We’ve missed another show due to Adrian Rose’s still unexplained refusal to sign the repeat waiver for the TOTP episodes on which he presented and so we arrive in the middle of February, 24 hours before Valentine’s Day. That means it’s been four whole months since the new, ‘year zero’ revamp of the show. How do we think it’s been going?
I have to say that I can’t think of anything that’s been introduced that’s improved the show. The live vocal policy has just found people out rather than given the performances an extra edge. The relegation of the chart rundown to just the Top 10 (with no voice over initially) seems to have been just for the sake of drawing a line under the old format and the studio set up with the audience visible running in between stages seems chaotic. The on stage interviews of the artists from the early weeks has been ditched thankfully (they were excruciating and pointless) but the new sections such as the ‘exclusive’ showing of new videos and the US charts seem shoehorned in for the sake of it.
And then there’s the presenters. It’s not that I think they were terrible – heaven knows that the old guard of Radio 1 DJs have prompted reams of ire from me during these TOTP posts – it’s just that they didn’t seem to add anything other than youthful over enthusiasm which in the case of some resulted in a lot of shouting of links (yes I’m looking specifically at you Claudia Simon). To be fair, Tony Dortie and his silly urban yoof slang has grown on me and he seems to be a decent fellow who tweets along to the repeats with good humour.
Tonight’s show has tinkered with the formula rather. There are only three studio performances and the three of the nine acts on tonight are just the Breakers which have been moved back to that incongruous position just before the No 1. It just doesn’t feel right.
The opening act tonight are…WTF?! It’s those talentless bozos Color Me Badd. Now if like me you thought this lot’s rise to fame and subsequent descent to the wilderness all happened within the calendar year 1991, then also like me, you’ll be wondering what the hell they are doing on TOTP in 1992.
Well, it’s all to do with what I was talking about earlier and those new sections. This time it’s the turn of the US charts which is why Color Me Badd are on the show except…as far as I can tell this track “Heartbreaker” wasn’t released as a single in the US. It seems to only feature in the lower regions of the chart in New Zealand, the Netherlands and this country. Yes, the lower regions, so low it didn’t actually make our Top 40 peeking at No 58. So it wasn’t in the American charts nor was it in ours? What’s that Claudia? It’s No 6 on the Top 100? What the hell does that mean? The US album chart? The graphic in the corner of the screen just had an American flag and the No 6. It must be the US chart mustn’t it? I think a bit of behind the scenes negotiating between the BBC and the band’s record company must have been afoot. I think the Beeb were out manoeuvred though as I can’t imagine that many TOTP viewers would have been excited at the prospect of this ‘exclusive’. They were literally last year’s news. That and the fact that “Heartbreaker” stinks the place out.
Do you think they had their eyes on New Kids In The Block’s crown? The track sounds a bit like them. Clearly the lead vocalist can’t do the dance moves his three band mates behind him are cranking out as he remains motionless when one of them steps forward to do a rap halfway through. No effort is made to to swap places with him and take up the slack in the dance steps. This must have been the boy band template that Take That followed early in their career. Didn’t Gary Barlow famously struggle with bustin’ his moves that the rest of them could do effortlessly?
At the end of their performance, co-host Steve Anderson says we may well be seeing “Heartbreaker” in the British charts next week. I’m guessing that line was definitely scripted in some forlorn attempt to justify it opening the show and pretty sure that nobody in the UK had heard “Heartbreaker”again in the 30 years between the original TOTP transmission and this repeat.
“RememberTheTime” when the biggest scandal in the press about Michael Jackson surrounded the rumour that he bleached his skin? Sadly for everyone involved, there would be scandals of a much more serious, damaging and distinctly horrible nature to come in the years that followed.
Back in early 1992 though, Jackson was just getting started on another round of releasing every track from his latest album as a single. Seven singles were lifted from “Thriller”, nine from “Bad”. His 1991 album “Dangerous” would follow suit with another nine tracks making it into the UK singles chart. That’s twenty five singles generated from three albums. David Coleman would surely have described it as “quite extraordinary”.
Following up global No 1 “Black And White” was always going to be a hard act even for Jackson but he gave it a good go with “Remember The Time” which was a No 3 hit in both the US and the UK. Written and produced by Teddy Riley, the creator of the New Jack Swing sound that was sweeping the world, it was no surprise that the song was in the same vein. It was all a bit too slick for my liking and didn’t hold my attention anywhere near as much as “Black And White” had.
The video was a lavish affair (of course it was) but we missed the exclusive first showing of it on TOTP the previous week as it was one of those shows that was Adrian Rosed. We still get another whopping five minutes of it tonight though. Quite why it was set in ancient Egypt I’m not sure. The track has no Egyptian connection and indeed the only country specifically mentioned in the lyrics is Spain! There’s the by now routine roster of stars in the promo including Eddie Murphy and super model Iman who would marry David Bowie later in the year. Jackson plays a wizard brought to the palace to entertain the Pharoah’s bored wife but who angers him by flirting with her instead. Cue some laborious chase scene involving Jacko and the Pharoah’s royal guards. Apparently this is the first video when Jackson kisses his female co-star. However, I’m more interested in how this particular conversation may have played out.
When a video pops up on YouTube & you have to explain to your kids why grandma was married to Eddie Murphy in ancient Egypt. 😂 @The_Real_IMANpic.twitter.com/L5VasTjlzh
The song won the 1993 Soul Train award for Best Male R&B single. Jackie performed it at the awards show sat in a chair having twisted his ankle earlier. I think I prefer him sat down instead of doing all those exhausting to watch dance moves.
Next we have one of two distinctly and defiantly indie bands both inside the Top 10 this week. The Jesus And Mary Chain are at No 10 and one place above them are a band that the Scottish feedback monsters gave a helping hand to at the start of their career. Apparently Jim Reid heard an early Ride demo via DJ Gary Crowley which led to interest from their former manager and founder of Creation Records Alan McGee. A recording contract followed and the band became one of the pin ups of the ‘shoegaze’ movement.
By early 1992, Ride we’re nearing their commercial peak which they would reach with their biggest hit single “Leave ThemAllBehind” and parent album “Going Blank Again”. Apparently the single was written about the second rate groups (in the band’s perception) that had trailed in their dust after their success came. Bit arrogant. They would be undone by a combination of touring fatigue and the advent of Britpop and they broke up in the mid 90s before reforming a couple of times in the new millennium.
Lead singer Mark Gardener would stay in the music business working with various artists and also recording as a solo artist whilst guitarist Andy Bell went onto form Hurricane #1 before famously joining Oasis and Beady Eye. However, I’m more interested in bassist Steve Queralt who was working as the singles buyer in the Banbury Our Price store when he joined Ride. Wow! There must be a few stories of pop stars working in record shops either before or after their fame. I’ve said a few times before about working with Pete the original bass player in The Stone Roses at the Stockport Our Price. I also worked with long time Peter Hook collaborater (Monaco, Peter Hook And The Light) David Potts in Manchester. Must be loads more though.
Time for one of those TOTP ‘Exclusive’ videos now but, as with Color Me Badd at the top of the show, I think the producers have seriously misjudged the demand for and excitement to be generated by the latest Bryan Adams promo. After his 16 week run at No 1 the previous year, I think we’d all had our fill of the Groover from Vancouver but that didn’t stop Steve Anderson trying his best to big up Bryan’s latest single “ThoughtI’dDiedAndGoneToHeaven” in his intro.
This was already the fourth single to be released from his “Waking Up The Neighbours” album that had only been out since September and it’s quite the plodder. There’s a definite Def Leppard vibe to it, not surprising though seeing as it was produced by the man responsible for all their big hits Mutt Lange.
As for the video, was it worth the build up and airtime? It’s a resounding no from me. It features Bry and his band in a sepia tinted hue, playing in a barley field (as you do) whilst some dolphins occasionally leap out over their heads. What?!
“Thought I’d Died And Gone To Heaven” peaked at No 8.
Almost exactly 12 months on from this TOTP, broadcast, the aforementioned Michael Jackson performed the half time show at Super Bowl XXVII. So? Well, the game took place in Pasadena, California and who are the final act in the studio tonight? Yep, The Pasadenas (I don’t just throw this stuff together you know) who are up to No 4 with “I’mDoingFineNow”. In scenes not witnessed on TOTP since The Leyton Buzzards performed “Saturday Night (Beneath The Plastic Palm Trees)” in 1979, the band are singing their hit…yep…under some plastic palm trees.
Why? Who knows. Pretty sure there’s nothing in the lyrics about beaches or palm trees and the middle of February is hardly holiday season is it? To make the palm trees look even more ludicrous and indeed incongruous, the lead singer is wearing a full length leather coat and hat whilst the rest of the band all have warm looking jackets on. Just crazy.
The Pasadenas would have three more minor chart hits (all of them cover versions) so it’s possible we haven’t quite seen the last of them yet but the end is nigh.
The Breakers start this week with “ForYourBabies” by Simply Red which had already been on the show before Xmas as an ‘exclusive’ performance basically to plug the “Stars” album for the festive market – as if it needed any more help in pushing sales. As such I haven’t got much else to say about it apart from if I was forced at gunpoint to pick a song from “Stars” that I could most tolerate then it would be this one.
“For Your Babies” peaked at No 9.
Macaulay Culkin appearing in TOTP was starting to become a regular occurrence. After his cameo in Michael Jackson’s “Black And White”, here he is again on the promo for a re-release of “MyGirl”. His involvement here is of course because he was starring in a film that took its name from the title of TheTemptations’ most well known song. I’ve never seen said film and have to admit I’d always assumed it was some cutesy, young love nonsense but having read the plot summary for it…well, without wanting to give away any spoilers, it does seem to be quite a bit darker than that.
Obviously “My Girl” the song is included both in the soundtrack and the film itself and given its success and Culkin’s then profile, it was given a re-release. I’d always assumed that it had been a massive hit in the 60s when originally recorded but although it was a US No 1, it didn’t even make the Top 40 in the UK. The 1992 re-release righted that wrong though when it went all the way to No 2.
It’s always sounded a bit like “The Tracks Of My Tears” by The Miracles to me but then it was written by Smokey Robinson so that’s hardly surprising. For the record, I think “The Tracks Of My Tears” is infinitely the better song. As for The Temptations, this was their first time in the UK Top 40 since 1984’s “Treat Her Like A Lady” and inevitably there was a Greatest Hits compilation album released off the back of it which duly went Top 10. They are still a recording entity with a new album due this very month but with a list of line ups changes that makes The Sugababes look like U2, you’d need a Tory minister to make the case that it was the same group.
And the grunge bandwagon keeps on moving….Were PearlJam actually a grunge band or was it just that they happened to come from Seattle? To me, debut single “Alive” sounded more like classic stadium rock than the punky, garage offerings of Nirvana but then I’m no expert on Eddie Vedder and co. I did like “Alive” though and the other singles from debut album “Ten” but I lost track of the band after that. Most rock fans didn’t though if their sales figures are anything to go by (which clearly they are). “Ten” went 13 x platinum whilst follow up “Vs.” sold 7 million copies in the US alone. Third album “Vitalogy” sold 877,000 copies in its first week making it the second fastest selling album in history only behind their own “Vs.”. Pearl Jam were and are a big deal. Somehow though, TOTP managed to avoid them and this Breaker appearance is the only time we got to see “Alive” on the show. Maybe the producers had got their fingers burned by that chaotic Nirvana studio performance of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”.
“Alive” peaked at No 16 on the UK Top 40.
The No 1 spot still belongs to WetWetWet and “GoodnightGirl”. The band are still going to this day albeit without Marti Pellow in their ranks anymore. A split between the two parties back in 2017 now seems permanent, especially as there is a new lead singer installed in the form of ex Liberty X star Kevin Simm. The rift apparently surrounds Marti’s unwillingness to concentrate solely on the band and his determination to try new musical projects. A sad tale but definitely not unique. Spandau Ballet find themselves in a very similar situation with Tony Hadley.
Pellow’s real name is Mark McLachlan but he adopted his stage name which was based on his school nickname ‘Smarty’ and his mother’s maiden name. Funny that the surname McLachlan was good enough for Craig.
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
Color Me Badd
Heartbreaker
Not a chance
2
Michael Jackson
Remember The Time
I did not
3
Ride
Leave Them All Behind
Nah
4
Bryan Adams
Thought I’d Died And Gone To Heaven
And no
5
The Pasadenas
I’m Doing Fine Now
Nope
6
Simply Red
For Your Babies
No
7
The Temptations
My Girl
Negative
8
Pearl Jam
Alive
Liked it, didn’t buy it
9
Wet Wet Wet
Goodnight Girl
No but my wife 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
And there goes 1991! Phew! So, was it a case of “Thank God that’s all over” or was it that we were all left wanting more? Let’s be honest, it’s option one isn’t it? As ever when I approach the next year of TOTP repeats, my optimism got the better of me and I came out the reviews thinking “it can’t have been as bad as all that surely?” and, as ever, I was wrong. In my defence, after the year of ‘Madchester’ that was 1990, was it unreasonable to have anticipated that 1991 would see a continuation of the dominance of the indie dance scene and all the cultural invention it bought? Sadly, the two biggest names of that movement were conspicuous by their absence. Both Happy Mondays and The Stone Roses were in a state of paralysis as they attempted to follow up on the huge events that were their iconic albums “Pills ‘n’ Thrills And Bellyaches” and “The Stone Roses . The latter were banjaxed by legal issues as they sought to disentangle themselves from their Silvertone recording contract and the Mondays? Well, they were hanging out with Ronnie Biggs in Brazil and doing a lot of drugs weren’t they?
Into the vacancy they created strode indie rock bands like Blur, Jesus Jones and Ride who looked the part but were they really just signings by major labels looking to jump on a bandwagon whose wheels had already come off? By the end of the year, a new dominant strain of rock music would arrive from Seattle in America. The era of grunge was upon us.
Dance music was still in the ascendancy with most of the tunes crossing over into the charts being rave anthems by the likes of The Prodigy, Bizarre Inc, Altern-8 and SL2. Meanwhile, some of the stars of the previous decade made a come back like Paul Young and a trimmed down OMD. Surely the biggest return of an act we’d first seen in the 80s though was by Simply Red who bagged the year’s biggest selling album in “Stars”.
As for TOTP, 1991 was a year of huge change with the ‘year zero’ revamp culling all those familiar Radio 1 DJ presenters in one fell swoop, replacing them with fresh faced youngsters we’d never seen before. A new live vocal performance policy was introduced to mixed results while the whole shebang was moved lock,stock and barrel, relocating from BBC Television Centre in London to BBC Elstree Centre in Borehamwood. It all took some getting used to and judging by the shows I’ve already reviewed, the new changes weren’t an immediate hit.
As usual with these end of year reviews, I like to remind myself of the songs that topped the charts to see if there is were any trends behind the sales and as ever, nothing really seems to make much sense.
17 songs had travelled to the summit of the charts. Of them, I would say they broke down like this:
6 by established stars (Queen twice, Michael Jackson, Cher, U2, George Michael and Elton John)
3 by ‘teen’ sensations (Chesney Hawkes, Jason Donovan, Color Me Badd)
2 by ‘new’ artists with a ‘new’ sound (Enigma, The KLF)
2 x novelty records (The Simpsons, Vic Reeves and The Wonder Stuff)
1 by a band with a loyal fanbase that manipulated the release schedules (Iron Maiden)
1 x TV advert tie in (The Clash)
1 x charity record (Hale & Pace)…
…and 1 by Bryan Adams.
Some may argue with my categories and you could swap some of the artists around of course. Was “Dizzy” an actual novelty record? Were Color Me Badd really a teen sensation? I had to draw the line somewhere though. Of those 17, I bought two and one of those was by mistake – I’ll let you work out / guess which ones they were. Discounting novelty and charity records and with the exception of Enigma, Iron Maiden and The KLF (and at a pinch U2), it was all very mainstream. Nothing ever seemed to change that much when it came to the really big hit singles. Maybe grunge will change all that in 1992…
Hits We Missed
During these reviews of the year in my other blog TOTP Rewind – the 80s, a lot of the entries in this section were songs and artists that had made it onto the show but those shows were not repeated by the BBC for reasons of taste surrounding hosts that were totally unpalatable today or, in the case of Mike Smith, because of legal restrictions. Thankfully, in 1990, any such restrictions were eradicated as none of the aforementioned hosts were still on the show.
However this vexatious issue returned in late 1991 due to one of the new presenters in the ‘year zero’ revamp (one Adrian Rose) following Smitty’s lead and failing to sign the repeat broadcast waiver! Fortunately, this only resulted in a couple of non transmitted shows but that kiss from Rose will prove to be more deadly in 1992 when multiple repeats won’t be shown. With all that said, there will still a few chart hits we missed seeing this year because they never actually featured on the show despite making the Top 40…
Alison Moyet – This House
Released 30/09/91
Peak chart position No 40
After finding solo stardom in the mid to late 80s after the dissolution of Yazoo, Alison Moyet began the new decade rejecting the notion of pursuing chart hits at any cost and putting artist integrity at the heart of her work. Her first album of the 90s was “Hoodoo” which sold reasonably but failed to produce any big hits as her commercial peak “Raindancing” had done. Maybe that’s what she wanted all along having publicly disowned that 1987 album.
“This House” was the only single from “Hoodoo” to scratch the Top 40 (and it was the lightest of dents) despite being the final of four releases. I think it’s fair to say that the track perfectly demonstrated her reinvention as a serious artist. A haunting, sombre number with a touch of Dire Straits’ “Private Investigations” in the verses, this was no “Weak In The Presence Of Beauty “. Its heavy nature meant that it struggled to find a home though in the rave obsessed charts despite it having originally featured as the B side to Alison’s cover of “Love Letters” which represented the peak of her commercial era. Oh the irony.
The fight for artistic integrity and credibility would continue with the release of the “Essex” album in 1994 before Alison would finally disentangle herself from her record label Columbia and return with “Hometime” some eight years later. Columbia meanwhile would flick the metaphorical v’s at Ms Moyet when they released a compilation of her singles in 1995 called…erm…”Singles” which went to No 1.
The Black Crowes – Hard To Handle
Released 05/08/91
Peak chart position No 39
*Originally released 1990 when it peaked at No 76.
In a year when the charts were seemingly dominated by rave anthems, there was still a small corner of the Top 40 reserved for some revivalist sounds, in this case courtesy of Southern rockers The Black Crowes. I’d certainly never heard of them before this point but apparently they’d been around since 1984 although they didn’t release their first studio album until six years later. That album was “Shake Your Money Maker” which included the band’s take on the Otis Redding song “Hard To Handle”, their first Top 40 hit in the UK.
I didn’t and don’t regard myself as any sort of enthusiast of Southern rock but I didn’t mind this. Knowing the original version of the song helped as well. I don’t remember the album being played on our shop stereo that much but somewhere along the line I also became aware of another single from the album, that being “Twice As Hard” (I think it may have been on that first Q Magazine compilation album that I bought around this time). The band would enjoy their biggest period of success the following year when their second album “The Southern Harmony And Musical Companion” went to No 1 in the US and No 2 in the UK. Rave anthems be gone!
Jellyfish – The King Is Half Undressed
Released 14/01/91
Peak chart position No 39
Sometimes the crazy world of pop throws up some complete anomalies, artists and songs that seem out of time with the era in which they appeared. Jellyfish were a fine example of this phenomenon. Hailing from San Francisco, they took their myriad influences of the likes of The Beatles, The Beach Boys, ELO, 10cc, Queen, Bowie, Wings and XTC and placed them all in a huge cooking pot, set it on a low heat and came up with a new pop cuisine that was both appetising and yet like something you wouldn’t necessarily choose from the menu. Intricate melodies combined with complex harmonies and all glued together by a timeless pop sensibility. Marvellous for pop fans like me but undeniably incongruous in a soundscape of rave and grunge.
Their material would engender a loyal cult following who saw them as the musical missing link but commercial success would remain tantalisingly out of reach despite tour slots with the aforementioned The Black Crowes. They even played at Wembley Stadium before 72,000 people supporting INXS yet “The King Is Half Undressed” would be their only UK Top 40 hit (and then only just). It came from an album called “Bellybutton” which included some great tracks including “Now She Know’s She’s Wrong” and “Baby’s Coming Back” the latter of which was even a No 1 for British boy band McFly in 2007. A sophomore album appeared in 1993 called “Spilt Milk” which the band saw as the natural culmination and apogee of their sound and which drew (probably unhelpful) comparisons with “Pet Sounds” – indeed they had even some ultimately unproductive songwriting sessions with yer actual Brian Wilson! It bombed in America though was better received in this country and the band broke up due to that well worn and weary of excuses ‘creative differences’. Their back catalogue probably demands a better legacy than it is afforded.
Milltown Brothers – Which Way Should I Jump?
Released 11/02/91
Peak chart position No 38
*Originally released 1989 – did not chart
When Tiffany sang “Could’ve Been” in 1988 I’m pretty sure she wasn’t singing about a gang of lads from Colne, Lancashire – not least because Milltown Brothers weren’t formed until a year later – but she…ahem…could’ve been.
Tipped by the NME no less for stardom as the 80s became the 90s, a bidding war by the major labels saw the band sign with A&M records who released a re-recording of “Which Way Should I Jump” (it was originally issued on an indie label two years before) which made them bonafide chart stars when it entered the Top 40 at No 38. A debut album called “Slinky” promised much with some nifty tunes that did much to dispel the idea that they were just another bunch of baggy chancers. I’m pretty sure it was a Recommended Release in Our Price.
However, the fates conspired against them with the release of follow up single “Here I Stand”. According to the band’s own website, the track was denied sales from independent record shops where they had done a string of promotional PAs by the chart compilers who feared chart rigging (officially the single was subject to the process of ‘weighting’) and it peaked at that most unfortunate of chart positions No 41. The repercussions were disastrous. No Top 40 hit meant no TOTP appearance and A&M lost their nerve and faith in the band. A follow up album wasn’t released until two years later by which point all momentum was lost. The band effectively broke up only to reform in 2004 and are still together to this day last releasing an album in 2020.
And yes they were brothers. Well at least singer and guitarist Matt and Simin Nelson are.
Nirvana- Smells Like Teen Spirit
Released 10/09/1991
Peak chart position 7
The first casualty of that unsigned Adrian Rose waiver and it’s a biggie. Who knew back in the Autumn of 1991 what an influence and legacy this song would have? I didn’t that’s for sure. I don’t mind admitting that I didn’t have a clue who Nirvana were nor did I get what all the fuss was about back then. It seemed to all happen overnight, this movement called grunge. Suddenly there were punters coming into the shop asking for that album with the front cover of a naked child, underwater and reaching for a dollar bill on a string. What was going on?
And then I heard the song. I couldn’t understand what they were singing about but then I wasn’t the only one not able to translate those lyrics that seemed indecipherable on first hearing. It didn’t matter. It was a huge cacophony of noise, bludgeoning the listener into submission. Immediately designated a legacy of being the ultimate anthem for a generation of disaffected, nihilistic youths, it is routinely listed at the top of all those polls like ‘The Best Single Ever’ and ‘The Most Important Rock Song Of All Time’. I’m guessing it still resonates with the younger generation some 30 years on even though those who were first turned on by it are now middle aged and thinking about their pension provision. The only track I can think of that has had such a visceral effect since would be “Creep” by Radiohead. Possibly. “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, in short, was a monster.
And then I watched this TOTP performance. God it was awful. From Kurt Cobain’s deliberately tone deaf vocals to his giving the microphone a blow job to the inevitable and uncovincing stage invasion. The band were never invited back. More informed and articulate people than I have already written millions of words about the influence and impact of Nirvana, Kurt Cobain and indeed “Smells Like Teen Spirit” so I don’t propose to write an essay on this but suffice to say that I’m pretty sure I have wigged out like a lunatic to this in some seedy venue on an indie night. Haven’t we all?
Saint Etienne – Only Love Can Break Your Heart
Released 12/08/91
Peak chart position No 39
*”Only Love Can Break Your Heart” originally reached number 95 on the UK Singles Chart. It was re-released in August 1991 reaching a new peak of number 39.
The second of two cover versions in this section comes from a band as far removed from the southern rock of The Black Crowes as it’s possible to be. Before 1991, if anyone had asked me about Saint Etienne, my mind would have immediately reverted to 1977 and that memorable European Cup tie between Liverpool and St Etienne that was one of my first footballing memories. David ‘Supersub’ Fairclough and all that. I would never have thought that 13 years later the defeated French team would provide the name for a dance act that seemed to come out of nowhere but who would transcend their club beginnings and become a cultural force for years to come. I say ‘out of nowhere’ but founding members Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs had already masterminded a Top 10 hit in ‘91 courtesy of “7 Ways To Love” by Cola Boy, not that I knew of that connection at the time.
I think I first heard their version of Neil Young’s “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” when I covered for a day in the Our Price Piccadilly store in Manchester (I usually worked down the road in the Market Street shop). It never seemed be off the shop stereo that day and it sounded achingly trendy to my ears ( yes ‘trendy’ was still an acceptable word back then!). It had a haunting quality to it combined with a shuffling back beat that immediately created a perception that the band were part of the indie-dance scene. My wife bought the parent album “Foxbase Alpha” and the tracks within it demonstrated that they had much more to them than just that. 60s pop influences combined with club culture sensibilities and some art film samples shaped an experimental yet accessible album. I think “Wilson” might be my favourite track.
Apparently vocalist Sarah Cracknell doesn’t actually do the singing on “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” (those duties were performed by one Moira Lambert) as she wasn’t a permanent band member at the time of recording. As much as I liked the band, I did have a problem with them though. I saw them in concert around 1993 (supported by Pulp no less) but they used backing tracks and only played a 43 minute set! Crackers (she must be known as ‘Crackers’ within the band don’t you think?) announced at the end of the last song that “we’re not a rock band and we don’t do encores”. What a swizz!
Hits That Never Were
Airhead -Funny How
Released 05/10/91
Peak chart position No 57
There’s a surprising number of famous people that hail from Maidstone, Kent. There’s the actors Mackenzie Crook (The Office / Worzel Gummidge), Tamsin Greig (Black Books / Friday Night Dinner) and Shaun Williamson (Barry from Eastenders / erm that’s it). If that wasn’t enough there’s also artist, Children’s TV presenter and national treasure the late, great Tony Hart. When it comes to pop stars though there’s a distinct dearth. Yes, David Bowie lived in Maidstone in the early 60s pre fame as part of blues group Manish Boys but he wasn’t from there. So it fell upon a group of lads in the early 90s to maintain Maidstone’s end in the pop stakes and those lads were called Airhead.
Originally entitled Jefferson Airhead before being threatened with legal action by US psychedelic rockers Jefferson Airplane, they briefly garnered public attention due to their brilliantly poppy single “Funny How” gaining heavy rotation on Radio 1’s playlists. Despite this exposure and its insanely catchy lyric “it’s funny how the girls you fall in love with never fancy you, funny how the ones you don’t do”, it failed to crack the Top 40. They did achieve that feat with follow up single “Counting Sheep” as 1991 turned into 1992 which reached No 35 but it’s “Funny How” that remains their best known work. It was even used to soundtrack some montages in Match Of The Day at the time.
They only released one album called “Boing!!” which made the Top 30 but the band split not long after due to tensions with their record label. For those that know it though, “Funny How” remains one of the biggest and best hits that never were of the whole decade.
Crowded House – Chocolate Cake
Released 22/06/91
Peak chart position No 69
Prior to the start of the 90s, Crowded House we’re pretty much known in the UK purely for their 1987 Top 30 hit “Don’t Dream It’s Over”. Their eponymous debut album it was taken from did exactly zilch over here. Follow up long player “Temple Of Low Men” made even less impact (is there anything lower than zilch?). However, their breakthrough moment would come with the release of third album “Woodface” in 1991 which would sprout four Top 40 hit singles including a Top Tenner in “Weather With You”.
And this one. Very much the runt of the litter, “Chocolate Cake” was the first single to be released from the album and it was largely ignored by the UK. Maybe it was too confrontational for most people. The lyrics take a swipe at multiple targets including overweight Americans, Andrew Lloyd Webber, capitalism and how the masses will accept any old toss served up to them as culturally valid without understanding the value of true art. Something like that anyway. I never did work out who ‘Mrs Hairy Legs’ was though.
A thoroughly forgotten Crowded House track, it didn’t even appear in their 1996 No 1 Best Of album “Recurring Dream” for which the advertising campaign used the tagline “you know more Crowded House songs than you realise”. Clearly not “Chocolate Cake” though.
Elvis Costello – The Other Side Of Summer
Released 08/04/91
Peak chart position No 43
I may have included this one in the review purely because my wife is a big admirer of the artist and I remember buying this one for her (using my Our Price staff discount of course!). I’m certainly no super fan myself but I do like plenty of his stuff. It’s just that since his 70s and 80s heydays he seems to have forgotten to include a melody in most of his tunes. Sorry my love!
“The Other Side Of Summer” couldn’t be described as such though having been deliberately written as a Beach Boys pastiche (early 70s era) and it fair bounces along in a very hummable way. Its musicality is totally at odds with its lyrics though which takes issue with both Pink Floyd and John Lennon with the latter being taken to task for “Imagine” (‘Was it a millionaire who said ‘imagine no possessions’?”).
It didn’t strike a chord with UK music fans though peaking at No 43. Taken from the album “Mighty Like A Rose”, what I most remember about this was the massive Grizzly Adams style beard Costello had grown and that was used in the promotional images surrounding the release. Paddy McAloon eat your heart out!
Before bestriding the UK charts later in the 90s with massive hits like “Are You Gonna Go My Way” and “Fly Away” (a chart topper no less), his singles weren’t always hits. Indeed, by the end of 1991, he’d only ever had two Top 40 entries to his name – “Let Love Rule” (No 39) and his breakthrough hit of this year “It Ain’t Over ‘til It’s Over” which just missed the Top 10 when it peaked just outside at No 11.
“Stand By My Woman” was the follow up to that single and it failed to keep the hit momentum going, returning him to the chart doldrums by missing the Top 40 altogether. Why wasn’t it a success? There was no apparent reason. Yes, it was a change of tempo though still a well structured if rather mournful and brooding ballad as opposed to its breezily paced predecessor but who decreed that each song had to sound the same as all your others? Well yes, Stock, Aitken and Waterman obviously but who cares what they thought?
Taken from his “Mama Said” album which I liked so much I bought, its title could have been a direct response to Tammy Wynette’s “Stand By Your Man” although it had more in common musically with Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me”.
Lloyd Cole – Weeping Wine
Released 21/10/91
Peak chart position Did not chart
When a lead singer of a successful band goes solo it tends to be an endeavour fraught with potential obstacles. Will your fan base accept you as an individual artist? Should you stick to the formula that made you a star in the first place or try and attract a different (meaning more mature) audience? Will you change your image? Not many have made the transition successfully I would contend. For every George Michael there’s a Limahl. In the case of Lloyd Cole, the former Commotions frontman didn’t pull up any trees commercially but he did produce a more than credible body of work.
After his band called it a day in 1989, Lloyd hit the ground running with two solo albums released in consecutive years. Although hit singles proved to be elusive, the albums sold steadily presumably as he retained his fan base’s interest and devotion at least initially. The second of those albums “Don’t Get Weird On Me Babe” is regarded by some Lloyd aficionados as his creative peak and from it came the single “Weeping Wine”. Hardly my favourite song of his by any standard but there was something about this unassuming, county tinged lament that appealed.
Years on from this I caught Lloyd live at a gig in New Mills, Derbyshire. He was great – entertaining yet self effacing banter with some brilliant tunes. The best thing was the interval though. That’s not a slur on Lloyd at all. During the break in his set, me and my mates Robin and Steve decamped to a pub round the corner from the venue for a quick jar and who was at the bar ahead of us having a whisky but Lloyd himself. I loved that nobody in the pub (including us) bothered him for autographs or selfies. He was just another punter. And of course Lloyd is a Chelsea fan like me. Gotta love the man just for that!
Love And Money – Winter
Released 16/11/91
Peak chart position No 52
Who comes to mind first when you hear the term ‘Scottish rock and pop’? Simple Minds? Big Country? Deacon Blue? Maybe somebody a little less obvious like Teenage Fan Club? Or more traditionally Gaelic like Runrig? How many attempts would it take before this lot came up as an answer I wonder?
I first became aware of Love And Money back in 1986 when their debut single “Candybar Express” started getting airplay on Radio 1. It wasn’t enough to make it a hit but it was a solid marker of things to come. Fast forward two years and their “Strange Kind Of Love” album generated four singles all of which I liked including the title track and “Up Escalator “. Still Top 40 success eluded the band.
By 1991, their third album “Dogs In The Traffic” seemed like a last throw of the dice to achieve the chart placings they deserved. Yet another Our Price Recommended Release, it became their highest charting long player but even then at a paltry peak of No 41. The final single from it was “Winter” presumably kept back to coincide its release with its namesake season. It’s a rather lovely, reflective track that was quite the change from the rawness of “Candybar Express” and the slick 80s production of “Strange Kind Of Love”. Sadly it disappeared like dandruff in a blizzard in the Xmas rush peaking outside the Top 40 yet again at No 52. Criminal really.
Singer and songwriter James Grant is still out there gigging and recording. His band’s debut album was called “All You Need Is…Love And Money”. Perhaps he also needed just a little bit of luck.
Malcolm McLaren – Magic’s Back
Released 21/12/91
Peak chart position No 42
What a curiosity this was but then anything involving Malcolm McLaren was never going to be run of the mill! On Xmas day in 1991, Channel 4 broadcast The Ghosts Of Oxford Street, basically a vanity project by McLaren (who wrote, directed and acts as narrator for the film) detailing the history of the famous London shopping street. The narrative is helped along by the interspersing of musical segments performed by an eclectic array of artists including Tom Jones, Happy Mondays, Sinead O’Connor and Kirsty MacColl and The Pogues doing that Xmas song.
This being a McLaren project though, Malcolm of course grants himself a song in amongst it all and what a song it was. His previous musical output had pushed the boundaries of traditional genres with the likes of “Buffalo Gals” and “Double Dutch” but “Magic’s Back” was a straight up dance floor filling house track ably aided by the vocal talents of Alison Limerick. Malc’s contribution is limited to his rather creepy spoken word intro but the rest of the track is banging! There was a whole album of the songs featured in the film but like the single it didn’t sell that well.
I’m pretty sure that I watched The Ghosts Of Oxford Street on Xmas day in 1991 and I’m equally pretty sure I was very disappointed with it even allowing for my fascination of all things McLaren. You never see it repeated on TV do you? Ever. Funny that.
TheMock Turtles – And Then She Smiles
Released 29/06/91
Peak chart position No 44
I waxed lyrical about The Mock Turtles back when I reviewed the TOTP show on which they performed “Can You Dig It?” months ago in this blog. I don’t therefore propose to rehash all of that again here. However, I did want to include them in this section as they really should have had more than just one hit (and no I’m not counting the 2003 Fatboy Slim remix of “Can You Dig It?”).
Back in 1991 when that song was originally in the charts, the band chose the tried and tested strategy of following it up by rereleasing a previous single. “And Then She Smiles” was originally out in 12” format back in 1989 but it was re-recorded and given a second bite of the cherry to consolidate the band’s commercial breakthrough. It seemed a smart move. The track was radio friendly and not a million miles away from the sound of its predecessor. It had a decent shot of charting. Somehow though, it fell tantalising short. Maybe it didn’t have that X Factor hook of “Can You Dig It?” – its spiralling, psychedelic guitar intro and its bouncing bass groove? Was it actually just a bit too…pedestrian? Not for me I have to say.
The band (or possibly the record company) doubled down on the misstep when it released a third single that sounded just like “And Then She Smiles” in “Strings And Flowers”. Again, I was a fan but it didn’t make much commercial sense to do the same thing as before and expect a better return. It sank without trace and so did The Mock Turtles until that 2003 revival thanks to David Beckham and a Vodafone ad. “And Then She Smiles” finally had its day when it was used as the theme tune to Sky’s comedy drama show Stella which ran from 2012 to 2017 starring none other than my mate Robin’s sister Emma.
Pete Wylie & Wah! The Mongrel – Don’t Lose Your Dreams (Excerpt From A Teenage Opera Part 154)
Released 15,07/91
Peak chart position Did not chart
As the 90s we’re getting going, apart from a couple of collaborations with The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu (aka The KLF) and fellow scousers The Farm, nothing much had been seen or heard of Pete Wylie since his 1986 hit single “Sinful!”. Well, those of us who classed ourselves as Wylie fans had been wowed by a string of excellent singles released in “Sinful!”s wake but as far as the charts were concerned, nothing he offered up to the record buying public had returned him to his former glories. “Diamond Girl”, “If I Love You” and “Fourelevenfortyfour” were all fantastic but each one had come and gone without a sniff of the Top 40. It really was a ludicrous state of affairs given his immense talent for turning a fine tune.
1991 would be a pivotal year for Pete but it had nothing to do with his music. Not that there wasn’t any music. Far from it as he released the album “Infamy! Or How I Didn’t Get Where I Am Today” under his latest pseudonym of Pete Wylie And Wah! The Mongrel. As I recall it was yet another Our Price Recommended Release. It failed to chart at all despite including yet more wonderful tracks to add to his remarkable ‘repertwah’. “Circle Of Salt” and the epic “The Kerry Baby” were standouts for me but the lead single from the album was “Don’t Lose Your Dreams (Excerpt From A Teenage Opera Part 154)”. A sprawling opus with everything chucked into the production and a title that referenced Keith West’s 1967 No 2 hit “Grocer Jack” was possibly out of place in 1991 but Wylie has never been one to play by the rules or do what might be expected of him.
Predictably (and quite wrongly) it sank without trace but that was the least of a Pete’s troubles. On 11th November he suffered a near fatal fall in Liverpool when a railing gave way fracturing both his spine and sternum. Thankfully he made a full recovery. Legend has it that when the paramedics arrived on the scene and went through the usual response questions to ascertain Pete’s level of consciousness and awareness starting with asking him his name he replied “You should f*****g know who I am!”. Pete Wylie ladies and gentlemen, part time rock star, full time legend.
TheReal People – Window Pane
Released 06/07/91
Peak chart position No 60
From one scouse legend to another bunch of Liverpudlians who would end up with a legacy of legend makers rather than actual legends themselves. Noel Gallagher was a roadie with the Inspiral Carpets when he first met Tony Griffiths of The Real People who had been a going concern since 1988, touring the world as a major label artist having been signed by Columbia on CBS. They’d released their debut eponymous album in 1991 to positive reviews though commercial success had been harder to come by. Noel wanted to put together a demo for his band Oasis to send out to record labels and Griffiths helped him out by lending him use of The Real People’s own eight track studio. Lacking much in the way of recording know how, Griffiths and his brother and fellow band member Chris showed Noel, Liam et al the studio ropes. The result was the “Live Demonstration” tape that included original versions of many of the tracks that would end up being released on “Definitely Maybe” including “Columbia”, “Bring It On Down” and “Rock ‘n’ Roll Star”.
Although their Manc mates would go onto become the biggest band in the UK by the mid 90s, it never quite worked out for The Real People success wise. One paltry No 38 in 1992 (“Believer”) was the peak of their chart fame and a second album for CBS , though recorded, remained unreleased until 2012 when the band finally made it available independently. However, despite cult status amongst those in the know, the Griffiths brothers went on to write hits for the likes of Cher, Ocean Colour Scene and Atomic Kitten. Their band continues to play live and record with their last album being 2016’s “Monday Morning Breakdown”. The Real People then, the real people behind Oasis. Definitely….maybe.
Their Season In The Sun
Banderas
Communards offshoot group Banderas looked they were onto something in early 1991 when they took their single “This Is Your Life” (nothing to do with Eamon Andrews nor The Blow Monkeys) into the Top 20. Funky yet spiky it was taken from an album called “Ripe” which boasted the musical chops of Johnny Marr and Bernard Sumner as contributors. The all female duo of Sally Herbert and the striking, shaven headed Caroline Buckley shook up the conventional band template and they seemed in the right place at the right time to form a successful chart career. However follow up singles failed to make the Top 40 and the album similarly struggled commercially.
There were no further releases and the band dissolved, left with a legacy of the “whatever happened to…?” conundrum. However, excellent reissues label Cherry Red are just about to release a double CD deluxe version of the album which includes liner notes by Sally and Caroline plus an interview with their by old pal Jimmy Somerville. Banderas – a band ‘ripe’ for reassessment.
Cathy Dennis
One of the biggest breakout stars of 1991, diminutive Cathy came straight outta Norwich and achieved four Top 20 singles and a gold selling album in the space of 12 months. However, the hits dried up as she attempted to consolidate on her success and by the mid point of the decade the game was up. Cannily though, Cathy changed sports and became an in demand songwriter for other artists penning “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head” for Kylie, “Toxic” for Britney Spears and “I Kissed A Girl” for Katy Perry.
Chesney Hawkes
Poor old Chezza. Perhaps the ultimate here today gone tomorrow pop star. A five week stint at No 1 with “The One And Only” led to both fame with the public but also derision in the music press. By the end of the year he was pretty much finished. He even has to put up with the ignominy of being labelled a one hit wonder despite follow up single “I’m A Man Not A Boy” going Top 30. Still, he seems like a nice bloke and is happy to play his (not quite) one and only hit in the nostalgia circuit.
Color Me Badd
How on earth did this happen? A group who included a sub standard George Michael lookalike, a Kenny G doppelgänger and a lead singer who was the spit of that god awful rapper Snow somehow managed to have a huge global hit with a song with one of the most teeth grindingly creepy titles of all time?! Come on people! What were you thinking?!
Shamelessly riding the New Jack Swing wave, these four knobheads from Oklahoma briefly caused a sensation when “I Wanna Sex You Up” hit No 2 in the US and topped the charts over here. They looked ridiculous and sounded horrendous. It couldn’t last and it didn’t. One more hit (the candy pop of “All 4 Love”) and that brief craze was over. Color Me Fad anyone?
Marky Mark And The Funky Bunch
When you’re more famous for your kecks than your music then you know you’re in trouble (just ask Kris Kross). Marky Mark would of course go on to have a very successful film career under his real name of Mark Wahlberg but for a brief (chortle) period of time Marky Mark and indeed his Funky Bunch were very hot news indeed. A US No 1 single in “Good Vibrations” led to him being the face (or possibly crotch) of a Calvin Klein underwear advertising campaign. However, the stench of some repugnant homophobic views aired on Channel 4’s The Word would see him rightly vilified and his music career was dead after just two years.
The Railway Children
Wigan New Wavers who having spent their early years on the tracks of the indie charts finally flagged down a mainstream chart hit in 1991 with “Every Beat Of The Heart”. Their late arrival as chart stars didn’t sustain though and despite pursuing a timetable of further hits, their time in the public spotlight was cancelled (ahem).
Sophie Lawrence
Five years on from Nick Berry taking “Every Loser Wins” to No 1, another Eastenders actor tried their luck at the pop game as Sophie Lawrence brought us a pretty straight and sterile version of Donna Summer’s disco classic “Love’s Unkind”. Whereas Berry’s character Wicksy had been a fan favourite (especially amongst the female side of the show’s audience I’m guessing), I’m not convinced that Sophie’s stroppy teenager Diane Butcher was quite so popular. Maybe that’s why her attempt at pop stardom stalled at No 21.
A Stock, Aitken and Waterman produced follow up was recorded (a Kylie album track fact fans) but it was never released and Sophie’s time in the pop merry go round came to a shuddering and final stop. Dum dum da dum dum dum dum ….
Zoë
Like Chesney Hawkes before her, Zoë wasn’t quite a one hit wonder but she is surely only known for one song, her No 4 hit “Sunshine On A Rainy Day”. A well crafted pop/dance crossover with an exuberant chorus, it proved a substantial hit, staying on the charts for 11 weeks. Despite her album being of similar material it failed to convince record buyers of its worth and came and went without anyone hardly noticing. No 37 hit “Lightning” didn’t pull up many trees as a follow up so Zoë quit pop music and reinvented herself as a potter before returning to music trying out rock and folk directions.
Last Words
So where does 1991 rank in terms of musical excellence? It’s not a classic in my book but I don’t think it’s the worst ever either (yes 1993 I’m looking at you). The Top 40 – and therefore TOTP – seemed to be awash with dance tunes of every hue but there were some standout songs for me as well. “Can You Dig It?” by The Mock Turtles, “Sit Down” by James, “3AM Eternal” by The KLF for example.
However, there was an elephant in the room that the whole of the year (almost literally) was dominated by; one song bestriding the charts behemoth like that would forever be associated with 1991. I speak, of course, of “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You” by Bryan Adams. Was it a great big steaming turd brought into existence to remind us that nothing had really changed when it came to mainstream chart music despite the dance revolution or a phenomenon of commerciality that deserved our recognition? Yeah, don’t all rush to reply – I think I know the answer already.
And me personally? How was 1991? I didn’t know it then but this year was possibly the most stable year of the decade work wise. I remained in the same job working at the same record shop (Our Price in Market Street, Manchester) and liked the people I worked with. A brief wobble about the shop being sold off earlier in the year came to nothing and by Xmas I had become the store’s chart cassette buyer! The thrill of it all! 1992 would bring big changes though as for the first time in my life I got a work promotion and became an Assistant Manager but that’s all for future posts
I’ve going to carry on into the 1992 TOTP repeats. Fancy joining me?
It’s mid August 1991 and the nation is still in the grip of Robin Hood fever with the Kevin Costner film having been out at the cinemas for around a month and doing great business whilst the theme song from the soundtrack by Bryan Adams is not even half way through its historic run at the top of the charts. Now obviously Costner’s performance in Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves was rightly put in the shade by the over the top portrayal of The Sheriff Of Nottingham by Alan Rickman but for my money, Rickman produced an infinitely better turn in another film that came out the day after this TOTP aired. It received critical acclaim but made peanuts at the box office compared to Robin Hood. Long before Savage Garden had a hit with a song called Truly Madly Deeply, it was also the title of a film starring Rickman and Juliet Stevenson written and directed by Anthony Minghella and it was kind of like a British Ghost but understated and without the Hollywood sheen and was so much better for it. It remains my favourite Alan Rickman movie. Despite Rickman’s character being a cellist and there being a motif of music running throughout the film, there was no chart-chomping hit single from its soundtrack thank God as that would have really spoilt the whole thing.
Back to TOTP though and we start this particular show with a band who would definitely have benefited from a huge hit single. Level 42 hadn’t been seen once yet in the new decade and had last released an album back in 1988 but they were back with a new single and album both entitled “Guaranteed”. Come 1991 though, they looked and sounded like a complete anachronism. The single had all the composite Level 42 elements with Mark King’s driving slap bass to the fore and Mike Lindup’s falsetto vocals still there in the background and centre stage in the bridge section but where was the tune? The whole thing just sort of meandered along for a while before giving up and disappearing up its own arsehole.
Although it was the second highest entry in the Top 40 that week as host Gary Davies advises, it never got beyond that number despite this TOTP appearance. The album did achieve a high of No 3 but its sales were nowhere nears those of previous albums like “World Machine”: and “Running In The Family”. I certainly can’t remember selling any in the Our Price store I was working in. Their imperial phase of the mid 80s was long gone and the band would split in 1994 before reforming in the new millennium.
Oh come on now! Color Me Badd again! I’m plain out of anything to say about this bunch of chancers. I mean just look at them. How did anybody fall for this crud?! Watching this video for “All 4 Love” back, they kind of remind me of Pinky and Perky the singing puppet pigs with their high pitched squealing voices and jerky dance moves.
I think Color Me Badd’s legacy (if it can be described as such) is summed up by the following: if you google their name, in the questions that appear in the People Also Ask section after the Wikipedia entry, the second one down is ‘Was Kenny G in Color Me Badd?’.
Now there was some unexpected Twitter love for this next act when the TOTP repeat was broadcast. Sophie Lawrence was never going to be the British Kylie but her version of Donna Summer’s “Love’s Unkind” seems to be much more fondly remembered than I had bargained for. It was produced by one Pete Hammond who had left the Stock, Aitken and Waterman team earlier that year and although it is an out and out sugary pop production, I think I prefer it to what SAW did to the actual Donna Summer when she teamed up with them in 1989 for hit singles like “This Time I Know It’s for Real” and “I Don’t Wanna Get Hurt”.
Of course, Sophie wasn’t the first EastEnders star to infiltrate the pop charts. Back in the mid 80s there seemed to be an Albert Square resident featured in the Top 40 countdown every week. So how does Sophie compare to those who went before and indeed after her…
Actor
Character
Single
Year
Chart peak
Was it any cop?
Anita Dobson
Angie Watts
Anyone Can Fall In Love
1986
No 4
Indescribably bad track set to Eastenders theme tune
Nick Berry
Wicksy
Every Loser Wins
1986
No 1
Painful piano weepy
Letitia Dean and Paul Medford
Sharon Watts and Kelvin Carpenter
Something Outa Nothing
1986
No 12
Clunky, mechanical pop. Dreadful
Tom Watt
Lofty
Subterranean Homesick Blues
1986
Did not chart
Astonishingly bad Dylan cover
Peter Dean
Pete Beale
Can’t Get a Ticket (For the World Cup)
1986
Did not chart
World Cup tie in “song” that couldn’t get any sales for obvious reasons
Sophie Lawrence
Diane Butcher
Love’s Unkind
1991
No 21
Passable Donna Summer cover
Michelle Gayle*
Hattie Tavernier
Sweetness
1994
No 4
Credible and catchy pop
Sean Maguire*
Aidan Brosnan
Good Day
1996
No 12
Breezy but nasty cliche of a song
Martine McCutcheon*
Tiffany Mitchell
Perfect Moment
1999
No 1
Surprisingly classy sounding big ballad
Sid Owen
Ricky Butcher
Good Thing Going
2000
No 14
Sugar Minott cover designed to make him the next Peter Andre. The mind boggles
* Biggest of a number of hits
I’d say that puts Sophie about mid table. Could have been worse although the competition wasn’t up too much.
Although lacking that star quality of the aforementioned Kylie, Sophie seems likeable enough in this performance although the suggestive eye wink that she has deemed necessary does jar a bit by the end. There was some also a Twitter reaction to Sophie’s backing singers and you have to say that the TOTP cameraman does seem to give them at least as much screen time as Sophie herself. Can’t imagine why.
It’s the video for “Winter In July” by Bomb The Bass up next. There seems to be a lot of love still out there for this period of the band’s career with comparisons between their album “Unknown Territory” (from which “Winter In July” came) and Massive Attack’s classic “Blue Lines” made by fans. Somehow though, whilst “Blue Lines” routinely appears in various best album polls of varying categories, the same can’t be said of “Unknown Territory” – odd really as both albums achieved similar chart peaks (No 13 for the former and No 19 the latter) whilst “Winter In July” was by far the biggest hit single of those released from both albums peaking inside the Top 10 at No 7. Apparently there’s a sample of “Ghosts” by Japan in the there somewhere but I’m not sure I can spot it.
Ah, this next track is peak summer of 1991. “Set Adrift On Memory Bliss” by PM Dawn was basically musical Radox washing over you and gently smoothing out the wrinkles in your aural senses. Now admittedly I couldn’t hear the Japan “Ghosts” sample in “Winter In July” but nobody could miss the sampling of Spandau Ballet’s “True” in this track. Much was made of its use at the time and I’m sure that many a customer asked for “that song that has Spandau Ballet in it” rather than “the PM Dawn single”. What a great choice of sample though – it totally makes the track.
As for PM Dawn, they’d had an earlier minor hit “A Watcher’s Point of View (Don’t ‘Cha Think)” but I don’t think that had registered with me so, as for many people, they were a pretty new name to me. There seemed to be something transcendental about “Set Adrift On Memory Bliss” though that made me take notice from its trippy sounding title to its lyrics that were at turns both indecipherable (“Rubber bands expand in a frustrating sigh”) and existential (“Reality used to be a friend of mine”).
The duo behind this wonderful sound were New Jersey brothers Attrell and Jarrett Cordes who went by the stage names of Prince Be and DJ Minutemix respectively. Looking like the missing members of De La Soul in their D.A.I.S.Y. Age phase, they scored a huge global hit with this single which went to No 1 in the US. It would peak at No 3 over here kept off the No 1 spot by Bryan Adams and even denied a No 2 berth by Right Said Fred. Where’s the justice eh?
A second screening for the video to ‘Monsters And Angels” by Voice Of The Beehive next (and the third outing in total for the song on TOTP). I watched Gary Davies very carefully during this link. Why? Well, at the end of the song he advises us that the band’s latest album had been released on the Monday of that week. Yeah and…? The title of it of course! The pun-licious “Honey Lingers”! I can’t be sure if Davies has grasped the cunnilingus connection by his expression but he does seem to take extra care to make sure he pronounces the album title correctly.
The Beehive sisters certainly weren’t shrinking violets when it came to naming things. Apart from “Honey Lingers” there was also an album called “Sex & Misery” and some live appearances in London in the Summer of ’91 that were entitled Orgy Under The Underworld. Blimey!
A staple of Summer compilation albums next as we get DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince with “Summertime”. Whilst it is an indisputable seasonal anthem, for me the song of that year’s Summer was “Set Adrift On Memory Bliss” that we saw earlier in the show. I mean, I thought “Summertime” was good and all that but PM Dawn’s track was shimmering perfection in comparison.
One of the landmarks that features in the video is the Philadelphia Museum of Art – yes, the building where Rocky runs up the steps at the end of his legendary training routine montage. That act of adrenaline pumping and lung bursting physical exertion being pretty much the opposite of what DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince were doing as they saunter past.
“Summertime” peaked at No 8.
This lot were inescapable in the Summer of ’91 and I’ve already mentioned them in this blog but here they are in the flesh (as it were) – it can only be Right Said Fred with “I’m Too Sexy”. Did any body else get a ZZ Top vibe off this lot back then. Not a musical vibe obviously but looks wise. Ok Ok, they clearly did not look like the Texas blues rockers but the make up of the band with two bald geezers (brothers Richard and Fred Fairbrass) who looked very similar and the guitarist (Rob Mazoli) who looked nothing like them. Compare that to ZZ Top and the very hirsute Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill out front with the clean shaven and most ironically named musician ever Frank Beard on the drum stool behind them. No? Nothing? Just me then.
The Freds were defiant about their image though. In a Smash Hits interview Richard Fairbrass stated:
“When we were on Top Of The Pops the other week, everyone else look really boring like Deacon Blue and their stupid student look. We’re different.”
Well, he was right about them being different. Nobody elsel looked like that on TOTP. I thought they might have shaved off their hair due to encroaching male pattern bald ness but it seems not. Fred Fairbrass went on to say in that Smash Hits interview that:
“When I had it in a ponytail it always looked a bit naff so I just thought ‘Shave it all off’.”
And his brother? Why did he shave off his hair? Here’s Richard Fairbrasss again:
Three Breakers this week starting with the lesser spotted Midge Ure who had not been seen on the show since…
*checks notes*
Wow! Since 26th June 1986! That’s a lifetime in pop music! Yes, very nearly five years on from his last appearance on the show when the video for his “Call Of The Wild” single played over the closing credits, Midge was back with a new hit called “Cold Cold Heart”.
What had he been up to in those missing five years? Well, he’d reconvened Ultravox in the latter part of 1986 to record the “U-Vox” album which I’d always assumed was a commercial failure but apparently went gold and achieved a chart high of No 9. However, all was not right in the band. Drummer Warren Cann had been sacked and the album recorded with Big Country’s drummer Mark Brzezicki. The singles taken from it were only minor hits – “Same Old Story” peaked at No 31. ‘All Fall Down” No 30 and “All In One Day” an unimaginable No 88 – and the band’s chemistry was no longer intact. Maybe Midge’s successful solo career in 1985 with the No 1 single ‘If I Was” had pissed them right off?!
Anyway, the band split in 1987 after the U-Vox tour and Midge returned to his solo career releasing “Answers To Nothing” the following year. Despite including a duet with Kate Bush and a couple of decent singles in the title track and “Dear God”, the album was only a minor commercial success. And then….not much. I’m guessing he was still touring but no new material was released over the next three years. Maybe he spent much of it in dispute with Chrysalis who had been Ultravox’s record label since the “Vienna” album in 1980 and also for all of Ure’s solo output up to this point? Come 1991, he was with new label Arista for his “Pure” album from which “Cold Cold Heart” was taken.
So what was his new material like? I wasn’t a fan of the single to be honest. It sounded like a twee folk infused nursery rhyme bulked up with some synths and a plodding bass. I really couldn’t see why this had propelled Midge back into the charts. He’d already experimented with a Celtic sound much more successfully to my ears on the aforementioned “All Fall Down” Ultravox single which had been recorded with The Chieftains. “Cold Cold Heart” sounded amateurish next to it. Still, it did provide Midge with one final trip to the UK Top 40 to where he has yet to return if you’re not counting the 1993 re-release of “Vienna” (which I’m not).
A US No 1 next from Karyn White in the form of “Romantic”. Although I remember her album “Ritual Of Love” from its cover, the actual music doesn’t ring any bells. It sounds very much like a Janet Jackson song to me and there’s good reason why as it was produced by regular Miss Jackson collaborators Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis.
Didn’t Karyn White have an earlier hit that sounded nothing like “Romantic”?
*checks YouTube*
Yes she had this slushy slowie called “Superwoman” in 1988…
Think I preferred that version of her rather than the Janet tribute act. “Romantic” couldn’t repeat its US success in the UK as it peaked at No 23.
REM‘s run of hit singles in 1991 continued with “Near Wild Heaven”. The third track to be lifted from their “Out Of Time” album, it consolidated on the success of previous singles “Losing My Religion” and “Shiny Happy People” when it peaked at No 27. It was the first single to be released by the band that had its lyrics both co-written and sung by bassist Mike Mills. He had written the lyrics to early single “(Don’t Go Back To) Rockville” and sung lead vocals on a cover version called – and get this for a nice little link with the previous Breaker – “Superman” but never both writing and vocals on the same track before. He does a pretty good job as well I think. I certainly don’t recall thinking it would have been better if sung by Michael Stipe. REM would garner a fourth and final UK Top 40 hit for the year when “Radio Song” was released in November.
We’re at week number six of sixteen of Bryan Adams being at the top of the charts so not even half way through his reign yet. It’s worth remembering that prior to this single, Adams hadn’t had a UK Top 40 hit since “It’s Only Love”, his 1985 duet with Tina Turner. Indeed, up to 1991, he’d only ever had four hits in this country at all and none had made the Top 10. So he hadn’t always been this interminable music figure that the Summer of 1991 made him into. I guess he certainly made up for lost time with “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”.
The play out video is “Time, Love And Tenderness” by Michael Bolton. There’s bit at the very start of the video which we don’t see on TOTP where Bollers is sat at his piano surrounded by members of a gospel choir rehearsing the song and he says “Ok , so we come right in with …”and then sings the words ‘Time, Love and Tenderness’. I say sing but he rasps them out. It sounds horrible.
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
Level 42
Guaranteed
I did not and that’s a guarantee
2
Color Me Badd
All 4 Love
Of course not
3
Sophie Lawrence
Love’s Unkind
Nope
4
Bomb The Bass
Winter In July
Negative
5
PM Dawn
Set Adrift On Memory Bliss
Yes I bought the cassette single but I don’t know where it is now
6
Voice Of The Beehive
Monsters And Angels
Liked it, didn’t buy it
7
DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince
Summertime
Nah
8
Right Said Fred
I’m Too Sexy
A definite no
9
Midge Ure
Cold Cold Heart
Negative
10
Karyn White
Romantic
Never happening
11
REM
Near Wild Heaven
It’s a no
12
Bryan Adams
“(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”
I didn’t
13
Michael Bolton
Time, Love And Tenderness
Hell 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.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – I f******g love The Proms! I’m not a classical music buff or anything (though I have been once and actually rather enjoyed it) but the real reason for my appreciation of this peculiarly British and currently devisive institution is that they completely hijack the BBC4 TV schedule and ride roughshod over all the usual programming. The consequence of this is that last week the TOTP repeats didn’t happen at all meaning I get a week off from this blog! Except that I’m always behind so I still have this one to do before it all starts again in earnest meaning if I want to kick back for a few days before this Friday’s resumption, I need to get a shift on with it.
Just before I get into the music though, a little context. Wikipedia tells me that the day after this TOTP aired, a little trumpeted and even less remembered comedy show premiered on Channel 4 that me and my wife used to love. Anybody else remember Packet Of Three? It was a very early vehicle for Frank Skinner and Jenny Eclair and also featured Henry Normal who would go on to write for the Mrs Merton Show and set up Baby Cow Productions which would give us such celebrated comedies as Alan Partridge, The Mighty Boosh and Gavin And Stacey.
Packet Of Three was a mixture of sit com and stand up set in the fictional Crumpsall Palladium showcasing real life stand up comedians whilst behind the scenes the three main protagonists played characters who ran the theatre. Normal was the theatre owner, Skinner the stage manager and Eclair the kiosk attendant. The opening titles festered the three of them as Gerry Anderson style puppets and had a pretty funky sounding theme tune. The whole thing had the feel of The Muppet Show I guess and it certainly helped to fill out many a Friday night when we were skint and had no money for going out. Here’s an episode featuring a very young Steve Coogan…
Anyway, back to the music and we start with one of the most infamous songs of the whole decade. “I’m Too Sexy” would go on to become ingrained in the nation’s collective mind over the course of the Summer – one of the most insanely catchy yet annoying ear worms of all time I would suggest. Remarkably however, the people behind the song would somehow manage to forge a career off the back of it and are still managing to achieve media coverage to this day though not perhaps for the best of reasons. Right Said Fred were of course named after the novelty single by Bernard Cribbins in 1962 and I have to admit that I could only see “I’m Too Sexy” in the same vein – a novelty hit like all those other intensely annoying examples of the genre from charts gone by. Yet what the Freds did to make their hit more durable was that they made it danceable. Now I’m certainly not admitting to ever having strutted my stuff on the catwalk or otherwise to its beats but I can imagine it was a hit at office parties and family dos the length and breadth of the country.
Consolidating its musical credibility (two words I never thought I would have typed about Right Said Fred) is the group’s musicianship that I was not aware of until now. It transpires that Richard and Fred Fairbrass had proficient enough chops to have played with some of the biggest names in the business. They don’t get much bigger than David Bowie who Richard played with as a session bassist in the mid 80s on tracks like “Blue Jean” and “Loving The Alien” whilst Fred appeared as a guitarist in the Bob Dylan drama Hearts Of Fire. No really. Look, here’s @TOTPFacts with the pictorial evidence:
Fred Fairbrass, meanwhile, played guitar for Bob Dylan in the 1987 film Hearts Of Fire. Dylan gave him the leather jacket he wore in the movie. #TOTPpic.twitter.com/Ur2jAf1Jla
“I’m Too Sexy” was written as a piss take of the narcissistic behaviour of preening body builders at the gym that the Fairbrass brothers ran in the early 90s and was originally recorded as an indie rock song before being turned into a dance track at the behest of radio plugger Guy Holmes. The lyrics supplied as many if not more hooks as the tune itself with suggestive lines like ‘No way I’m disco dancing’, ‘I shake my little tush on the catwalk’ and of course ‘I’m too sexy for my cat, too sexy for my cat, poor pussy, poor pussy cat’ pressing the big red double entendre button. It would spend a record six weeks at No 2 behind Bryan Adams (the jury is out on whether that was a good or bad thing) but made it to No 1 in the US.
A substantial career was to follow for the band but nowadays Richard Fairbrass is most well known for being a prominent anti-vaxxer. Presumably he is too sexy for Pfizer.
Now I don’t think the word ‘substantial’ probably does justice to Will Smith’s career. A massive TV and film star (he’s been in over 40 movies) he also, of course, has a long and successful music history with multiple hit records on both sides of the Atlantic. It all started though with his collaboration with DJ Jazzy Jeff with Smith assuming the moniker of The Fresh Prince that would make his name in the TV series The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. I think that show was probably on UK TV screens at the time so I’m guessing Smith would already have been known on these shores in 1991. He had of course had a small hit in our charts back in 1986 with “Girls Ain’t Nothing But Trouble” but that seemed a million miles away from the cool vibes of “Summertime”.Even allowing for the obvious connection of its title, this track was just perfect for the Summer with its lilting beats drifting out from transistor radios.
The parent album “Homebase” didn’t make the necessary improvements and no further singles released from it were hits in the UK. However, the duo would return in 1993 with the No 1 single “Boom! Shake the Room” before Smith would release a plethora of hits under his own name throughout the rest of the decade racking up three No3s, three No2 s and another chart topper in “Men In Black”.
Voice Of The Beehive now with their “Monsters And Angels” single and wha a pleasant ditty it is too. There was much debate on Twitter after this repeat aired about Tracey Bryn’s guitar which appears to be the wrong way round. The answer to this strange behaviour though lies in the writing on it which the Twitterati’s consensus was that it was an autograph from Morrissey who is on the show later. I can understand Tracey wanting to show it off but why did he sign it on the back? Apparently the band were on tour following this TOTP appearance and Tracy mentioned the signed guitar at nearly every gig apparently. I have to admit that I missed this detail when I first watched this back as I was more struck by how Tracey had the look of Britney Spears. Is it just me or could she be Britney’s Aunt?
“Monsters And Angels” peaked at No 17.
Whilst a student during the late 80s, I’d developed quite the liking for Deacon Blue. Their debut album “Raintown” was an instant classic (in my opinion) and they became hugely successful pop stars on the back of follow up album “When The World Knows Your Name”. However, I’d begun to lose interest a bit by 1991 and, being employed by a Manchester record store (albeit a chain), I kept my liking of them down to a minimum when at work. However, I couldn’t deny that “Twist And Shout” was a great pop song, familiar yet nuanced, unconventional yet radio friendly, it just worked for me and also for the people who bought it in enough amounts to send it to No 10 in the charts.
As ever with any Deacon Blue performance, my eyes are drawn to Lorraine McKintosh and her energy and presence. And those eyes of course. Erm…anyway…err…the band would achieve a further seven Top 40 singles but never again returned to the Top 10.
If ever a band should have been a one hit wonder surely it was this next lot? Yes, unbelievable as it may seem, Color Me Badd had more than one hit and here they are with the other one “All 4 Love”. Given that there is an abrupt cut away from host Simon Mayo to this studio performance and we don’t actually see the band behind him at any stage, I’m willing to bet that this was recorded when they were in the TOTP studio in person for their No 1 “I Wanna Sex You Up”. Having checked out that clip on YouTube, although some of the band have changed their outfits for “All 4 Love”, I’m still of that opinion.
If “I Wanna Sex You Up” was all about New Jack Swing, then “All 4 Love” harked back to 60s soul and the performance the band gives here puts me in mind of some of the great groups of that era. There’s a reason for that. The song was pretty much a direct rip off of another song. Here’s @TOTPFacts once again:
"All For Love" has, er, similarities to "Patch My Heart", a 1966 track by '60s vocal group The Mad Lads – enough for its composers (one of whom was Isaac Hayes) to receive credit. https://t.co/glNmhvjuSy#TOTP
The first time I saw that tweet I read it as The Macc Lads rather than The Mad Lads but that would have been a different type of song altogether!
“All 4 Love” would give the band a second US No 1 but it didn’t quite achieve that in the UK peaking at a still healthy (and totally undeserved) No 5.
Earlier in this year, my friend Robin had found himself marooned at a TOTP recording after mistakenly believing that Morrissey was going to be on the show. He wasn’t and instead found himself being forced by the studio floor team to clap along to the likes of Kenny Thomas instead. The show he should have been at was this one as Mozza is here and up next. After the video for “Pregnant For The Last Time” the other week, here he is in the flesh and if you look closely you can see his nipples through his sheer shirt!
The song has a rockabilly sound to it and that is backed up by the presence of a double bass player on stage with Morrissey. As with the guy on accordion witnessed earlier in the Deacon Blue performance, you didn’t get many of those on TOTP in the 90s.
Morrissey’s solo chart statistics were pretty predictable out turns out. Look at this tweet from Gareth Windibank:
This was one of only three of those 33 top 40 hits (after “Suedehead” and “Everyday Is Like Sunday”) to reach its chart peak in the second week rather than the first. #TOTP
Very much a case of a loyal fanbase dutifully buying everything their hero released immediately but then the single falling down the charts as it failed to find a wider market methinks.
Of course, Morrissey’s stock is not that high these days thanks to some unpalatable views that he now holds. Very similar to Richard Fairbrass. I wonder who would win this particular fat-headed arse -off?
Despite being “a day out of date already” as Simon Mayo quips, Bomb The Bass is next with “Winter In July”. On vocals here is Loretta Heywood who also wrote the lyrics. Loretta is still recording material and she even laid down an acoustic version of this track on an album called “The Boy Across The Road” and I have to say I much prefer the sparser version…
After giving up making music, Tim Simenon relocated to Prague where he opened a bistro called Brixton Balls with a menu based around meatballs. I wonder if he was so into meatballs back in 1991? If so, I hope he didn’t let it slip to Morrissey in the BBC bar after this show.
“Winter In July” peaked at No 7.
Just when I was powering through this, they go and chuck in four Breakers in a two minute slot right at the death! Bastards! We start with Beverley Craven who, after the surprise success of “Promise Me” earlier in the year, looked like she could become a global superstar in the shape of perhaps Carly Simon or even Carole King. Her record label Epic went for a re-release of her first single “Holding On” as the follow up. Peaking at a very lowly No 95 at the start of 1991, it very much followed the “Promise Me” blueprint and I guess the strategy was to keep hold of the fan base that she had built so spectacularly. No point in putting out something from left field that would have confused and potentially lost her audience. It was a sensible move.
Somehow though, the single didn’t seem to take off in the same way that its predecessor had and it stalled at No 32. Maybe people had splashed out on the album instead which had been out for around two months by this point and spent every one of those weeks in the Top 10. A similar fate would await another single in October when “Woman To Woman” peaked at No 40 whilst the album was in the middle of a 50 week run on the charts. Even so, it seemed like a surprise when neither single could gain any traction in the Top 40.
Simon Mayo never missed an opportunity to plug himself and his Radio 1 Breakfast Show did he? He makes a point of telling us that Marillion‘s “No One Can” is the show’s Chart Beater that week. Not sure that choosing Marillion from this week’s Breakers was the smartest move in terms of credibility Simes. After the departure of Fish they seemed to be a completely different and less interesting entity. Replacement vocalist Steve Hogarth was a decent singer but the material the band were recording had lost the spark that differentiated them from other acts. Maybe it was just Fish’s ungainly and unlikely rock star persona that was missing or the element of the band being deeply unfashionable? Whatever it was, Marillion sounded more accomplished and radio friendly to my ears but ultimately more predictable and boring for all that.
“No One Can” peaked at No 33.
Whenever I think of Saturdays in 1991, my mind immediately fills with images of long days working the counter at the Our Price store in Market Street in Manchester whilst trying to find a reason to go up stairs to the stock area to try and find out the football scores from the radio up there. I also think of this song, “A Roller Skating Jam Named “Saturdays”” by De La Soul. This was another track from their “De La Soul Is Dead” album and was one of the lighter tracks on it, proclaiming, rather obviously, the joys of roller skating and the weekends. It includes a prominent sample from Chicago’s “Saturday in the Park” and you have to acknowledge De La Soul’s vision to be able to base a hip-hop song around such an unlikely source. Something about the track has stuck with me all these years and it’s this – me and my wife will still sometimes quote the song’s ‘Saturday, it’s a Saturday’ lyric to each other come the weekend.
“A Roller Skating Jam Named “Saturdays”” peaked at No 22.
The final Breaker delivers us some Acid Jazz courtesy of Young Disciples. Is Acid Jazz still a thing? It certainly was in 1991 with acts such as Omar and Incognito having broken through into the mainstream with Top 40 hits already this year. Both of those artists as well as Young Disciples (like Eurythmics there is no ‘The”) were on the legendary Talkin’ Loud label and its latest chart busting act hit it big with “Apparently Nothin” which peaked at No 13.
Although it would prove to be the band’s only chart hit, it was important in launching the career of Carleen Anderson who would secure a solo deal off the back of it and would indeed release her own version of the song in 1999. alongside The Brand New Heavies (who did have a preceding definite article).
My wife really liked this one and I think she must have bought it as it’s in the singles box.
It’s still Bryan Adams at the top obviously with “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You” – this is only week 4 of 16 – and according to Simon Mayo, the last five UK No 1 singles in this year were taken from movies. Is that right?
*checks Wikipedia*
Well, not quite true. The list is as follows:
Artist
Title
Film taken from
Chesney Hawkes
The One and Only
Buddy’s Song
Cher
The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss)
Mermaids
Color Me Badd
I Wanna Sex You Up
New Jack City
Jason Donovan
Any Dream Will Do
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
Bryan Adams
(Everything I Do) I Do It for You
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
The problem is that Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat wasn’t a film was it Simon? It was a stage musical. Yes, they made some sort of film of the stage show years later in 1999 with Donny Osmond as Joseph but even that was a direct to video release. And yes, there was a soundtrack album to the stage show featuring Jason Donovan but again it wasn’t a movie soundtrack. OK, I’m being a pedant but when you’ve reviewed hundreds of these TOTP repeats covering a nine year period, presenters getting things wrong (or at least not quite right in this case) tend to get on your wick.
Seeing as I’ve got another 12 weeks worth of having to say something about this record, I’m leaving it at that for this one.
The play out video is “The Beginning” by Seal. Ever the wag, Simon Mayo doesn’t let the opportunity for a wry comment pass when he remarks that “The Beginning” coming at the end of the show is “kind of logical”. Yeah, whatever Mayo. The video has Seal messing around with a chain and a bird of prey while dressed in a pair of leather trousers. Did he ever wear a pair of kecks that weren’t leather?
“The Beginning” peaked at No 24.
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
Right Said Fred
I’m Too Sexy
Of course not
2
DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince
Summertime
I did not
3
Voice Of The Beehive
Monsters And Angels
Nope
4
Deacon Blue
Twist And Shout
No but I have it on a Best Of CD I think
5
Color Me Badd
All 4 Love
Hell no
6
Morrissey
Pregnant For The Last Time
Nope
7
Bomb The Bass
Winter In July
Nah
8
Beverley Craven
Holding On
No
9
Marillion
Not One Can
Never going to happen
10
De La Soul
A Roller Skating Jam Named “Saturdays”
Liked it, didn’t buy it
11
Young Disciples
Apparently Nothin
Yes but I think it was my wife actually
12
Bryan Adams
(Everything I Do) I Do It for You
Negative
13
Seal
The Beginning
Not the single but I had their 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.
This is my fifth year of reviewing these BBC4 TOTP repeats. I started with the shows from 1983 and we are now up to 1991. This is my 367th post over two blogs. Thats over 825,000 words. I’m tired. I’m stuck in the house due to testing positive for COVID and I’m staring at a blank document awaiting inspiration to strike. I’m not helped by the fact that the TOTP production team were determined back then to cram in as many acts as possible into 30 minutes of screen time. This week there are 14 acts! 14! I’m not sure I can do it anymore. Look, I’ll try OK, just for you…
…OK, first song of the night and not only do I not remember it at all but it’s already giving me a headache. The cause of my distress is “Tribal Base” by Rebel MC / Tenor Fly / Barrington Levy. What that Rebel MC who did “Street Tuff” because this sounds nothing like that. Wikipedia informs me that this was from his second album which was in a ‘breakbeat hardcore’ style with some ‘reggae fusion’ thrown into the mix. I have absolutely no idea what any of those words mean. Apparently it was a precursor to the ‘jungle’ sound which then begat drum’n’bass both of which I do remember because you couldn’t escape them in the mid 90s (‘jungle ist massive’ and all that).
As for Tenor Fly, he was a leading light of the rave movement whilst Barrington Levy is a reggae and dancehall legend whose back catalogue stretches back to 1979. Now of course, it’s possible that there are some reggae fusion fans out there reading this (there might be!) that are now shouting at their devices incredulous at my lack of knowledge in this field but I can only tell it how it was and is via my own memories and knowledge. I have very little else to say about this one other than I didn’t expect to see a double neck guitar on stage for a track like this. I thought they were the preserve of prog rock.
Presenter Nicky Campbell makes a really lame quip about the Rebel MC never stopping and being a ‘rebel without a pause’ (groan!) and then follows it up by saying that“Salt ‘n’ Pepa would have been here tonight but Salt is currently having a baby which is kicking it almost as hard as she is here…”. Surely the pun there was about pushing it Nicky as in “Push It”, one of their most well known hits? Their actual current single is “Do You Want Me” which is promotes the idea of men respecting women and not pressurising them until they are ready to have sex….or as @TOTPFacts put it:
No shagging with Salt 'N' Pepa until the third date. #TOTP
Yes, well…anyway. Salt ‘n’ Pepa would continue this conversation in their next single “Let’s Talk About Sex” which including these classic lyrics:
Yo, Pep, I don’t think they’re gonna play this on the radio And why not? Everybody havin’ sex I mean, everybody should be makin’ love Come on, how many guys you know make love?
“Do You Want Me” peaked at No 5.
Talking of having sex (as just about every song in the charts seemed to be at this time), here is LaTour with “People Are Still Having Sex”. Campbell bravely takes on the single’s title by trying to intellectualise the subject going on about a “chilling assessment of contemporary attitudes towards an activity fraught with danger” before saying it’s great to dance to. Was it really though? Even the backing dancer up there on stage for this studio performance doesn’t seem to know what moves to do. Oh yes, that backing dancer who’s mouthing “hello lover”? General consensus on Twitter was that she was one of the Bombalurina women last seen cavorting with Timmy Mallett. She got all the good gigs didn’t she?
A stage performance of this track doesn’t really work does it? The tempo of it doesn’t really naturally make for a visually engaging spectacle whilst the main guy (Mr LaTour?) comes across as really creepy. Just nasty.
Campbell works very hard in his next link to make sure he gets the title of the song right, overly articulating the world ‘funk’ when introducing “Get The Funk Out” by Extreme. It’s the promo video but surely this performance would surely have been better suited to the TOTP studio than LaTour’s? It’s full of energy with lead singer Gary Cherone looking almost demonic with some of the weird shapes he pulls his body into.
When I first heard this, I thought Cherone was singing ‘No Robbie Nevil’s going to spoil my fun’ as in the “C’est La Vie” hit maker from the 80s as opposed to what he actually sings which is “No rotten apple gonna spoil my fun” which makes much more sense. Quite why Robbie Nevil would have been seen as a party pooper by a bunch of funk metal heads I have no idea.
“Get The Funk Out” peaked at No 19.
Meanwhile back in the studio we find Kenny Thomas having an enormous hit (I said hit!) with “Thinking About Your Love”.Kenny was one of the biggest breakout stars of 1991 with four Top 40 hits and a Top 3 album. Eventually the hits dried up and by the middle of the decade Kenny had disappeared from view altogether. However, he re-entered the public consciousness after appearing in ITV’s Hit Me Baby One More Time in 2005 although he was beaten to a place in the grand final by one of the weakest and weediest pop bands of the 90s in 911 – the shame!
Nowadays, he’s the lead singer of Living In A Box who shared the same record label in Chrysalis Records back in the day which is how they originally met. On the band’s official website, in answer to the question ‘Are you going to be singing some of your own songs at the Living In A Box shows?’, Kenny replied:
Yes, definitely! Fans coming to see The Box will hear their hits and people who want to hear some of mine will get the chance to hear those too. I think the fans will hear six Top 10 records in our set, which is quite something.
Well it would be Kenny if that were true but although ‘The Box’ (nobody calls them that surely?!) did have three Top 10 hits, you only had the one in “Thinking About Your Love” which makes a grand total of four not six.
A load of Breakers now starting with something for which the official description is, I believe, ‘techno bollocks’. Cubic 22 were a Belgian (not Italian for once) dance project whose only UK Top 40 hit was “Night In Motion”. They comprised Peter Ramson and Danny Van Wauwe the latter of whom sounds like he should be a Man Utd midfielder who was bought for a lot of money but who can’t make the team. Apparently we’ll get to see them in the studio next week. Oh joy. Cue another visually bizarre performance just like LaTour.
If the track sounds vaguely familiar, here’s @TOTPFacts with the reason why:
The piano riff from "Night In Motion" was later pinched by British dance outfit Strike for "U Sure Do", which reached 31 in 1994 and 4 in 1995: https://t.co/b639Sfosyr Borremans and Van Wauwe didn't get any money out of it. #TOTP
This is more like it!Despite having been formed in 1987, Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine had never achieved any mainstream success until now. Quite why was 1991 the turning point in their career? Well, it could have been that their brand of sample heavy, indie dance pop that they had been making was finally receiving national recognition with bands like EMF, Jesus Jones and Pop Will Eat Itself all having chart hits around this time. Or maybe it was just that their band name really fitted in with the sex obsessed Top 40 at this time!
“Sheriff Fatman” (possibly their most well known song though certainly not their biggest hit) was a re-release of an early single that had failed to chart though it had been a big indie hit. Like the band themselves, their timeline is a bit chaotic but as far as I can tell, it was re-released when the duo signed with Chrysalis Records (them again!) after the collapse of Rough Trade – a bit like when “Sit Down” was re-released after James has moved from Rough Trade to Fontana. Also like “Sit Down” was the fact that “Sheriff Fatman” had been on that influential ‘Madchester’ themed “Happy Daze” compilation album which I think must have been when I first heard the track.
Highlighting the dodgy practices of slum landlords via the use of some inspired wordplay in their lyrics, “Sheriff Fatman” was an absolute stomper and a mosh pit favourite for fans when played live. Indeed, those lyrics, once heard were impossible to forget.
Moving up on second base Behind Nicholas Van Wotsisface At six foot six and a hundred tons The undisputed king of the slums With more aliases than Klaus Barbie The master butcher of Leigh-on-Sea
Those lines of course had their basis in reality. Nicholas Van Wotsisface was a reference to British businessman and convicted criminal involved in property Nicholas van Hoogstraten whilst Klaus Barbie was the German Nazi known as the ‘Butcher of Lyon’ for having personally tortured prisoners of the Gestapo. This wasn’t your average pop song – even Nicky Campbell acknowledges that in his introduction to Jim Bob and Fruitbat as “something very intriguing now…”.
All of this and I haven’t even got onto my CUSM claim to fame yet. I’ll leave that for the next post when they are on the show properly though.
“Sheriff Fatman” peaked at No 23.
Next a young man who was being talked up as the next big thing in British soul…or was it acid jazz?. Time has decreed that it was a sub genre called ‘neo soul’ actually. His name was Omar and his song was “There’s Nothing Like This”. In fact, his full name was Omar Lye-Fook (which sounds like a lyric from Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves Of London”) and he was a hugely talented musician who could play multi instruments and had a smooth, velvety voice to go with that.
Like many singles in 1991 it seems, “There’s Nothing Like This” was another re-release having originally been issued in 1990 on Kongo Records. It was re-released by the hugely influential acid jazz label Talkin’ Loud when Omar signed with them in 1991 becoming his biggest ever hit when it peaked at No 14. The bass riff gave it an instant hook that made it stand out and he looked set for superstardom. And then…nothing. There was no follow up single until the following year and that was actually the lead single from his new album. By that point, momentum appeared to have been lost. Omar didn’t have another Top 40 hit until 1997.
In my mind, I have an image of Simon Mayo saying “That was Omar and “There’s Nothing Like This”….except the rest of the album”. Maybe I made it up but it sounds like the sort of snide thing Mayo might have said.
The final Breaker sees the return of Paula Abdul with the lead single from her second album “Spellbound”. Unlike all her other hits up to this point, “Rush Rush” was a ballad and a big one at that. No uptempo dance number here. It was all very accomplished and polished and all those other words ending in ‘-ished’ but it was ever so slow and just a tad dull I thought.
In the US, it would supply Paul with her fifth consecutive No 1 single and indeed stayed top of the charts or five whole weeks. Over here, it got to No 6 which was just about the same pattern of difference between the UK and America for all her releases. And yes, clearly that’s Keanu Reeves in the video which was a play on the James Dean film Rebel Without A Cause – oh, is that what put the idea in Nicky Campbell’s ahead for his awful ‘rebel without a pause’ pun?
Talking of awful puns, here’s Driza Bone with “Real Love”. The people behind Driza Bone were producers and remixers Vincent Garcia and Billy April but it turns out they didn’t come up with the name themselves though. Here’s @TOTPFacts with the rest of the story:
Driza Bone were named after an Australian brand of oilskin raincoat. Billy April: "[Vincent Garcia] saw that name on a trip to Australia in 1990 and liked it. When we couldn’t come up with anything better we used it." #TOTP
As well as being an act in their own right (they employed a revolving conveyor belt of vocalists – this one was Sophie Jones), they also used their name for the remixing arm of their set up and worked with artists like Lisa Stansfield, Jody Watley, Mary J. Blige, Shanice and Duran Duran.
Sadly for Drizabone, I remembered their dreadful name more than their song which peaked at No 16.
Just when we thought that the Jason Donovan phenomenon was all over, he comes back with a massively successful hit! I have to admit I didn’t see this coming at all. I thought he was spent, done – ‘you’ve had your season in the sun now f**k off mate’ type of thing. Yet his decision to agree to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s offer to play the lead role in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (apparently he mulled it over for a whole three weeks) proved to be completely correct as his version of “Any Dream Will Do” scored him a huge No 1 single.
I’d forgotten that to went straight in at No 2 – not something that happened every week in 1991 – so the buzz around the release must have been big. It would spend two weeks at No 1 whilst the cast album of this production was also No 1 for two weeks. Donovan’s success in the role and the way it reignited his career was a beacon for others to follow in his wake with the likes of Phillip Schofield, Donny Osmond and Boyzone’s Stephen Gately all playing Joseph over the next few years. In 2007, the song gave its name to a second Lloyd Webber talent show-themed TV series as he searched for a new star to play the role in a revival of the show. The winner was Lee Mead who took a version of the song to No 2 in the charts. It was clearly one of those songs that people just couldn’t get enough of.
As for Jason, “Any Dream Will Do” would prove to be a false dawn. There would be just one further Top 10 single (a cover of The Turtles’ “Happy Together”) and an album in 1993 that his new label Polydor Records had so little faith in that they licensed several of his old hits and included them on the album much to his annoyance. It didn’t work and the album stiffed at No 27. It would be the last Jason Donovan album of the 90s.
Oh, and one final thing, what were all those Pet Shop Boys references that Nicky Campbell made in his intro about?
Some sadness attached to this next performance from Bette Midler as the artist who originally recorded “From ADistance”, Nanci Griffith, passed away literally days ago aged just 68. RIP Nanci.
Getting Bette Midler into the TOTP studio in person must have been quite the coup for the BBC and she’s come dressed as if she’s auditioning for the part of Peter Pan in that year’s Xmas pantomime at the Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury. She even adopts a Peter Pan stance when starting the song with one hand at her waist while leaning back as if surveying Neverland. All that was missing was a slap of her thigh. Come the key change at the song’s finale, she attempts a few jumps as if expecting to be lifted high into the rafters by some invisible wires but sadly for her, she can’t get off the ground. Where’s Tinker Bell with her pixie dust when you need her?
Joshing aside, I have to admire ‘The Divine Miss M’ for her very overt social media stance against the horrific presidency of Donald Trump. Good on you Bette.
Those jokers Color Me Badd are still at No 1 with “I Wanna Sex You Up”. In a Smash Hits interview, the band announced that “I Wanna Sex You Up is just a modern way of saying ‘I want to romance you'”. OK, so firstly, nobody’s opening line is ‘I want to romance you’ is it?! Secondly, the phrase ‘I Wanna Sex You Up’ definitely does not say ‘I want to romance you’ anyway!
The play out video is “The Motown Song” by Rod Stewart. In keeping with the sexually charged feel of the show, Nicky Campbell can’t resist one final risqué comment when he introduces the track thus:
You can hear the charts on Sunday 4.30 on Radio 1 FM, see them again next week on TOTP presented by Radio 1’s very own blonde bombshell Simon Mayo. We leave you tonight with a man who’s partial to a blonde bombshell…or three…it’s Rod Stewart and The Motown Song…”
So there you have it – a show featuring songs called “People Are Still Having Sex” and “I Wanna Sex You Up”, a band whose name included the word ‘sex’, a conversation about shagging with Salt ‘n’ Pepa and then we round it all off with an innuendo about threesomes (or was that a foursome?!). And we didn’t even have the song on about female masturbation!
I’ve made it through! Fourteen acts and their tracks all viewed and reviewed! Maybe I have more resolve than I gave myself credit for!
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
Rebel MC / Tenor Fly / Barrington Levy
Tribal Base
Nah
2
Salt ‘n’ Pepa
Do You Want Me
Nope
3
LaTour
People Are Still Having Sex
Definitely not
4
Extreme
Get The Funk Out
Not in the singles box but I think I might have it on something
5
Kenny Thomas
Thinking About Your Love
Negative
6
Cubic 22
Night In Motion
Not my bag at all
7
Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine
Sheriff Fatman
See 4 above
8
Omar
There’s Nothing Like This
No
9
Paula Abdul
Rush Rush
I was in no rush to buy this
10
Driza Bone
Real Love
Another no
11
Jason Donovan
Any Dream Will Do
Ooh no!
12
Bette Midler
From A Distance
…is where I would like to be when this song is on
13
Color Me Badd
I Wanna Sex You Up
Vile – no
14
Rod Stewart
The Motown Song
One final 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.
We’re just about slap bang in the middle of 1991 here at TOTP Rewind and I have just had my 23rd birthday. I’ve been married for just over 8 months and am working at Our Price in Manchester (the Market Street store). Life has settled down into a routine after the huge changes of matrimony and moving to a new city. However, things are about to get a little nerve racking as around about this time (I could be wrong on the exact timings as its 30 years ago) the staff were all called into a early meeting one Saturday morning and we were told that the company were looking to sell the shop off. Oh shit! What did that mean? Was the company in trouble? What would happen to all us guys and gals that worked there? FFS! I’d not expected anything like this when we were told the Area Manager would be coming to inform us of something. I gullibly thought it would be about some new promotion or other (though why that would have required Area Manager’s input I don’t know).
From the little info that we were given that morning about potential redundancies, I had worked out that I might just be safe by virtue of having joined a week before the other Xmas temps that were kept on. It was a precarious position which could change at any moment but obviously there were people who I worked with in a worse position than me. However, our finances were threadbare and we were living month to month with just enough to pay the rent on our flat but precious little else to cover for anything going wrong that would have financial implications let alone a budget for a social life. As I remember this threat of store closure hung over us for sometime and obviously was all the staff could talk about for a while. It didn’t make for a happy atmosphere. In the end, the company couldn’t find a buyer and the decision was taken to keep the store trading which it did for another four years before it was finally sold off and became a travel agents (I think). For now though, these were scary times so I hope that the music in the charts and on TOTP would have given me a lift.
Tonight’s host is Jakki Brambles and she gives a strange intro to the first act on tonight.
“We have probably the only ever artist to score five Top 20 singles off her debut album and still got dropped by her record label. You can’t keep a good woman down, here’s Sonia…”
That all seemed a bit personal and unnecessary Jakki. A case of damning with faint praise even. It was true though. After becoming the first female UK artist to achieve five top 20 hit singles from one album, she did leave Chrysalis Records and moved on from Stock, Aitken and Waterman though the reason why doesn’t seem clear. Maybe she felt sidelined by Kylie and Jason? Anyway, Sonia proved to be more resilient than we might have suspected and returned to the charts with new record label IQ Records and a new single called “Only Fools (Never Fall In Love)”. Supposedly written for Diana Ross (it’s close to being exactly the same title as her 1981 cover of “Why Do Fools Fall in Love” by Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers!), it was pinched for Sonia by her A&R man, one Simon Cowell. And guess what, it was a horrible Motown pastiche! What a surprise! Still, the UK’s pop fans decided that the hadn’t had enough of Sonia yet and sent it to No 10 in the charts. Have that Pete Waterman!
I was at Polytechnic with someone who was bit like Sonia, except that she didn’t have red hair, wasn’t Scouse and wasn’t annoying so nothing like her at all really!
They’ve messed round with the chart run down again! Why?! They’ve gone back to having it run along the bottom of the screen rolling news ticker style whilst a video plays. I’m sure they tried this at some point back in the 80s and gave it up as a bad job. I bet they went back to it to try and fit in more videos because they were worried about the competition provided by ITV’s The Chart Show. Jakki gamely tries to promote this new convention as “incredible value for money, two for the price of one. Yes, not only do we give you the sight and sound of Amy Grant, we also reveal in vision only, the UK Top 40”. What a crock of shit! Maybe the producers thought that the traditional countdown with the stills of the artists set against the TOTP theme tune was a bit old hat going into the 90s and so needed a revamp complete with that green screen presenter effect. Maybe it did look cutting edge back then but it looks awful now.
Anyway, as for Amy Grant, she was up to No 2 with “Baby Baby” although the TOTP graphics team have it down as a new entry. Maybe it was teething troubles with all this new technology? A more wholesome song and performer it would have been hard to imagine as Amy was ‘The Queen of Christian Pop’ whilst “Baby Baby” was inspired by her then six week old daughter Millie’s face. By way of contrast, we’ll be seeing a few songs about the sexual act and even masturbation later on. Ahem.
Nothing unsavoury here though as the squeaky clean Gloria Estefan brings us “Remember Me With Love”. I recall reading an article in the early 90s about an obsessive Madonna fan who bought anything and everything to do with Madge but when she released her “Erotica” album and that ‘Sex’ book with the nude photos and simulations of sexual acts…well, it was all to much for him and he turned his back on Madonna and instead turned his attentions to someone much purer. Yes, of course, he chose to devote himself to Gloria Estefan. Not that the dichotomy of pop stars and their sexual image hasn’t been around before this. There was Michael Jackson v Prince, The Beatles v The Rolling Stones and maybe even Paul McCartney v John Lennon?
Blimey! I thought we’d done with All About Eve back at the end of the 80s but here they are with yet another Top 40 single in “Farewell Mr. Sorrow”. Julianne Regan and co have one of the more bizarre chart histories going – 9 Top 40 singles but only one of them got any higher than No 29 which of course was the infamous “Martha’s Harbour” which peaked at No 10.
This one was their 8th consecutive chart hit and quite a pleasant little ditty it is too – most unlike a lot of their other work. It was taken from their third studio album “Touched By Jesus” which was their first recording without guitarist and sometime Mr Regan Tim Bricheno and it didn’t do nearly as well as their first two albums leading to the band leaving record label Vertigo and signing with MCA for their last album “Ultraviolet” by which time nobody was interested anymore. I always quite liked them though.
Some of that smut next with a band who Jakki Brambles tells us have never had a hit not even in their native Australia. Really Jakki? Is that actually true? We are of course talking about Divinyls and their hit “I Touch Myself” and handily, someone on Twitter has already checked this claim out and debunked it:
Oh dear Jakki. Anyway, this is that masturbation song which is obviously what it’s about. Or is it? Well, yes it is. Here singer Chrissy Amphlett from a 2013 Cosmopolitan interview:
“In a world where female sexuality and masturbation is still widely feared and demonized, we need to pay some major respect to the brave women who empower us. ‘I Touch Myself’ is not just a party song, but also an emboldened call-to-action. Amphlett reminded us that we are in control of our own bodies and pleasure, and there is no shame in that game.”
Well quite. Now I didn’t know this until a friend told me years after the event but “I Touch Myself” wasn’t the first song on the subject of female masturbation. No, that was Cyndi Lauper’s “She Bop” from 1984. Well, the lyrics are stacked with innuendo to be fair:
Do I want to go out with a lion’s roar Huh, yea, I want to go south n get me some more Hey, they say that a stitch in time saves nine They say I better stop – or I’ll go blind
Hey, hey – they say I better get a chaperone Because I can’t stop messin’ with the danger zone No, I won’t worry, and I won’t fret – Ain’t no law against it yet
Gulp! So indecent was it deemed to be that it earned a place on the Parents Music Resource Center’s Filthy Fifteen list which led to the creation of the Parental Advisory sticker. Most of the songs on that list were by hard rock bands like Judas Priest, AC/DC and Black Sabbath. Oh and W.A.S.P. but then if you call a song “Animal (Fuck Like a Beast)” then what do you expect. Obviously the aforementioned Madonna was also on the list for 1985’s “Dress You Up” but that guy who was the obsessive fan who rejected her for Gloria Estefan must have missed that news story.
At the time, the name Lenny Kravitz was new to me but he had already released one album back in 1989 called “Let Love Rule” but it had completely passed me by. Fast forward two years and he was back with another collection of songs called “Mama Said” from which this single, “It Ain’t Over ’til It’s Over” was taken. This was the second track to be lifted from the album after lead single “Always on the Run” had just missed out on being a hit by peaking at that most unfortunate of chart positions No 41. Its follow up though did the trick. Dripping with Motown and Philadelphia soul vibes, it went all the way to No 11 in the UK and just missed the top spot in the US where it peaked at No 2.
The album was pretty good too. How did I know? Well because around this time I was taking part in my first ever Our Price stocktake. I’d been warned about these mythical events that might go on until past midnight where all the staff took part and had to count at price point every single item in the shop. I’d warned my wife on the big day that I could well be home late but I think we were all done reasonably early at 9ish. Whilst counting, and possibly to stop us all gossiping about the impending shop closure, we were allowed to put music on the shop stereo and someone out on “Mama Said”. That album stayed on most of the night I think as we just kept pressing repeat so as not to waste time looking for/arguing over what the next album for playing should be and who got to choose it. I liked what I heard enough to buy the album and especially liked opening track “Fields Of Joy”:
A huge tune next as Massive Attack (now allowed to have the second word of their name included as the Gulf War had needed) return with “Safe From Harm”. After the mesmerising “Unfinished Sympathy”, surely they couldn’t pull another corker from out of their hat but yes they could. Inspired by the film Taxi Driver, this was equally as hypnotic as its predecessor with Shara Nelson’s vocals to the fore and rapping from 3D that managed that difficult feat of not being intrusive but understated and yet integral to the track.
Like “Unfinished Sympathy” and indeed the “Blue Lines’ album itself, “Safe From Harm” wasn’t as big a hit as you remember or indeed it deserved, peaking at just No 25.
Just when you thought they wouldn’t shoehorn in any Breakers this week, here they are with only *10 minutes of the show remaining. We start with Rod Stewart and “The Motown Song” which was the third single to be released from his “Vagabond Heart” album. This really did seem like money for old rope to me. He’s already done a version of “It Takes Two” with Tina Turner on that album and this seemed like more of the same corny, obvious shite. A bit like when The Rolling Stones finally released a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone” in the mid 90s. As with “It Takes Two”, Rod collaborated with a legendary act in The Temptations for this one but even their presence couldn’t save it from being a steaming pool of pish.
If anything, the animated video for it makes it even more corny. Made by the same company responsible for “Dear Jessie” by Madonna, it features some ‘hilarious’ comic mishaps befalling cartoon versions of stars like Vanilla Ice (who gets buried under a truckload of ice cubes) and Sinéad O’Connor (who slips while shaving her head and has to wear plasters over the resulting nicks). Like I said, hilarious. Rod himself appears in the video both in human and cartoon form of which the latter looks more like him than the real thing.
“The Motown Song” made No 10 both in the UK and US singles charts.
*Plus the repeat edited out a video of “Light My Fire” by The Doors for copyright reasons.
Some funk/glam/metal rock or something next as Extreme make their first appearance on the show. Despite having been around since 1985, I’d certainly never heard of this lot before but suddenly there was huge interest in them thanks to their “Get The Funk Out” single. This energetic workout of a track was getting a lot of airplay on MTV (I think) and suddenly we were getting lots of enquiries about their second album “Extreme II: Pornograffitti” from which the single was taken. That title caused quite bit of confusion with many people (me included) thinking the band were actually called Extreme II. It didn’t help that Extreme II was what a member of staff had written on the master bag for the band’s name. The record company (and this seemed to happen a lot in 1991) immediately withdrew the album which had been out nearly a while year by this point so that they could re-release it later on when the single had peaked with some extra advertising for it.
Guitarist Nuno Bettencourt was getting a lot of press attention at the time not just as the latest guitar noodling prodigy but also as a bit of a heartthrob. To be fair, their lead singer (and normally the visual focus of a band) lead singer Gary Cherone was a bit more….erm…awkward looking. The album would spawn another four UK Top 40 singles including the the soft rock ballad “More Than Words” that made No 2 over here and No 1 in the US. For a while, Extreme looked like they could be the next big rock act.
Next a song that had been a hit just 8 months earlier albeit performed by a completely different artist. “From A Distance” was originally recorded by country legend Nanci Griffith (though she didn’t write it) for her 1987 album “Lone Star State of Mind”. Despite being many people’s definitive version of the song, it failed to chart. Then, in 1990, it was recorded and released as a single by both Cliff Richard (his was a live version and was also that whichwas a UK hit) and Bette Midler whose take on it lost out to Sir Cliff and finished up outside the Top 40 at No 45. However, in the US, Bette’s version was a huge success and won a Grammy for Song of the Year in 1991. Presumably that was why it was re-released over here. As with Extreme, there was suddenly a big demand from punters for their album that it featured on (“Some People’s Lives”) but yet again it was withdrawn by the record company so that it could be re-released and re-promoted. I was getting truly sick of explaining this phenomenon to customers by now.
I could see why Midler had chosen to record it. It was in the same ball park as her recent US No 1 “Wind Beneath My Wings” and indeed scored her a No 2 hit in there home country. In the UK, it would peak at No 6.
Some more filth now as we get “People Are Still Having Sex” by LaTour. This was like “Kissing With Confidence” by Will Powers meets “French Kiss” by Lil’ Louis. It originally included the lyric ‘This AIDS thing’s not working’ but was changed to ‘This safe thing’s not working’ to ensure it got some radio play.
I couldn’t really be doing with this at all – the track that is not sex per se. It just seemed sensationalist for the sake of getting some press. It was a minor hit globally peaking at No 15 in the UK.
And to round off this episode of smut and obscenity, the No 1 record is still “I Wanna Sex You Up” by Color Me Badd. So that’s two records with ‘sex’ in the title and one about masturbation on the same show. Mary Whitehouse must have been apoplectic. Just to crank up the sex-o-meter, the band are in the studio in person! Everything about this performance is so wrong. From the suits to the dancing (the three lads at the back seem to be doing ‘ring a ring a roses’ at one point) to the actual song.
Despite their success, Smash Hits magazine only had Color Me Badd on their front cover once throughout the whole of 1991. In comparison, Chesney Hawkes was on three times as was Dannii Minogue. Even The Farm, Philip Schofield and those twin sisters from Neighbours got a front cover!
The play out video is “Monkey Business” by Skid Row. I get really confused by all these metal bands. Skid Row, Mötley Crüe, Anthrax, Megadeth… I couldn’t really tell you the difference between any of them. To differentiate this lot from the pack, their lead singer called himself Sebastian Bach though his real name is Sebastian Philip Bierk. The latter seems more appropriate.
Normally I include the chart rundown here but due to the new format, there is no clip I can include. Sorry.
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
Sonia
Only Fools (Never Fall In Love)
Only a fool would have bought this
2
Amy Grant
Baby Baby
No but my wife liked it
3
Gloria Estefan
Remember Me With Love
Nah
4
All About Eve
Farewell Mr. Sorrow
I did not
5
Divinyls
I Touch Myself
Thought I might have but the singles box says no
6
Lenny Kravitz
It Ain’t Over ’til It’s Over
No but I had the album
7
Massive Attack
Safe From Harm
See 6 above
8
Rod Stewart
The Motown Song
No thanks
9
Extreme
Get The Funk Out
Not the single but I have it on something I think
10
Bette Midler
From A Distance
Nope
11
LaTour
People Are Still Having Sex
No
12
Color Me Badd
I Wanna Sex You Up
I should coco
13
Skid Row
Monkey Business
I’d rather watch a monkey defecate
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.
When I started out reviewing all these TOTP shows beginning with the 1983 repeats, quite often a show would not be re-broadcast due to the consequences of Operation Yewtree. As the old brigade of presenters began to be weeded out, the unacceptable elements we’re also part of the cull and so the shows that were omitted from the BBC4 schedules began to get less and less. As we pushed on into the 90s, every single TOTP was shown again….until now. Yes, we are missing out the 30 May 1991 edition but it’s nothing to do with any forces of darkness. This is the first episode not to be repeated since 23 June 1988 and the reason is…well, it could be a couple of things. Firstly, the quality of the existing video isn’t up to broadcast standards or secondly, and this is the theory that Twitter seems to suggest was the true reason, oh I’ll let @TOTPFacts fill you in:
This will be due to ongoing licensing issues re: using The Doors' catalogue on TV. (The video for "Light My Fire" plays over the end credits, making it hard to edit out) #TOTP
The Doors?! You might well wonder why they were on a TOTP in 1991 and it was nothing to do with an advert this time. No, it was all to do with the Oliver Stone Doors biopic that was released that year starring Val Kilmer. As part of the film’s promotion, a soundtrack album was released (featuring the original versions of the songs and not Kilmer’s vocals which were used in the actual film) and “Light My Fire” was re-released as a single to publicise it. OK, so that explains why Jim and co were back in the charts in 1991 but why can’t the BBC broadcast a show that includes their music 30 year later? It’s because The Doors and their estate have withdrawn from the Mechanical Copyright Protection Society (MCPS), no longer wishing to accept the society’s licensing agreements. This means that the BBC would have to negotiate a deal directly with the artist to play their music and as the corporation is sticking with its policy of single blanket collective licensing, that rules out The Doors from any BBC playlists. The Doors aren’t the only artists to have left the MCPS – Neil Young, Bonnie Raitt and Journey have also done so. I’ll leave you to make up your own minds as to whether this is a good or bad thing.
So are we finished with the whole Doors thing now? Not quite. In orders to maximise the revived interest in the band’s music, their record company Warners withdrew all their back catalogue from sale, presumably to force punters to buy the soundtrack album. Then, when the fuss surrounding the film had died down, they made them available again. Great for Warners, not so good for those of us working in record shops trying to explain tis marketing strategy to customers. Off the back of this comes one of my claims to fame. I indeed did have to explain this to none other than the Rochdale Cowboy himself Mike Harding. Yes, the singer, songwriter and comedian who seemed to be on the TV all the time when I was growing up came in to buy some Doors albums but was dismayed by our poor stockholding. Luckily for Mike, we still had a one copy left of the 1985 Doors Best Of (the double CD with the iconic ‘Lizard King’ photo of Jim on the front cover) so I sold him that instead of the soundtrack album as it was more comprehensive (as I recall the latter didn’t have “Hello, I Love You” on it).
As for the film itself, I wasn’t sure about it when iI first saw it at the cinema. It was 2 hours and 21 mins long for a start (which was very long for a film back then). They even had an intermission in the screening I was at cutting the film into two parts. I watched it again a couple of years ago and found it more likeable.
Anyway, the upshot of all this is a non repeated TOTP. Fortunately, the whole show is on YouTube if you really need to see it but I am already behind in may reviews so I’ll be given that one a miss. For the record, these are the artists that were featured:
Technotronic
MC Hammer
Pop Will Eat Itself
Sonia
Kraftwerk
Siouxie and the Banshees
Amy Grant
Kylie Minogue
Cher
The Doors
If you’re annoyed about missing out on seeing any of the names listed above, take solace in the fact that you have also missed out on having to endure Anthea Turner presenting and get this….it was her last ever TOTP appearance! Hurray!
The decision to axe Anthea would be the tip of the iceberg in terms of changes to the show in 1991. The ‘year zero’ revamp was coming but before then even, some changes were afoot. We’ve already had the truncated chart rundown which doesn’t include records going down, the compressed Breakers section with up to five acts concertinaed into under a minute and a half and now another change that would have been heresy back in the programme’s 80s heyday. A record that isn’t even in the Top 40 opening the show! Apparently this was a regular practice in the 70s but since 1980 the criteria for appearing on the show had been inflexible one of which was your record had to be in the Top 40. Suddenly though, in June 1991, that didn’t matter as here were Northside with a very clear graphic announcing that their single “Take 5” was at No 41 in the charts. None of this made any sense. Even host Mark Goodier doesn’t seem to have got the policy change memo as he says in his intro…
“Good evening and welcome to TOTP featuring the world’s most exciting chart – the BBC UK Top 40”
…and then he introduces an act whose single is outside of that ‘most exciting chart’. Just weird. Who knows what negotiations and deals went down behind closed doors to make this happen but it didn’t really do Northside much good as the single would only rise one place in next week’s chart before falling away completely. At least they could say it was a bona fide Top 40 hit I guess. Of course, the band already one of these to their name as “My Rising Star” had made it all the way to the giddy heights of No 32 the previous year.
The band were part of the Factory Records roster of artists and did indeed hail from Manchester (Moston to be precise) and I remember there being some fuss about them when their only album “Chicken Rhythms” was released later in June. It did quite well as I recall (Wikipedia tells me it got to No 19 in the album chart) whilst “Take 5” was a pretty funky tune to be fair. I like that, despite the privilege of being on TOTP without a Top 40 hit, the band had a dress down Thursday approach to being on TOTP in their choice of outfits. On the other end of the spectrum and also on this show were Marillion and that led to this little Twitter spat when the repeat went out on BBC4:
Always the professionals you know…and who are Northside?😄#totp#marillion
Oh, by the way, before we get any further, this TOTP was originally broadcast on my 23rd birthday so Happy Birthday to me! I am now 53. This can’t be right surely? Something else which wasn’t right was the fact that rather than doing all his links in and amongst the studio audience, for some of them (those for promo videos and not studio performances) Mark Goodier seems to have been green screened! In this intro to “Jealousy” by Pet Shop Boys he does it against a backdrop of Neil and Chris before being zapped off screen Star Trek like. Not another new innovation?
This was the fourth and final single to be released from the duo’s album “Behaviour” and for me was the best at the time (I may have been swayed by “Being Boring” in later life though). A huge, sweeping, epic ballad with an orchestral outro which was perfectly at odds with Tennant’s dead pan vocals, it should have been a much bigger hit than its No 12 peak. Maybe if it hadn’t been the last track to be released as a single? Apparently it was the first proper song that Neil and Chris wrote together but they waited for years before recording it for an album as they wanted Ennio Morricone to score the orchestral part but they had to settle for Harold “Axel F” Faltermeyer in the end.
I seem to recall there was a guy working at our shop around this time who was going through some relationship problems with his boyfriend and who would play this track a lot on the store stereo. I’m not sure that helped to be honest.
The aforementioned Marillion next though it was a Fish-less version of the band by now. “Cover My Eyes (Pain and Heaven)” was the lead single from their sixth studio album “Holidays In Eden” and guess what? It wasn’t in the Top 40 at the time either! Yes, like Northside earlier, the TOTP producers gave the band a slot anyway. What was going on?! Makes their snarky tweet about who were Northside seem a bit lacking in credibility seeing as they were benefitting from an unusual TOTP appearance just like them. And they were even further down the charts at No 42 that week. In fairness, it did make it all the way to No 34 in the end but even so.
So who was it that took over from Fish? Well it was Steve Hogarth of course though I had to do a double take to make sure that wasn’t cockney comedian Micky Flannagan up there at first. As for the song, I don’t remember it at all but that’s hardly surprising as it meanders along going nowhere for its entire length.
Goodier is back with his Star Trek transported trick again next as he introduces Salt ‘N’ Pepa with “Do You WantMe”. His intro is not quite factually correct though:
“Do you remember the 1988 hit “Push It” by Salt ‘N’ Pepa. Well in fact they haven’t really been in the charts for about three years now they’re back though…”
Well actually Mark, since “Push It” they’d had three Top 40 hits the last of which was “Expression” in April 1990 so not really three years then. OK, “Expression” only just sneaked in at No 40 but as we have seen tonight, you could get on TOTP with less of a hit in 1991.
“Do You Want Me” would go all the way to No 5 but I have to say I don’t really remember it. If I think about Salt ‘N’ Pepa and 1991, the only single that comes to mind is “Let’s Talk About Sex” which was a No 2 hit later in the year. Both tracks were from their “Blacks’ Magic” album which despite the success of its singles was largely ignored in the UK. That was largely due to the fact that their record label released a Greatest Hits album in October which was a healthy seller peaking at No 6.
Another Madonna re-release next as, off the back of her whopper of a seller Best Of album “The Immaculate Collection”, “Holiday” was back in the charts. Unbelievably, this was the third time the song had been a hit in the UK! Originally it made No 6 in 1984, then No 2 when re-released in 1985 (kept off the top by her own “Into The Groove” single) and finally in 1991 when it peaked at No 5. So, at the risk of sounding like Craig David, does that make the 1991 entry a re-re-release?
Look, I’ll have covered this song twice before in my 80s blog (https://80spop.wordpress.com) so I don’t propose to spend too long on this one but I have to say I don’t really understand why record buyers would have forked out for this one for a third time especially as so many people had already bough the “The Immaculate Collection” album with it on over Xmas. Was it a rare mix of it? Or were there loads of Madonna completists out there? Or could it have been for this reason courtesy of @TOTPFacts:
This third issue of "Holiday" was released to tie-in with compilation "The Immaculate Collection". As well as the 7" you could also buy CD EP "The Holiday Collection", which included 3 Madonna hits left off the LP: "True Blue". "Who's That Girl" and "Causing A Commotion". #TOTP
You’d have to be a real obsessive super fan to buy it just for that though surely?
It’s that nice Kenny Thomas now with his second and biggest ever hit “Thinking About Your Love”. I’ve said in previous posts that back in 1991, I really had a problem with Kenny and it seems irrational to me now. Yes, I thought this music was a bit on the bland side but there have been loads of artists down the years that have fallen on deaf ears with me and I didn’t despise them nearly as much as I did Kenny. From what I can make out he seems a thoroughly decent chap as well but boy did he get up my nose back then. Let me watch this performance again and see if it triggers some of those feelings of loathing…
…nope. Nothing there to cause such an extreme reaction in me. His backing vocalist looks a bit like TV presenter June Sarpong. Can’t be can it?
“Thinking About Your Love” peaked at No 4.
Some Breakers now starting with the first of two bands on tonight with the US spelling of the word ‘colour’ in their name. “Solace Of You” by Living Color is another one I don’t recall but listening to it now, it has a world music feel to it and a different sound altogether to hear previous hit “Love Rears Its Ugly Head”. Sort of like Paul Simon meets Eagle-Eye Cherry? Maybe not. Presumably they had to make do with a Breakers slot on the show rather than a studio performance despite being 1 and 2 places higher in the charts than Northside and Marillion respectively due to their touring commitments that Mark Goodier outlines. They had the last laugh though as “Solace Of You” was a bigger hit than either “Take 5” or “Cover My Eyes (Pain and Heaven)” when it peaked at No 33.
Another Gloria Estefan single! Wasn’t she just on the other week with a song called “Seal Our Fate”? Well, she’s back again with another track from her “Into The Light” album called “Remember Me With Love”. I really couldn’t tell you how this one went and even after watching it on this TOTP I can’t as the clip cuts off before she’s even got to the chorus! This compressed Breakers section really was pointless, talking of which this single would surely be a jackpot winning answer on Pointless if the subject was Gloria Estefan Singles.
While Michael Bublé was learning to shave, Harry Connick Jr was the guy being talked of as the natural successor to Frank Sinatra in the crooning stakes. He came to global recognition back in 1990 when his album “We Are In Love” tore down the traditional musical genre walls and became a mainstream hit despite essentially being a jazz album. My wife was quite taken with him at the time and had that album. Around the same time he had recorded the music for the Billy Crystal /Meg Ryan film When Harry Met Sally from which this single “It Had To Be You” was taken. The soundtrack album was a also a massive success and earned Connick a Grammy Award for Best Jazz Male Vocal Performance.
There was such a rush of material from Harry at this time that it all got a bit confusing. In September of 1991 he released “Blue Light, Red Light” which was a big band album and was also a sizeable success whilst he also contributed a song to the soundtrack of The Godfather Part III. The albums kept on coming with one released every year throughout the 90s pretty much although that initial buzz about him was never really recovered. Effortlessly cool, Connick Jr ran a career in acting parallel to his music making appearing in more than 20 films but I think I liked him best as tail gunner Clay in Memphis Belle. Eat your heart out Bublé.
Innuendo songs – it’s a niche genre but it does exist. I’m thinking “Love Resurrection”. by Alison Moyet and of course “Turning Japanese” by The Vapours but perhaps the biggest of them all was “I Touch Myself” by Divinyls (as with Eurythmics, there was no ‘The’). Largely unknown outside of their native Australia (where they were a much bigger deal), their only song to make any inroads anywhere else in the world was their homage to masturbation. It was written by Tom Kelly and Billy Steinberg who had form when it came to provocative pop songs – they also wrote “Like A Virgin” for Madonna.
I thought this was a great pop song. Immediately catchy but also having an angle with a great vocal delivery from Christina Amphlett. One of the best one hit wonders of the decade. Sadly Christina died in 2013 of breast cancer but her legacy lived on with the founding of the I Touch Myself Project which was created in her honour with a mission to create educational forums to remind women to check their breasts regularly.
“I Touch Myself” peaked at No 10 in the UK and No 4 in the US.
Ah, the very wonderful Kirsty MacColl is back in the charts. Last seen exactly two years prior to this with her version of “Days” by The Kinks, this would turn out to be her last ever Top 40 hit if you discount all of the re-releases of “Fairytale of New York”. Her lack of chart success remains a mystery and travesty. “Walking Down Madison” was the lead single from her “Electric Landlady” album (see what she did there?) and was seen as a change in direction for Kirsty with its hip/hop feel and extensive use of rapping in it. The guitar part in it reminds me of Happy Mondays and that influence would make sense as Kirsty supplied backing vocals for their hit “Hallelujah”. However, it was actually written by Johnny Marr and was one of the first songs that he wrote after the break up of The Smiths. Despite the multitude on stage here with Kirsty, I don’t think Johnny was one of them but is that Roland Rivron on bongos?
When Kirsty died in 2001, I was on a Xmas night out from work and recall seeing her face on the news on a TV screen in an electrical shop window as I walked past. I remember thinking why is Kirsty MacColl on the news? It was tragic news.
Oh and by the way TOTP graphics team, you spell her surname MacColl not McColl. Show some respect.
A brand new No 1! Cher has finally gone after what seems like ages (mind you if we thought her time at the top was a long one, watch out for Bryan Adams in a few weeks time!). The ‘Badd’ news is that it’s been replaced by that horrible “I Wanna Sex You Up” song by Color Me Badd.
The other week I commented on the fact that two of the guys in the band looked like George Michael and Kenny G. I wasn’t the only one. Here’s Beavis and Butthead making the same connection (maybe I was just regurgitating their take on it subliminally) and they’ve added another name too…
The play out video is “Shiny Happy People” by REM again. I think it’s the third time it’s been on the show and it’s that level of overkill that quickly turned a lot of people off it. I was one of them. Parent album “Out Of Time” was played to death in the Our Price I worked in and “Shiny Happy People” was never off the radio. It became one of those songs that you couldn’t listen to any more after having already reached saturation point. Other songs that triggered me like this would be “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen and “Tainted Love” by Soft Cell (which was also back in the charts in 1991!). Even the band themselves tired of it quickly and avoided playing it live whilst it was not included in the track listing for their 2003 Warner Brothers greatest hits “In Time: The Best Of REM”.
It’s not that REM were always suffering for their art with sombre, melancholic songs though. “Stand” from 1989’s “Green” album is a great pop tune full of hooks whilst 1986’s “Fall On Me” has a wonderful pop structure and melody. And yet somehow, for many of us, “Shiny Happy People” seemed to cross a line. Maybe it’s due a bit of a revisit.
For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:
This one is on the singles box though I think my wife bought it
12
Color Me Badd
I Wanna Sex You Up
Away with you!
13
REM
Shiny Happy People
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.
To say we were still in the grip of dance music in mid 1991, this particular TOTP seems to be pretty conventional indeed featuring some very established acts, a couple of previously indie bands plotting a course for the mainstream with a more commercial sound and a new name but very much in the traditional singer-songwriter mould. There’s only two acts that would have qualified as dance music and one of them was Color Me Badd so I’m not sure they count.
Gary ‘Safe Pair of Hands’ Davies is the host and we start with a band desperately trying to convince us that they were still relevant in the new decade despite having made their fame and fortune very much as an 80s group. T’Pau hadn’t released an album for nearly three years by this point. Could they really roll back the clock and reclaim their former glories with a new one called “The Promise”? It seemed like a big ask at the time and so it would prove to be. The first taster of the songs they had been working on was lead single “Whenever You Need Me” and it offered very little in terms of a new musical direction. In short, they hadn’t developed their sound at all. Sure, it chugged along like a good ‘un in a power ballad by numbers fashion but it felt like the band had just decided to play it safe. They call it a ‘lay up’ shot in golf.
Reaction to the band’s return was mixed at best and awful at worst. Adam Sweeting of The Guardian had this to say about the album:
This melodramatic and syrupy concoction would comfortably have earned the band the Barbara Dickson slot on The Two Ronnies. Consider the first single, “Whenever You Need Me”, a Eurovision fourth-placer if ever there was one. Here, as elsewhere, Carol Decker’s masonry-toppling vocals are piled up in layers like a particularly indigestible aural lasagne
Ouch! Carol Decker still looked great and delivered the song as best she could but the rest of the band seemed to have decided that they were, in fact, serious rockers and not faded pop stars after all as they have all sprouted long hair. One of them really looks like ex- Duran Duran guitarist Andy Taylor. It isn’t but Andy’s shaggy locks look had clearly influenced him. I hope he had a good time up there on stage because I’m pretty sure this was T’Pau’s final ever TOTP appearance.
OK, we might as well get this one out of the way early. As indicated earlier, Color Me Badd are on the show.
*sighs*
Quite how this lot got to become a record selling phenomenon in 1991 is beyond me. They had a shitty song and as poster boys for the new jack swing genre, they were totally unconvincing. They weren’t even that good looking. At least New Kids On The Block had that on their side (well some of them anyway).
Regardless, “I Wanna Sex You Up” is headed for the top and is up to No 7 already. Apparently, it had already been offered to and turned down by the likes of Bell Biv DeVoe and Keith Sweat. Not quite up there with Decca turning down The Beatles but still a big mistake on there behalves. The track went double platinum in the US and was the 10th best selling single of the year in the UK.
The band are still going to this day (sort of) although the line up has changed a few times. Original members Bryan Abrams and Mark Calderon were still giving it there all on stage as recently as 2018 but unfortunately Abrams gave it a bit too much at this performance in New York….
…I like the Wikipedia description of the incident:
Abrams allegedly screamed, “I’m motherfucking Color Me Badd!” as he pushed Calderon to the floor. Officers stated that alcohol may have been a factor.
‘Alcohol may have been a factor‘ – d’ya think?! Abrams tried to make it up to Calderon at a subsequent gig by apologising via the medium of a T-shirt….
Dearie me. These are the actual guys from the band by the way and not a tribute act called Fuller Me Badd.
One of those established acts next as Simple Minds are back in the TOTP studio with latest single “See The Lights” which was the second single from their No 2 platinum selling album ‘Real Life”. Like T’Pau earlier, the band were hardly breaking new ground here. It felt like they were treading water to me. There had been a big line up change around this time as the album was made without keyboardist and original band member Mick MacNeil so maybe the band were trying to show their fans that the show would be going on as usual. More changes were a foot as drummer Mel Gaynor would also depart after this album when the band went on hiatus to reassess their options. The only album they released over the next four years was their first Best Of called “Glittering Prize 81/92”. These were uncertain times.
As with the Cher album “Love Hurts” that I talked about in a recent post, “Real Life” also swapped the cover art during its sales life. The album initially sported the minimalist and arty image on the left below before re-orders came with the shot of the band on the right which was actually the original rear cover – all very confusing. Maybe the band’s management wanted to reinforce the idea that tight were essentially a trio of permanent members now.
“See The Lights” peaked at No 20.
That singer-songwriter is up next and it can only be Beverley Craven of course with her rather affecting ballad “Promise Me”. I’m assuming her off white trouser suit and white piano in this performance are an homage to John Lennon and “Imagine”. I don’t know enough about pianos to be sure whether it is a Steinway like Lennon’s. Somebody who does know about musical instruments though is one of my wife’s best friends who is a classical musician and who, like us, was also living in Manchester in 1991 and around this time she got offered a place as part of the band for Beverley’s tour which I think included European dates. However, she turned the chance down as she had already booked a holiday with her then boyfriend and the dates overlapped. They finished not long after. I think she asked Beverley to “promise me you’ll wait for me” but she didn’t. Ahem. I’ll get my coat.
It’s thatREM song next. “Shiny Happy People” may sound like a gloriously uplifting breath of fresh air pop breeze but supposedly the story behind it is a lot darker. Written about the Chinese propaganda machine spreading lies about what was really going on in the country post the Tiananmen Square uprising, Michael Stipe became concerned that rather than highlighting the propaganda, the song was actually modelling it with music fans accepting wholesale that it was just a happy, piece of bubble gum pop with no other levels to it. He may have been right.
Off the top of my head, other examples of songs where their sound is at odds with their subject matter would be “Luka” by Suzanne Vega and “Born In The USA” by Bruce Springsteen. I’m sure there are more.
“Shiny Happy People” peaked at No 6.
Impromptu gigs – they have quite the history don’t they. All the way back in the early 60s when those Cliff Richard films like Summer Holiday and The Young Ones always seemed to have a “let’s do the show right here” scene in them through to The Beatles unannounced concert from the rooftop of their Apple Corps headquarters at Savile Row in 1969 and into the 80s with U2 performing on the roof of a liquor store at the corner of 7th St and S. Main St, LA as part of the video shoot for “Where the Streets Have No Name”. Even in 1991, the practice was still alive and well as James played an impromptu gig on the roof of Manchester’s Piccadilly Hotel on 30 January. Add to that list The Wonder Stuff whose video for “Caught In My Shadow” was filmed in the grounds of St Philip’s Cathedral (otherwise known as Pigeon Park), Birmingham. Not quite a pure impromptu event though as the band had to get permission from the local council and the police had to be consulted so news of its happening had been leaked meaning that 200 indie pop kids turned up on 20 April to watch the band perform an acoustic gig.
It looked like it was great fun and that everybody had a good time (except maybe the guy in the orange top whose hands seemed surgically sewn into his pockets). The closest I ever got to an event like that was when I was on holiday in New York in 1998 and me and my mate Robin happened to stumble upon a live outside broadcast for the 1000th Ricki Lake show. I presume there’s some footage out there somewhere of me and Robin peering at the back of a crowd trying to see who everyone there was crowding round. My wife and another friend had gone off in another direction that day and saw Donald Trump coming out of Trump Tower. When we met up with them, they excitedly told us of their day and about Trump but Robin and I felt that we eclipsed then with our Ricki Lake story. I’m not sure we did given everything that has happened since.
“Caught In My Shadow” peaked at No 18.
Like T’Pau earlier, here are another band who made their name in the 80s returning with new material for the new decade. The only release that Deacon Blue had made in the 90s up to this point had been their “Four Bacharach & David Songs” EP and an album of B-sides and unreleased tracks called “Ooh Las Vegas” the previous year. “Your Swaying Arms” was their first new material since their album “When The World Knows Your Name” had, indeed, made their name and brought them huge commercial success.
Unfortunately for the band, the follow up album “Fellow Hoodlums” didn’t do anywhere near the same business as its predecessor (which had knocked Madonna off the top of the charts) and was generally seen as a mis-step. Yes, it did reach No 2 in the charts thanks to a sizeable loyal fanbase but I would wager that only second single “Twist And Shout” is remembered and indeed memorable from this era of the band. “Your Swaying Arms” was a case in point. A nice enough track that lilts along but it didn’t really go anywhere.
Ricky Ross had got himself an edgy, short haircut for this performance and the young man that I was at the time would have been always pleased to see Lorraine McIntosh strutting her stuff. Lorraine and Carol Decker on the same show! I was spoilt that week!
After the “Innuendo” and “I’m Going Slightly Mad” singles, “Headlong” was much more of a traditional sounding Queen song. Very much in the style of something like “Hammer To Fall” or “One Vision” but not as accomplished. I don’t think lyrics like ‘Hoop-diddy-diddy, hoop-diddy-do’ did it any favours to be honest. The video was shot in November and December of 1990. Within 12 months Freddie Mercury would be dead having succumbed to AIDS.
His yellow top in the video here conjures up images of him in a similarly coloured jacket whipping up the crowd into a frenzy at Wembley stadium. Meanwhile, we can assume that Brian May, unlike most of the rest of us, did have access to The Simpsons TV show judging by his T-shirt.
“Headlong” peaked at No 14.
Acting as the cheerleader of the established acts on tonight’s show comes Cher who is still at No 1 with “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s In His Kiss)”, now in its fourth week at the top. I guess it was one of those songs that maybe appealed to people who traditionally didn’t buy much music and maybe only found themselves in a record shop once or twice a year? In today’s political vocabulary, ‘it cut through’.
According to Wikipedia, her follow up single “Love And Understanding” was released this week back in 1991 even as she was still top of the pile with her previous one. Talk about striking while the iron’s hot!
Probably the only true dance act on this TOTP is the play out video. Technotronic had been having hits for a couple of year by this point but the game was nearly up come 1991. “Move That Body” was a Top 20 hit but it would be their final one and the album it was from “Body To Body” peaked at No 27 whilst debut album “Pump Up The Jam” had been a No 2 hit. Quite the contrast. I shan’t mourn their passing I have to say.
No but why wife’s friend who turned down the tour with Beverley bought the album just to torture herself some more
5
REM
Shiny Happy People
I did not
6
The Wonder Stuff
Caught In My Shadow
No
7
Deacon Blue
Your Swaying Arms
Negative
8
Queen
Headlong
Another no
9
Cher
The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s In His Kiss)
Yes but it was all an honest mistake!
10
Technotronic
Move That Body
Do you have to ask?
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.
It’s mid May 1991 and I have been working in the Our Price store in Market Street, Manchester for about 8 months and life is OK. Except there’s one thing wrong. I haven’t yet had a Saturday off. Obviously as a Xmas temp (as I was when I started) I didn’t expect any whilst the Xmas rush was on but having secured permanent employment with the company, I have worked every Saturday since. Saturday 18 May would change all that though. How do I remember this date? Because I’d booked the Saturday off to watch the FA Cup final. Now as I have mentioned just a few times over the course of this blog, I have always been a Chelsea supporter (46 years and counting now) but I had never missed watching the Cup final regardless who was playing and 1991 wasn’t going to be any different. That year the finalists were Spurs and Nottingham Forest and I had invited some mates from out of town around to watch it. It was an eventful game but it would always be remembered as the Gazza final for all the wrong reasons…
Gazza, of course, had been a pop star less than 6 months earlier off the back of his tears at Italia ’90. His performance in the FA Cup final was more wretched even than either of his two hit singles though. Spurs and hit singles wasn’t a new phenomena restricted to just Gazza mind. The football club had released FA Cup final songs for the previous three occasions they had made the final back in the 80s, all of them with cockney rhyming slangers Chas ‘n’ Dave with the most memorable being the 1981 song “Ossie’s Dream” – ‘in the cup for Totting-ham’ and all that. 1991 was no different as “When the Year Ends in One” was released. Unlike its predecessors, it failed to make the Top 40…because it was shit. Anyway, I finally got my Saturday off to watch the game but before that was the small matter of Thursday night and TOTP. I wonder of host Bruno Brookes will mention the footy*?…
*SPOILER ALERT: He doesn’t.
What on earth is he wearing?! That clobber he’s got on makes him look like a member of a Formula 1 track side race team, ready to speed change a tyre when the driver pulls in for a pit stop. Just ludicrous! Stood next to him is a kid with floppy ‘Madchester’ hair wearing a Revenge T-shirt , Revenge being New Order’s Peter Hook’s side project band in the early 90s. The contrast is startling. Not sure that the kid’s enthusiastic clapping for acts on tonights’s show that include Danni Minogue, Jason Donovan and Cher is that sincere given his choice of T-shirt. I suspect opening act New Kids On The Block wouldn’t have been one of his faves either. Now don’t be fooled by any the studio audience whoops and hollering, by this point in their career, the band’s popularity was not at the heights it had scaled previously. In short, the wheels were coming off and they were heading down the dumper. To arrest this slide, Donnie Wahlberg convinced them to pursue a new musical direction that was more urban. “Call It What YouWant” was the first offering of their new style and came from something called “No More Games: The Remix Album” which did what it said on the tin and featured hip-hop-upped versions of their previous hits. In the history of very bad ideas, this was surely in the Top 10. I get they were trying to grow and change with their pre-teen audience as they themselves grew older but surely those kids wanted grunge not dirge. The album sold moderately but didn’t really halt the band’s decline.
Apparently this was their one and only TOTP studio appearance. As such, they’ve decided to try and make it a bit special by performing the vocals live. Big mistake. Wahlberg raps adequately but Jordan Knight’s vocals, never that convincing, sound exposed and flat. Give them their due though, they could dance in sync very well.
“Call It What You Want” peaked at No 12.
One of the best known songs of the 80s making a comeback in the 90s now as we see “Tainted Love ’91” by Soft Cell re-released and back in the charts. Why? Well, there was a Best Of album released by record label Mercury called “Memorabilia – The Singles” and “Tainted Love” was back out to promote it. It was actually a re-recorded version of the song as were all but two of the eleven tracks on the album. There had already been a Soft Cell Best Of album released in 1986 simply entitled “The Singles” but it had got swallowed up in the Xmas rush and scraped to a lowly No 58 in the charts. Fast forward five years and it was deemed the right time for another compilation to boldly go where its predecessor hadn’t. Advertised as a Soft Cell / Marc Almond album, it only actually included two Almond solo originals plus his 1989 No 1 with Gene Pitney “Something’s Gotten Hold of My Heart” and his collaboration with Bronski Beat on 1985’s “I Feel Love (Medley)”. You can imagine a conversation at Mercury about the crucial need to include “Something’s Gotten Hold of My Heart” in the track listing but that would mean marketing it as a Soft Cell/ Marc Almond combined project. It worked though as the album went Top 10 and the single Top 5.
For many years, I couldn’t listen to “Tainted Love” due to the amount of times I had already heard it played on radio. It got hammered at the time and is regularly given a spin whenever anything vaguely to do with the 80s is broadcast. I had reached saturation point (see also “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen). I think I might just be coming out of that phase now though. I can’t hear that much difference between the original recording and this 1991 version – maybe a slight difference in the emphasis Marc puts on some of his phrasing and a slightly less lush production? Right until this very minute I had always believed that “Tainted Love” was the best selling single of 1981 but Wikipedia tells me that the Official Charts Company recalculated the data in 2021 giving the title to “Don’t You Want Me” by The Human League. What?! Why did they feel the need to do that 40 years on? One of the great chart swizzes ever surely?
The other week Simon Mayo was telling us how Cathy Dennis was going to be No 1 in the US with “Touch Me (All Night Long)” and now here’s Bruno Brookes saying that she is No1 in the US. Slightly disingenuous as she was actually No 2 in the Billboard Hot 100 chart (their equivalent of our Top 40) but she was No 1 in the US Dance Club Songs chart. I’m being pedantic of course. Suffice to say she was doing very well commercially.
Now, is that a catsuit she’s wearing in this performance? I do believe it is. I’ve told my woman in a catsuit story before haven’t I? OK, here it is again. In my early days at Our Price, there was a woman in our shop called Natalie who also did some modelling on the side I think. Anyway, one day she turned up for work in a catsuit and asked me if I thought it was a bit too much. Suffice to say I didn’t know where to look. One day Mick Hucknall rang the shop asking to speak to Natalie (I think she met him on a night out and he was quite enamoured). I answered the phone and when I asked who it was asking for Natalie he replied ‘Mick’. I knew it was Hucknall as Natalie had told us all that he was interested in her but she wasn’t sure what to do about it. As a claim to fame, it’s pretty poor I admit.
“Touch Me (All Night Long)” peaked at No 5 in the UK.
When I saw in the running order that Dannii Minogue was on this show, I assumed it was to perform her “Love And Kisses” single but it seems I’ve written so many of these reviews that I’ve lost tracks of the weeks. “Love And Kisses” has been and gone and we are now on to Dannii’s follow up single called “Success”. Wikipedia tells me it was also known as “$ucce$$” which was a really naff idea if true.
Like its predecessor, this was lifted from her debut album and was about the trappings of celebrity (probably). It’s got a bit more of a heavier beat to it than the much lighter “Love And Kisses” but it’s still pretty anonymous. Dannii clearly tries to deliver the song’s harder edge with a sassier performance as she takes off her jacket early doors to reveal a tattoo on her right arm which appears to be an elephant (?) and a dress with the straps dangling so perilously low as to run the risk of dropping altogether potentially causing a Janet Jackson style wardrobe malfunction. Even Bruno declared that he had been concerned (well it was pre-watershed I suppose). Also, whoever styled Dannii’s hair, what was the deal with the long straggly bit covering the left side of her face? It didn’t look practical at all. The whole thing looks like she’d just dashed out fo the back of a taxi at the last second before taking to the stage.
Talking of taxis, apparently when recording her album in Brooklyn, there has been some shootings near the studio meaning taxicab drivers were reluctant to take Dannii’s fare for the journey there. She supposedly found the recording experience in New York City both “awesome” and “terrifying”. Also potentially terrifying was the prospect of Dannii repeating that TOTP performance, droopy shoulder straps and all, before the Queen at the The Royal Variety Show that year. Thankfully, I can report that although there was a fair amount of flesh on display (especially from her backing dancers), Dannii kept her modesty intact at all times (unlike when she did those nude calendars back in the mid 90s).
“Success” did a good job of consolidating the success of “Love And Kisses” by peaking at No 11 where it stayed for three weeks.
More breakneck speed Breakers again this week as we get four songs crammed into in 1 min and 20 seconds. I’m sure the TOTP producers were beginning to worry about the competition from ITV’s The Chart Show with its video only show format and were trying to redress the balance. We start with “Shiny Happy People” by REM who Bruno reckons have got a ‘massive cult following’ in the UK. I think they may have surpassed that particular status by this point with the release of the “Out Of Time” album but the arrival of this single certainly left any remnants of being a cult way behind them. Very much the band’s marmite moment, it surely can’t be denied that “Shiny Happy People” brought them to the attention of people that had never heard of them before. We sold copy after copy after copy of the album in the Our Price store I worked in off the back of this song.
Apparently written ironically with the title and chorus being based on a Chinese propaganda poster, Michael Stipe however disputes this theory. Here’s @TOTPFacts:
"Shiny Happy People" is "not meant to be ironic at all", Michael Stipe says. "We wrote it because we were challenging ourselves. I grew up a child of the '60s listening to The Monkees and the Archies and The Banana Splits…" #TOTP
"… The guys threw me the stupidest song that sounded so buoyant and weird and I was like, 'Okay, I accept the challenge.' So it was bubblegum music made for kids." #TOTP
Of course, you can’t mention “Shiny Happy People” without referring to Kate Pierson from the B-52s whose vocals on this really did add something to it. Kate’s band were enjoying a commercial renaissance themselves after the success of 1990’s “Cosmic Thing” album so that, allied with the fact that both band’s were from Athens, Georgia made the fit between them kind of inevitable.
Not convinced that this was the song that made mainstream superstars of REM? How about this evidence then. “Shiny Happy People” was used as the theme song to the unaired pilot for the sitcom Friends, known at that time as Friends Like Us.
Still not having it? Well how about this then? REM singing a version of it called “Happy Furry Monsters” on SesameStreet. Come on. Is there a safer TV show in the history of television?
“Shiny Happy People” peaked at No 6 in the UK, easily their biggest hit at the time and still their joint third highest charting UK single to this day.
“A new name to us all” next (according to Bruno Brookes) as Flowered Up breach the Top 40 for the first time. So were they a new name? Well, they had formed two years earlier and had released two singles in 1990 which made Nos 54 and 75 so not totally unknown I would wager Bruno. In fairness to Brookes, had I heard of them before “Take It” was a hit? I really can’t remember but I do recall talk of them being ‘the next Happy Mondays’ at the time. That may have been less due to their sound and more to do with them having a Bez like dancer figure in their ranks, the brilliantly named Barry Mooncult who actually looked more like Peter Gabriel (in his Genesis days) on stage with his flower petal costume.
Their chart breakthrough coincided with a move from indie label Heavenly Records to major London Records so that may explain why it happened (major label promotion budget etc). Debut (and only) album “A Life With Brian” was released later in the year and the band had already appeared on the front covers of both Melody Maker and NME before then. I think they were quite well known in the end then Bruno. Flowered Up will perhaps forever be mostly associated with their biggest hit “Weekender”, the massively epic 12 minute long single that made the Top 20 in 1992 and which the band steadfastly refused to edit for airplay reasons. Hopefully we’ll get to see that in future TOTP repeats. In the meantime, “Take It” peaked at No 34.
Giving Dannii Minogue a run for her money in the strappy top stakes is Carol Decker of T’Pau who are back in the charts with “Whenever You Need Me“. No, really. Going against all known logic, 80s popsters T’Pau were somehow still having hits into the 90s. It really did rally against the status quo as when they returned two years after their last Top 40 hit, they sounded exactly the same. Now I’d had a soft spot for this lot back in their 80s heyday but even I couldn’t have cared less about them come 1991.
“Whenever You Need Me” was the lead single from their third album “The Promise”. I remember we had lots of it in stock in our store and hardly sold a copy. Somehow it made No 10 in the charts whilst the single made No 16 (although it was their last ever trip to the Top 40). Thinking back now, I wonder if there was some chart manipulation going on from the record label with lots of FOC stock being given to chart return stores in return for a few beeps of the album barcode on the Gallup scanner. That might well be a scandalous claim, it’s just that we really didn’t sell many at all. Whatever was going on, it didn’t really work as the band called it a day after “The Promise” (two further singles released from it did nothing at all chart-wise) although there have been reunions and sporadic gigging since then. I saw Carol Decker on the bottom of the bill on one of hose Here And Now tours about 20 tears ago and she still turns up on the music TV channels every now and again presenting things like Carol Deckers 40 Ultimate Rock Chicks or something.
After getting a little too overexcited about Dannii Minogue’s dress straps, Bruno Brookes now starts getting himself in bother over a “threesome of girls”. A threesome Bruno?! You couldn’t have just said ‘trio’?! Anyway, It’s Wilson Phillips that he’s referring to and the rest of his intro makes little sense either as he says they have had No 1 success in America and are now making it big in the UK. Whilst all of that is true – “You’re in Love” was their third single taken from their debut album to top the US charts – Bruno makes it sound as if they are only just starting to make waves in the UK. Actually, they had a Top 10 hit over here the previous year with “Hold On”. Had he forgotten that already? The UK had kind of lost interest in Wilson Phillips already though. “You’re in Love” peaked at No 29 this side of the pond and they would score just a further two hit singles on our shores, neither of which was especially big.
The highest new entry next and it’s a big one. A single going straight in at No 3 wasn’t something that happened every week back in the early 90s (especially by a new, unknown act) so there must have been a big buzz around Crystal Waters and her song “Gypsy Woman (La Da Dee)”. So unusual was it that, at the time, it meant that she was the highest debuting female artist ever*.
*She was subsequently relieved of that title by Gabrielle in 1993 when “Dreams” debuted at No 2 who was in turn usurped by Whigfield a year later when “Saturday Night” went straight in at No 1. Crystal Waters didn’t quite top the charts as Bruno suggested she might, peaking instead at No 2.
The song is actually about homelessness (it was released as “Gypsy Woman (She’s Homeless)” in some territories) but for me, it almost bordered on novelty status with that incessant and extremely annoying ‘La-da-dee/la-dee-da’ hook. Apparently though, it was very much seen as a house music classic and, more than that, it was a trailblazer of the genre in that it combined social conscience with beats. It routinely appears in music polls as one of the greatest dance tunes of the 90s! I had no idea! Maybe I should have guessed at its house music reputation judging by the dance moves Crystal gives in this performance – she performs the song as if she’s busting some moves in a club rather than in front of an audience of millions on the UK’s premier pop music show. The track is of course nothing to do with the country singer Don Williams’ song “I Recall a Gypsy Woman” which my Dad does a pretty good version of.
Talking of novelties, here was something you didn’t see that often – a contemporary Christian music (CCM) artist breaking through to have a monster hit in the mainstream charts. Amy Grant is known as ‘The Queen of Christian Pop’ but here she was back in 1991 with yet another song that had been a US No 1. How many has that been just on this TOTP? Three? If you include Cathy Dennis’s dance chart topper? “Baby Baby” was one of those radio friendly, feel-good pop songs that you found yourself humming along to even though you didn’t particularly like it. Now my wife really did like this one to be fair and even today she can sometimes be heard humming it absent-mindedly.
The heart-warmingly sweet / nausea inducing (delete as appropriate) video received a nomination for Best Female Video at the 1991 MTV Video Music Awards. Totally lacking in special effects but just portraying Amy and her on screen love interest doing luv’d up things seemed to appeal to a simpler sense of what life should all be about. Love, friendship, fun…and rolling oranges back and forth to each other apparently. I’m trying to think of any other Christian Music artists that I know of. Stryper? Were they a CCM artist?
*checks Wikipedia*
Yes! They are Christian Rock band! Two things here. How did I dredge that up from my memory banks and what the Hell is Christian Rock?!
“Baby Baby” peaked at No 2 in the UK.
When I think of Jason Donovan and 1991, only one thing comes immediately to mind – Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and his No 1 record “Any Dream Will Do”. Despite Bruno advising us that the show starring Donovan is opening in June, Jase isn’t here with that song. No, it’s a little ditty called “RSVP”, a single that’s so forgettable, nobody ever did reply to him. Apparently it was a ‘not released before’ track from his forthcoming Greatest Hits album but top points to anyone who remembered this bilge. In line with his recent chart track record, it wasn’t a major hit peaking at No 17. Not even Jason’s guitar playing and some leather trousers could save this one.
Cher is still at the top of the pile with “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss)”. Now as its the third week of its reign at the top and I have nothing else to say about it, I dug about for some tenuous links between Cher and other artists on this TOTP and I found one! “Baby Baby” wasn’t Amy Grant’s first US No 1. That came in 1986 when her duet with Peter Cetera “The Next Time I Fall” hit the top. And who has had a massive hit duetting with the ex-Chicago man? Yes, Cher of course whose “After All” went Top 10 in the US in 1989. Small world and all that.
To finish off, we have a forthcoming No 1 record by perhaps one of the most useless bands in the whole of the decade (in my humble opinion). Color Me Badd were an R’n’B four piece who briefly threatened global dominance after their “I Wanna Sex You Up” single became a hit all around the world. The group described their style as ‘hip-hop doo-wop’ although I seem to recall a lot of talk of them being part of this new jack swing movement but maybe that was purely because of the song’s inclusion on the soundtrack to the film New Jack City. For the record, I described Color Me Badd as atrocious shit and yet the UK seemed unable to resist their …erm…charms and sent it to No 1. Was it just that it had the word sex in the title and chorus? I can just imagine loads of beered up young men sidling up to women on the dance floor in clubs up and down the country crooning “I Wanna Sex You Up” to them. Ugh!
As for Color Me Badd themselves, I have to say that the word sex wasn’t what came to mind when looking at them. If you were trying to put a hip hop boy band together, I don’t think I’d have included a Kenny G lookalike and someone trying (and failing) to look like “Faith” era George Michael but with a long bob haircut in their ranks.
Order of Appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
New Kids On The Block
Call It What You Want
Ok, I will. It was shit
2
Soft Cell / Marc Almond
Tainted Love ’91
Nope
3
Cathy Dennis
Touch Me (All Night Long)
Nah
4
Danny Minogue
Success
Failure – no
5
REM
Shiny Happy People
I didn’t
6
Flowered Up
Take It
No
7
T’Pau
Whenever You Need Me
Negative
8
Wilson Phillips
You’re In Love
But not with this song – no
9
Crystal Waters
Gypsy Woman (La Da Dee)
I’d have rather listened to Crystal Tips and Alistair sing
10
Amy Grant
Baby Baby
I didn’t. Not sure if my wife did or not
11
Jason Donovan
RSVP
Dear Jason, this is a shit song – no
12
Cher
The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss)
Yes but it was all a genuine mistake
13
Color Me Badd
I Wanna Sex You Up
Hell 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 Rewind - the 90s 