Busta Rhymes

TOTP 30 APR 1999

Posted on by 80stastic

The day after this TOTP aired, Andrew Motion was announced as the next Poet Laureate in succession to previous incumbent Ted Hughes. His term would last ten years until he handed the baton to Carol Ann Duffy whilst the current Poet Laureate is Simon Armitage. You know what’s coming now…I wonder if the artists on tonight’s show have any connection with that role or poetry in general?

Our host is Jamie Theakston and we begin with last week’s No 1 (of course we do) which has been deposed and is currently No 3 in the charts. There was clearly a lot of belief, willingness and capacity from the management people behind Martine McCutcheon when it came to ensuring her transition from soap darling to pop star. From signing a significant record deal with Virgin, being given the song “Perfect Moment” as her debut single (a song A&R person Cheryl Robson had been sat on for three years) to having an hour-long television documentary about her journey from EastEnders actress to a singer, all the stops were being pulled out to make sure the project was a success. And a success it was. A No 2, platinum selling album, the 14th best selling single of the year and a pair of No 6 hits to follow.

It couldn’t sustain though. Two more albums quickly followed but failed to match the achievements of its predecessor. It seemed that appetite for Marine as a chart frequenter had been satiated. Why? For me, the cause of her commercial decline was that the initial burst of sales came off the back of her association with her EastEnders persona Tiffany. It’s as if people were in some sort of mourning for the death of that character and needed something to buy as a souvenir or keepsake. Then, the strength of her debut hit spilled over into sales for her album and before you knew it, momentum was created and away she went. However, the larger the distance of time that separated Martine from Tiffany, the less the connection between her and the public. That momentum waned until she was just another pop singer. Maybe she should have reactivated her pop career after her star turn in Love Actually when the public fell in love with another of her character portrayals. That didn’t happen and the last album she released came in 2017 which made a respectable No 17 in the charts but there has been nothing from her since…apart from this of course….

Poet Laureate link: “Perfect Moment” was written by Wendy Page and one J. Marr. In his podcast The Poet Laureate Has Gone To His Shed, Simon Armitage spoke to Johnny Marr about his life as a musician. OK, the J. Marr that co-wrote “Perfect Moment” wasn’t the ex-Smiths guitarist but give me a break!

Just like Suede on last week’s show, Texas were also making a bit of a comeback after being away for a couple of years and also like Brett and the boys, they had to make a decision about which musical direction should be part of their return route. Unlike Suede, it seemed to me that they decided to basically just replicate their previous album which had brought them into the mainstream and delivered all that commercial success associated with such a transition. I’m sure the band themselves would be able to point to all sorts of details that spelt out the differential nuances between “White On Blonde” and “The Hush” but to your average pop music consumer, it surely felt like more of the same. Certainly, lead single “In Our Lifetime” retained that radio friendly polish that we’d come to expect from the second coming of the band. What was different though was the fact that this was the first time that the band had not employed an external producer for an album, preferring instead to keep it in house with guitarist Johnny McElhone twiddling the knobs on the mixing desk.

The chart performance of “In Our Lifetime” suggested that the record buying public were more than happy with a healthy helping of what they’d been served up before as its peak of No 4 maintained the band’s run of Top 10 singles by becoming their sixth on the trot. And why not? It’s a perfectly decent rock/pop tune with its strident yet melodic looped guitar hook and ‘wickedy-wick’ sound effect that introduces the chorus plus, of course, Sharleen Spiteri’s smooth vocals. For the moment, Texas were still in the ascendancy and doing nothing wrong at all.

Poet Laureate link: The state of Texas has its own Poet Laureate designation scheme, appointing a new incumbent every one to two years to promote poetry and recognize the literary contributions of Texans.

Fancy a bit of Busta Rhymes? No, me neither but executive producer Chris Cowey did and to be fair, the rapper was at No 5 with his single “What’s It Gonna Be?!” so…At the risk of sounding like my Dad commenting on my musical preferences as a teenager, this was just noise and a horrible one at that. “The mightiest and fastest rapper” ever to appear on the show is how Jamie Theakston describes Rhymes. Well, he perhaps he was but that doesn’t mean he could make a record that was listenable and he didn’t with this track. Even the presence of Janet Jackson couldn’t save it though I’m not sure I could even hear her contribution over all that shouting which seems to be about making his baby’s body wet. Eeuuww! Cowey could at least have shown the video in full (rather than on a big screen in the background) seeing as it was one of the most expensive ever produced at a cost of $2 million. The sound mix was much better on the promo as well with Busta’s rantings toned down more than in this studio performance. Not for me thank you.

Poet Laureate link: Poetry? Busta Rhymes? Yeah, that’s all I’ve got for this one.

Some blatant and shameless self promotion next as the Beeb uses its historic, flagship music show to advertise another of its programmes. If Miami 7 doesn’t ring any bells then the collective noun for its stars certainly will. S Club 7 were put together by pop impresario Simon Fuller when he was left at a loose end after the Spice Girls gave him the boot as their manager and his first action was to put together another pop group but this time he’d recruit more compliant people who he perceived wouldn’t tell him where to get off as his previous charges had.

Despite the fact that the Spice Girls project had turned into a global marketing operation encompassing different media and more merchandising than anyone could possibly want or house, Fuller reckoned there were yet more promotional opportunities to be explored. He envisioned a brand that was cross-media marketable, that could conquer both the music charts and TV ratings. Teaming up with his brother Kim (who wrote the Spice World movie story), they devised the TV show Miami 7 which the BBC picked up and broadcast on their CBBC channel. It was only a month into its run at the point of this TOTP broadcast and so, with show still on our screens, the Beeb indulged in some cross channel promotion and we got to meet the show’s stars in the TOTP backstage area. Although the first S Club 7 single – “Bring It All Back” which also acted as the Miami 7 theme tune – was still a whole five weeks away from release, that didn’t stop us from being given a preview of the video for it which, quelle surprise, also included some clips from the show.

Of course, this whole pop group/TV show wasn’t an original Fuller idea. The Monkees project from the 60s famously got there first but even in the 90s it had been tried with the show No Sweat following the adventures of boy band North & South who would have four Top 40 hits between ‘97 and ‘98. That didn’t stop Miami 7 being a hit though and it would run for four seasons albeit under a different title for each series. Its success is widely acknowledged as being the motivation for bringing the world shows like High School Musical and Glee.

As for “Bring It All Back”, it would top the charts when finally released. An insanely catchy slice of bubblegum pop which inevitably and obviously generated comparisons with The Jackson 5, it also contained one of the greatest key changes in all of pop music history. As we’ll be seeing it another three times in these TOTP repeats I’ll leave it there for now but suffice to say that the S Club story would run for years involving success, heartbreak, solo careers, controversy, a juniors version spin off, splits, reunions and ultimately tragedy. Someone really should make a TV show or movie about it.

Poet Laureate link: Not really though there was a literary club known as Authors‘ Club whose membership included three Poets Laureate – Alfred Austin, John Masefield, and John Betjeman.

From a request to ‘Bring It All Back’ to a plea to “Bring My Family Back” courtesy of Faithless. They did make some dark records didn’t they and this one is no different with Maxi Jazz recounting the tale of a man who grew up in a broken family, whose wife left him with the kids after his infidelity with a work colleague and who slips through the cracks and end up living in a derelict slum and regretting his life decisions. At least, I think that’s what it’s about. Although I wouldn’t describe myself as a fan, I did quite like this. It’s kind of got an hypnotic quality to it which means you can’t help listening despite the grimness and misery of the lyrics. Someone who is a fan is a friend of mine who will become an octogenarian this month proving yet again that age can be just a number when it comes to musical taste.

Poet Laureate link: A genuine connection! Caleb Femi, who was named London’s first Young Poet Laureate (2016–2017), features on the 2020 Faithless album “All Blessed”. He delivers a rap/spoken-word performance on the track “I Need Someone”. The band’s Sister Bliss commented on the collaboration that for the album, they wanted to work with “thoughtful fresh talent” like Femi to honor the high lyrical bar set by their late frontman, Maxi Jazz. 

Right what was going on here then? Watching this back without any prior knowledge/information, it looked like an attempt by TOTP executive producer Chris Cowey to really shake the format up which it was I guess but he couldn’t really lay claim to a totally original idea here. So, the dance music continued with the next two hits also coming firmly from that genre but there was a deliberate decision to tie the two together as Jamie Theakston gives them a combined intro – “This is Armand Van Helden versus Fatboy Slim”. We then get a studio performance by the former (featuring guest vocalist Roland Clark up front) and the video for the latter’s latest hit but the two are interspersed with clips of both of them entering a boxing ring. What gives?

Well, I didn’t have a clue so I looked it up and it turns out that Armand van Helden and Fatboy Slim were connected by their 1999 “A Date With Destiny” DJ battles. These high-profile, head-to-head gigs featured them competing in a boxing ring at venues like Brixton Academy. Ah, so that’s where that boxing imagery footage comes from! Basically Cowey just got permission to use it rather than it being anything that he set up himself. The boxing match theme is backed up by the fact that Van Helden’s last hit “You Don’t Know” knocked Fatboy Slim’s “Praise You” off the top spot. There was a rematch when their follow ups (“Flowerz” for Van Helden and “Right Here, Right Now” by Fatboy Slim) were released in the same week. This time it was a knockout victory for the Fatboy with his single landing at No 2 whilst “Flowerz” couldn’t punch its weight and was left floundering at No 18. That’s a pretty decisive result despite Theakston saying in his segue that “Fortunately, there were no judges to pick a winner in this particular heavyweight contest so judge for yourselves”. Well, I think the record buying public were the judges Jamie and they made it very clear who their winner was. To be fair, it was a mismatch as “Flowerz” didn’t pack the same punch as its predecessor and never really gets itself off the canvas and into any sort of rhythm. There was no long lasting grudge held though as the duo reunited for performances at The Warehouse Project in Manchester and Drumsheds in London in November 2024.

Poet Laureate link: Ian Henery, the first ever Poet Laureate for Walsall, hosts a radio show on Black Country Xtra and has specifically named Armand Van Helden as a personal favourite from the golden era of house music.

OK, so. This is actually interesting as we just about see a DJ style fade from the Armand Van Helden tune into the video to “Right Here, Right Now” by Fatboy Slim. Fair play to Chris Cowey whom I’ve given a lot of stick to in this blog but the presentation on these two hits has been clever and effective. This was the fourth single lifted from the album “You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby” and it was yet another banger – Norman Cook really was in the groove here. It’s got the usual samples in it from sources I haven’t a clue about but it also has a sense of foreboding, imbuing the listener with the feeling that they’re about to hear something monumental. Then the Big Beats kick in and you’re off on an aural journey signposted by the creativity of Cook’s imagination.

The video hooks into that idea of a journey by depicting the course of human evolution from a single celled amoeba via a jellyfish, an amphibian, a primate an homo erectus before finally becoming a human. It was supposedly inspired by the 70s French animated educational television series Once Upon A Time…Man which I remember from reruns in the 80s, typically shown mid morning during the Summer holidays. It was a clever way of engaging kids in history and tracked the development of humans from the creation of the Earth through to a prediction up to the year 2150. I liked it as I recall though I’m not sure that I caught all 26 episodes.

Anyway, not long before the end of the “Right Here, Right Now” video, Cook himself pops up in a burger van with a message apologising for not being on the show in person before we return to the promo. I get that Cowey wouldn’t have turned down the chance of using such a piece of VT but it does come across as incongruous and doesn’t really add anything which is a shame. The final transformation sees the now fully developed human being turn into the kid on the cover of the “You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby” album but it must be a lookalike or CGI as Cook was never able to track that person down to pay him some royalties for the use of his image.

Poet Laureate link: As a member of The Housemartins, Cook had a connection to the city of Hull (where I have lived for the past 22 years). The poet Philip Larkin was the Librarian at the University of Hull and he was offered the position of Poet Laureate in 1984 which he declined.

Some things in life are just inexplicable. The Bermuda Triangle, the Great Pyramids of Giza, the England football team’s inability to win a trophy since 1966…and the appeal and success of Westlife. Yes, we’ve arrived at that point I’m afraid. The point where somehow the UK decided that far from having had enough of boy bands littering the charts throughout the 90s, that despite the sea change to the popularity of girl groups in the second half of the decade, and never minding that we’d already had years of one Irish boy band dominating everything…we needed another one! Why for chrissakes? WHY?! I just didn’t get it with this lot. They were so dull and, it seemed to me, inherently a one trick pony. How could anyone distinguish between one overwrought, schmaltzy ballad from another?! They all sounded the same! And not just that, they were all performed the same with those grinning berks sat in a line on stools, sometimes getting up if they had a solo. And yet, they were successful. Incredibly so, breaking chart records at will whilst racking up No 1 after No 1. They had four just in 1999 despite the first one “Swear It Again” – coming with four months of the year gone already. They weren’t even that good looking were they? Given the amount of times they will no doubt appear in these TOTP repeats, I’m leaving it here. For now.

Poet Laureate link: W.B. Yeats who was a Nobel Laureate (an Irish equivalent of a poet laureate) and Westlife share a connection with Sligo with the former famously associated with the town and its landscapes and the latter having grown up there (well, three of them anyway). Because of this shared hometown, Sligo’s tourism and cultural boards often promote the “poetry of Yeats and the music of Westlife”!

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1Martine McCutcheonPerfect MomentNo
2TexasIn Our LifetimeNope
3Busta Rhymes / Janet JacksonWhat’s It Gonna Be?!Never
4S Club 7Bring It All BackNot likely
5FaithlessBring My Family BackI did not
6Armand van HeldenFlowerzNah
7Fatboy SlimRight Here, Right NowNo but I had the album
8WestlifeSwear It AgainNo – I swear!

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/m002rxqf/top-of-the-pops-30041999

TOTP 24 APR 1998

Posted on by 80stastic

Ah – and I thought last week’s show was the nadir. Looking at this week’s running order, I am genuinely not inspired to even bother writing this post. If it wasn’t for the completist in me, I might well have given up at this point but nine years of writing the blog which is into its sixteenth TOTP year does cut deep and I can’t quite let it go just yet. I might have to get through this one in double quick time though and with the briefest of commentaries in places.

Jayne Middlemiss is once again our host and we begin with a hit that was on the show as recently as last week but is given some more exposure due to it holding firm in the Top 10 at No 6. Although we just get a repeat of last week’s performance of “Found A Cure” by Ultra Naté, there was also a video made went to promote the single which was directed by one Charles Stone III. Who? Well, he was the director for many a music promo by the likes of Living Colour, A Tribe Called Quest and Neneh Cherry before moving on to feature films like Paid In Full. Still no clue? Well, he was also responsible for this notorious advert which in turn was responsible for men everywhere believing they were suddenly the funniest person alive by dint of saying just one word…

The first comment under the video on YouTube for this is possibly the saddest thing I’ve read in a while:

“This ad made me really excited to have friends when I got older. Sadly that never happened. I drink a lot of beer though.”

@YesOkayButWhy; 2021

As for Ultra Naté, after finding a cure, she seemingly pursued a career in pharmacy – her next single was called “New Kind Of Medicine” and in 2006 she released the song “Love’s The Only Drug”.

Savage Garden are back on the show with “Truly Madly Deeply” – again. What was the deal with this one? It spent five consecutive weeks in the Top 10 being completely ignored by TOTP Executive Producer Chris Cowey but has now been on the show in three out of the last four episodes courtesy of it spending three weeks at No 5. I’m wondering if it was to do with a desire by Cowey to make the show almost completely studio performance based. As with Ultra Naté earlier, the song’s video is never shown but instead we get the same in studio appearance recycled three times. Were the Australian duo ignored initially because they weren’t available to appear in person and Cowey refused to show the video instead? According to the excellent @TOTPFacts, after the early May ‘98 shows, not one video was shown until the end of June when they would appear occasionally.

The word ‘mighty’ has been used a fair few times in the world of entertainment. There’s The Mighty Wah, one of the many pseudonyms of one of my heroes Pete Wylie. How about “The Mighty Quinn”, a 1968 No 1 single for Manfred Mann? Then there’s Wolverhampton indie rockers The Mighty Lemon Drops and, from the world of comedy, The Mighty Boosh. However, I’d completely forgotten about this lot. The Mighty Mighty Bosstones were a ska-punk band from Boston (geddit?) whose only UK chart entry was “The Impression That I Get”. It was an unusual title for an unusual hit. A raucous rampage of ska beat, parping brass and the rip-your-throat-to-shreds vocals of lead singer Dicky Barrett. With this being a live performance, I had to check if the recorded version of the song sounded the same and they pretty much do with Barrett sounding like he’s swallowed a razor blade even on record. Barrett is a supporter of Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the outspoken anti-vaxxer who is somehow the current United States secretary of Health and Human Services in the Trump government. Something tells me that Barrett might not be the best judge of character. His song though sounds pretty good and he sells it to the studio audience even though some of them, I get the impression (ahem), maybe don’t know who him and his band are or how to dance to the sound they are making. The Mighty Mighty Bosstones only called it a day in 2022 with Barrett’s views on COVID-19 vaccines given as the reason for this.

From a hit I’d forgotten about to one I do remember (everyone remembers this one surely?!) but it had slipped my memory quite how big a hit it was – anybody else forget that “Feel It” by The Tamperer featuring Maya was a No 1? It was for just a solitary week but a chart topper is a chart topper. So who were they? They were a bunch of Italian record producers who sampled the old Jacksons hit “Can You Feel It” to create a monster dance anthem with a model-looking woman out front to sell it. So basically another Black Box then.

Anyway, although the Jacksons sample completely dominated the track, what was even more distinctive about it were the lyrics which included the infamous line “What’s she gonna look like with a chimney on her?”. Like many people, I was left scratching my head on first hearing and saying to myself “Did she just sing about having a chimney on her? Surely not”. On second hearing, after the lyrics were confirmed, my fingers were still scraping my skull but this time my question to myself was “What on earth does she mean?”. Well, I didn’t know this back then as a fledgling internet wasn’t widely accessible to all but it turns out the lyrics were nicked from little known track “Wanna Drop A House (On That Bitch)” by Urban Discharge and suddenly the whole mystery is cleared up.

So successful was “Feel It” that The Tamperer featuring Maya would repeat the formula to create two further hits by sampling Madonna and ABBA but that’s all for a future post. For now, let’s marvel at the sight of two consecutive artists on the show having prominent brass sections and in the knowledge that back in 1998, pissed up clubbers would have been winding their way home in the early hours chanting “What’s she gonna look like with a chimney on her?”.

It’s not getting any better (for me at least). This next hit, and this is going to make me sound like a right reactionary old fart, is literally just a lot of shouting. No, correction – a lot of shouting over the theme tune to 80s TV show Knight Rider. This is Busta Rhymes with “Turn It Up (Remix) / Fire It Up”. The third single from his “When Disaster Strikes…” album, it’s apparently radically different from the album version which sampled Al Green’s “Love And Happiness” but I’m not tempted to find out how different. It would spend two weeks at No 2 in the UK chart in its remixed format so I was clearly out of sync (yet again) with the record buying public. I stand by my original assessment though – this was just shouting as this performance evidences. Ah yes, this performance. It’s introduced by Mr Rhymes himself on the now established show prop “the big telly owa there” as Jayne Middlemiss describes it and guess what? He and his mate (no I don’t know who he is) just barks some words at the screen, banging on about No 1. Erm…Busta? You’re not No 1 fella. And what was the idea with the Knight Rider sample? It was a terrible theme tune and a terrible show with a terrible actor as the lead. Ah, I’m done with this. NEXT!

What. On. Earth? Having swiped left on Busta Rhymes, I’ve ended up with what is technically known, I believe, as ‘some right weird shit’. OK, that’s not right. Technically speaking, 187 Lockdown were a speed garage artist but I reserve the right to my original, personal qualification. I dislike pretty much everything about this – the track, the staging… everything. I get they’ve tried to add an Eastern vibe to their sound but it’s just that usual, sub-genre defining, sped-up, skittering backbeat with an culturally appropriated melody and some random spoken word samples dropped into it. As for the performance, quite what is the guy dressed in black meant to be doing? There some half hearted “Kung-Fu” styled movements, some facial grimacing, what looks like some Marcel Marceau trapped-in-a-box miming and…is that a praying mantis yoga stance? Then there’s the two female dancers who start the performance in full kimonos but end it stripped down to bras and knickers. It’s all a bit ‘lads mag’ and also a possible case of cultural stereotyping.

After the popularity of speed garage faltered, 187 Lockdown was shut down while its prime movers Danny Harrison and Julian Jonah continued to release music under the alias of M Factor and remix for artists as mainstream as Robbie Williams and Atomic Kitten. However, there was a renewed interest in the 2010s in their 187 Lockdown material thanks to the popularity of BBC TV series People Just Do Nothing and its characters that made up Kurupt FM. I can’t say I’ve ever watched it but one show I did watch religiously as a kid was Kung Fu starring David Carradine. Now, if 187 Lockdown had remixed that TV theme and had Master Po and ‘grasshopper’ performing on stage…now that I would have been there for.

Now, when I saw this on the running order, I wrongly assumed it was just another entry on the list of dance tracks that was essentially this TOTP and that, of course, I would hate it. However, “Sounds Of Wickedness” by Tzant is rather good. A track comprising some breathless rapping and some breakneck breakbeats with a funky bass line courtesy of Reuben Wilson’s “Orange Peel” (though it sounds like Dee-Lite’s “Groove Is In The Heart” to me), it fair pelts along giving the listener quite the head rush. Apparently, Tzant were the same people behind the PF Project who brought us the Trainspotting themed hit “Choose Life” in 1997 and the rapper is the same guy from all those awful cover versions by Clock. “Sounds Of Wickedness” was nothing like either of those though. In fact, it reminded me of another early 90s hit by Definition of Sound…

Maybe Tzant’s track is a bit more hard-hitting but you get my drift. They would have one more minor hit under that moniker but would score another Top 20 entry in 1999 under the name of Mirrorball and go onto mix the first volume of the “Euphoria” dance compilation albums that were huge sellers at the end of the 90s and early 2000s.

It’s the final week of six at No 1 for Run-D.M.C. versus Jason Nevins with “It’s Like That” so I suppose I should finally comment on the video we’ve been watching for all these shows. There’s not much to it really though – an unconvincing male vs female breakdance-off set in a disused building interspersed with the odd shot of the Run-D.M.C. lads doing their trademark arms folded pose and some of Jason Nevins in yellow tinted glasses which are his trademark apparently. It’s not a patch on their iconic promo with Aerosmith for “Walk This Way” but then they were always going to miss a showman like Steven Tyler.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1Ultra NatéFound A CureNo
2Savage GardenTruly Madly DeeplyI did not
3The Mighty Mighty BosstonesThe Impression That I GetNah
4The Tamperer featuring MayaFeel ItI wasn’t feeling this one – no
5Busta RhymesTurn It Up (Remix) / Fire It UpBig NO
6187 LockdownKung-FuNegative
7TzantSounds Of Wickedness‘Fraid not
8Run-D.M.C. versus Jason NevinsIt’s Like ThatAnd 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.

TOTP 09 MAY 1996

Posted on by 80stastic

There’s ten hits on this episode of TOTP but we’ve seen four of them before and one of the new ones is a football song (no, not that one; not yet). We’ve also seen the presenter before and not that long ago – it’s that Beertje Van Beers woman again. I’m not sure she was any more famous than she had been the first time she hosted the show a few weeks before (despite the exposure afforded her by that appearance) so why was she back again? Was it all about how she looked? In the era of Britpop and lads mags then I suppose that was a distinct possibility.

Beertje’s first job is to introduce one of those hits we’ve seen before – it’s Suggs featuring Louchie Lou and Michie One with “Cecilia”. The last time they were on led to an infamous incident when lisping boxer Chris Eubank had to contend with a bit of a tongue twister when doing the Top 10 countdown. As A-ha’s Morten Harket once sang on “I’ve Been Losing You”, he was hissing his ‘S’s’ like a snake. Poor Chris and poor the watching British public as this was a honking cover version. I’ve said this before but Suggs’s solo career has always been completely at odds to his Madness one for me. I like Madness and have even seen them live but Suggs on his own just doesn’t compute. For some reason in the mid 90s though, his awful Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel covers won the approval of UK record buyers giving him two Top 10 hits. Parent album “The Lone Ranger” achieved silver sales status and provided Suggs with a further three smaller chart hits but by the time of his second solo album “The Three Pyramids Club” (which sounds like the title of a Richard Osman novel), this brief infatuation was over and it sank without trace. Suggs never really returned to his solo career although he did have a hit with “Blue Day” in 1997 which was the FA Cup final song for my (and his) beloved Chelsea FC (more about cup final songs later). However, just last year, he teamed up with Paul Weller for the Slade-esque spelt single “Ooh Do U Fink U R”.

I’m always very cautious when it comes to commenting on rap artists purely because I don’t know enough about their music and its culture. I’m a white man who grew up in Worcester as a pop kid. If I tried to do any kind of analysis, it would be totally inauthentic. I guess I’m still allowed an opinion on what I’m watching and hearing on these TOTP repeats though right? I can’t just skip over a rap artist appearing on the show can I? The completist in me won’t let me just swerve this so here I go. I know the name Busta Rhymes – of course I do. I spent the 90s working in record shops. Could I name any of his tracks unprompted? Not a one. Would I recognise any if I were to check out his discography? Let’s see…

*checks Busta Rhymes discography*

Oh yeah. He did “Hit ‘Em High (The Monsters Anthem)” from the Space Jam soundtrack with B-Real, Coolio, LL Cool J and Method Man. And therein lies the problem. The only Busta Rhymes hit I know is from a movie about basketball starring Bugs Bunny. I don’t have any depth of knowledge nor relevance to the world of rap. OK, I’ll have to just go for the most superficial of reviews. “Woo-Hah!! Got You All In Check” was the debut single for Busta Rhymes and would peak at No 8 in both the US and the UK. I initially thought that the BBC censor was sleeping again to have let the lines “let’s get high” and “roll some weed” get through but then I checked led out the full, explicit lyrics. Dearie me! There’s no way any of that was getting through the BBC bad language filter. Mary Whitehouse would have self combusted.

Now this is an interesting link from Beertje even though she possibly only used it for its play on words. “In Holland we have three types of people; soccer players, cheeseheads and Klubbheads” she informs us. OK, so let’s break this down. Soccer players? Well, of course the Dutch have a rich history of producing fantastic footballers. One of my mates could talk for hours about Johan Cruyff and ‘total football’. Cheeseheads? I had to do some research on this I have to admit. It’s not a term to refer to enthusiasts of Dutch cheese though that would seem legitimate. No, apparently its usage dates back to the 19th century when Holland was occupied by Napoleon’s army and Dutch cheese producers got fed up with French soldiers stealing their beloved Gouda cheese. As a form of protection when confronting said soldiers, the Dutch wore helmets made out of cheese barrels hence ‘cheeseheads’. The term actually became an insult used by the French and Belgians when referring to Dutch people. Hmm. So by making sure she shoehorned in a play on words to introduce a Dutch dance act, Beertje actually insulted her own country? Oh well.

Said dance act are a team of Dutch dance producers with more than 40 aliases for their recordings including Hi_Tack, Da Klubb Kings and my personal favourite Drunkenmunky. For this their biggest hit “Klubbhopping” however, they went by the moniker of Klubbheads. I’m not going to lie, listening back to this is just making me feel nauseous, like somebody’s taken a club to my head. Klubbheads indeed.

Finally something approaching a decent tune. Having made it big with their last single “Slight Return”, The Bluetones weren’t about to rock the boat by messing with that hit formula and so they didn’t with its follow up “Cut Some Rug” which was certainly cut from the same cloth as its predecessor. Jangly guitars, a shuffling backbeat and some acerbic lyrics (“And all the time you remind me of blitzkreig and the doodle bug, salt upon a bubbling slug”) all allied with a hummable chorus. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it was the gameplan here alright.

Having gone off on a tangent earlier when discussing the origins of the phrase ‘Cheeseheads’, let’s continue that theme with an exploration into backstory of an expression that I’ve certainly used in this blog before- ‘cut some rug’. Apparently, it dates back to the 1930s and 40s when the ‘jitterbug’ dance was popular. Owing to its high energy moves, its protagonists would leave lots of marks on the dance floor that looked like cuts in a carpet or rug. I’m not sure that ‘The Bluetones shuffle’ as demonstrated by Beerjte in her intro would inflict such damage. By the way, I might make this cultural references thing an occasional series you know! Or maybe not.

One of those nearly one hit wonders now when an artist who is only known for one big hit single but whose discography shows that they actually had a further but minor chart entry. Yeah, one of them. The Tony Rich Project was, unsurprisingly, the project of one Tony Rich (real name Antonio Jeffries), a songwriter for LaFace Records who penned compositions for the likes of Toni Braxton, Boyz II Men and TLC. He made the leap into the sphere of artist in his own right with debut single “Nobody Knows”, a tender, soulful ballad that hit big both in the US and over here. Follow up single “Like A Woman” made it to No 27 in our charts then nothing. Well, not nothing as Tony continued to record and release new material well into the new century with his last album appearing in 2017 but he would never have any other major chart success. There is no truth in the rumour that Tony’s artist name inspired the title of 1999’s supernatural horror film phenomenon The Blair Witch Project. That particular movie’s name was influenced, of course, by British soft rockers The Alan Parsons Project.

“Let’s get rocked!” as the next band once sang. Def Leppard (for it is they) hadn’t released a studio album since 1992’s “Adrenalize” filling that gap with a greatest hit and B-sides collection. When the new album finally arrived, it wasn’t quite the Def Leppard of old. There were a few reasons why, not least that the band had seen which way the wind was blowing in the arena of rock music and had understood that post grunge, the sound that had served the so well in their late 80s pomp wasn’t going to cut it in the mid 90s. Added to that was the realisation that they’d been, as described by guitarist Vivian Campbell, living in a state of arrested development singing songs about putting out the trash and that they should write more mature songs that reflected their adult experience. And there was plenty of source material – founding member Steve Clark had died in 1991, guitarist Phil Collen had got divorced, bassist Rick Savage was battling facial paralysis condition Bell’s palsy and the death of his father whilst drummer Rick Allen and lead singer Joe Elliott had been arrested for spousal abuse and assault respectively. Given all that dark and heavy material, the album’s title track and lead single “Slang” seems remarkably jaunty. I can’t say that I’ve ever listened to the rest of the album but supposedly it does see the band operating outside of their comfort zone with more industrial and electronic sounds incorporated. It garnered mixed reviews ranging from a confused mess of an album to plaudits for trying to do something new. Back to the single though and it doesn’t really go anywhere for me and sounds like a poor man’s version of “Slam” by Dan Reed Network.

The one thing that did stand out for me was Joe Elliott’s super straightened new hairdo. It put me in mind of – and this is very niche – a particular style of grooming that some owners of the Maltese breed of dog go in for. We have a Maltese dog and we make sure he has a regular trim at the dog groomers but I’ve seen owners displaying their dogs at Crufts with the fur all grown out and straight as a curtain. Poodle rock indeed.

The next three hits we have seen before on the show starting with an ex-No 1! Yes, it’s that curious TOTP phenomenon of a record having gone down the charts and either going back up or putting the blocks on its descent to such an extent of being afforded a place on the show’s running order. We saw it in an earlier 1996 show when Oasis’s “Wonderwall” got a repeat airing when it re-entered the Top 5 having dropped out of the Top 10 a few weeks earlier. Now it’s the turn of Mark Morrison whose “Return Of The Mack” is still holding at No 2 despite having been on the charts for two months. The last time Beerjte was hosting, she introduced Morrison as that week’s No 1 and he celebrated by picking her up and carrying her off at the end of the song. Thankfully, she’s put enough physical distance between them this time to ensure that doesn’t happen again. In her intro, there’s a moment where she throws a look in the direction of Morrison on the stage behind her and I’m sure you can detect something in it that says “don’t think of trying it again mister”. I hope so anyway.

I would never describe Damon Albarn as a “Charmless Man” but by his own confession, this period of Blur’s career saw him potentially as a clueless one. If that sounds harsh, look at this from Damon himself:

See? I think I said in my last post when Blur were on the show performing this track in the ‘exclusive’ slot that it was a decidedly decent song and I stand by that though it’s clearly not one of their most high profile despite its chart peak of No 5. I’m sure Liam Gallagher would have dismissed it as “chimney sweep music” though. I’m not sure what drummer Dave Rowntree’s over sized drumsticks nor Graham Coxon’s shrunken guitar in this appearance were all about – presumably some band in joke. Graham’s ‘Freedom For Tooting!’ t-shirt was obviously a reference to the 70s sitcom Citizen Smith starring Robert Lindsay as hapless revolutionary Wolfie Smith. I recently listened to an interview with Lindsay and he recounted that the fame that the role brought him had its downsides including being harassed by both admiring women and jealous boyfriends on a night out and, in one extreme case, being blamed for an outbreak of football hooliganism when attending a match played by his hometown team of Ilkeston as the perpetrators had come dressed as Wolfie for the day. I’m pretty sure that Graham Coxon would never have done anything so charmless.

George Michael stays at No 1 with “Fastlove” for a second of three weeks. This track would prove to be his last hit in America, a territory that he dominated in his “Faith” era. That album provided George with six huge hit singles including four consecutive No 1s between ‘87 and ‘88. Quite phenomenal. Things started to tail off a bit with 1990’s “Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1” albeit that lead single “Praying For Time” did furnish another chart topper. By the time of the “Older” album nearly a decade after his late 80s pomp, although sizeable hits, “Jesus To A Child” and “Fastlove” would peak at Nos 7 and 8 respectively whereas both hit the top spot in the UK. This was very much a role reversal of those “Faith” chart positions – of those four American No 1s, in the UK the corresponding peaks were:

2 – 11 – 8 – 13.

Although his US numbers were down, George continued to stack ‘em high over here throughout the rest of the decade. These were the chart positions of his seven single releases after “Fastlove” until the end of ‘99:

2 – 3 – 2 – 10 – 2 – 2 – 4

There may have even been cultural differences in terms of chart compilation and release strategies that explains the contrasts highlighted above but I thought they were…well…worth highlighting.

We play out with another football song but, as I said at the top of the post, it’s still not that one. This TOTP aired two days before the 1996 FA Cup final between Liverpool and Manchester United and it tuned out to be a complete damp squib of a game that was decided by a solitary goal by Eric Cantona (himself the subject of yet another football song in the Top 40 that will feature on the following TOTP repeat). Already in the charts was the cup final song by United called “Move Move Move (The Red Tribe)” which would peak at No 6. Released a week later was this effort from their ultimately defeated opponents under the name of Liverpool FC & The Boot Room Boyz. Despite losing the cup final (cream suits and all), this pile of shite actually won the chart battle when it entered the chart at No 4. With a similar title to United’s hit – “Pass & Move (It’s The Liverpool Groove)” – it also tried to capture the predominant dance sound of the time much as their rivals had. Both failed dismally. Liverpool should have just updated 1988’s “Anfield Rap” – now that was a football record with a groove.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1Suggs featuring Louchie Lou and Michie One CeciliaNever
2Busta RhymesWoo-Hah!! Got You All In CheckNo
3KlubbheadsKlubbhoppingNot likely
4The BluetonesCut Some RugI did not
5The Tony Rich ProjectNobody KnowsNah
6Def LeppardSlangNegative
7Mark Morrison Return Of The MackNope
8BlurCharmless ManNo but I had their Great Escape album
9George MichaelFastloveAnother no
10Liverpool FC & The Boot Room BoyzPass & Move (It’s The Liverpool Groove)As if

Disclaimer

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

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