Bryan Adams

TOTP 05 FEB 1999

It’s early February 1999 and England football manager Glenn Hoddle has just been sacked by the Football Association for comments he made in an interview with The Times newspaper in which he suggested that people born with disabilities were paying for sins in a previous life. A BBC survey conducted during the fall out from the interview found that 90% of those asked thought Hoddle should not remain as the national team manager. Glenn defended himself by saying his words had been taken out of context and by highlighting his work for disabled charities but his fate was sealed. Some though saw it as an overreaction and that his sacking was driven by other agendas involving a lacklustre World Cup performance, poor recent results and rumours of player discontent. Kevin Keegan would be appointed as Hoddle’s successor within a fortnight though. It was big news but can I link it into this particular TOTP? Let’s find out…

Jamie Theakston is our host and we start with…no…it can’t be…not again. It is you know. Bryan Adams and Melanie C are back once more with “When You’re Gone”. Right, if I’m going to be annoyed I’m going to get my facts straight first…

*checks the TOP Of The Pops Archive website*

FIVE TIMES! Five times this has been on! I know that it had some long chart legs but seriously?! Starting the 5th February ‘99 show with a hit that was first featured on the 11th December ‘98 episode?! And no I don’t care that it had gone up from No 7 to No 5 for its highest position since debuting at No 3. And three of those appearances were repeats of the two original performances. We never even got to see the music video though having checked it out – Bry and Mel wandering around a house but constantly missing the other one because they’ve, you know, gone – that might not be a bad thing. Bry’s guy-liner look is giving me heavy JD Vance vibes and that’s terrifying frankly.

Glenn Hoddle link: “When You’re Gone”? Being sacked? That’s an easy starter for 10.

I’m really not liking this backstage area schtick especially when it’s used by Jamie Theakston to make some creepy comments about “making some new friends“ whilst leering at this week’s No 1’s backing dancers. Anyway, next up are Garbage with their single “When I Grow Up”. The fourth single from their “Version 2.0” album, it’s a much more upbeat sound than some of their other work with its “ba ba ba ba” chorus, and almost pop song like sensibilities. Having said that, its lyrics were as dark as ever – how many ‘pop’ songs contain the phrase “golden shower” for example? Incidentally, that was something the band were very proud of, sneaking said idiom into a track being played on daytime radio. According to Shirley Manson, the song is about whether adulthood brings maturity and with lines like “cut my tongue out”, “unprotected, God I’m pregnant” and “I go mental”, I think Garbage achieved their stated aim of creating a track with a dark lyrical subject matter set against a pop melody. “When I Grow Up” peaked at No 9 just as two of the previous three singles released from the album had which wasn’t quite up there with Paul Young’s “Everything Must Change” spending five consecutive weeks at No 9 but it must have been some sort of record.

Glenn Hoddle link: This is very tenuous. Shirley Manson used to be in Scottish rock band Goodbye Mr Mackenzie. Hoddle won the FA Cup in 1981 with Spurs who defeated Manchester City 3-2 in a replay. The scorer of City’s first goal in that match? Steve MacKenzie

After trying his hand at doing a segue using rhyming couplets (it’s not big nor clever Jamie), Theakston introduces “Good Life (Buena Vida)” by Inner City. Wait…what? I don’t remember this. I mean, obviously I remember Inner City and their No 4 hit “Good Life” from 1988 but this flamenco style re-recording of it? Nope, I got nothing. Having listened to it though, I think I prefer it to the original which was never my cup of tea. And I mean ‘prefer’ not ‘like’ as even this reimagining of a Detroit house hit (with added español lyrics) was never going to be my taza de Spanish Brew. Or something.

So why did this version exist? Well, it wasn’t part of some campaign to promote a Best Of album – in fact, it wasn’t linked to any type of album, studio or compilation. However, there had been a white label copy of the new version kicking around the clubs for a year and the attention it attracted finally warranted an official release and when that happened, it turned out that the person behind it was Kevin Saunderson of, yep, Inner City. So what, he was just bored and so revisited his back catalogue for something to do? Who knows but it gave Kevin and his band their first Top 10 hit since 1989. Anyway, if you can be bothered, here’s the link to what I wrote about the original version from 1988:

TOTP 08 DEC 1988

Glenn Hoddle link: In an interview with The Big Issue magazine, Labour politician and Spurs fan David Lammy said this:

“Football was quite important to me growing up. It was the era of Spurs winning the FA Cup in ’81 with Ossie Ardiles and Glenn Hoddle. Spurs were huge and in a way, because we were growing up in the inner city and there were riots, the fact that we had such a great football team meant the world to us, it was something really positive.“

Jane Graham, 17 May 2020, Big Issue #1406

Hoddle and ‘inner city’ both mentioned there. Ahem.

Another hit whose chorus goes “Ba Ba Ba Ba Ba Ba Ba Ba”! Unlike Garbage’s “When I Grow Up” earlier though, “National Express” by The Divine Comedy wasn’t quite as dark lyrically though it did receive criticism in some of the music press for allegedly taking a swipe at the working classes, an allegation singer songwriter Neil Hannon denied. For him, he was literally recounting some of the sights he saw whilst travelling on a coach. However you perceived its words, “National Express” sure was catchy which might explain why it became the band’s first (and so far only) Top 10 hit. What I’ve always liked about Hannon’s lyrics is that he annunciates them so well – you can actually hear and understand what he’s giving vocal expression to which is a crucial part of the storytelling within them. Yes, some took offence at the line about the “jolly hostess” having an arse the “size of a small country” (including my wife) but at least you were engaged by the words however you perceived and received them. Later in 1999, a Greatest Hits album called “A Secret History… The Best of the Divine Comedy” would take them into the Top 3 and provide a gold disc to boot. It would also give us one of the most preposterous and yet glorious song titles of all time in “The Pop Singer’s Fear of the Pollen Count”. Ah you’ve got to love The Divine Comedy!

Glenn Hoddle link: A born-again Christian since 1986, Hoddle famously employed faith healer Eileen Drewery whilst England manager for which he was lampooned in the press. A divine comedy you might say.

Who??!! Leilani?! Wasn’t she a glamour model? Well, yes and no. There is a former glamour model called Leilani Dowding who is actually engaged to Billy Duffy, guitarist for The Cult but she isn’t this Leilani. No, this Leilani is Leilani Sen, a singer signed to ZTT from 1998 to 2000 and whom had a small hit with “Madness Thing” during that time. And what a slight, little thing it was. An inconsequential ditty about…what? Boyfriends who are too tall, boobies that are too small and eating Curly Wurlys according to the lyrics. No, really; that’s what she sings. I can’t believe she was on the same record label as Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Art Of Noise and Propaganda. Anyway, she didn’t last long – just one more No 40 hit and an unreleased album. However, she returned in 2023 as a contestant on reality series Survivor and with a single (presumably released off the back of her appearance on it) called “Wicked Knickers”. Hmm. Bizarrely, another similar looking female pop star flogging similarly cheesy pop songs would appear later in 1999 – it was as if Leilani was a prototype Lolly. As far as I can recall, Lolly never had a fleet of ironing boards on stage with her though. A thing of madness indeed.

Glenn Hoddle link: Hoddle probably did hate the madness of it all when it came to that interview in The Times.

A slushy R&B ballad next from Dru Hill who, let’s be honest, I know very little about and have even less interest in. I can’t help it – I grew up as a pop kid. For what it’s worth, they sound to me like they know what they were about with “These Are The Times” featuring some on point harmonies that Boyz II Men would willingly take to the end of the road. Why does Sisqó have a big, silver dragon motif on his microphone when none of the other members of the group do? Well, later in 1999, he would leave Dru Hill to pursue a solo career and his debut album was called “Unleash The Dragon” so maybe it was a clue as to what was going to happen? Maybe not actually as the whole group were influenced by the Dragon and Asian culture, as displayed in their band logo. Perhaps he was just a big show off then.

Glenn Hoddle link: Yes, it was The Times that did for poor old Glenn

Last week’s No 1 has dropped to No 2 but here’s that same performance repeated again as we get The Offspring and “Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)”. The dolls’ heads being used as percussion instruments as referenced by Jamie Theakston was surely inspired by the cover of the album “Yesterday And Today” by The Beatles. Only released in America and Canada, it was an amalgam of the “Help!” and “Rubber Soul” albums but its original cover, nicknamed the “butcher cover”, depicted the band wearing white butcher smocks and covered with decapitated baby dolls and pieces of raw meat. The image caused so much controversy that it was immediately withdrawn by Capitol and replaced by John, Paul, George and Ringo gathered around a steamer trunk. Thirty years later, I’m pretty sure The Offspring’s TOTP stunt didn’t cause as much outrage despite Theakston’s talk of complaints in his intro. Maybe we’d got used to such imagery with the release of the original Toy Story film and the behaviour of Sid Phillips towards his toys…

Glenn Hoddle link: Glenn was a stylish, flair player – in fact he was pretty fly…for a white guy.

It’s a sixth different No 1 in six weeks (and that run will carry in for a while yet) as Armand van Helden is straight in at the top with “You Don’t Know Me”. Now, this guy had already been on a No 1 record but he didn’t really get the credit for it. What am I talking about? Well, he did the remix of Tori Amos’ “Professional Widow” which topped the charts in 1997 as “Professional Widow (It’s Got to Be Big)” but Tori’s management only authorised the release if she was given sole credit (even though she had nothing to do with that version). Armand finally got his official solo hit two years later which kind of seems like a case of fairs’s fair.

The guy up there doing the singing (singing on a dance anthem?!) is one Duane Harden who was allowed to go off and write the lyrics alone by van Helden while he got in with the business of putting together the samples to form a looping track which Harden’s vocals would be laid over. The result was a piece of New York house that had that all important crossover appeal. Armand would go to No 1 again 10 years later alongside Dizzee Rascal on “Bonkers”.

Glenn Hoddle link: There’s nothing except…they’ve both been on TOTP! Glenn Hoddle on TOTP? You better believe it…

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Bryan Adams / Melanie C	When You’re Gone	Negative
2	Garbage	When I Grow Up	No but it’s pretty good
3	Inner City	Good Life (Buena Vida)	Nah
4	The Divine Comedy	National Express	No but I had that Best Of album
5	Leilani	Madness Thing	Nope
6	Dru Hill	These Are The Times	Not really my thing
7	The Offspring	Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)	No
8	Armand van Helden	You Don’t Know Me	I did not

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

TOTP 22 JAN 1999

Posted on 21 Days Ago by 80stastic

Another day, another TOTP repeat to write about. I am worn out physically, mentally and creatively by this now nine year old blog. Who’s on this particular show then? Well, another dance track based on an old Bee Gees song, another showing of the Bryan Adams/Melanie C hit, another boy band at No 1 with a cover version and Another …Level. It’s also another stint as presenter for Jayne Middlemiss (at least she’s not Jamie Theakston!) who does another pointless ‘interview’ in the backstage area with one of the artists. Tedious.

We start with that Bee Gees inspired dance track by Blockster which is actually just a repeat of the performance from last week’s show. “You Should Be…” had actually dropped five places from its chart debut and peak position of seven days prior but that wasn’t enough reason for executive producer Chris Cowey not to show it again. He’d have probably argued that it was still in the Top 10 and so still a popular record with an audience. Added to that, there weren’t many new releases to showcase. Why couldn’t we have had another showing of the (award winning) Fatboy Slim video for “Praise You” though? As it was, we only got to see it once. Anyway, it was Blockster who got the Cowey nod and therefore another chance to see another guy fronting an old Bee Gees tune in a white suit. Why did they all have white suits? Yes, I know why – to approximate the look created for the character of Tony Manero played by John Trovalta in Saturday Night Fever. Plus the Bee Gees original of “You Should Be Dancing” was in the film’s soundtrack but I guess what I’m trying to say is it’s not very inventive is it?

It’s another hit for Another Level. This one was called “I Want You For Myself” and it’s the usual R&B, bump ‘n’ grind ballad nonsense that we’d already come to expect from this lot despite only being four singles into their career. I could never see what their appeal was. From what I can work out, they were mainly a UK phenomenon with limited success elsewhere. Were they good looking? Sort of. Was there a gap in the market for an R&B boy band? Maybe. Wikipedia says their debut eponymous album never got higher in the charts than No 13 despite containing all those hits but that it was also certified platinum. Those two stats don’t seem synonymous with each other somehow. Their second and final album “Nexus” would only sell a third of the amount of copies as its predecessor meaning that it wasn’t able to take the band to…ahem…another level of success.

From the banal to the downright quirky. Sheffield electronic trio All Seeing I had bagged themselves a hit the previous year with their take on the Buddy Rich version of “Beat Goes On”, originally a hit for Sonny & Cher. For the follow up, they sought out two other sons of Sheffield from differing music eras. A chance meeting with Jarvis Cocker when Pulp appeared on an episode of TOTP the same week as All Seeing I led to Jarvis co-writing “Walk Like A Panther”. The track was put together specifically with legendary crooner Tony Christie in mind. The master of hits like “I Did What I Did For Maria” (which is referenced in “Walk Like A Panther”), “(Is This The Way To) Amarillo” and The Protectors theme tune “Avenues And Alleyways”, Christie’s career was dormant by 1999 with no chart entry since 1975. Despite the potential opportunity offered to him, Christie was originally reluctant to take up the offer until his son talked him into it. The result was a slinky, prowling track that, if nothing else, provided the charts with an antidote to all the generic dance and R&B fodder they seemed to be full of.

Despite the success of “Walk Like A Panther”, Christie’s career went back into hibernation until the intervention of comedian Peter Kay whose Phoenix Nights sitcom featured “(Is This The Way To) Amarillo” heavily promoting a renewed interest in the singer. In 2005, the track was used as the Comic Relief single for that year going to No 1 for seven weeks, the longest running chart topper since Cher’s “Believe” in 1998. A retrospective Best Of album was also a No 1. As for All Seeing I, one further minor hit with Human League’s Phil Oakey followed before they called it a day in 2002. The various members still work in the music business though with one of them having a brief cameo as one of the Weird Sisters rock band in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

P.S. This is who Tony Christie has been reminding me of…(sorry Tony)

Another 70s disco track reworked for the 90s! This time it’s Donna Summer who provides the source material (at least it’s not the Bee Gees again!) as her 1979 hit “Bad Girls” is covered by Juliet Roberts. Now, I’m not sure what the reasoning behind this release was other than the classic ‘need-a-hit-do-a-cover-version’ record company tactic but if it was all about that, then it worked taking Juliet to No 17 for what would be her final hit completely under her own name*.

*She would have a No 11 and dance chart No 1 hit in 2001 alongside David Morales.

The staging in this performance seems slightly jarring with Juliet positioned at the back on her own mini stage but behind her four backing singers who are front and centre. I know this role reversal has been done before – in their debut TOTP performance Oasis had Liam singing from the back of the stage – but I’m not sure it works that well here. All eyes are drawn to the backing singers in their bright red dresses which kind of undermines Juliet I feel. Maybe she felt more comfortable not completely in the spotlight? Maybe she could have occupied that space between the back of the stage and the front and been, you know, “caught in the middle”? Ahem.

Here’s one of those bands that I knew the name of but was fairly ignorant of how they sounded – at the time anyway. Having listened to Three Colours Red* retrospectively, it seems to me that this single was a bit of a departure from their earlier sound. Hits like “Sixty Mile Smile” and “Nuclear Holiday” were that classic indie rock sound that we’d seen from many a skinny, white boy group down the years. However, “Beautiful Day” was entering epic, rock ballad territory akin to something Muse might have come up with. Not a bad example of the genre as these things go but somehow the band couldn’t sustain and they split in 1999 despite two Top 20 albums and being signed to Creation Records. That old chestnut ‘musical differences’ was given as the reason. A reunion in 2002 would last for three years but without any further commercial success, a second permanent split followed.

*Maybe I was aware of them due to their name also being the concluding part of the Polish film director Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colours trilogy.

It’s time for that Bryan Adams/Melanie C track again now. It’s the fourth time “When You’re Gone” has been on the show with the first being way back on the 11th December 1998. In the intervening weeks, it had not been lower than No 8 in the charts following its No 3 peak on its debut. This particular week it was No 6 again in a run of three consecutive weeks in that position. What was it with Bryan Adams and massively lengthy chart hits?! Did all of the above make a secure enough case for all these repeated appearances? I’m not sure. From a blogging point of view, absolutely not. What am I supposed to keep saying about this one week after week?! Well, we’ll find out as there is still one final appearance to come in a couple of weeks. Bryan and Melanie – I can’t wait until when you’re gone.

Oh god! What’s this? A dance version of Roxy Music’s “More Than This”?! Of course it is! Just what the world needed! The woman tasked with fronting this carbuncle of a hit was Emma Sarah Morton-Smith who was restyled as Emmie for promotion purposes. We’ve seen some horrific dance takes on retro hits in the past such as Rage’s horrible treatment of “Run To You” by Bryan Adams and Nikki French’s woeful cover of Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse Of The Heart” but surely Roxy Music’s back catalogue should have been sacrosanct? Apparently not as Bryan Ferry himself gave his blessing to the project. Bryan! What were you thinking?! Despite a few near misses, Emmie would never have such a big hit again and would end up as a radio DJ on Heart Yorkshire and a presenter on QVC. Well, she did seem to know a thing or two about selling your soul…

P.S. Is that Duran Duran guitarist Dom Brown up there on stage with Emmie? I think it is you know.

Well, it had been coming. A relentless push over three years and eight consecutive Top 10 hits had led to this moment. 911 finally had their chart topper and it was a nasty cover version. Of course it was. They’d already covered Shalamar (“A Night To Remember”) and the ubiquitous Bee Gees (“More Than A. Woman”) so why not go for the hat-trick by turning to an old Dr. Hook number? “A Little Bit More” had been a No 2 hit in the UK in the sweltering Summer of 1976 and was a perfect choice of ballad for the three pop puppets of 911. They even got to sit down for once to sing it rather than pulling all their usual “Bodyshakin’” dance moves. It was also a horribly cynical move designed to give the trio the one thing their career had been missing. Once achieved, it was as if the spell had been broken or at least the project completed. Only two more hits would follow and a line was drawn on the career of 911, at least as chart stars – two reunions would follow and the group are nominally still together to this day. A little bit more? No, you’re alright thanks lads. As Public Enemy once told us, “911 Is a Joke”.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Blockster	You Should Be…	No
2	Another Level	I Want You For Myself	No thanks
3	All Seeing I	Walk Like A Panther	Interesting but no
4	Juliet Roberts	Bad Girls	Nah
5	Three Colours Red	Beautiful Day	Nope
6	Bryan Adams/Melanie C	When You’re Gone	I did not
7	Emmie	More Than This	Hell no!
8	911	A Little Bit More	Of course not

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/m002plnc/top-of-the-pops-22011999

TOTP 15 JAN 1999

Posted on 23 Days Ago by 80stastic

We’re in mid January 1999 and Christmas is long gone and well behind us. The release schedules have woken up and been reactivated so there are some ‘new’ songs on tonight alongside some of the older hits that are still knocking about the charts which executive producer Chris Cowey doesn’t seem able to let go of. To that end, two of the first artists on tonight both featured in the last show. Indeed, they were the first two songs in that episode from seven days prior. As Men At Work once sang – “it’s just overkill”. Anyway, Kate Thornton is our host and we start with “End Of The Line” by the Honeyz. This was its third appearance on the show and this performance was just a repeat showing of the previous week’s. Having said that, it was a very hardy hit spending five weeks inside the Top 10 including the busy festive period when singles can get swept away in the Christmas rush. With nothing much else to say about this one, I looked to the internet for inspiration and found a piece online that talked about the purple outfits the group are wearing here which they also donned in the video. The article says:

“…the purple overcoats, which were low-key iconic in that they never permeated popular culture but remain a recognisable visual reference point within the Honeyz’ narrative.”

Paul Begaud – cantstopthepop.com – Dec 2020

Look, I’m no expert on the Honeyz so I should defer to Paul but, on the other hand, really?! Iconic?! They were purple overcoats not Geri Halliwell’s Union Jack dress!

The mid to late 90s fascination with the disco era of the Bee Gees was quite a thing. Seriously though, look at all of these hits that were either cover versions or featured samples of the Gibb brothers’ work around that period:

“How Deep Is Your Love” – Take That – 1996
“Words” – Boyzone – 1996
“Stayin’ Alive” – N-Trance – 1995
“We Trying To Stay Alive” – Wyvlef Jean – 1997
“Night Fever” – Adam Garcia – 1998
“More Than A Woman” – 911 – 1998
“Tragedy” – Steps – 1998

The trend continued apace in early 1999 with the highest chart entry of the week – “You Should Be…” by Blockster. This was a vehicle for DJ, producer and remixer Brandon Block whose career had seen him play all the ‘super clubs’ such as Up Yer Ronson, Ministry Of Sound and Republica. In 1999, he became a chart star with this reworking of the Bee Gees classic “You Should Be Dancing”. Given the glut of Bee Gees hits at the time, it doesn’t seem a very inventive concept but I guess he executed it pretty well. He’s the guy on the turntables (obviously) who looks a bit like The Apprentice reject, Strictly Come Dancing loser and JD Vance hanger on Thomas “Bosh” Skinner. However, for some of us non-dance heads, he is best known for this incident at the BRITS 2000…

Supposedly he was off his face and was convinced by the friends he was with that he had won an award and that he should go and collect it on stage. Ah, we’ve all been there. For instance, I was once on holiday in New York and found myself in a bar called The Slaughtered Lamb, a horror-themed bar in Greenwich Village. It had props like caged skeletons and werewolves. I’d had a few (OK, a lot!) and my friend Robin convinced me that the werewolf figure had blood dripping down its face and that I should report it to the bar staff. So I did. The woman behind the bar dismissed me like the fool I was whilst Robin and the rest of our group guffawed.

Anyway, Brandon Block seemed to learn from his public embarrassment and in 2009 agreed to take part in an anti-drugs campaign for the government. He followed that up by working with Blenheim the London drug and alcohol treatment service as a project worker and has also been employed by the NHS, working with people who have multiple complex needs. He currently works as a Stress Management and Goal Mapping Coach with people suffering from mental health issues.

Here’s that other hit that was on just last week from Bryan Adams and Melanie C. I’ve got nothing left to say about “When You’re Gone” so I’m going to shamelessly pinch a story from a podcast I’ve discovered called the Eighties Archive Podcast. It’s basically two fellas talking about 80s music but not the obvious stuff. They interview people from back then who may or may not have had hit records and it’s actually very engaging mainly because of their enthusiasm for the period. So you might get say, Leigh Gorman from Bow Wow Wow who was brilliant or Richard Jobson of The Skids and The Armoury Show (again brilliant) or some bloke who used to be in Roman Holliday (not so brilliant). Anyway, in their latest show, one of the presenters told a tale of how he was working in the Our Price store in the Lakeside shopping centre in 1991 at Christmas when all the punters seemed to want to buy was “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen (rereleased after Freddie Mercury’s death and that year’s festive No 1) and “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You” by Bryan Adams. So fed up was the presenter with this situation that, fuelled by the bravado of youth (him and his mates thought they owned the shop), he started shouting at people that they didn’t have any more Bryan Adams singles. One customer took offence and said “You’re meant to be a record shop” to which the presenter replied “And you’re meant to have taste!” and flicked him the V’s! Scandalous behaviour that was witnessed by an Area Manager on a store visit which led to the presenter being sacked and quite right too. The moral of the story? Don’t disrespect Bryan Adams…nor flick the V’s at a customer when working in a shop.

A classic case of a record label indulging in careful release scheduling now. Ultra had bounded into the charts the previous year with their debut hit “Say You Do” landing at No 11. However, subsequent hits had seen diminishing returns at play so another big hit was required. The best way to do that? Release a single – “Rescue Me” – when it doesn’t take as many sales to get you up the higher end of the charts of course – early to mid January. Then you double down by copying the sound of somebody else’s recent huge hit – in this case Savage Garden – and bingo! Your boy band has a Top 10 single. Beware though. The effects of a reviving January hit will wear off fairly quickly and you’ll be left with that underlying cause of discomfort which is the absolute knowledge that your charges are, in fact, worthless crud and you’ll have to accept the truth that they are going nowhere. Which is exactly what happened to Ultra who were never seen nor hear from again after this hit. Hurray!

Oh this is just taking the piss now! Why is Chris Cowey showing a performance from four months ago of “Millennium” by Robbie Williams? I suggested in a recent post that the reason behind a repeat showing of him doing “No Regrets” was because he’s Robbie Williams and I stand by that given the decision to re-show this. Just as Jamie Theakston had eulogised about him in his intro the other week, so Kate Thornton bangs on about how everyone loves Robbie including her and her Mum! Cowey justifies the clip’s inclusion in the show by tying it to the fact that his second album “I’ve Been Expecting You” is at No 1 (which was true) but it does rather feel like it was shoe-horning it into the show. Anyway, I’m not about to comment on this one again so here’s what I wrote about it in the 18 Sep 1998 show:

TOTP 18 SEP 1998

And the 28 Aug show:

TOTP 28 AUG 1998

What the Hell is this? Why was Cowey encouraging presenter Kate Thornton to engage with the artists ‘backstage’ in some horribly cringeworthy interactions (they don’t qualify as interviews) that weren’t funny, entertaining nor worthwhile. There have been numerous attempts to spice up the format over the years by conversing with the artists or sometimes just celebrity guests and I can’t think of one that has ever worked. Moving on…

And yet another 70s disco era song revived in the late 90s. At least this one wasn’t a Bee Gees tune. After Blockster earlier comes Da Click, a UK garage group on the FFRR label, who took Chic’s anthem “Good Times”, added a load of rapping all over it, interpolated the vocals from Luther Vandross’ “Never Too Much”, called it “Good Rhymes” and had a No 14 hit with it. The words ‘Yankee Doodle’, ‘feather’ and ‘macaroni’ come to mind. It’s not big and it’s not clever. It also wasn’t any good. I always got this lot confused with Da Hool who is a German DJ and producer. I think my confusion is understandable which is more than I can say about Da Click’s decision to record this rubbish. It gets worse. Two years later, one of Da Click’s number – DJ Pied Piper – was responsible for one of the worst No 1 records ever – the execrable 2-step garage ‘anthem’ “Do You Really Like It?”.

There have been a few very famous Justins in the world of music. Justin Timberlake, Justin Bieber, Justin Hawkins of The Darkness but before all of them came simply Justin. Only 15 years old here, this kid became a name after appearing in a BBC TV show called The Fame Game which followed the hopes and aspirations of young people wanting to be stars. Off the back of it, Justin (Osuji) would have a small Top 40 hit with a cover of “This Boy” by The Beatles. The follow up was “Over You”, a nothing ballad with the most ridiculous opening lines ever given to a 15 year old boy to sing who sounds like his voice hasn’t broken yet…

“I′ve had many many setbacks, misendeavours in my life

But it’s never gotten to me, all that trouble and my strife”

Writer(s): Cody Miller, Justin Stokes, Laurel Tessa Mahoney, Miranda Leigh Berdahl, James Colter Schaffner, Zach Inmon Walker

“Many, many setbacks”? By the age of 15? Now, of course, some kids have had terrible lives by that point and witnessed some awful things but in the context of trying to sell a love song to a TV audience, it just doesn’t seem authentic. Thankfully I don’t remember “Over You” at all. The only one of his that springs to mind is a cover of “Let It Be Me” by The Everly Brothers in early 2000 which would be Justin’s last Top 40 hit. Although his original pop career would end there, Justin would reinvent himself as Sonny J Mason working as a singer-songwriter and producer, collaborating with the likes of Craig David, Sugababes and So Solid Crew whilst also releasing his own solo recordings.

Yes! Finally! A great track gets its just deserts! Although it maybe felt unexpected that Fat Boy Slim was at No 1, it probably shouldn’t have done. After all, “Praise You” wasn’t the first chart topper he’d been involved with. As part of The Housemartins, he’d just missed out on being the Christmas No 1 by a week in 1986 with “Caravan Of Love” and at the very start of the 90s, his Beats International vehicle rose to the summit with “Dub Be Good To Me”. Then, of course, his Fat Boy Slim persona had already delivered him two big hits in 1998 with “The Rockefeller Skank” and “Gangster Trippin” so the writing had been on the wall for us all to read. And yet I do recall being slightly taken aback that he’d done it again in 1999 despite the quality of the track.

I’m not going to list all the source material that Norman Cook sampled to create “Praise You” – all that information is available via a quick search of the internet and in any case, I don’t know any of the originals at all so I can’t see the point in referencing them. What I do know is that he created an almost perfect dance track that had that curious, undefinable quality of being able to cross over into the mainstream. How did he do it? Musical genius? Pure luck? Cosmic forces at work causing the stars to align? If the answer was that obvious we’d all be raiding our record collections and looking to put together a patchwork of sounds that shouldn’t go together but somehow do. Something else that shouldn’t have worked but did was the promo video. Yes, that one. Directed by and starring Spike Jonze, it had the effect upon first viewing of making the audience exclaim “What the f**k was that?” so amateurish and so bizarre looking was it. Its protagonists, the fictional Torrance Community Dance Group, essentially invented the ‘flash mob’ phenomenon when filming the chaotic dance routines unannounced at the Fox Bruin Theater in Los Angeles. Indeed so low were its production values (the whole thing only cost $800 to make) that MTV refuses to air it initially until Cook advised them that it was supposed to look like that. It would go on to win three MTV Video Music Awards making their initial stance look ludicrous.

A small gripe though, why did we only get to see it once? Yes, it only had a solitary week at the top of the charts but that didn’t stop Chris Cowey from allowing multiple repeats of previous No 1s which were now descending the charts. Was he worried about the quality of the video as well?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Honeyz	End Of The Line	Nah
2	Blockster	You Should Be…	Negative
3	Bryan Adams / Melanie C	When You’re Gone	No
4	Ultra	Rescue Me	No thanks
5	Robbie Williams	Millennium	Nope
6	Da Click	Good Rhymes	I did not
7	Justin	Over You	Never happening
8	Fatboy Slim	Praise You	No but I had the album

Disclaimer

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

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

TOTP 08 JAN 1999

Posted on 26 Days Ago by 80stastic

So, TOTP 1999 repeats are go! It’s my last year of doing this – please be halfway decent! As we’re in early January, the charts are very static with few new releases meaning that this show is full of songs that have been on before. Familiarity is also in evidence with our host who is Jamie Theakston who is becoming as ubiquitous as Simon ‘Smug’ Mayo used to be back in the day.

We start with Bryan Adams and Melanie C with “When You’re Gone”. This single really had legs spending ten consecutive weeks inside the Top 10 including three on the trot at No 6 which is its position this week. It’s continued to enjoy longevity in many forms long after the single finally dropped out of the charts via re-recordings and live performances. Adams returned to the song in 2005 for his compilation album “Anthology”, laying down a new version of it with Pamela Anderson of all people whilst Melanie C rejoined him in 2022 as they revisited the track for Adams’s “Classic Pt. II” album. Bryan frequently performs the song live as an acoustic number, usually plucking a member of the audience out to join him whilst Chisholm has also performed it during her concerts on a regular basis.

Theakston goes in for a bit of sexual innuendo in his intro to the next act. “If you’re one of the millions suffering from the flu then may I suggest the Theakston remedy. Stay in bed, snuggle up under your duvet and enjoy a healthy dose of the Honeyz” he chirps before doing his best Sid James impression by blowing out his cheeks. Yeah, knobhead. The Honeyz are back on the show for similar reasons as Bryan Adams/Melanie C – their hit “End Of The Line” is holding at No 9 having already peaked at No 5 in its first week in the chart. They were a bit like a prototype Sugababes weren’t they? Not that they shared a musical style but in terms of a revolving door policy when it came to their line up. Though there have only ever been four members to feature in a trio format, there is just one ever present in Célena Cherry. Of the other three, Heavenli Roberts has had five separate stints in the band, Naima Belkhiati two and Mariama Goodman three. The current lineup features Cherry, Roberts and Cherry’s sister Candace. Do you think they’ve…ahem…finally found the right combination?

Next, a third hit on the spin that has been on the charts for weeks already. Why is Robbie Williams on the show performing “No Regrets” again? Well, because he’s Robbie Williams would seen to be the main criteria. Observe the sycophantic intro from Jamie Theakston – “It’s Rob’s world, we just live in it”. Notice he calls him Rob not Robbie. I think they were possibly ‘mates’ at this point on account of Williams dating Nicole Appleton and Theakston seeing her sister Natalie though I think the former relationship ended around this time. Executive producer Chris Cowey would argue that it’s because “No Regrets” was going up the charts and with a lack of new releases to showcase, this was perfectly legitimate and justified. The truth is though that after debuting at No 4, the single had not spent another week inside the Top 10. Yes, successive drops to Nos 14 and 19 had been countered by consecutive moves back up the charts to No 18 and this week’s position of No 16 but it was hardly a big seller at this time. This was surely just a case of trying to pad the show out with a big name wasn’t it? Theakston’s intro doubles down on this. Let me entertain you? Nah, I’m good thanks.

A new song! A rare new entry into the Top 40 in the first week of January! It comes courtesy of Alisha’s Attic whose chart career to this point has been a model of consistency. Their first five hits had all peaked at either Nos 12, 13 or 14. “Wish I Were You” would end that run by going no higher than No 29. More than that though, it was portentous, ushering in the end of their pop career. None of their subsequent singles were bigger hits than No 24 and their third album “The House We Built” failed to make the Top 40. So what happened? It’s a question as old as The Rolling Stones that if I knew the answer to, I’d be a music industry mogul. If I had to guess though, I’d say that musical tastes moved on and, despite their consistency, Alisha’s Attic hadn’t established a big enough foothold in the charts to ride the changes. Ultimately, I think that’s a shame as I quite liked their quirky pop songs. However, “Wish I Were You” wasn’t their best work. It’s a bit slight and insubstantial to the point that the middle eight is essentially the sisters singing “I, I, I, I…” over and over. We didn’t need another Jim Diamond thanks! Things worked out for Shelly and Karen though as both have gone on to form successful careers as songwriters for other artists. Having been and done the pop star thing, presumably they don’t wish they were those people anymore.

Right who’s this? Oh it’s that woman with the huge hair again, Alda. She had a hit in 1998 with “Real Good Time” and she’s back with the follow up “Girls Night Out” which sounds very similar to its predecessor. No, not ‘very similar’ – exactly the same. As such, what else can I say about Alda who is originally from Iceland but relocated to London and now lives in…oh, this is just brilliant…High Barnet! This shizzle writes itself sometimes! What about her music you say? Well, it’s out and out pure pop confectionery – fine if that’s your flavour but too much of it would make you barf. Compared to her pop contemporaries like Robyn for example, she’s the cheap supermarket own brand equivalent of an M&S best seller – Home Bargains’ Claude The Caterpillar as opposed to M&S’s Colin The Caterpillar cake. No, not Claude The Caterpillar but Cuthbert because she’s more Aldi than Alda.

*I’ll get me coat*

Another new entry now and it’s from the Lighthouse Family. Now, I’ve defended this lot in the past on the basis that musical snobbery is wrong and that ridicule is nothing to be scared of but oh dear…this one…this one is just undeniably, irredeemably dreadful. Awful. Just no good.“Postcards From Heaven” was the title track from their second album and also the fifth single to be lifted (see what I did there?!) from it. That might explain why its peak of No 24 was the duo’s lowest chart position in a run of nine hits up to that point but I’m pretty sure it was because it was horseshit. It’s so insubstantial and slight and…dull. And it sounds just like all their other hits. Abject crap. Postcards from Heaven? More like delivery from the depths of Hell. Sorry guys but it turns out Adam Ant was wrong. Ridicule is something to be scared of.

Right, that’s your new tunes done with and so we’re back to the (very) familiar starting with a former (and indeed Christmas) No 1. Yes, the Spice Girls claimed the (then) coveted festive chart topper in 1998 with “Goodbye” and thereby became the first act to have three such consecutive hits since The Beatles in 1965. However it only stated stayed at the peak for one week hence the comment from Jamie Theakston about them getting on the wrong side of Chef’s “Salty Balls” as that was the record that deposed them. It was, in fact, the first No 1 single of 1999 but was not played on TOTP as an episode did not air the week of the 27th December 1998 to 2nd January 1999. So why didn’t “Salty Balls” feature on this particular show rather than “Goodbye”? Was it an issue with the lyrics? I mean, there’s a lot of innuendo in them but no actual swear words – I don’t think the single carried a Parental Advisory sticker did it? Whatever the reason, Chris Cowey chose not to go with Chef so we get a re-showing of a previous performance of “Goodbye”. As it turned out, this would be the group’s final TOTP appearance of the 90s and, therefore, also the last time I’ll be reviewing them in this blog. So, “Goodbye” indeed Sporty, Scary, Baby, Ginger and Posh. You came, you saw, you conquered – you spiced up our lives.

Who saw this coming? Steps at No 1? Seven weeks after it debuted at No 2, “Heartbeat/Tragedy” has risen to the top of the charts. It feels a bit like All Saints’ journey to No 1 with “Never Ever” which took weeks as well. Yes, its achievement was probably enabled by a lack of big new releases in the first week of January but still. In fairness, their last single “One For Sorrow” had peaked at No 2 and all three of their releases to this point had spent at least two months inside the Top 40 so maybe the clues had been there all along? “Heartbeat/Tragedy” took it to a new level though. Fifteen consecutive weeks inside the Top 10 including a month inside the Top 3 after it had relinquished the top spot – it was a chart monster.

In recognition of this success, we get a medley of the two tracks but it’s not a new performance but two separate appearances in the show cobbled together. Is it me or does it seem a bit of a shoddy edit? It’s not like when The Jam and Oasis were afforded two songs to celebrate their respective No 1s – the former’s “Town Called Malice” / “Precious” double A-side and the latter’s “Don’t Look Back In Anger” when they also performed their cover of Slade’s “Cum On Feel The Noize” which was an extra track on the CD single. Still, it was hardly a tragedy was it? Better best forgotten.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Bryan Adams and Melanie C	When You’re Gone	Nah
2	Honeyz	End Of The Line	Negative
3	Robbie Williams	No Regrets	Didn’t happen
4	Alisha’s Attic	Wish I Were You	Nope
5	Alda	Girls Night Out	Never
6	Lighthouse Family	Postcards From Heaven	Good Lord no!
7	Spice Girls	Goodbye	No
8	Steps	Heartbeat / Tragedy	I did not

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

TOTP 11 DEC 1998

Posted on December 30 by 80stastic

As I write this sat on a train on the 27th December, Christmas has been and gone for another year but there were still two weeks to go at the point this TOTP aired back in 1998. After a period of poor mental health resulting in five weeks off work, I was back in a record shop as Christmas approached just as I had been for the previous eight years. However, this time I was in the Our Price store in Altrincham having been transferred there as part of the plan to phase me back into work. The last three festive periods I’d been in Stockport, a much larger store with its own set of particular challenges. Altrincham was a much smaller unit and I’d already worked a Christmas there five years prior which I’d enjoyed so it was a good decision by area management to install me there. The manager was a guy called Scott who was from down south originally but had relocated ‘oop north’ and though I didn’t know him at all, he would prove to be a very important person in helping me to re-establish myself at work and recover from my mental health issues. Scott presumably wouldn’t have chosen to go into a busy Christmas with an Assistant Manager who had suffered from such problems but he was never anything less than supportive and encouraging. He took the role of being shop manager very seriously and would always wear a collar and tie to work which I’d never witnessed before but it helped to establish the standards he wanted for the shop. My re-integration wasn’t just about Scott though, the whole team at Altrincham were pretty easy to work with. First example, as I sat nervously in the staff room with Scott on that first morning back, a lovely colleague called Suzanne popped her head around the door and offered to make me a cup of tea and it was at that moment when I believed that everything was going to be OK after all.

Well, that’s enough recollections of my private life. Let’s get to the music and we start with a man having the biggest hit of his life up to this point. Jay-Z may be one of the biggest hip-hop artists of all time but back in 1998, certainly in the UK, he just had a collection of middling hits that were all collaborations with other artists to his name. Suddenly, with the release of the lead single from his third studio album, Beyoncé’s fella was debuting at No 2 in our charts. “Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)” was an unlikely hit, or rather, its source material was not an obvious choice. When my son was younger he loved to watch the film Annie (either the original or remake) and I’ve also seen a few theatre productions of it during the course of my job as an usher so I know the songs in it quite well including “It’s The Hard Knock Life”. I’m guessing that Jay-Z was also familiar with it but, unlike me, he had the vision to incorporate it into a massive hip-hop hit. So invested was he that 16 years later, he was a co-producer on that aforementioned movie remake.

Whenever I hear this song, I am reminded of a nice pun that I read about a footballer playing for my beloved Chelsea at the time. His name was Gus Poyet and he’d picked up an injury playing in the Boxing Day fixture which would rule him out for the next ten matches. The headline in the official Chelsea Magazine reporting on this news? ‘It’s a hard knock life for Gus’. Lovely stuff.

There’s no doubt that songwriters are influenced by either their peers or heroes. Many a story exists where an artist admits that when writing one of their hits, they were actually trying to copy a song like…*fill in your desired choice of song*. For example, when writing “Up The Junction”, Squeeze’s Chris Difford admitted he wanted the song’s title to only be sung in the final line just like “Virginia Plain” by Roxy Music. The next hit on this TOTP was another such song written in the style of another. The title of “The Everlasting” was devised by Manic Street Preachers lyricist Nicky Wire as a deliberate attempt to come up with a song with the same naming format as Blur’s “The Universal” or Joy Division’s “The Eternal”. In the end, he borrowed the title from a poem by his brother Patrick Jones. Well, tick that box but what other boxes were checked by this song? Sweeping strings? Check! Melancholy tone? Check! Slowly building anthem? Check! Commercially successful? Well, yes check but with caveats. By debuting at a peak of No 11, it ended a run of five singles that went Top 10 and as a follow up to their previous hit “If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next” which gave them their first chart topper then I guess maybe it was a disappointment? In truth though, the album had been in the shops for three months by this point so sales of that were bound to affect subsequently released tracks from it. All of the above makes me wonder quite why it took that amount of time to release a follow up single? Three months seems like a long time though I haven’t done any research into release schedules to be fair.

Fancy an unlikely duet? This TOTP has you covered as we are offered Bryan Adams and Melanie C with “When You’re Gone”. I say unlikely as, at this point, the only Spice Girl to have dipped her toe in the waters of a solo career was Mel B who’d released one solitary single on her own (albeit a No 1). Despite having left the organisation, Geri Halliwell was still five months away from releasing her first solo single. In other words, the era of Spice Girls operating outside of the group had yet to take hold. Within a couple of years, all five members would have solo careers of varying levels of success but in late 1998, routinely seeing any one of these household names out there on there own was not an everyday occurrence. Melanie C, who would come out of the traps fast with two No 4s and two No1s in her first four solo singles, had a trial run when she teamed up with ‘The Groover from Vancouver’ on this second track released from the latter’s “On A Day Like Today” album.

It was a mutually beneficial arrangement as the single’s peak of No 3 not only helped to establish the idea of Melanie C as an artist in her own right but it also furnished Adams with his biggest UK hit since his collaboration with Rod Stewart and Sting on “All For Love” from The Three Musketeers soundtrack. You could hear why. A slick, uptempo, radio friendly, soft rock track with a swirling organ accompaniment and some clever lyrical pacing (“even food don’t taste that good”) creating organic hooks. However, given the general perception that Mel C was in possession of the best vocals within the Spice Girls, I’m not sure that her voice is on point all the time here. Originally, Bryan wanted to record the song with Sheryl Crow but when she failed to take him up on his offer, a chance meeting with Miss Chisholm in a hotel lift in Los Angeles led to him giving the job to the Spice Girl. I think I would have preferred Sheryl to have had a go at it if I’m honest. The single proved to be extremely hardy spending ten consecutive weeks inside the Top 10 bumping around between No 5 and No 8 and not leaving the Top 40 for nearly four months.

One of those songs now that would highlight the out of kilter-ness (that’s a word right?) that sometimes exists between the UK and the US. Brandy was fast on her way to becoming a superstar around this time. Not only did she have the starring role in hit US sitcom Moesha but her singing career was also in full ascendancy off the back of her huge smash “The Boy Is Mine” with Monica which was the second best selling song of 1998 in America. Indeed, it had also been a big hit on these shores going to No 2 and being our own 18th best selling single of the year. She’d followed that with “Top Of The World” in the UK which again made No 2 but was nowhere near as big a seller as its predecessor. Her record label Atlantic chose not to release that track in the US and instead opted for the Dianne Warren penned “Have You Ever?”. Atlantic seemed to know what they were doing when this track followed “The Boy Is Mine” to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart. When released in the UK though, it stalled at No 13, spending just five weeks in total in the lower reaches of the Top 40. So why the commercial differences on display here? Was it a cultural thing? I have no idea but take my lead from the young woman in the studio audience of Brandy’s performance here who is stood to the left of the screen with her arms permanently crossed, half-heartedly swaying as if to say “Is this it?”. To be fair to her, it does sound like a filler track for a Toni Braxton album.

Not that I’ve given this much thought before but the release history of LeAnn Rimes is a bit of a mess. OK, it’s not something most people would care about (and if not for writing this blog neither would I) but it is all over the place. In the UK, we’d never heard of LeAnn until she recorded that song from Con Air which would become the hit with the most longevity by becoming our sixth best selling single of the year despite never getting higher than No 7 (six seven!). Albums wise, she’d already released four studio albums to that point none of which had done anything over here. Then came “Sittin’ On Top Of The World” which didn’t originally include “How Do I Live” but which was added for the UK release thereby sending it to No 11. Two tracks that were always on the album and which were lumped together as a double A-side as the follow up to “How Do I Live” were “Looking Through Your Eyes” and “Commitment” but that single would only spend a solitary week at No 38 in the UK Top 40, unable to compete with the extraordinary ongoing sales of its predecessor which was still in the charts. Once it finally tailed off enough to allow for another single to be released, LeAnn’s record label went back to the title track of her third (but major label debut) album “Blue” that had come out two and a half years prior! Sensing this would be another big hit, they added it to “Sittin’ On Top Of The World” as an extra track just as they had done with “How Do I Live”. Keeping up? Good. However, “Blue” would debut at a chart peak of No 23 then spending three weeks at the outer reaches of our Top 40 before departing.

The song itself was originally recorded in 1958 by Bill Mack who I thought was the washed up rock singer from Love Actually who ends up having a Christmas No 1 but who was in reality an American songwriter, country artist and DJ. A very retro country & western song featuring a slide guitar, it’s been covered many times including famously by Patsy Cline and, of course, by Rimes when she was just 11 on her second studio album “All That” released independently. She re-recorded the track when she was 13 for the “Blue” album but apparently it’s the earlier version that was released for some reason. See, I told you it’s all a mess.

What was it with 1998 and Swedish pop acts? The UK charts were full of them in this year with hits from the likes of Robyn, Eagle-Eye Cherry, Ace Of Base and The Cardigans. Then came Emilia and her song “Big Big World”. Discovered by Lars Anderson, son of ABBA manager Stig Anderson, Emilia hit the ground running when her debut single went to No 1 in eight countries and made No 5 in the UK. What sounded like a very simple song with an almost nursery rhyme quality to it, was actually based on a classical piece of music – ‘Peasant Cantata’ by Johann Sebastian Bach. This made for a second big hit this year to channel the German composer after Sweetbox’s “Everything’s Gonna Be Alright” which sampled ‘Air on the G String’. It would prove to be Emilia’s only success in this country but it did allow many a lazy music journalist (and our host Jamie Theakston) to bang on about it being ‘a big, big hit’. It’s very much a ‘marmite’ song I think – you either loved it or hated it (I was in the latter category) which might account for my perception that you don’t hear it much on the radio these days. Emilia continued releasing music into the new millennium and tried out to be the Swedish entry in the Eurovision Song Contest in 2009 but failed to make the grade. Similarly, her lyrics to “Big Big World” wouldn’t have passed any exams – look at this shocking use of tenses:

But I do do feel
That I do do will
Miss you much
Miss you much

Source: LyricFind. Songwriters: Emilia Hanna Rydberg / Lars Anderson Big Big World lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

If it’s 1998, it must be time for another Robbie Williams hit. “No Regrets” was his fourth of the year and his least likeable to my ears. I don’t know why I could never get along with it but it just never pushed any buttons for me. It’s all very well constructed and all that but it just lacks that pop sensibility. Was it too worthy? Too overly earnest? Enough people liked it to send it to No 4 so maybe I was missing the point or something? Maybe, I was too overly concerned with the deliberately dramatic ending that I could never get along with? Robbie should have gone straight to “Strong” for his follow up to “Millennium” rather than mess about with “No Regrets” in my humble opinion but having said that, when he did release it a the third single from the album, it also made No 4 so maybe Robbie had no regrets on that score.

It’s the seventh and final week at the top for Cher with “Believe”. It was quite a remarkable feat given that its parent album had also been out for nearly two months and had itself gone double platinum. The follow up to “Believe” taken from the album was “Strong Enough”, an almost carbon copy of its predecessor and that got to No 5 over here. The UK really couldn’t get enough of Cher’s late 90s sound.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Jay-Z	Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)	No
2	Manic Street Preachers	The Everlasting	Nope
3	Bryan Adams / Melanie C	When You’re Gone	Nah
4	Brandy	Have You Ever?	Negative
5	LeAnn Rimes	Blue	Not for me
6	Emilia	Big Big World	Never
7	Robbie Williams	No Regrets	No thanks
8	Cher	Believe	I did not

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/m002np2q/top-of-the-pops-11121998

TOTP 09 OCT 1998

Posted on November 26 by 80stastic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(a) I don’t remember it

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002m4hn/top-of-the-pops-09101998

TOTP 20 MAR 1998

Posted on August 17 by 80stastic

And just like that we appear to have reached a ‘jumping the shark’ moment in the history of TOTP. I ranted a bit in the last post about the Cast of Casualty having a hit record and their continuation of the soul-destroying trend for actors becoming pop stars off the back of their TV series characters performing a song in the show. That was bad enough but just seven days later we have the unedifying spectacle of the resurrection of another TV show inspired hit machine that made little sense back in the mid 70s and even less in the late 90s. We’ll get to that presently but some admin first in that we should acknowledge the fact that Jo Whiley is tonight’s presenter and I may have words to say about her later as well.

We begin though with the Spice Girls who have entered the charts at No 2 with their latest single “Stop”. Normally, a No 2 hit wouldn’t be anything to be sniffed at but in this case, well…it was seen as quite the seismic disappointment seeing as it halted the run of every one of the group’s singles having gone to the top of the charts. Despite Jo Whiley saying in her link that she didn’t think it meant the end of ‘girl power’, the Battle of Britpop aside, I don’t think there’d been as much discussion of a song not getting to No 1 since “Welcome To The Pleasuredome” halted Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s run of chart toppers in the mid 80s. I discussed the potential reasons for “Stop”…well…stopping their imperial run in the last post so I’m not going over all that again but suffice to say that in a way Jo Whiley was right – a No 2 instead of a No 1 single wasn’t the end of ‘girl power’ but the departure of Geri Halliwell a couple of months later possibly was.

We’re at the ‘jumping the shark’ moment already. Now don’t get me wrong. I like The Wombles as much as the next person of my generation who grew up with them in that final, five minute children’s TV slot before the boring old news came on. Everyone child of the 70s knew the names Great Uncle Bulgaria, Tobermory, Madame Cholet, Wellington, Bungo, Tomsk and, of course, Orinoco. I think a very young me had a poster of Wellington on my bedroom wall. That stop-motion animation and the playful voice of Bernard Cribbins was magical stuff. However, the idea to turn them into a pop group…I’m not sure I was ever on board with that even as a small child. Back in the 70s though they were huge. The brainchild of Mike Batt who wrote not just their hits but the TV show theme tune as well, according to Wikipedia they were the most successful music act of 1974 in the UK with more weeks on the singles chart than any other artist. Is that true? My God. It probably is though. In 1977 – the year of punk – David Soul was the UK’s best selling artist so…

Those 1974 hits included “Remember You’re A Womble” (No 3), “Banana Rock” (don’t recall that one but it made No 9), “Minuetto Allegretto” (No 16) and, of course, “Wombling Merry Christmas” (No 2). Back then, there were no Gorillaz-style computer graphics nor holograms to depict The Wombles but people in cumbersome, furry costumes which did actually look like their television counterparts but had no moving mouth parts which kind of undermined the whole idea of them performing.

Back to the late 90s though and why were The Wombles suddenly back on TOTP? Well, they are back in the charts with a rerelease of “Remember You’re A Womble” which would peak at No 13. Again though I ask why? Why did we need to be reminded of this – how to be diplomatic about this? – song that was of its time? Apparently it was part of campaign to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the show first appearing on our TV screens. A good enough reason you might say? No and I’ll tell you for why. Firstly, The Wombles were back on our TV screens anyway as a new series of episodes were made after Canadian company Cinar Films acquired the rights from original production company FilmFair. These were shown in the UK by ITV. Secondly, the songs were awful and we really didn’t need them back in our lives and indeed our ears.

At the song’s end, Jo Whiley ponders whether it could be The Verve underneath those Wombles costumes. A facetious remark obviously but it got me thinking about who did occupy those furry suits? Back in the mid-70s, some of the names of those who were in the band as it were included Mike Batt (obviously), session guitarist Chris Spedding who produced the first Sex Pistols demos and had his own hit called “Motor Bikin’”, legendary session drummer Clem Cattini who worked with everyone including pioneering producer Joe Meek and was one of The Tornadoes on mega hit “Telstar” and Robin Le Mesurier (son of the beloved Dad’s Army actor). As for the 90s version, the internet is not giving up much. Apparently whoever were in those costumes didn’t want to remember they’d been a Womble!

Some proper music now with the return of James who have reached that point in their career where a Best Of album is not only due but justifiable and credible. Taking the singles from their four albums on Fontana/Mercury (not including jam sessions album “Wah Wah”), plus two new songs and an track from early EP “James II”, it would go to No 1 and three times platinum. I was one of those who bought it and a good choice it was too but playing the whole album in one session, I had to admit to myself that some of the tracks did tend to merge into each other. I know – that’s fighting talk to some people but I can only call it as I hear it. Maybe that’s just an inevitable consequence of their sound being so distinctive and idiosyncratic.

Anyway, as was the established practice by this point, a new song was released to promote the Best Of which was “Destiny Callling”. Now, you know what I said about their songs merging into each other? Well, band member Saul Davies described the writing process for “Destiny Calling” as “whacking on a capo and playing “She’s A Star” at twice the speed”. Look, I’m not trying to find fault here, I’m just reporting the details. For what it’s worth, I liked it – a fairly obvious dig at the mechanics of the music industry, it was a perfect appetiser for the retrospective of their work…OK, of their chart successful work. What’s great about James though is that they’ve never rested on their laurels. Within 18 months they’d released their eighth studio album and have gone onto produce another ten in the following 25 years. I like Tim Booth’s Ian Curtis type wig out as the performance reaches its climax. Thankfully, nobody in the studio audience shouted at him to “Sit Down!”. Ahem.

I have no idea who this is or what her hit sounded like so I’m going in with no preconceived notions…

*three minutes later *

…well, what did I expect from a song called “Uh La La La”? This is lowest common denominator Eurodance rubbish that wasn’t even original. Alexia (for that is her who were talking about) clearly ripped off 1995 hit “I Luv U Baby” by The Original for the final line of the chorus (not the words which are clearly not unique but the intonation of the delivery). And what about that title? Clearly pinched from Kool And The Gang’s “Let’s Go Dancin’ (Ooh La,La, La)” but with the ‘Ooh’ adapted to ‘Uh’ to try and disguise the theft even though she’s clearly singing “Ooh”. Was this an attempt to become 1998’s version of Whigfield? I say 1998 but the single had been a hit all around Europe in 1997 but via lots of different record labels so the swines at Sony music ordered a unifying re-edit, remix and rerelease on Almighty Records to launch Alexia in the UK and so we had to suffer like the rest of the continent. A couple more minor hits later and Alexia was gone from our charts forever though she’s still recording music to this day amassing 19 (!) album releases to date including a Christmas album in 2022.

At the end of Alexia’s performance, Jo Whiley makes a remark that “Uh La La La” is about Alexia’s inner feelings but that “it could so easily be about the sex appeal of a Teletubby”. In a recent post, I commented on Jo’s intro for The Lilys who were the latest act to record a song for a Levi’s ad campaign following in the footsteps of Stiltskin, Babylon Zoo and Freakpower. When mentioning those names, she noticeably grimaced and I remarked this was a bit rich coming from a woman who would argue in favour of the musical significance of The Teletubbies if it kept her on TV. Ha! I wasn’t so far away with my assessment!

We’ve arrived at the final hit of the 90s for Kylie Minogue and although not one of her most well known tracks it might well be one of the most underrated. “Breathe” was the third and final single released in the UK from her “Impossible Princess” album. I think I’ve discussed the problematic gestation ofthat album before but briefly, it took two years to record due to changes of musical direction, various different collaborations and a quest for pure perfection from everyone involved in it. As such, its release was postponed multiple times and then its title was deemed dubious after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in August 1997. It was finally made available in the UK in late March of 1998 having been renamed to simply “Kylie Minogue” (the third eponymous album of her career) meaning that all three singles from it were released before the parent album which was unusual to say the least.

“Breathe” is actually very engaging – slinky but not without substance and almost hypnotic with its lyrics about internal contemplation. It could be a prototype for “Pure Shores” by All Saints which is a compliment by the way. It probably deserved better than its chart high of No 14. The 90s had started with a No 1 for Kylie with “Tears On My Pillow” but by the decade’s end, her sound, exemplified by the likes of “Breathe”, was almost unrecognisable from that. Whilst her creativity was in the ascendancy, her commerciality was on the wane but she would get the latter back in spades come the new millennium with “Spinning Around” and those hot pants. Sadly, I won’t be reviewing those TOTP repeats as I’m stopping at the end of 1999 so fare thee well Kylie and thanks for all the content.

Bryan Adams is up next with another track from his “Unplugged” album. Unlike the first single taken from it though, “I’m Ready” was not a new song but nearly two decades old which Adams first recorded in 1983 for his album “Cuts Like A Knife”. Back then it was an out and out rock song but in 1998 it metamorphosed into an acoustic ballad complete with a low whistle played by Irish folk legend Davy Spillane which seems like an attempt to jump on the bandwagon of the Celtic flute sound to be found on “My Heart Will Go On”. I definitely prefer the rockier version of “I’m Ready” though it’s hardly one of his best efforts. Still, compared to The Wombles, this was high art indeed. By the end of the decade, Adams would have released another studio album, a second Greatest Hits collection, teamed up with a Spice Girl and even had a dance hit (courtesy of a remix by Chicane) that had gone down a storm in Ibiza!

By March 1998, “White On Blonde”, the fourth Texas album, had been out for over a year and delivered the band four Top 10 singles. So how do you convince your fanbase to buy a fifth? Easy. Team up with a couple of rappers and re-record the first of those four hits and release it as a double A-side with another track from the album. That sounds overly cynical but that is what happened – the release details at least. I may be being presumptuous about the intentions behind them. However, with follow up album “The Hush” still 14 months away from being available in the shops, it was a way of both maintaining the band’s profile and keeping them in the charts.

The rappers concerned were Method Man and RZA from the Wu-Tang Clan so big names (not quite sure how they knew Sharleen and the gang though) and the track they collaborated on was “Say What You Want” which they retitled “Say What You Want (All Day, Every Day)”. It was performed at that year’s BRIT Awards and presumably audience reaction was positive enough for a proper release to be considered (maybe that was the real reason behind it being made commercially available). As this version wasn’t on the album, the track on its own wasn’t going to squeeze any more sales out of it so it was doubled up with “Insane” which was on the album. So, starting with “Say What You Want (All Day, Every Day)” and I have to say I didn’t get it. I’ve read comments online saying how it “just worked” but I couldn’t/still can’t hear it. The rap bits don’t blend with the pop song – they just sound really incongruous next to each other. Then there’s that layer of strings introduced to the chorus that wasn’t in the original which sounds discordant or even out of tune. Am I missing something?

As for “Insane”, I’m not convinced that it’s quite strong enough to have been a single but it’s a moody number that has something going for it. The smouldering brass parts remind me of Portishead (or is it Groove Armada?) and Sharleen’s vocals are as on point as ever but it’s maybe just a bit too downbeat? I think it probably makes more sense in the context of the album.

We have a new No 1 and it’s from Run D.M.C. vs Jason Nevins. The track “It’s Like That” had actually been the rap trio’s debut single all the way back in 1983 but had largely been overlooked in favour of its B-side “Sucker M.C.’s”. Fast forward 14 years and, with Run D.M.C’s legacy as one of the most influential hip-hop artists ever assured, the track was revisited by producer and remixer Jason Nevins and became a massive international hit, going to No 1 in multiple countries. I seem to remember that it had been available in other territories way before an official release was secured in the UK meaning that imports of the single made their way into record shops over here first. I think we may have had a few copies in the Our Price in Stockport where I worked. Its phenomenal (and maybe unexpected) success would lead it to spend six weeks at No 1 and become the third best selling single of 1998 in the UK. As well be seeing plenty more of this one, I’ll leave it there for now.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Spice Girls	Stop	Nah
2	The Wombles	Remember You’re A Womble	What do you think?!
3	James	Destiny Calling	No but I had the Best Of album
4	Alexia	Uh La La La	Definitely not
5	Kylie Minogue	Breathe	Negative
6	Bryan Adams	I’m Ready	Nope
7	Texas / Wu-Tang Clan	Say What You Want (All Day, Every Day) / Insane	No but I had a promo copy of the album
8	Run D.M.C. vs Jason Nevins	It’s Like That	And no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002gv57/top-of-the-pops-20031998?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 19 DEC 1997

Posted on June 10 by 80stastic

Christmas is nearly upon us in the world of BBC4’s TOTP repeats and, unlike nowadays, there is much talk of who will be this year’s festive No 1. Some of the contenders in the race were:

The Teletubbies – “Teletubbies Say ‘Eh-Oh’”
Various Artists – “Perfect Day”
Spice Girls – “Too Much”
Robbie Williams – “Angels”
Chicken Shed Theatre Company – “I Am In Love With The World”

If you can’t remember who clinched the title then here’s a clue – they had silly names and there was a lot of controversy surrounding them. No, not the Teletubbies! It was the Spice Girls though I’m willing to bet a few of them had handbags to rival Tinky Winky’s!

Anyway, we’re not there yet. We still have one last show for the great and the good of the class of 1997’s pop cohort to promote their Christmas wares and we start with Natalie Imbruglia who is still in the Top 10 despite having spent the last two months in residence there. Although this was the era of singles debuting high and crashing out of the Top 40 completely within a fortnight due to record company first week of release discounting, there were still plenty of examples of hits that bucked that trend. Off the top of my head, just in 1997, there’s No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak”, “Tubthumping” by Chumbawamba, No Mercy’s “Where Do You Go”, All Saints’ “Never Ever” and “Encore Une Fois” by Sash! “Torn” was another such song. Look at these chart stats:

2 – 2 – 2 – 4 – 5 – 9 – 8 – 8 – 8 – 9 – 10

This week’s TOTP appearance was for one of those No 8 positions so presumably because it had gone back up the charts or was holding steady. In the week before Christmas, it seems a bit odd to be opening the show with a months old hit which would also feature in the Christmas Day show but there you go. Would there have been a discussion at her label RCA about deleting it to make way for the follow up single “Big Mistake”? If there was, it was clearly poo-pooed in favour of ensuring it wasn’t swallowed up in the festive rush and was held back for the much slower post Christmas sales period. Nearly thirty years on though, it all see seems a bit academic as despite a triple platinum selling debut album and ten UK Top 40 singles to her name, I’m willing to bet the vast majority of people could only name “Torn” when it comes to Natalie Imbruglia hits.

Here’s another of those songs that took up long term residency in the charts – “Angels” by Robbie Williams. This one spent twelve consecutive weeks inside the Top 10 whilst never going higher than No 4 thus undermining the faith that some of the bookies had in it to be the Christmas chart topper. Maybe some of that belief was based on the fact that:

It was a ballad – always a winner at Christmas
There appeared to be some sleigh bells somewhere in the mix in the intro
There was an extra track on the CD single called “Walk This Sleigh”

History tells us, of course, that this was the single that saved Robbie’s career which got me thinking if there were other examples of this. The first that came to mind was “Instinction” by Spandau Ballet. After scoring their biggest ever hit with “Chant No. 1 (I Don’t Need This Pressure On)” in the Summer of 1981, their next two singles released for the “Diamond” album were chart failures. “Paint Me Down” only managed a humble peak of No 30 whilst “She Loved Like Diamond” was a sales disaster failing to make the Top 40 at all. Suddenly, the pressure was on and the band were in desperate need of a hit to resurrect their career. Enter Trevor Horn whose remix of the album track “Instinction” took them back to the Top 10 before the band became global superstars with “True”.

Then there’s the case of Culture Club. Having had demos rejected by EMI, the band finally signed with Virgin Records but after their first two singles had less longevity to them than TACO Trump’s tariff charges, there must have been concern within the record label that their charges were a dud. A last throw of the dice in third single “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me” saw the track receive support from David Hamilton on Radio 2 (which wasn’t the popular music playing station it is today back then) and a last minute TOTP appearance after Shakin’ Stevens cried off saw the world introduced to Boy George. Cue tabloid hysteria but also massive sales and pop superstardom.

Bringing it back to Robbie Williams, Take That struggled to find chart success in their early days with their first three singles getting no further than No 38. After all the promotional groundwork the band had done in clubs and schools, it was scant reward. A fourth single was given the go ahead but only with the safety net of it being a cover version. Their version of the old Tavares hit “It Only Takes A Minute” took them into the Top 10 and Take That are still with us 33 years later (albeit now as a trio).

Now I remember there was a Bryan Adams MTV Unplugged album because I recognise the cover but I couldn’t have told you that the lead single from it was called “Back To You”. However, I do know the song. How come? Because it was a staple of the early guitar classes I attended back in about 2009 as it turns out the chords to it are pretty basic. We used to start with this one to get us warmed up. Does that mean I liked it? It’s an OK track but it doesn’t come near to the power of “Run To You”. It actually sounds a bit twee in comparison. Still, those chords won’t learn themselves and a part of me will always be reminded of sitting in a circle and strumming along to its backing track whenever I hear it. Bryan’s original would make No 18 in the UK but was a No 1, rather predictably, in his native Canada.

I’m not sure if the bookmakers had this one down as a potential Christmas No 1 but then, in fairness to Ladbrokes, William Hill and the rest, the chart journey of “Never Ever” by All Saints was hard to have predicted. In at No 3 in its first week, it then fell for two consecutive charts before reversing the trend to spend three weeks at No 4 of which this TOTP appearance was one. It would finally top the charts for a solitary week in early 1998. Quite extraordinary really.

P.S. I like host Jayne Middlemiss’ intro where she really lets her Geordie accent come through when she says “Mel. Shaz, Nicki and Nat are gonna sing for wuh”. Lovely stuff.

What’s not so lovely though is the link to the next song which comes from one of the band themselves. Yes, introducing “If God Will Send His Angels” by U2 is Bono himself. What was this all about? A demonstration that the show’s profile was still so powerful that it could get superstars to record exclusives for it? Bono’s Christmas message includes him banging on about his kids wanting him to have a bath after returning from being on tour (how festive) before apologising for not being there with us (by which I presume he means in the studio) and therefore we get the promo for the single which was the fifth and last taken from “Pop”. I had totally forgotten about this one probably because it’s totally unmemorable. Even the by now over used record-at-slow-speed-and-then-sped-up video technique employed on the promo seemed old hat. It really is a bit of a dirge but it managed a chart peak of No 12 nonetheless. You could doubt the wisdom of releasing a fifth track from an album at the height of the Christmas singles rush – what did record label Island think was going to happen? The reasoning behind it seems to be the fact that due to the deadline of a pre-booked tour, the “Pop” album was rushed to market in what the group felt was an unfinished state. As such the band either remixed or completely remade the tracks taken from it for single release making them seem like more essential than usual purchases for the die-hards in the fanbase.

“If God Will Send His Angels” would also end up on the soundtrack album for the film City Of Angels (the clue to the reason why is in both titles!). I’ve never seen it but it starred Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan and was about an angel falling in love with a mortal woman. The film was a commercial success as was the soundtrack which also featured songs by Alanis Morissette and Goo Goo Dolls both of whom were managed by Rob Cavallo who was the album’s executive producer. Funny that. Morissette had the follow up album to global smash “Jagged Little Pill” due out whilst Goo Goo Dolls also had an album forthcoming. Again, funny that. The latter’s track contributed to the film was “Iris” which would top airplay charts around the world when released as a single the following year, be nominated for a Grammy and is still a staple of pop/rock radio station playlists to this day and you can’t say that about “If God Will Send His Angels”,

And so to another of those potential contenders for the Christmas No 1 according to the bookies. “I Am In Love With The World” by Chicken Shed Theatre Company was originally included on the “Diana Princess Of Wales: Tribute” charity album due to her patronage of the theatre company that literally started in an old chicken shed and was released as a single from it in time for Christmas. Presumably the bookmakers were predicting another Elton John style flood of sales. It never transpired with “I Am In Love With The World” (why was it ‘I am’ and not ‘I’m’) peaking at a relatively lowly No 15. Maybe its inclusion on an album that went double platinum in the UK reduced its chances or maybe the nation had taken enough time by this point to shake off its collective malaise that Diana’s death had brought on. Or maybe, and I don’t wish to wield harsh criticism against a charity record, it was just terrible. Because it really was.

Say what you like about Celine Dion (and many of us have) but she worked with some of the biggest names in music. Her previous single to this (which was still in the Top 40) was a duet with Barbra Streisand and the follow up – “The Reason” – was co-written by Carole King. My wife introduced me to Carole’s “Tapestry” LP when we first met back in 1986 so it has a special place in my heart but this track was like a paper doily compared to the songs woven into that classic album. A power ballad (of course it was) but it wasn’t a Jim Steinman type powerhouse like “It’s All Coming Back To Me Now” which she’d had a hit with the previous year. It sounded like a Eurovision* entry or possibly an X Factor winner’s song.

*Celine had, of course, won that particular song contest for Switzerland in 1988.

Tellingly, that duet with Barbra Streisand (“Tell Him”) would endure much better than “The Reason”. It peaked at No 3, spent four weeks inside the Top Ten 10 and a further four inside the Top 20 whereas “The Reason” peaked at No 11 and spent just three weeks in total in the Top 20. In the week of the Christmas chart, “Tell Him” held at No 13 whilst “The Reason” dropped to No 16.

Christmas wasn’t just about selling singles though. Albums was where the real money was and what type of album did record companies love to put out at Christmas time? A Best Of compilation of course! Yes, the reliable old staple of festive release schedules was a Greatest Hits/Best Of/Collection (delete as appropriate) and around this time a new strain of the format appeared – a retrospective of a solo artist and their former band on the same album. Although there had already been a Sting Greatest Hits (“Fields Of Gold: The Best Of Sting 1984-1994”) and two collections from The Police (1986’s “Every Breath You Take: The Singles” and 1992’s “Greatest Hits”), record label A&M reckoned they could still squeeze some more readies out of the back catalogue of both their artists by combining them into one album. Was this a genius move or a hateful idea – you’ll have your own opinion but it didn’t sit well with me. I like my retrospectives to be definitive which this surely couldn’t be. Not everything by two artists could be contained in one album. Surely a box set was needed?

Anyway, in 1997 came “The Very Best Of Sting & The Police” (note the use of the word ‘Very’ to signify that this was something different even though it wasn’t). Featuring fifteen tracks (seven from Sting and eight by The Police), it went four times platinum in the UK either matching or beating the sales of those aforementioned previous collections. So which songs didn’t make the cut?

The Police:

“So Lonely”
“De Do Do Do De Da Da Da” (though it was included in subsequent reissues of the album)
“Invisible Sun”
“Spirits In The Material World”
“Wrapped Around Your Finger”
“Synchronicity II”
“King Of Pain”

Sting:

“Spread A Little Happiness”
“All This Time”
“It’s Probably Me”
“Nothing ‘Bout Me”
“All For Love” (with Rod Stewart and Bryan Adams)
“Love Is The Seventh Wave”
“Seven Days”

And those lists aren’t completely exhaustive! Bah!

To promote the album, a single was required and so The Police’s first UK Top 40 hit “Roxanne” was recommissioned for the job. However, it wasn’t the original version but a horrible remix by Puff Daddy who probably reckoned he owed Sting one for “I’ll Be Missing You”. What he came up with featured samples and a horrible rap and was retitled as “Roxanne ‘97” and was just a dreadful mess. Thankfully, we don’t get that version here but a rather affecting acoustic take on it. Although Sting might rival Bono in the holier-than-thou arse stakes, you can’t deny that “Roxanne” is a great tune (Puff Daddy remix aside).

I’m guessing that the bookies didn’t want to get burned by a Christmas No 1 they hadn’t seen coming as happened in 1993 when firm favourites Take That were bounced out of the top spot by Mr Blobby and so didn’t underestimate the Teletubbies. Thankfully, history didn’t repeat itself. It seems the joke was wearing thin by this point as we only get 30 seconds of “Teletubbies Say ‘Eh-Oh!’” as the credits roll. I never thought I’d say this but thank God for the Spice Girls.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Natalie Imbruglia	Torn	No
2	Robbie Williams	Angels	No but I had a promo copy of the album
3	Bryan Adams	Back to You	Nope
4	All Saints	Never Ever	Negative
5	U2	If God Will Send His Angels	I did not
6	Chicken Shed Theatre Company	I Am In Love With The World	Hell No!
7	Celine Dion	The Reason	Never
8	The Police / Sting	Roxanne ’97	Nah
9	Teletubbies	Teletubbies Say ‘Eh-Oh!’	Of course not

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/m002chnq/top-of-the-pops-19121997?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 07 FEB 1997

Posted on January 23, 2025 by 80stastic

We’re in the midst of a huge run of ‘golden mic’ hosts in these TOTP repeats. So far in 1997, the only Radio 1 DJ to have presented the show is Nicky Campbell back at the start of January. Since then we’ve had Rhona Cameron, Phil Daniels, Noddy Holder and in the next three shows we’ll see Peter Andre, Ant & Dec and Ian Wright before Jo Whiley waves the flag for Radio 1 again on 7th March. For this week though we have Ardal O’Hanlon aka Father Douglas Maguire from Father Ted. A Christmas special for that show (the one with the lingerie department scene) had recently aired so Ardal’s profile was in the ascendancy at the time. His approach to hosting is to claim propriety for the charts for this week and therefore TOTP as well and he pulls it off successfully I think.

The opening act are The Supernaturals who were a sort of nearly men of Britpop. Hailing from Scotland, they’d done the ‘paying their dues’ route of touring to create a fan base and independently releasing their early material until they were eventually picked up by major label Food in 1995. They then did a load more touring but not as headline act in their own tour but supporting the likes of Dodgy, Ash, Menswear, Sleeper, The Bluetones and in a rather unlikely move Tina Turner (must have been another support artist in after them surely?). Putting in the miles on the road paid off when their second single release “Lazy Lover” pierced the Top 40 peaking at No 34. The follow up was “The Day Before Yesterday’s Man” which was a nice play on words and an incredibly catchy bit of piano led but guitar based rock/pop. Despite this TOTP appearance though, it would only make No 25 in the charts. A re-release of their debut single “Smile” was deemed necessary to try and build on their first hit which it did but, despite being perhaps their best known tune, could only make it two places higher up the charts. Their album “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore” did go Top 10 (just) but that would be the band’s commercial peak and it was a case of diminishing returns after that. Why weren’t they bigger than they were? Was it a case of bad timing with their arrival on the scene coming just as Britpop was burning out? Were they ahead of their time? They may not thank me for the comparison but were they a prototype Scouting For Girls? Or were they just always destined to be the bridesmaid and not the bride? For my part, I liked them and even bought their album though it was a few years after the event in a sale in a record shop in Madrid bizarrely whilst on holiday there.

After splitting in 2002, they reformed in 2012 and are still an ongoing entity today. If you think you don’t know or remember them, you might actually know some of their songs by osmosis as a number of them have been used to soundtrack advertising campaigns for the likes of Sky Movies, Arnold Clark Automobiles and Smile bank (guess which song they used for that one!). They’ve also featured in films and TV shows such as Shooting Fish, Hollyoaks, Clarkson’s Car Years, Fast Food and Homes Under The Hammer. With such demand to licence their work, maybe they aren’t the nearly men I thought they were.

When you think of Michelle Gayle, who do you think of? Hattie Tavernier in EastEnders? Or perhaps as half of rap duo Fresh ‘n’ Fly from her time in Grange Hill? Or the rather accomplished singer that she turned out to be during her brief music career? It perhaps should be the latter as she probably doesn’t get the credit she deserves for the decent stab she made of it. Sure, her best known song “Sweetness” was a bit sleight and throwaway but it was bright, bubbly and fun. Some of her other hits weren’t your average soap star turned pop star fare; she was no Stefan Dennis! No, my impression is that she took it seriously and wanted to be taken seriously rather than giving this opportunity her existing fame had afforded her a whirl. And some of her songs were OK. Take this one – “Do You Know” – for example. It’s a smooth as silk, sleekly produced R&B/pop song that was perfect for daytime radio and Michelle co-wrote it.

So why didn’t her time as a pop star last longer? I think it was to do with the perception of her as a singles artists as opposed to one who could shift lots of albums. She clocked up seven chart hit singles (including two inside the Top 10) but her two studio albums failed to sell in copious amounts peaking at Nos 30 and 17. She was also unlucky with record company machinations. After leaving RCA after her second album she joined EMI but a third album she recorded the them was never released. There was then an attempted comeback in 2004 when another album went unreleased after her label folded. She has had better luck and more success after becoming an author and a return to acting but this time treading the boards at the theatre. In 2023, she made a surprise if very fleeting return to her pop star days by appearing on stage with Louise at a Shepherd’s Bush gig singing her hit “Sweetness”.

So how is Ardal doing? Not bad actually. He has resisted doing a turn in character as Father Dougal Maguire whilst sneaking in some Father Ted references (“we’ll be having an exclusive from the British band Bush who are huge in America but very small here”) and channeling the spirit of Dougal by projecting the image of a man who is nominally in charge of the show but who doesn’t really have any control or know what’s going on (“we’ll be having some music, some counting, young people screaming and here’s Michelle Gayle singing a song…”). In his segue for the next video, he doesn’t hold back in his distaste for the duo involved by saying he doesn’t know how they got into his charts and then appearing to have had headphones on for the duration of it when the track is over. To be fair to Ardal, he had a point. “I Finally Found Someone” by Bryan Adams and Barbra Streisand was hardly down with the kids was it?

Taken from the soundtrack to Babs’s latest film The Mirror Has Two Faces (which I’ve never even heard of let alone seen), it’s perhaps what you would expect if you put these two together to record a song for a romantic comedy/drama – a big, rather overwrought ballad that ticks all the boxes of cinematic requirements. It wasn’t for me though Bry’s raspy rock voice does blend better than expected with the more refined tones of Babs. However, I’m not sure Adams is at his best when in the vicinity of movie soundtracks – often pilloried for that Robin Hood song, he was also part of the unholy trio that also included Rod Stewart and Sting that sicked up the bilious “All For One” from The Three Musketeers movie. “Have You Ever Really Lived A Woman?” from Don Juan DeMarco was similarly awful and then there’s this. Barbra and movies, on the other hand, are synonymous with each other. Tell me this though. How have I, in 2025 and at 56 years of age, only just noticed how she spells her name?!

And now for something completely different. I say completely different but, although the year had changed, the make up of the charts hadn’t as they were still home to multiple dance hits of which “Passion” by Amen! UK was just one of many. The correlation between banging tunes filling the dance floors and filling up the Top 40 was still dominant as the decade turned the final corner and headed for the finish. Who was buying these records in the shops? Was it club goers who wanted to recreate that top night they’d had last weekend in their living room? Was it DJs needing a track to complete their next set playlist? Most dance records of this time left me cold but I could appreciate their appeal and power in the setting of a nightclub but not so much being played at home. Maybe punters were practicing their dance moves in the safety of their homes before daring to present them to fellow club goers? Or maybe I just don’t know what I’m talking about at all? Anyway, these are the facts for this one. The guy behind it was Irish DJ Paul Masterson who would go on to have more hits under the pseudonym of Yomanda and it was released on the painfully hip Deconstruction label reaching No 15 in the charts. It made No 40 when rereleased in 2003.

Another dance tune though this one is completely different to Amen!UK. Nuyorican Soul was a side project by American garage house producers ‘Little’ Louis Vega and Kenny ‘Dope’ Gonzalez aka Masters at Work. This single – “Runaway” – was a fairly faithful cover of a 70s disco track by the Salsoul Orchestra featuring the vocals of Loleatta Holloway who supposedly is the most sampled female singer in popular music history (remember the whole Black Box/“Ride On Time” debacle?). Vega and Gonzalez didn’t sample Loleatta in their version though choosing instead to have Puerto Rican singer songwriter India do the actual heavy lifting vocally. Some 90s production values made the whole thing sound retro yet current and it was duly a hit going to No 24 in the UK Top 40 and No 1 in our Dance Chart.

After a rather oblique Father Ted reference earlier when he referred to Bryan Adams and Barbra Streisand as “Lenny* and Petula Clarke”, Ardal O’Hanlon veers off into random-ville for his next link by name checking Toyah Wilcox, noting that it’s been 427 weeks since she’s been in the charts? That can’t be actually true can it? 427 weeks is what? Just over eight years. Right, I’m checking Toyah’s discography…

…Oh My God! He was nearly right. In fact, Ardal underestimated Toyah’s absence from the charts. Her last visit to the Top 40 was in May 1985 so a gap of nearly 12 years by this point! “Why can’t you be more like En Vogue?” he asks Toyah looking straight into the camera before we get the video for “Don’t Let Go (Love)” which is back up to No 5 this week. However, this would be the final time that the group would visit the UK Top 10. Good song as it is, it’s another of those tracks that has brackets in the title for no discernible reason. They don’t sing the word ‘love’ in the chorus – in fact, that word doesn’t appear in the lyrics at all (though ‘lovers’ does). For balance, Toyah wasn’t adverse to the use of brackets in her song titles. There’s “Be Loud, Be Proud (Be Heard)”, “Don’t Fall In Love (I Said)” and the marvellously ridiculous “Latex Messiah (Viva La Rebel In You)”.

*Recurring character Bishop Brennan’s first name was Leonard or Len as Father Dougal would call him much to his annoyance.

And here it is again. The problem for TOTP producers as to what to do with an almost instrumental dance hit. On this occasion it is The Orb with “Toxygene” and the decision on staging for their performance was to have the duo (Alex Paterson and Andy Hughes I think) each sit on a revolving mini platform tinkering with their keyboards and equipment set up. It looks ill-conceived at best and laughable at worst. What astonishes me is why the band themselves agreed to do it. Did they really think this was the best way to promote their single? Wasn’t there a video to go with it that could have been shown thereby killing two birds with one stone – a better showcase for the track and a solution for the show about how to stage it?

The track itself was supposed to be a remix of Jean Michel Jarre’s “Oxygène 8” from his “Oxygène 7–13” album though it doesn’t really sound anything like it at all which apparently Jarre wasn’t too happy about. I’ve wondered why there weren’t more uses of Jarre’s work in 90s dance tracks (there could well have been for all I know but this is the first I’ve come across) seeing as he was The Godfather of electronic, ambient and new-age sounds. There were people I knew at school who swore by him though it didn’t do much for me and my youthful pop sensibilities. Maybe Jarre’s reaction to The Orb’s treatment of “Oxygène 8” was a reason why there weren’t more samples of his work in existence.

Next an example of that curious phenomenon of when a UK artist is huge in America but can’t get arrested in their own country. In the 80s we had The Escape Club and Wang Chung. Bush were the 90s equivalent. Their debut album “Sixteen Stone” went Top 5 in the US but could only peak at No 42 over here. However, they finally broke through in the UK with the lead single from their second album “Razorblade Suitcase” which was called “Swallowed”. Listening to it now, it really does sound like a Nirvana tribute act, an accusation that was levelled at them constantly back then. I thought it was OK but I was never going to fall for them hook, line and sinker. I’m guessing though that their record company would hope that some female punters would do exactly that for lead singer Gavin Rossdale. They were out of luck if they did as he was going out with Gwen Stefani of No Doubt at the time and they would later be married for 13 years. No doubt we’ll be seeing…erm… No Doubt on these TOTP repeats very soon.

In the last post, I talked about “Walk On By” being one of the most recorded songs in history. However, “Ain’t Nobody” must be up there as well. Originally recorded by Rufus and Chaka Khan, it has also been recorded by Jaki Graham, Scooter, Richard X versus Liberty X and had been in the charts as recently as 1995 courtesy of Diana King. The there’s this version by LL Cool J. Recorded for the soundtrack of the Beavis And Butt–Head Do America film, it was a somewhat surprising No 1 in my opinion. It wasn’t as big a hit anywhere else in the world (including the US apart from their Rap Chart) and I don’t recall the film being a big hit over here (though Wikipedia tells me it did good business in America) so I’m not quite sure why it proved so popular in the UK. LL Cool J’s next hit also came from a film soundtrack as he was one of the artists on “Hit ‘Em High (The Monstars’ Anthem)” from Space Jam.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	The Supernaturals	The Day Before Yesterday’s Man	No but I had their album
2	Michelle Gayle	Do You Know	No
3	Bryan Adams and Barbra Streisand	I Finally Found Someone	Never
4	Amen! Uk	Passion	Not my bag
5	Nuyorican Soul featuring India	Runaway	Negative
6	En Vogue	Don’t Let Go (Love)	Nope
7	The Orb	Toxygene	I did not
8	Bush	Swallowed	No but I had it on one of those Best Album Ever compilations
9	LL Cool J	Ain’t Nobody	Nah

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/m0026zt7/top-of-the-pops-07021997?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 22 NOV 1996

Posted on December 15, 2024 by 80stastic

As I write this, the latest series of I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! has just concluded with Danny Jones being crowned as the new King of the Jungle and it strikes me that there’s a couple of tie ins between that show and this episode of TOTP. No, nothing to do with McFly who wouldn’t be invented for another eight years nor The Communards whose Reverend Richard Coles came third this year. Neither is there a connection to contestant Tulisa formerly of hip-hop trio N-Dubz who wouldn’t start having hits for a further ten years. However, the first link is really obvious and it’s the show’s opening act who are Ant & Dec. Told you it was obvious! The ever present hosts of I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! since the first series in 2002 (apart from they one year when Ant was in rehab and was replaced by Holly Willougby), the diminutive duo were still very much pop stars at this point in their career though that was rapidly approaching its natural end.

“When I Fall In Love” was their eleventh consecutive UK Top 40 hit but there were only two more to come in their original incarnation. Although the title of this one suggests images of Nat King Cole or maybe even Rick Astley (!), thankfully it was nothing to do with that classic 50s hit though maybe it would have been better if it had been as this was absolute garbage. A totally nothing tune but even that chronic lack of substance was too much for Dec’s weedy voice. Meanwhile, Ant’s rap was clearly inserted to give him something to do whilst his pal tried and failed to do the vocal heavy lifting. On the CD single, you had the choice of playing the radio edit with or without the rap though that’s like choosing whether you’d rather eat your left or right arm. Talking of arms, Dec seems to be unsure what to do with his right one during this performance, slashing about wildly with it as if he’s swatting flies. And what was going on with his hair? That mullet bit…was that even real? It looks like a wig that might have been used in a really poor quality Beatles biopic. In short (unlike Dec’s hair), everything about this was a bit naff (exactly like Dec’s hair). I think they made the right decision to knock the pop star thing on the head not long after this.

There’s no Shed Seven connection to I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! that I’m aware of but in 1996, the York indie rockers were at the top of their game. Five UK chart hits in one calendar year was quite the achievement – they were literally at the apex of their career which was quite apt given that four of those hits came from an album called “Maximum High”. In fact, two of those singles continued the theme in “Getting Better” and “Going For Gold”. Sadly, “Bully Boy”can’t really be shoehorned in at all whilst “On Standby” and “Chasing Rainbows” not just end the metaphor but invert it.

It’s that last song that concerns us here though. This wasn’t from “A Maximum High” but the lead single from third studio album “Let It Ride” though it was released a good six months before it. So why was that? Well, Rick Witter is on record as having an issue with the release schedule but it’s nothing to do with the gap between the single and album coming out. He believes that if “Chasing Rainbows” had been released in a different week to its actual release date, it might have been a No 1. Does he have a point? On first glance, that seems a stretch for a single that peaked at No 17. However, was he meaning that they should have waited a few weeks until that sales lull after Christmas when traditionally it took much fewer sales to get a single to the top of the charts? I’m thinking Iron Maiden’s “Bring Your Daughter…To The Slaughter” for example. Well, a quick look at the first chart of 1997 shows the Christmas No 1 was still in pole position but the two highest new entries came at Nos 2 and 3 and from unlikely artists in Tori Amos with that dance remix of “Professional Widow (It’s Got To Be Big)” and Orbital with their dramatic track “Satan”. There’s no guarantee that Shed Seven would have gone to the top of the pile if they’d released “Chasing Rainbows” in that same week but I’m betting they would have got higher than No 17.

P.S. One of my favourite bands is Embrace and just this week I attended a very intimate Q&A session with lead singer Danny McNamara in which he divulged that when they were starting out, the feedback they got from labels and A&R men was that they didn’t sound enough like Shed Seven. Hmm.

I’m pretty sure that Tina Turner was never a camp mate in I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here nor Adina Howard or Warren G who remade her hit “What’s Love Got To Do With It”* in 1996. Despite its No 2 chart peak, this had totally disappeared from my poor, overworked memory. And thank f**k for that because it was a shoddy idea horribly executed. Warren G, of course, had scored a major hit two years prior to this with the track “Regulate” whilst Adina had bagged herself a minor UK hit the previous year with “Freak Like Me” which the Sugababes would take to No 1 seven years later as part of a mash up with Tubeway Army’s “Are Friends Electric?”.

*Breaking news: Before Tina Turner was offered the track, it was recorded by Bucks Fizz but shelved after Tina’s version was a hit. Is there a connection between the 1981 Eurovision winners and I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here!? Surely Cheryl Baker has been on it, she’s been on everything else.

This version of Tina’s 1984 UK No 3 and US No 1 hit was nothing like as stunning as the Sugababes’ offering. It just seems like a cynically constructed vehicle for Warren G much as he had done with “Regulate” which was built around Michael McDonald’s yacht rock classic “I Keep Forgettin’ (Every Time You’re Near)”. This time though, it felt like a complete cut and paste exercise with Adina doing a passable Tina impression before Warren would come barging in with his rapping. It was part of the soundtrack to a film called Police Story 3: Supercop starring Jackie Chan hence his featuring in the video. Said soundtrack includes a version of Carl Douglas’s “Kung Fu Fighting” as covered by Tom Jones. If that sounds horrendous then I can assure you that it absolutely is…

If “Star” was Bryan Adams’ shot at securing a Christmas No 1, he was wildly off target. Maybe he thought having the word ‘star’ in the title would tip the seasonal scales in his direction. What he should have done was write a half decent song instead of this awful dirge. I think I used that word to describe his last single “Let’s Make A Night To Remember” as well. It was all a bit of a disappointment after his “The Only Thing That Looks Good On Me Is You” track had spearheaded the campaign for his “18 Til I Die” album in fine form.

The single released after this was yet another love song, this time a duet with Barbara Streisand from the film The Mirror Has Two Faces called “I Finally Found Someone” which was equally as tedious. Following that, the title track from “18 Till I Die” was was released and was an uptempo rocker which was perfectly serviceable so it seemed to me that Bry was in a bit of a slump when it came to ballads around this time. If he wanted a Christmas hit, he could always have rereleased this which originally a single way back in 1985 before it got used in the 2022 film Violent Night.

Now, I’m confident that neither Bryan Adams nor Barbara Streisand have been on I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! (can you imagine the fee they’d have to pay Babs to appear!) but how about next year the programme makers take a left field punt on Crispian Mills from Kula Shaker? Not only is he the lead singer of a band (albeit one that stopped having hits a quarter of a century ago) but his family background is acting royalty being the son of Haley Mills (Whistle Down The Wind, The Parent Trap etc) and the grandson of Sir John Mills (Ice Cold In Alex, Ryan’s Daughter etc and indeed etc). OK, it might be a bit of a stretch to assume that the watching TV audience would know who he was these days but back in 1996, he and his band were one of the breakout stars of the year. Rivalling Shed Seven for the most hits in those 12 months, “Govinda” was Kula Shaker’s fourth single to chart and their third to make the Top 10 when it peaked at No 7.

As host Nicky Campbell says, mixing Eastern mysticism with Western pop had indeed proved to be a good idea for the band, providing the blueprint for their whole career pretty much. It was never more evident than on “Govinda” which was sung totally in Sanskrit with the text taken from a devotional chant entitled “Govinda Jaya Jaya” which had been recorded back in 1970 by the London Radha Krishna Temple and produced by George Harrison who was also responsible for the collective’s No 12 UK hit “Hare Krishna Chant”. Growing up as a child in Worcester in the 70s, my only experience of the Hare Krishna movement had been people laughing at them as a procession of them snaked down the High Street on a Saturday afternoon chanting their mantra and dressed in saffron orange. Probably like most people who knew nothing of their beliefs, I was left wondering who this bloke Harry Krishna was. Fast forward to the mid 90s and whilst I hadn’t converted to their faith, I was fully into Kula Shaker and especially this single. Sadly, the Krishna teachings of humility, selflessness and global oneness didn’t reach everyone out there. Whilst working in the Stockport branch of Our Price, a man came to the counter and asked me if we had “that Paki song”. He meant “Govinda” and the irony of the dichotomy he represented (a man using a racist term to ask for the Eastern influenced song he liked) wasn’t lost on me though it certainly was on him.

“Govinda” would draw a line under the band’s prolific output with only two singles being released over the next two years until their second album “Peasants, Pigs & Astronauts” finally appeared in 1999 by which time, the band’s momentum, if not lost, had certainly been misplaced. They are still a going concern today though having released their latest album “Natural Magick” just this year.

P.S. I quite often watch these TOTP repeats with subtitles on so that if I comment on a song’s lyrics or a presenter’s links, I’m not misquoting people. The subtitles for “Govinda” just say ‘He sings in Sanskrit’. Bit of a ‘can’t be arsed’ approach to the job isn’t it?

Did I say that Kula Shaker were one of the biggest breakout acts of 1996? Like a back-pedalling, dodgy politician I may have mis-spoke as the official Breakthrough Artist of 1996 were actually Garbage who even won an award as such at the MTV Europe Music Awards (Kula Shaker weren’t even nominated). How so? Well, their eponymous debut album would sell 4 million copies worldwide and that calendar year saw them in the Top 10 of the UK singles charts with “Stupid Girl” and this track “Milk”. The last track on that album, it wasn’t the album closing, big ballad that might have been assumed but, as described by lead singer Shirley Manson, a “siren song” about loss. It’s almost hypnotic but with a definite dark element to it. Presumably the band didn’t think it was dark enough though and so recruited trip-hop artist Tricky to lay down some sinister vocals onto the track. It’s the Tricky version (called The Wicked Mix) that was a hit in the UK but obviously we don’t see/hear that version in this TOTP appearance as it’s an exclusive performance from Atlanta where the band were presumably on tour. However, in other territories, the track was released without Tricky’s vocals (The Siren Mix) which didn’t go down well with the Bristolian rapper who complained to the press about the situation. As far as I can tell, the Tricky version did better chart wise than the pure Garbage release.

“Milk” was the last single to be taken from the album (the one with the pink cover) and that pedantic part of my brain is still impressed with how Shirley Manson has colour co-ordinated with it in her choice of outfit for this performance. I say ‘still’ as I liked it the first time she did it in an earlier TOTP appearance when there was a pink feather boa wrapped around her microphone stand. If I am being really pedantic though, does Shirley have some lipstick on her teeth in this performance?

I bet Jimmy Nail has been asked to be on I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! He’d have been a prime candidate wouldn’t he? I also bet he would have turned down flat any invitation as my perception is that he’s quite a private person and would have balked at the idea of laying himself bare in a reality TV show. Why do I think that? Well, in 2004, Nail successfully sued News Group Newspapers and Harper Collins Publishers over false allegations made in the News Of The World about him and Nailed, an unofficial biography which was the newspaper’s source of the claims. Jimmy described reading the article as one of the worst experiences of his life. Given all of that, I don’t think he would have been up for being filmed constantly in an artificial environment with people he didn’t know. Anyway, he’s on TOTP to promote his single “Country Boy”. The last time he was on the show, he and his band wore schoolboy outfits but this time, they are wearing black suits and ties which makes them look like they’ve just arrived from a funeral. This was possibly quite apt as this single would be his last ever hit in the UK so you could say this valedictory performance was almost a wake for his career as a pop star.

And so we arrive at the other link to I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! No, none of the members of the Fugees have ever been on the show – it’s far more tenuous than that but I’ll get to it in a minute. “No Woman, No Cry” was the fourth single taken from “The Score” album and it just missed out on giving the band a third consecutive No 1 after “Killing Me Softly” and “Ready Or Not” when it peaked one place lower – the Fugees really were a big deal in this year. Yet another classic song given the hip-hop treatment, Bob Marley’s original had peaked at No 22 in 1975 and at No 8 when rereleased in 1981 following his death. I say “given the hip hop treatment” but it’s actually a pretty straight version – host Nicky Campbell calls it “authentic” though I’m not sure that’s quite the right word.

Anyway, to that I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! connection. So this year’s runner up was Coleen Rooney. Now back in September 2010, Rooney’s then current club Manchester United were due to play his former team Everton at Goodison Park. Rooney’s switch from red to blue back in 2004 had never been forgiven by the fans who had once adored him and to whom he had sworn allegiance what with Everton being the team he grew up supporting. The abuse Rooney would receive every time he returned to Everton was horrific and unyielding. A month before this particular match, Rooney was the centre of claims that he’d paid two women for a threesome in a Manchester hotel whilst Colleen was five months pregnant with their first child Kai. The press was rife with stories that this would be the end of their marriage. If this was manna from heaven for the more salacious tabloids, it was also the stuff of inspiration for the Everton faithful who came up with a chant based around the story. Set to the tune of “No Woman, No Cry”, they would let rip with “No woman, no Kai”. Cruel absolutely but undeniably clever. In the end, United manager Sir Alex Ferguson didn’t select Rooney for the match day squad choosing instead to protect him from running the gauntlet of abuse he would inevitably have received. And that is my second and final connection between this episode of TOTP and I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! I thank you.

We have a new No 1 and thank heavens for that as the last incumbents were Robson & Jerome. Going straight to the top of the charts are The Prodigy and it’s their second No 1 of 1996 following “Firestarter” in the March. If anything, I liked “Breathe” even more than its predecessor even though it was cut from the same cloth pretty much. It was another barnstorming dance anthem that felt claustrophobic, dangerous and indeed dirty, a sensation only exaggerated by the downright grimy video. Cockroaches, centipedes and an alligator inhabit an apartment that made that house at the end of The Blair Witch Project look clean. Then there’s the performances of Keith Flint and Leeroy Thornhill who look absolutely crazed and depraved, almost daring the audience not to carry on listening. There’s also a slight nod to the Run DMC /Aerosmith video for “Walk This Way” with the two protagonists separated by a flimsy wall which is ultimately breached. This wasn’t doing anything to improve Flint’s public perception amongst the tabloids who were already on his case after his deranged appearance in the “Firestarter” promo.

“Breathe” would spend two weeks at No 1 whilst parent album “The Fat Of The Land” topped the charts for six and went five times platinum in the UK alone. The Prodigy were never bigger than in this year.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Ant & Dec	When I Fall In Love	As if
2	Shed Seven	Chasing Rainbows	Nah
3	Warren G and Adina Howard	What’s Love Got To Do With It	Never
4	Bryan Adams	Star	No thanks
5	Kula Shaker	Govinda	No but I had a promo copy of the album
6	Garbage	Milk	I did not
7	Jimmy Nail	Country Boy	Nope
8	Fugees	No Woman, No Cry	No but my wife had the album
9	The Prodigy	Breathe	No but I had it on one of those Best Album Ever compilations

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/m0025gms/top-of-the-pops-22111996?seriesId=unsliced

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