If a week can be a long time in politics then that is also true of football (and quite possibly music). When last week’s TOTP was aired, the England national team had made a sluggish start to Italia ’90 and were being widely criticised in the media. Fast forward eight days and they have turned things around and qualified for the knockout stages after defeating the might of Egypt in the last group game. Hang on, eight days you say? Yes, this particular TOTP went out on the Friday rather than in its regular Thursday night slot so as to clear the schedules for that England v Egypt game the day before. Suddenly hopes were revived and the nation looked forward (albeit with some trepidation) to the next game versus Belgium.

Those eight days have also proved to be a long time in the pop music world as tonight’s show has nine (!) ‘new’ songs on it and only four that we have seen before in no small part due to the return of the Breakers section. Tonight’s host is Jakki Brambles whose previous recent appearances on the show have been dominated by her wearing of big Winter coats even under TV studio lights. With it being the height of Summer though she peeled all her layers off and gone for a white t-shirt and ripped jeans look topped off with an embroidered baseball cap. The T-shirt proclaims the legend that is The Royal Findhorn Yacht Club (I have no idea) and Jakki seems to be in a rush to get off (possibly to do some tacking on a schooner or something – as I said I have no idea) judging by the speed with which she is talking.

We start tonight with Brummie rockers Magnum who were last seen in the Top 40 back in ’88 with a trio of medium-sized hits from their “Wings Of Heaven” album which was the peak of their commercial success. I have no recollection of them still having chart hits into the 90s but here they are with a little ditty called “Rockin’ Chair”. Taken from an album called “Goodnight L.A.”, it sounds pretty unexceptional, rock fodder to me but supposedly the album was meant to be an attempt to break the band in the US and was seen by critics as taking the band in an ‘Americanised’ and more commercial direction. If anything, to my ears, it sounds less commercial than their previous hits like “Start Talking Love” and “Days Of No Trust”. Anyway, what do I know? So did Magnum manage to break America? No, no they didn’t and you know why they didn’t? The album was never released in the United States! Right, scratch that comment about what do I know because I may not be a record company executive but I do know that if you want to break America, it’s a good idea to release your album there so that people can, you know, actually buy it!

The album did OK in the UK (where it was released) peaking at No 9 and presumably it did well in Germany judging by Jakki’s comments about the band entertaining 50,000 East Berliners recently.

“Rockin’ Chair” peaked at No 27 but their last single previous to that was a No 33 hit called “It Must Have Been Love” talking of which…

…here come Roxette enjoying the biggest hit of their career with “It Must Have Been Love”. Often dismissed as insubstantial and not deserving of any credibility claims, it’s fair to say that the duo rarely get referenced as being the musical influence of…well…anybody really. Having said that, they racked up a smorgasbord of hit singles throughout their career which, incidentally, spanned 33 (!) years. I always got the impression that they were not that bothered by the criticism that dogged them, steeled by the knowledge that they were good at what they did – writing, recording and performing well crafted pop tunes. Indeed, so comfortable were they with their image that they even called one of their compilation albums “Don’t Bore Us – Get To The Chorus!”. If that doesn’t display a healthy degree of self knowledge then I don’t know what does!

“It Must Have Been Love” peaked at No 3 in the UK and was a Top 10 hit in just about every country around the world going to No 1 in the US, Australia, Denmark and Spain to name but a few.

Well here’s a treat – two acts for the price of one! Never has the acronym BOGOF been more apt though as said acts are Sonia and Big Fun! What?! Why?! What possible justification could there be for this unholy pairing?! What? It was for charity? Which charity? Childline? Oh..well…I can’t really…oh OK, it seems there was some credible justification but it doesn’t mean I have to like the song does it? And I don’t. It’s not even a cover of the James Taylor classic “You’ve Got a Friend” but another Stock, Aitken and Waterman composition.

Watching this performance back, it looks just wrong for them all to be sat down for the duration of the song Westlife-esque when we were used to seeing Big Fun jumping around the TOTP stage wiggling their arses for all their worth and little Sonia doing her rolling shoulders nerdy dance moves. It’s not that easy to transform yourself from pop puppets to serious artists surely? Just by the addition of some stools? *Insert your own jokes*

In a Smash Hits interview around this time to promote the single, when Big Fun’s Jason John was asked if they dreaded ‘the dumper’ and what would they do if they fell into it, he replied:

“I don’t think about the dumper because we’re really only just beginning our careers…”

Hmm. After “You’ve Got a Friend” peaked at No 14, Big Fun never had another Top 40 single. After disbanding, one of them became a painter and decorator whilst Jason ‘we’ve only just begun’ John decamped to the US to run a nightclub in New York.

It’s those famous musical offspring Wilson Phillips next who are bounding up the charts with their single “Hold On”. The group En Vogue also had a hit with a song called “Hold On” in this year – they were on the show only the other week – and it got me thinking whether “Hold On” was a popular song title of choice for recording artists. I found a website that listed 45 cover versions and distinct songs that happen to share the title “Hold On”. They included artists as diverse as Tom Waits through to Donny Osmond via Santana and KT Tunstall. And whose song called “Hold On” was the most commercially successful? Why, Wilson Phillips of course (En Vogue came in second).

Some Breakers now starting with Red Hot Chili Peppers and “Taste The Pain”. Despite being around since 1984, I have to admit that they hadn’t been on my radar at all in that time and I can’t say I remember this track either. I wouldn’t really become aware of them until the following year and the release of their “Blood Sugar Sex Magik” album and attendant singles “Give It Away” and the anthemic “Under The Bridge” which I bought. “Taste The Pain” was from their previous studio album “Mother’s Milk” and became the band’s first UK hit single peaking at No 29. I hadn’t realised before but they actually had a track on the multi platinum Pretty Woman soundtrack album called “Show Me Your Soul”. Given the film and soundtrack’s popularity and seeing what it was doing for the career of Roxette whom we saw earlier, I can’t help wondering if they wouldn’t have been better off releasing that as a single?

I can’t move on though without a mention for Celtic ‘bagrock’ outfit Red Hot Chilli Pipers whose lineup features three highland bagpipers and traditional marching snare backed by a more traditional rock band. Their live show even features highland dancing! I’ve yet to catch them live myself yet but a friend who has say they are quite the experience.

Bruce Dickinson covering “All The Young Dudes”? Even if this was for charity* as per Sonia and Big Fun (which it wasn’t) it would still be inexcusable. This David Bowie penned tune that was turned into a massive hit by Mott The Hoople really didn’t need the Dickinson treatment. I couldn’t see that it added anything to the original being a pretty straight cover. I suppose it was a canny marketing move by Bruce’s label to release a well known song to help promote his “Tattooed Millionaire” album but still.

*Two years later, Dickinson did record a song for charity when he combined with Rowan Atkinson in his Mr. Bean alter ego to record Alice Cooper’s “(I Want To Be) Elected” for Comic Relief which went to No 9 which was 14 places higher than “All The Young Dudes”.

And talking of Alice Cooper, completing a trio of rock-related Breakers, are Dogs D’Amour who once toured with Alice around the start of the new millennium. Back in 1990 though, they were in the Top 40 again for the second and final time. Having finally breached the chart ramparts in ’89 with ‘Satellite Kid”, “Victims Of Success” was the lead single from their album “Straight??!!” and I have to say the title didn’t ring any bells with me. Having given it a listen, it sounds like a rather unremarkable blues rock song full of guitar twangs and hackneyed lyrics like these:

“Yesterdays punks on the cover of the rolling stone
Yesterdays punks could buy a Beverly Hills home”

I’m kind of surprised it managed to sneak into the charts to be honest. Maybe they were riding on the coattails of the success their good buddies The Quireboys were enjoying around this time?

“Straight??!!” would be the last studio album to feature the band’s ‘classic’ line up (it says on Wikipedia) before they split. Top Dog Tyla (real name Timothy Taylor) would resurrect the brand in various different formats and line ups over the years as well as collaborating on a project entitled Hot Knives with long-time friend *checks notes* ah yes, Spike… from The Quireboys.

“Victims Of Success” peaked at No 36.

A return to the show for the break out star of ’88 next as we witness the return of Yazz with her new single “Treat Me Good”. Just two short years since her massive No 1 single “The Only Way Is Up”, Yazz was at a crossroads. Her debut album “Wanted” had gone double platinum but the singles released from it had all peaked at a lower chart position than the one before. Her next move was career crucial. “Treat Me Good” was to be the lead single from an album initially entitled “Revolution Of Love” (presumably the album due out “at the end of the Summer” as advised by Jakki Brambles) but it never appeared and was canned when Yazz left her record label Big Life. Were they disappointed by the commercial performance of “Treat Me Good”? Despite a 10 place move up the charts after this TOTP outing, the single would get no further than that No 20 peak and would be in and out of the Top 100 in five weeks. To be fair, it didn’t really sound to me like it had that ‘Wow!’ factor that “The Only Way Is Up” had and was a pretty sub-standard R’n’B pop number.

Re-emerging with Polydor Records, Yazz once again found herself in the position where a proposed second album was shelved when “One True Woman” failed to appear in May ’92. After one final return to the Top 40 in ’93 with Aswad with a cover version of Ace’s “How Long”, her sophomore album finally emerged more than five years after her debut. It bombed completely. Yazz continued to release singles and one further album into the 90s but she then found herself at another crossroads (this time of a more personal nature) when her marriage to her husband (who was also her manager and publisher and father of baby Rio mentioned by Jakki Brambles in her intro) broke down. After finding Christianity, Yazz now spreads the gospel message in prisons and released a record called “This Is Love” which was inspired by her experiences.

And yes Jakki, she did look incredible just eight weeks after giving birth.

After the decade that was the 80s had seen fit to allow Aussie soap Neighbours to spawn bona fide chart stars in Kylie, Jason Donovan and (for the love of God!) Stefan Dennis, you would have thought that the 90s would have brought a stop to that but no! There was still another of the cast that felt that the world of pop had space for one more…all hail Craig McLachlan And Check 1-2. As referenced by Jakki Brambles in her intro, Craig had played the role of Henry Ramsey (the brother of Kylie’s character Charlene) in Neighbours for nearly three years but by the time of his foray into music and subsequent hit with “Mona” he had swapped allegiances and transferred to the other Aussie soap Home And Away. I have very distinct memories of Henry Ramsey whilst I was still a student at Sunderland Poly – nasty mullet and dungarees worn without a T -shirt which the women that I was friendly with at the time were quite taken with – but I had no idea that he had pop star pretensions.

Now admittedly it was a very low bar but I didn’t mind “Mona” (compared to Stefan Dennis, he was the height of credibility) and it was a tune that was written by blues rock ‘n’ roll legend Bo Diddley which had been performed previously by the likes of The Rolling Stones, The Troggs and Bruce Springsteen so Stock, Aitken and Waterman this was not. I’m pretty sure I didn’t realise the song’s origins at the time but fourteen years after it was a hit in the UK, I saw a band perform their own version of this in whilst on holiday in San Francisco. I can’t remember the name of the band but the venue was called the Biscuits And Blues Bar and I remember thinking there’s no way this can be a Craig McLachlan original if this authentic blues band are performing it!

After peaking at No 2 in the UK, it seem that Craig might have a shot at usurping his one time co-star Jason Donovan in UK pop fans’ affections given that old Jase seemed to be on a downward commercial trend but after one more single (the No 16 hit “Amanda”) he was pretty much gone. He did follow Donovan’s trick of releasing a song from a stage musical three years later when “You’re the One That I Want” from Grease in which he was starring with Debbie Gibson made No 13 in the UK Top 40 (Donovan had scored a No 1 with “Any Dream Will Do” from Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat) but he would never again return to our charts.

Inevitably, and very much seen as the classical antidote to New Order’s “World In Motion”, here is the BBC’s Italia ’90 theme tune “Nessun Dorma” by Luciano Pavarotti. Now inextricably linked in the psyche of every English football fan with the events of June /July 1990 and the fortunes of the national team, how many of us had ever heard of it (or indeed Pavarotti) before?

The BBC really pulled it out of the bag when it came to soundtracking their coverage of this World Cup. Does anybody recall the ITV opening titles and music? I didn’t and had to look it up. Here’s their opening titles….

…just dreadful. Apparently it was entitled “Tutti Al Mondo”, was written by Rod Argent and Peter Van Hooke and …oh nobody cares do they? ITV’s theme tune was crushed by the BBC and Pavarotti’s weight as easily as Gazza’s tears started to flow after that booking in the semi final. A few words about the opening title graphics before we move on which were awful as well. The crass image of the statue of David nonchalantly nodding some footballs around and the official mascot stick figure player called Ciao added in to ensure the full tacky horror couldn’t be missed. Comparing the two is a bit like on The Apprentice when the two teams do the advert task and one team has understood the brief completely and delivered something concise and on message and the other team has just came up with a slogan that they thought was a clever word play and completely missed the point of what they were trying to sell. Somebody in the ITV creative team should have got fired.

“Nessun Dorma” was a No 2 hit on the UK Top 40 and after the Three Tenors concert in Rome the night before the final was played featuring José Carreras, Plácido Domingo and of course Pavarotti spawned the classic live album, the world went classical music mad. That album became the best-selling classical album of all time and even changed the way the music industry marketed its classical catalogue with a whole new category called ‘strategic classical’ set up to try and reach new audiences via huge marketing campaigns.

My own personal memory of the whole Nessun Dorma / Three Tenors phenomenon was that my future father -in -law was so enthused by the concert that he taped it off the TV (remember when we used to do that?) to keep for posterity but my future mother-in- law taped over it with an episode of Eastenders by mistake. Once the incident had been discovered I was dispatched into Hull town centre to ask around the music shops to see if anyone knew when the official video would be coming out. There was no release date forthcoming so we had to pretend that the precious VHS tape couldn’t be found whenever my father-in-law asked about watching the concert over again for many months until the official release could be bought for him.

MC Tunes in the area! The Moss Side rapper is back on the show with his hit single “The Only Rhyme That Bites” although this week we get the video. @TOTPFacts has unearthed this about the promo:

Hmm. Well, it just looks to me like a load of guys skateboarding and not especially impressively. I suppose we all have to start somewhere and Ken Horn did go onto produce a number of successful TV shows including the Jimmy McGovern drama The Street and the fifth series of the superb Line Of Duty. Back in 1990 though, it looked like brother Trevor had the monopoly on the family talent.

By the way, if you’re wondering whatever happened to MC Tunes and wanted to know more about what sort of person he was/is, don’t go looking to Wikipedia for the answer. Under the category Personal Life, it just says:

Tunes still lives in Manchester.

“The Only Rhyme That Bites” peaked at No 10.

And so it came to pass that Elton John‘s first ever solo No 1 would be with the brain stupefying “Sacrifice / Healing Hands”. After his ridiculously flamboyant outfits of yesteryear (Donald Duck anyone?), Elton has completely toned it down and gone for an all black ensemble topped off with a BOY cap. Were they popular at the time? I’m pretty sure Chris Lowe of the Pet Shops Boys used to wear one back in the day but were they still a thing in 1990?

The single was taken from the album “Sleeping With The Past” which in a Smash Hits feature where pop stars named their favourite ever albums, that man from Big Fun Jason John (whom we heard from earlier) was at it again giving us the benefit of his wisdom. Here he is:

“Sonia actually gave me this LP as a present a few weeks ago…It must be one of the best albums he’s ever done…Personally I’ve become a big Elton fan after listening to this album. It’s been a big inspiration to me.”

Hmm. Not “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” then? “Too Low For Zero” maybe? “Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only The Piano Player”? No? OK, Jase, you know best.

At the song’s end, there’s a weird interaction between Jakki Brambles and Elton where she strides across the stage, offers her had to Elton to shake and then kisses his! There then follows an excruciating exchange where Jakki asks Elton how he is and which charities the royalties from the single are supporting. Elton is almost monosyllabic in his replies. Now if you really want to see a proper Elton John interview, may I recommend this…

So put off her stride is Jakki that she forgets to introduce the play out song which is one of the biggest and most talked about hits of the year – it’s MC Hammer with “U Can’t Touch This”. This tune was absolutely massive back in the day but more seemed to be made in the press about Hammer’s baggy loon pants (that tapered to the ankle) in the video.

Famously based on “Super Freak” by Rick James, “U Can’t Touch This” made Hammer a huge star briefly. Parent album “Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em” stayed at No 1 in the US album charts for 21 weeks and was the best selling album of 1990 there. Multiple awards followed and his extensive tours raked in the money. It’s 1990 and the living is good for MC Hammer. It wouldn’t last though but that’s all for another post.

“U Can’t Touch This” peaked at No 3 in the UK Top 40.

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

Disclaimer

OK – here’s the thing – the TOTP episodes are only available on iPlayer for a limited amount of time so the link to the programme below only works for about another month so you’ll have to work fast if you want to catch the whole show.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000r6hy/top-of-the-pops-22061990

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.

Some bedtime reading?

https://michaelmouse1967.wixsite.com/smashhits-remembered/1990-issues