This is the single I was meant to buy for my wife the other week but somehow I bought her home “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s In His Kiss)” instead! How could I get Vic Reeves and Cher mixed up?!

Me not buying my wife Vic Reeves single in 1991

For two years we had all been enamoured with Vic Reeves Big Night Out on Channel 4 (at least myself and my wife had been) and I think I’m right in saying that the second and final series had just aired the week before this single came out. That single was a cover of “Born Free”, the title song from the 1966 film of the same name sung by Matt Monro (hence Nicky Campbell’s name check at the end of the performance). However, it wasn’t that track that my wife wanted but the B side which was “Oh! Mr Songwriter” with which Vic always closed each episode of Big Night Out.

Coming off the back of the success of the TV series, the single was a huge success peaking at No 6 and was followed by an album called “I Will Cure You” later in the year which would make the Top 20 and include an actual No 1 record in Vic’s collaboration with The Wonder Stuff on a cover of Tommy Roe’s “Dizzy”.

Vic can’t resist subverting the norms of a TOTP performance here by having his backing singers indulge in a plate of sandwiches half way though whilst he shows the audience a flip chart of birds. Here’s Vic on that performance via @TOTPFacts:

By the way, I did ultimately correct my error and buy the Vic Reeves single for my wife so no conspiracy there.

One of the best singles of the whole decade next? Possibly. “Get The Message” by Johnny Marr and Bernard Sumner super group Electronic appeared some 18 months after their first single “Getting Away With It”. The intervening length of time and the fact that “Getting Away With It” was so dominated by the distinctive vocals of Pet Shop Boy Neil Tennant made it feel like this single was almost by a new artist altogether. And what a song it was! It just sits together effortlessly, an almost perfect combination of Marr’s musicality, Sumner’s low register singing and Primal Scream vocalist Denise Johnson’s wonderful vocal talents at the song’s coda. Plus there was that incessantly catchy, swirling ‘wah-wa-wa wah’ sound effect at the end of the second chorus.

An eponymous album followed in May and I remember there being some disappointment amongst punters that the track listing didn’t include “Getting Away With It”. I think there was an import version of it that did include that track if you were prepared to pay around £18 for the CD though I’m not sure we sold many of those in the Our Price I was working in. Subsequent releases have rectified that omission. The album was a big success peaking at No 2 and selling over a million copies worldwide. “Get The Message” itself peaked at No 8.

Some Breakers and the TOTP producers are sticking with the pile ’em high strategy of the previous week as they cram 4 songs into 1 minute and 30 seconds. We start with Roachford whom we haven’t seen for nigh on two years. “Get Ready!” was the new single and also the title of their second album. I had a bit of a soft spot for Roachford – “Cuddly Toy” had been a floor filler at the Sunderland nightclub of my choice when I had been a student up in the North East – and though this track wasn’t anywhere near as immediate as their biggest ever hit, it was a bit of a grower I thought. It grew on me so much that I bought it in the end although it was from the bargain bin of our Summer sale later in the year. The album sold steadily though it was hampered by a lack of any further hit singles from it

I once saw Roachford live – it must have been about 1994 – as I got on the guest list for their gig via the Sony rep who came to our store. They were pretty good I have to say. Andrew Roachford would later join Mike + The Mechanics as their some time vocalist and also released an album as recently as 2020 called “Twice In a Lifetime” which charted at No 31 on the UK album chart – the first Roachford album to make the Top 40 for 23 years.

“Get Ready!” the single peaked at No 22.

Yet another AC/DC single! There have been a plague of them since I’ve been writing my 80s and 90s TOTP blogs. “Are You Ready” is their ninth Top 40 hit in the period I have covered and guess what? It sounds the same as all the other ones! No I don’t care, it does! Plus, the video is exactly the same as well – the band live in concert with Angus Young in his schoolboy uniform and Brian Johnson in his flat cap. Give it a rest! “Are You Ready” peaked at No 34 and was from the band’s gold selling album “The Razors Edge”.

I think I remember this next one or am I thinking of a different record altogether? Frances Nero had recorded for Motown in the 60s but her only UK Top 40 hit was “Footsteps Following Me”. Apparently it was written by Ian Levine, the man behind the UK Hi-NRG scene and who worked with a load of artists in the 80s including Pet Shop Boys, Bucks Fizz, Erasure, Kim Wilde, Bronski Beat and Bananarama. “Footsteps Following Me” peaked at No 17 and was dubbed by British DJs as ‘the soul anthem of the nineties’ (it says on Wikipedia).

What is that other tune that “Footsteps Following Me” reminds me of? Oh yeah, it’s this…

Did someone mention Bananarama earlier? Here they are doing The Doobie Brothers. I really don’t remember this but the internet tells me that their version of “Long Train Running” was the third single to be released from their “Pop Life” album and was basically only recorded to fill up the album track listing. The TOTP graphics team were at it again with this one calling it “Long Train Coming” which is probably another record altogether!

The 1973 original wasn’t a hit in the UK at the time but it was remixed in 1993 and became a Top 10 smash whilst this rather weedy sounding version by the Nanas peaked at No 30.

A bit of pop history now as the get our first national view of Blur. Hands up those watching this performance who thought this lot would become a giant figure bestriding the UK musical landscape for years to come? Yeah, me neither. I quite liked “There’s No Other Way” though I have to say. Somehow though, at the time, I didn’t feel the need to explore their debut album “Leisure” which was released a few months later. Had I done so and developed a loyalty to Blur three years before Oasis appeared, I may have been on their side in the war versus the Manc lads of 1995.

This performance though did little to convince me that they weren’t just another of those floppy fringed, indie bands like Ride but put into drug induced overdrive. Drug induced? Looks at the state fo Damon Albarn’s wide eyed stare and Alex James’s clueless leaping about. Both clearly under the influence. Don’t take my word for it though. Here’s Damon himself courtesy of @TOTPFacts:

The single peaked at No 8 whilst the album also went Top 10. Even so, their elevation into the national consciousness was still a good few years off. There’s no other way of seeing it though, “There’s No Other Way” was a statement of intent.

I said the other week that I didn’t remember “Seal Our Fate” by Gloria Estefan when it was included in the Breakers section. I clearly can’t have caught this episode of the show either as who could forget Gloria performing the single in that PVC dress?! Blimey! She has a whole parade of people up there on stage backing her (The Miami Sound Machine?) but nobody is looking at them. Erm…anyway…unusually the single was a bigger hit in the UK than it was in the US peaking at No 24 over here but only No 53 across the pond.

It was used in a Pepsi advert also featuring Gloria herself which I also don’t remember but here it is:

He’s still there for a fifth week at the top and as Nicky Campbell advises us, nobody had achieved such a run at No 1 since Paul Hardcastle with “19” in 1985. Was there some sort of music industry conspiracy happening to keep Chesney Hawkes in pole position for all this time? How could such a dastardly deed be done and to what end? Had anybody thought to ask David Icke about “The One And Only”?

Despite that plea from Jakki Brambles last week, Chezza doesn’t seems have had his locks shorn at all. To be fair, his brother on the drums has an even worse haircut. Are all those shrieks from the TOTP audience genuine or were they result of the floor staff whipping them up into a false frenzy? If Chesney-mania was a thing, it was very short-lived. Just one Top 30 single was to follow and that was that. Only Sajid Javid’s time as Health Secretary before he caught COVID himself was shorter. Chesney seems at one with himself and his time as a pop star though. He now lives in Los Angeles with his American wife Kristina and their three children and occasionally performs on the nostalgia circuit.

The play out video is “Quadrophonia” by Quadrophonia and guess what? I have zero recall of this one. This seems to be happening a lot lately. Back in the 80s I seemed to know every song that made the Top 40 (and a fair few that didn’t) but the 90s is proving a horse of a different colour altogether. Maybe I was out having a life as opposed to spending all my hours sat in a room listening to Radio 1.

Apparently this lot were a Dutch/Belgian electronic music collective – like we didn’t have enough of them clogging up the charts back then – who thought it would be a clever trick to make a play on words of the title of The Who’s 1973 album and the 1979 film it inspired. The sound that they came up with was a horrible noise. The end. Cue someone riding a Vespa over a cliff top at Beachy Head.

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

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1EMFChildrenNo but I bought that Afro King single the extra tracks on which were basically a mini greatest hits including Children
2De La Soul“Ring Ring Ring (Ha Ha Hey)”Nope
3Vic ReevesBorn FreeYes for my wife (eventually!)
4ElectronicGet The MessageNot the single but I must have it on something surely?
5Roachford Get Ready!Yes (albeit it from the bargain bin)
6AC/DCAre You Ready?Not for this garbage no
7Frances NeroFootsteps Following MeNah
8BananaramaLong Train RunningNo
9BlurThere’s No Other WaySee Electronic above
10Gloria EstefanSeal Our FateNegative
11Chesney HawkesThe One And OnlyI did not
12QuadrophoniaQuadrophoniaNot likely

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/m000xw3q/top-of-the-pops-25041991