Doop

TOTP 31 MAR 1994

Posted on March 3, 2023 by 80stastic

It’s the end of March 1994 and new TOTP producer Ric Blaxill is implementing his ideas for the show slowly but surely. Unlike the ‘year zero revamp ‘ of 1991 which seemed to want to change everything all at once, this was more of an organic approach. Yes, he’d brought back some of the Radio 1 DJs overnight and ditched Tony Dortie and Mark Franklin without flinching but some things remained the same. The logo, theme tune and titles were unchanged and so was the day of broadcast. All of these elements would be replaced or shifted in time but for now it was essentially the same show. However, Blaxill did take the decision to ditch the Breakers section meaning there were less Top 40 singles showcased but there seemed to be more emphasis on getting artists into the actual TOTP studio in person. Of the 10 acts on this show, seven were in studio performances. He’d also started putting a personal, direct to camera message from the ‘exclusive’ artist at the top of the show beforethe titles had even got underway. Last week it was Salt ‘N’ Pepa and this time around it was the Bee Gees. Little alterations but alterations nonetheless.

We start though with Haddaway and his fourth consecutive UK hit single “Rock My Heart”. I think I’ve said this before but it seems like a real anomaly to me that this guy was in the charts in 1994 despite the fact that we’d only first become aware of him less than a year before. He was definitive 1993 in my head. After, switching to a ballad for his previous hit “I Miss You”, he was squarely back with the Eurodance formula for this one and it’s all very repetitive stuff. Not even his overly energetic backing dancers can liven this up. Haddaway was just about done after this No 9 hit. He did manage two further minor UK hits but his second album released in 1995 – “The Drive” – stalled completely and tanked over here though he did retain some of his European fanbase.

I should mention that tonight’s host is Bruno Brookes and that his hair by this point was taking on a life of its own. He’d always had a bit of a mullet back in his 80s heyday but the dawn of a new decade hadn’t persuaded him to go for an into the 90s haircut. No, Bruno went the other way and doubled down on long hair to the point that it seemed to be trying to form an enclosure around his face. Never mind Haddaway being an anomaly, Brookes was an uber – outlier.

Anyway, back to the music and sometimes it’s easy to think you know a song but you really don’t. What am I talking about? Well, you can identify a song when it comes on the radio easily enough because you’ve heard it enough times to be buried in your memory banks but do we know how it came about, its origins, the motivations behind its composition, what are the lyrics actually about? Here’s an example…”Say Something” by James. Now, I might hear it and think “yes, that’s James. Unmistakably them from around the mid 90s I would imagine when they were having lots of hits”, tick myself as being correct and refile the song in my brain until the next time I hear it. Yet the hours and process that might have gone into bringing that song to the public maybe deserve more than that brief acknowledgment.

Why am I picking on James for this narrative? Well, after touring their fourth album “Seven” extensively it was time to return to the recording studio to begin work on their fifth “Laid”. Desperate to work with the legendary Brian Eno, their wish was granted and he duly agreed to act as producer. The band had historically always had song-storming sessions whilst jamming in their Manchester rehearsal rooms out of which the seeds of new tracks would be germinated. Eno observed this and thought that this organic (there’s that word again!) practice was just as valid for recording as the finished product and got the band to agree to letting him record said sessions as a second album, a companion piece to “Laid”. Originally meant to be released simultaneously or as a double album, reticence from their label meant it didn’t see the light of day until August 1994 when “Wah Wah” was released nearly a year after “Laid”. At 23 tracks and 68 minutes long, it divided opinion. To the casual fan who liked their big, anthemic hit singles, it wasn’t what was required but for the strong devoted it was a great insight into how the band worked and their motivations. Now, “Say Something” was actually track five on the “Laid” album but it was paired with a track called “Jam J” for release as a double A-side single which was track 3 on “Wah Wah”. There is a song on “Wah Wah” called “Say Say Something” but it bears no resemblance to its “Laid” counterpart. To further hammer home this point about song composition and not usually getting to know the full gestation period of a track, “Wah Wah” includes an early take of “Sometimes” which would become the second single released from 1997 album “Whiplash”.

As for the performance here, Tim Booth delivers a great vocal but it is combined with a strangely static stance with him only loosening up in the middle eight with some snake-hipped shimmying. The single would peak at No 24 and we won’t see/hear from them again for nearly three years when they would release “She’s A Star” as the first single from that “Whiplash” album.

A video now as we get to see the promo for “I’ll Remember” by Madonna again. Like The Beatles and The Clash before her, Madge didn’t really go in for personal appearances on the show. Off the top of my head there’s two from 1984 – her debut performing “Holiday” in the January, all armpits and bangles and then there’s the infamous pink wig appearance in December for “Like A Virgin”. A bit of digging in the internet tells me that over a decade later she was in the studio in November of 1995 to perform “You’ll See” from her ballads collection “Something To Remember” and 1998 saw her on the show twice for run throughs of “Frozen” and “The Power Of Goodbye”. I think that’s it for the 80s and 90s. Not many really when you consider her global reach and the amount of hits she had during that time. The new millennium brought a handful more of appearances before the show was axed in 2006.

Who said Eurodance acts all sound the same?! Well, I’m pretty sure I have at some point in this blog but just as Haddaway shook things up with a ballad for his third single, so Culture Beat lowered the bpm and mood for their fourth hit “World In Your Hands”. This was actually very different to all their previous stuff with an almost trip-hop backbeat and some very sombre raps courtesy of Jay Supreme. The whole track feels pretty dark watching it back. It’s almost Massive Attack-esque. Well, not quite but maybe ‘Medium Sized Rebuke’. Did we really need the very literal stage dressing of a massive spinning globe though? “World In Your Hands” peaked at No 20.

New producer or not, TOTP wasn’t going to turn its back on Eurovision and so here was the UK’s 1994 entrant – Frances Ruffelle with a song called “Lonely Symphony (We Will Be Free)”. Although the song was chosen two weeks earlier by a public telephone vote on A Song For Europe, Frances was already nailed on as the artist to sing it as she was pre-chosen for the gig. She actually performed all eight contending songs over four preview shows during a one week period in March. Although a new name to me, Frances actually came from a very showbiz background. Her Mum is Sylvia Young, founder of the legendary Sylvia Young Theatre School in London and Frances had already made a name for herself in her own right starring in West End productions Starlight Express and Les Misérables. She has furthered that showbiz legacy by being the mother of pop star Eliza Doolittle.

I have to say I don’t remember this song at all (can’t have bothered watching Eurovision that year) but it sounds like Culture Beat weren’t the only people who had been listening to Massive Attack. France’s song had a whiff of the trip hop collective – even the song title bears a resemblance to their most famous song! “Lonely Symphony” is nowhere near as memorable as “Unfinished Sympathy” though and that proved to be its undoing on Eurovision night as Frances trailed in a distant 10th place. It faired better on the UK singles chart where it peaked at a respectable No 25.

Twitter users watching this BBC4 repeat got themselves into a bit of a lather when they realised that Frances was wearing Union Jack underwear beneath her rather sheer dress. I wonder if a then 21 year old, pre-Spice Girls Geri Halliwell was watching back in 1994 and thinking “Hang on a minute. That’s interesting…”

Unlike the Breakers section , Ric Blaxill hadn’t jettisoned the ‘exclusive live by satellite’ slot and continued to keep perhaps misplaced faith with it in the same way that Todd Boehly still believes that Graham Potter is the best person to be my beloved Chelsea’s manager (for now). There’s no denying the size of the name who’s occupying that slot this week but yet again it seems to me to be a wholly uneventful…well…event.

As the onscreen caption states, Bruce Springsteen was enjoying his biggest ever hit with “Streets Of Philadelphia” which was up to No 2 by this point. Not only was the size of the hit impressive but also its longevity. It spent 7 weeks inside the Top 10 alone including a run of 4 where it placed no lower than No 3. Somehow though, The Boss couldn’t manage to topple some Dutch chancers who’d revived the Charleston from the top of the charts. The performance here might be interesting to Bruce aficionados (I know a few) but it’s a tad on the dull side isn’t it? OK, given the sombre mood of the track and the gravitas of the film it came from, you couldn’t expect Bruce to be jumping around stage as if he was singing “Dancing On The Dark” or something but it seems to disrupt the tempo of the show. The fact that it’s in black and white (mostly) doesn’t help. Maybe I’m missing the point. I probably am.

See, now Blaxill’s gone completely the other way mood wise. Talk about polar extremes! Some might say this was going from the sublime to the ridiculous. Get ready for S*M*A*S*H! Now, I spent the 90s working in record shops and so felt reasonably across what was happening in UK music but I have to admit that the ‘New wave of new wave’ was a scene that I don’t recall but it turns out that it was an actual thing and it wasn’t just some clever/nonsense line that Bruno Brookes came up with. Apparently some sort of Britpop forerunner, it was characterised by new bands who wore their original New Wave artists’ influences on their sleeves. All sounds a bit myopic to me. S*M*A*S*H were just one of the bands in the scene though the ones that I’m familiar with are surely more closely associated with Britpop – Sleeper, Echobelly, Shed Seven, Elastica…

So, S*M*A*S*H then. I’m assuming the name was a play on the title of Korean War based comedy drama M*A*S*H? They came from Welwyn Garden City, they made loud records with provocative, ban-inducing titles (“Lady Love Your C**t” anyone?) and somehow managed to get onto TOTP without having released a single (the first act ever to do so). Here’s @TOTPFacts on how they ended up on the show:

Although Pulp were hoping for a call that week ("Do You Remember The First Time?" had entered the top 40 at 33), #TOTP producer Ric Blaxill instead decided to take a punt on S*M*A*S*H, whose non-chart-eligible EP had charted in the album chart 28. "Shame" was the lead track.
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) February 24, 2023

S*M*A*S*H's Ed Borrie explains: "Our radio plugger… brought Ric Blaxill to see us in Luton at this sports hall… and then a couple of weeks later he had us on Top Of The Pops." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) February 24, 2023

Simples! OK, maybe not that simple. Their story does have a few more details. The song they performed here – “Shame” – was the lead track from an EP that chart regulations excluded from being eligible for the singles chart but which did qualify for the album chart where it reached No 26. They did finally get a proper hit single later in the year when “(I Want To) Kill Somebody” made No 26 but it’s controversial subject matter got it banned. Listening back to “Shame”, I have to say I don’t mind it. A bit derivative but then if you’re part of a scene whose name harks back to to another well established movement what do you expect? They seem like a prototype of the noisier moments of The Libertines. Just like their frontman Pete Doherty, I’m guessing S*M*A*S*H’s singer Ed Borrie had some issues with drug abuse given his wide-eyed, staring performance here. Surely he’d taken something beforehand? Sadly, I think I’m right. Here’s @TOTPFacts again:

S*M*A*S*H bassist Salvatore Alessi went on to join Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine, while drummer Rob Hague was in These Animal Men.
Singer Ed Borrie, meanwhile, disappeared into (in his words) "North London's drug scene". #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) February 24, 2023

Happily, Ed is on better form now and is still doing live gigs having supported the likes of My Life Story in 2019. One last thing, how did they get away with singing “You’re girlfriend’s a bitch” on pre-watershed, prime time TV?

We move from Ric Blaxill shaking things up with a cutting edge new band to yet another extreme of giving a part of the pop establishment a pat in the back. Bruno Brookes stands in front of a huge disc that he’s presenting to the Bee Gees to mark 30 years in the business and 100 million sales worldwide. This bit of staging was another small change – hadn’t Simon Mayo stood with a load of 2 Unlimited gold discs the other week as a prop to introduce them? The massive disc only serves to make Bruno look even smaller than he actually is and seems to have made him stumble over his words in his segue. “With me three members of the Bee Gees…” he begins. Aren’t you missing a ‘the’ there Bruno? How many more members of the Bee Gees did you think there were? In truth, it’s all just a big set up to promote their latest single “How To Fall In Love Part 1” and what a curious thing it is. It never seems to get going properly and is so lightweight that it’s hardly there at all. Nowhere near as accessible as previous Top 5 hit “For Whom The Bell Tolls”, it was also nowhere near as successful peaking at No 30. Another curious thing about this was why does Barry Gibb sing the whole song with his right hand in his pocket?

It’s the final week at the top for Doop with “Doop”. Can we just try to forget that this ever happened and never talk of it again? Great.

The play out music is “How Gee” by Black Machine. Yeah, I haven’t a clue either but it sounds very familiar presumably because it’s made up of a load of samples from other songs? Seems that was the case. Here’s @TOTPFacts again:

Sampled in Black Machine's "How Gee": some sax from "Soul Power 74" by Maceo & the Macks (1974) https://t.co/FgVufeq7J6, and a snippet of "Sho Yuh Right Sho Yuh Right" by Chuck Brown and The Soul Searchers (1985) https://t.co/ZvL0YvIFhN #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) February 24, 2023

… Plus vocals from "Rich Man" by St Paul (1987) https://t.co/V9gd5wYnQ7 and "Rock 'N Roll Dude" by Chubb Rock (1987) https://t.co/fwaJPsKxXM #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) February 24, 2023

Apparently they were an Italian electronic group that had a few hits in the 90s mainly in Austria and The Netherlands with “How Gee” being the biggest in the UK where it got to No 17. They’re the first act on the next show as well so heaven knows what I’ll find to write about them then!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Haddaway	Rock My Heart	Never happening
2	James	Say Something	Not the single but I have their Best Of album with it on
3	Madonna	I’ll Remember	Nope
4	Culture Beat	World In Your Hands	No
5	Frances Ruffelle	Lonely Symphony (We Will Be Free)	Not even patriotic duty made me buy this
6	Bruce Springsteen	Streets Of Philadelphia	Nah
7	SMASH	Shame	I did not
8	Bee Gees	How To Fall In Love Part 1	As if
9	Doop	Doop	See 1 above
10	Black Machine	How Gee	And no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001jf1w/top-of-the-pops-31031994

TOTP 24 MAR 1994

Posted on February 28, 2023 by 80stastic

This is the eighth show since new producer Ric Blaxill took over the TOTP reins and by my reckoning the breakdown of presenter appearances after bringing back the Radio 1 DJs is as follows:

Simon Mayo – 4
Mark Goodier – 2
Bruno Brookes – 1
Robbie Williams and Mark Owen from Take That (guest presenters) – 1

What was this blatant favouritism for Simon ‘Smug’ Mayo?! I’ve stated my dislike for him many times on this blog but he seems to be even more self satisfied (if that were possible) since returning to the show after the three year hiatus imposed by the Stanley Appel era. It’s as if he’s subliminally saying to the watching TV audience “See, told you the show would suffer if I wasn’t on it”. Tonight, he’s full of football related comments during his segues (Mayo is a Spurs supporter) to show…what exactly? That he was an original ‘lad’ before ‘lad culture’ when into hyperdrive in the mid 90s? Nob.

Before the opening titles of tonight’s show we get a message to camera from Salt ‘N’ Pepa advertising their upcoming appearance later on live by satellite from New York and then we’re straight into it. Opening the show are D:Ream with “U R The Best Thing” although Mayo seems to have confused them with “Groove Is In The Heart” hitmakers Deee-Lite judging by his intro. “OK. Deee-liteful, deee-lovely… err…D: Ream” he quips in his intro. Yes, I know he hasn’t really confused the two acts and that he’s trying out what he believes to be a humorous line but it just isn’t funny. At all. Or is he yet again trying to demonstrate his huge knowledge of pop music. Ooh look at me! I know about a record that was in the charts four years ago! I say again…nob.

It is D:Ream though who surely couldn’t believe their luck given the chart run they were on. Having managed to carve out a couple of medium sized hits the previous year with this track and “Things Can Only Get Better”, they must have thought that those needed to be consolidated on with some new hit material. The usual pop career strategy wasn’t for them though as they embarked upon an even more successful commercial run using the same songs. Talk about recycling; D:Ream were pop’s great environmentalists! In their defence, this was a Perfecto remix of the original track just as “Things Can Only Get Better” was remixed for re-release and they did then put out some different tracks from their album as their next two singles. Their had been speculation that they would move onto “Unforgiven” and “Star/ I Like It” which had also been Top 30 hits in 1993. There is no defence of Peter Cunnah’s chequed suits though. This version of “U R The Best Thing” peaked at No 4.

https://youtu.be/fCjZEAXyTU4

What’s this then? A track by Soul Asylum that isn’t “Runaway Train”? Yes it is and it’s title affords Simon Mayo the opportunity to air his first side-splitting football reference of the night. “And now it’s Soul Asylum playing Eric Cantona’s favourite record “Somebody To Shove” he tells us, so obviously pleased with himself. His comment needs putting in context 29 years on to make sense of it. Cantona had been sent off twice in four days for violent conduct in the week that this TOTP aired. Ok, we get it Mayo but it’s still not a genuinely entertaining line is it?

Anyway, enough of my disdain for the host, what about the music? It seems that Soul Asylum were doing a D:Ream in that they were in a cycle of re-releasing singles one after the other. Their most well known song “Runaway Train” was originally released in June of 1993 and came to a premature halt at No 37. “Somebody To Shove” was pushed out as the follow up in the September and peaked at No 34. Then “Runaway Train” was given the green light again and this time ran as far as No 7 over the Christmas period. And finally “Somebody To Shove” was put into motion as its follow up for a second time in March 1993. I think I need some asylum for my poor brain let alone my soul. Was it all with it? Well, “Somebody To Shove” peaked two places higher on the UK charts second time around at No 32 and it’s a decent rock tune in the vein of recent chart stars Gin Blossoms but it didn’t have the cut through pull of “Runaway Train” in the same way that casual punters never went for any of Extreme’s material other than “More Than Words”. As for Eric Cantona, there was much worse to come the following year in the shoving stakes.

It’s another outing for that live by satellite performance from New York of “Dry County” by Bon Jovi next which acts as the soundtrack to the chart countdown. I haven’t got much else to say about this one having already discussed it previously so I’ll instead talk about their single previous to this one. Why? Well, it was called “I Believe” which was also the title of two different hit singles in the chart around this time by Marcella Detroit and Sounds Of Blackness. It got me thinking about how many other songs there are called “I Believe”. Well, there’s EMF’s follow up to “Unbelievable”, Tears For Fears’ fifth single from their “Songs From The Big Chair” album and the song that both Frankie Laine and the execrable Robson & Jerome took to No 1. My personal favourite though, if we ignore the brackets, is Stevie Wonder’s “I Believe (When I Fall In Love It Will Be Forever)”. As Alan Partridge might say ‘lovely stuff’.

I’m guessing that if asked to come up with a list of boy bands from the 90s, Worlds Apart wouldn’t be one of the first names on it. Take That? Obviously. Boyzone? Of course. Westlife? Indubitably. East 17? Were they a boy band? Go on then. After that you might have to delve a bit deeper to come up with names like 5ive, 911, A1 and Another Level. Then there’s the American counterparts that made huge impacts both sides of the Atlantic. New Kids On The Block, Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, even Hanson maybe? Worlds Apart though? Well if you were asking the question in the rest of Europe, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Hong Kong etc then they might well be the first and immediate response. They were massive in those territories, immersing themselves in people’s consciousness to the extent that they had their own brand of orange juice and Haribo sweets in the shape of their heads! The reaction to them in the UK was lukewarm at best though. Their albums absolutely tanked over here and they only troubled the Top 40 singles chart compilers on four occasions with their best return being this No 15 hit, a cover of The Detroit Spinners’ “Could It Be I’m Falling In Love”.

Looking at them here, they have all the classic boy band ingredients:

There’s five of them
At least two of them have the 90s curtains haircut
One of them looks like John Barrowman
They’re all wearing oversized, unbuttoned shirts over T-shirts and one of them has the obligatory waistcoat on
Their doing a cover version

It’s all very predictable but also validates their boy band credentials so why weren’t they bigger over here. Perhaps we should just not worry about it and thank our lucky stars they weren’t. Where were David Grant and Jaki Graham when you needed them though?

Back with Simon Mayo and he’s in the groove now with his football-related segues. After having referenced French striker Jean-Pierre Papin in his intro to Worlds Apart – his beloved Spurs were reportedly interested in signing him from AC Milan but it never came to anything (could it be were falling in love with Jean -Pierre Papin? Geddit?) – he’s now resorted to taking the piss out of other teams. In his sights tonight were Swindon Town who were struggling at the bottom of the Premier League at the time. “OK, 9 – 10 – 12 – 12 – 10 – 9 – 7. No, not Swindon’s goal against tally, it’s the last eight chart positions for Reel 2 Real.” Right, I’ve fact-checked this statement and whilst the chart positions are correct, Simon appears to not be able to count as there the last seven chart positions not eight you arse! So far tonight we have established they Mayo is not funny, a football bully and his grasp of even the most basic of numbers is appalling. What a guy!

Anyway, about Reel 2 Real featuring Mad Stuntman (to quote their full artist title), that is quite the rollercoaster of a chart journey. Their single “I Like To Move It” certainly had legs. It would ultimately spend 11 weeks inside the Top 10 and 15 inside the Top 20. In total it spent 5 months on the Top 100. Given all of the above, why had TOTP ignored it until now? After all, it was one one hell of an ear worm although it wasn’t especially welcome in my auditory system. Wasn’t this just a 2 Unlimited / K7 hybrid? And why didn’t they call it “I Like To Move It (Move It)”?

Impressive as its 1994 chart life was, that was nothing to the legacy it has amassed since. It has been heavily used in the Madagascar film franchise and has also made its way into the gaming world via Singstar Dance and Fortnite. I’m pretty sure it was also the inspiration for this Top 5 hit later in the year…

Now, after a run of over nine years, we have to say goodbye to the Breakers section which was jettisoned by new producer Ric Blaxill after this show. It first appeared on TOTP in January 1985 and whilst I understand the concept behind it, the slot had become unwieldy and unworkable with often as many as five tracks crammed into a 2 minute time frame. Anyway, for what it’s worth, these were the last of them starting with The Brand New Heavies. Having garnered critical acclaim with their first two albums – the eponymous debut and “Heavy Rhyme Experience, Vol 1.”, the band would discover the secret to combining that with commercial popularity with the release of third album “Brother Sister”. A platinum selling, No 4 charting collection of songs, its appeal was no doubt helped by the inclusion of the band’s cover of Maria Muldaur’s “Midnight At The Oasis” which weirdly was omitted from the US version of the album. I’m getting ahead of myself though. The lead single was “Dream On Dreamer”. A radio friendly, acid jazz infused soul/pop track, it would peak at No 15 becoming their biggest hit at the time.

Here come Roxette next with the video for their single “Sleeping In My Car”. The promo is set in what seems to be an underground car park and reminds me of the video for Duran Duran’s “The Chauffeur” the final scenes of which are set in a similar location. The Duran video is filmed in black and white (as are parts of Roxette’s) and was inspired by Liliana Cavani’s erotic and disturbing cult film The Night Porter. Whilst “The Chauffeur” is all very stylised and has high artistic pretensions, the “Sleeping In My Car” promo seems a lot less aesthetic and if it was influenced by a film, it was probably Rita, Sue And Bob Too.

The final (ever) Breaker is one of those aforementioned “I Believe” songs from Sounds Of Blackness. The track was written and produced by the legendary Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis (who produced the rest of parent album “Africa To America: The Journey Of The Drum”). Apparently they were convinced to work with the 40 strong collective after taking their long time collaborator Janet Jackson to one of their shows and witnessed her enthusiastic response to them.

“I Believe” peaked at a very impressive No 17 and they followed it up with “Gloryland”, the official theme song of World Cup USA 94 which they recorded with Daryl Hall.

Time for that Salt ‘N’ Pepa live by satellite exclusive now. Simon Mayo is back with his spectacularly unfunny one liners, blathering on about Finsbury Park tube station but it doesn’t distract from the performance. It should be stated, of course, that “Whatta Man” was a collaboration with En Vogue. Up to this point, both artists had a chequered history when it came to UK hit singles. For En Vogue that meant a huge debut song in 1990 (“Hold On” – No 5) followed by three releases that all failed to chart. Then another massive song in 1992 (“My Lovin’ (You’re Never Gonna Get It) – No 4) then a run of three middling hits and two chart flops before “Whatta Man”. As for Salt ‘N’ Pepa, it was a similar story with huge hits (“Push It”, “Twist And Shout”, “Let’s Talk About Sex”) punctuated by smaller ones (“Shake Your Thang”, “Shoop”, “You Showed Me”). It was probably mutually beneficial to both parties to join forces to seek out a huge record.

And whatta hit! A No 7 in the UK and No 3 in America, it sold 200,000 copies in the former and 1,000,000 in the latter. It’s not hard to hear why. The combination of En Vogue’s silky vocals with Salt ‘N’ Pepa’s sublime, chiming rhymes made for a killer track. The performance here is full of sass and swagger and a large cast but I’m not sure that En Vogue are any of them. That’s not them on vocals at the back of the set is it? So what happened next? For Salt ‘N’ Pepa, “Whatta Man” would prove to be the final time they made the UK Top 10 though they did return to the charts on four further occasions though none of those entries got any higher than No 19. En Vogue faired better. Their 1997 album “EV3” went platinum in the States and furnished them with one last huge hit in “Don’t Let Go (Love)” which went to No 5 in the UK and No 2 in the US.

The Take That juggernaut continues to play fast and loose with chart records. “Everything Changes” was the title track of their second album but it was also their fourth consecutive single to enter the charts at No 1 which it will do the week after next. Their first chart topper to feature Robbie Williams on lead vocals (he took on that role for the band’s cover of Barry Manilow’s “Could It Be Magic” but that peaked at No 3), it was also specifically written for him by Gary Barlow as a deliberate ploy. I have to say that I always found it quite weak and insubstantial but then again, if it had appeared on the second (much poppier) Wham! album “Make It Big”, would we have been talking about yet another George Michael classic?

The Top 10 countdown gives Simon Mayo another opportunity to showcase his amazing talent for delivering lines that only he thinks are funny. “Now the Dutch have a great tradition when it comes to the UK No 1. There’s Pussycat and “Mississippi”…and erm…well “Doop” by Doop that’s it as far as I can think…” he deadpans to camera. Once more, as well as being humourless he is factually incorrect. He’s missed out 2 Unlimited* and “No Limit” which was a UK chart topper just 12 months before! Surely he can’t have forgotten that or did he purposely omit them to try and make his ‘joke’ work? My God, I think I’d rather listen to this Charleston nonsense one more time than year any more from Mayo!

*There have been numerous Dutch DJ types post 1994 to ascend to the No 1 spot plus who could forget Vengaboys in 1999?!

The play out song is “Hi De Ho” by K7. The follow up to “Come Baby Come”, this was an example of something called the swing revival. Or was it retro swing? Or even neo-swing? Whatever its name, it was a movement that displayed a renewed interest in the swing genre of jazz. Yeah, must have passed me by as well. I mean, I remember there was a minor hit single in 1988 by the Reggae Philharmonic Orchestra that was a cover of Cab Calloway’s “Minnie The Moocher” but that surely doesn’t count as a whole movement? Yes, there was also the Doop phenomenon but did that count as swing music? A quick bit of research tells me that there was more to it than that but it mostly happened in America and was instigated by Los Angeles’ Royal Crown Revue band. These jump blues revivalists appeared in the Jim Carrey film The Mask whose soundtrack heavily featured swing music and indeed K7’s “Hi De Ho” track. The video for the song features a cameo from the aforementioned Cab Calloway himself and of course, he originally recorded “Hi De Ho Man’ upon which the K7 single is based. I’m pretty sure that I owned a copy of The Mask soundtrack (and therefore the K7 track) by default as there was a promo copy of it floating around the Our Price where I was working at the time so I took it home. Don’t think I ever played it and have no idea where it is now.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	D:Ream	U R The Best Thing	Nah
2	Soul Asylum	Somebody To Shove	No
3	Bon Jovi	Dry County	No but I had a promo copy of the album
4	Worlds Apart	Could It Be I’m Falling In Love	As if
5	Reel 2 Real featuring Mad Stuntman	I Like To Move It	Negative
6	The Brand New Heavies	Dream On Dreamer	No but I think my wife had the album
7	Roxette	Sleeping In My Car	It’s another no
8	Sounds Of Blackness	I Believe	I did not
9	Salt ‘N’ Pepa and En Vogue	Whatta Man	Liked it, didn’t buy it
10	Take That	Everything Changes	Of course not
11	Doop	Doop	Nope
12	K7	Hi De Ho	No but I had it on that promo copy of The Mask soundtrack

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001j65b/top-of-the-pops-24031994

TOTP 17 MAR 1994

Posted on February 23, 2023 by 80stastic

The era of the TOTP ‘golden mic’ is here! Well, not here as in the here and now but in March 1994 where we are up to with these BBC4 repeats and when the idea was first used. This was the brainchild of new producer Ric Blaxill to shake things up with some guest presenters from the worlds of pop and comedy (mainly) and he was certainly on the money with the first holders of the mic. Take That were the most popular band in the country and their two most popular members were Mark Owen and Robbie Williams (I’m guessing). Unfortunately, they weren’t the best at presenting (possibly due to the distraction of the attention of the young girls in the audience) but at least the change had been set in motion.

And so to the music and we start with a huge song whose legacy would far outlast its sales history. Not that it didn’t sell many copies (it did – 600,000 according to Wikipedia) nor that it didn’t achieve a high chart peak (its No 5 position easily outdid any numbers that the band had done previously) but it feels to me like it was really the start of something – we weren’t sure what it was or what it would look like but it was coming.

“Girls & Boys” by Blur surprisingly only remained on the UK Top 40 for five weeks and only two of those were in the Top 10 (hence my comment above about sales history) but that doesn’t detract from its impact. On first hearing this just sounded mental! What’s he singing about? Girls who want boys to be girls?! WTF?! It was bewildering and utterly transfixing at the same time. Then comes the realisation that this is Blur – the indie band who seemed to have struggled to find an identity for themselves after their first hit “There’s No Other Way” introduced them and their frankly silly haircuts. (apart from drummer Dave Rowntree of course) back in 1991. Sophomore album “Modern Life Is Rubbish” saw them reposition themselves as the second coming of The Kinks and The Small Faces with its theme of Englishness and stance of fighting back against the pervasiveness of American culture. It had also seen them settle into a pattern of middling sized hits – the three singles from it made Nos 28 (twice) and 26. Suddenly they were straight into the charts, week one at No 5 with this song that sounded like nothing they had done before. This was a seismic change.

Apparently inspired by the hedonistic clubbing scene in Magaluf, it was named single of the year by both Melody Maker and the NME. So what was it that the song was heralding? Britpop? I’m not sure but the impact of the song was made clear to me one morning at work when our shop cleaner who was lovely and always made me a cup of tea first thing asked me if she could buy the single on my staff discount before she finished her shift. This was totally against the rules of course but how could I refuse? Anyway, this was the first time she’d ever mentioned music to me despite the fact that she was working in a record shop every morning but something about “Girls & Boys” made her not only talk about it but want to buy it.

It was, of course, the lead track from the “Parklife” album which was released about six weeks later in late April. Many, many words have been written about that album and I’m not arrogant enough to think I have anything new and interesting to add to the collection of essays, articles and posts. However, for the record, my recollection of hearing it for the first time on the shop stereo was that it was loud. Yes, that was the extent of my critical faculties when it came to appraising Blur’s iconic masterpiece. It was loud. Sheesh!

Was this Alison Moyet’s last ever time on TOTP? I think it might have been. A twelve year run starting on 29th April 1982 with the debut appearance of Yazoo with “Only You”, through the big solo hits of the mid 80s to this last hurrah in 1994 with “Whispering Your Name”. Quite a ride.

I wrote about Alison’s struggles for artistic freedom with record company Sony in the last post. This single was a danceified version of a more acoustic take that features on her album “Essex” that Sony insisted on to make it a more commercial package. Those wrangles would lead to Alison eventually leaving Sony but it would take eight years before she was released from her contract with them. Wanting to maximise every bit of revenue out of Alison, Sony released her first Best Of album in 1995 called “Singles” which, somewhat surprisingly given that her last major chart hit prior to “Whispering Your Name” had been in 1987, went to No 1 selling 600,000 copies. Sony still weren’t finished there though. The following year they rereleased the album but with a bonus CD of live recordings taken from Alison’s last UK tour. The expanded album charted again inside the Top 20.

Freed from Sony, Moyet has gone on to record five solo albums including the critically lauded “Other” in 2017 and, to my mind (and ears), remains one of the finest singers the UK has ever produced. TOTP Rewind salutes you Alison.

https://youtu.be/owMkj-PjjAM

Despite his legendary rock status, by 1994 Bruce Springsteen had only visited the Top 10 of the UK singles charts three times and all of those entries came from his most commercial album “Born In The USA” (and one of those owed its success to being double A-sided with “Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town” if we’re being honest). Then came “Streets Of Philadelphia” which would take him all the way to No 2 becoming (and what surely will remain) his biggest ever hit here. Written specifically for the Jonathan Demme directed Philadelphia, it won an Oscar in the category of Best Original Song, four Grammys and a Golden Globe Award.

The film was one of the first mainstream Hollywood movies to address the issues of HIV/AIDS and homophobia and would earn Tom Hanks the first of two consecutive Best Actor Oscars for his role as gay corporate lawyer Andrew Beckett who believes he is fired from his firm as a result of his diagnosis with AIDS. I caught the film at the cinema at the time and found it a very affecting piece. Springsteen’s sombre song certainly added to its power. Even goofy Robbie Williams displays a moment of seriousness in his intro to the song when urging people to go and see it as they might learn something from it.

The video of Bruce walking along various Philadelphia locations is pitched just right to provide a visual montage for the song. It wasn’t, however, the first piece of music from a film that included such a visual tour of the city:

I’m on record a few times in this blog as stating that I’m not a fan of Björk mainly because of not being able to appreciate her rather unique vocals. I have to say though that revisiting her back catalogue via her TOTP appearances is starting to make me reconsider. This is the fourth single of hers that I’m quite liking. After “Venus As A Boy”, “Play Dead” and “Big Time Sensuality”, I presumed the run would come to an end with “Violently Happy” but not quite.

The fifth and final single released from her debut solo album…erm…”Debut”, whilst it isn’t the sort of thing that would ordinarily be top of my go to playlist, there’s something rather captivating about this hypnotic track. Simple but addictive House beats combine with Björk’s acquired taste delivery of lyrics that speak of a dangerous state of being when separated from an all encompassing passionate lover. It’s heady stuff. To paraphrase Howard Jones, these BBC4 repeats are challenging my preconceived ideas. “Violently Happy” peaked at No 13.

The second of three consecutive female solo artists on the show tonight as Tori Amos makes a quick return to the charts with “Pretty Good Year”. The second single from her “Under The Pink” album and the follow up to surprise No 4 hit “Cornflake Girl”, this was also a Top Tenner peaking at No 7. Tori was starting to become a big hitter in chart terms. However, nothing would ever come close to replicating those hits apart from the 1996 remix by Armand van Helden of “Professional Widow” which unfeasibly went to No 1.

“Pretty Good Year” is…well…pretty good but doesn’t have the kooky power of its predecessor although it does have a rather spooky eight bars near the end where Tori wails on about things melting and whether her baby is alright. Nothing to do with The Wizard Of Oz or the Wicked Witch of the West (“I’m melting, I’m melting!”), Tori is on record as saying that it’s about a letter she received from a fan called Greg who told her that he felt that the best parts of his life had already happened and that his future was finished despite being just 23. Tori stated that she saw that pattern repeated in young men in every country she visited. I guess learning to love yourself isn’t always easy but as George Benson once sang it “is the greatest love of all”.

After two let’s say left-field or perhaps outré or maybe even uncompromising female singer-songwriters in Björk and Tori Amos comes someone who it strikes me is currently desperately trying (too hard) to be all three of those things to remain relevant. Madonna was still one of the biggest names on the planet in 1994 but today she seems determined to provide the press with ammunition to knock her down. The whole Madame X project made for some unflattering headlines as has her appearance recently, raising concerns within her fans about hitting the cosmetic surgery a bit too hard lately. Maybe she can restore some of her former glories with her recently announced Celebration Greatest Hits tour though it’ll have to be quite a show to justify the ticket prices quoted online.

Anyway, back to 1994 and, as I said, Madonna was still a huge global superstar but she had rather upset a few people with her projects in the 90s so far. A coffee table book called Sex, an album entitled “Erotica” and a starring role in an erotic thriller called Body Of Evidence had lowered the tone rather so a rather safe ballad was released by Warner Bros. “I’ll Remember” was yet another song from a film soundtrack but Madonna, for once, was not in the movie it was from. After “Into The Groove” (Desperately Seeking Susan), “Who’s That Girl” (Who’s That Girl) and “This Used To Be My Playground” (A League Of Their Own) had all been from flicks with Madge herself in prominent roles, she was nowhere near the cast for With Honors which I’ve never seen but which sounds like a stinker from its reviews online. Its soundtrack however did sound interesting. Featuring the likes of The Cult, Lyle Lovett, Belly doing Tom Jones’ “It’s Not Unusual”, Kristin Hersh and Michael Stipe, plus a track by Seattle grunge rockers Mudhoney called “Run Shithead Run”, it might be worth seeking out. Next to that lot, Madonna sounds positively mainstream but maybe that was the intention.

“I’ll Remember” is a pleasant enough ballad being built around a choppy, synthesised keyboard part though it wasn’t a million miles away from her last single release “Rain”. The video is very similar to the promo for it as well with both featuring Madonna with black, short cropped hair in a recording studio. All seems a bit unimaginative and last minute to me. What do I know though as “I’ll Remember” was nominated for a Grammy and a Golden Globe award (she lost out to Springsteen’s “Streets Of Philadelphia” for the Grammy). The single did the business commercially as well going to No 2 in the US and No 7 over here.

New TOTP producer Ric Blaxill was tinkering with the show’s format rather than being the new broom in his early weeks. Yes, he had got rid of presenters Tony Dortie and Mark Franklin and brought back some Radio 1 DJs to replace them but other changes took their time to appear. The titles and theme tune were still the same and features like the Breakers and live by satellite performances were still there. However, all would change in time with the Breakers being first for the chop in just a couple of weeks. Another innovation was the showcasing of songs that weren’t actually in the Top 40. We’d already seen some play out songs at the end of the show not go on to be fully fledged chart hits and now here was a proper slot for a single not actually in the Top 40 at the time of the performance.

Roachford had struggled to match the success of their biggest hit, 1989’s “Cuddly Toy” in the years that followed it despite releasing some decent material. By 1994, they were onto their third studio album from which “Only To Be With You” was the lead single. The single was at No 41 at the time of this TOTP appearance but that exposure propelled it to a high of No 21 eventually as well as spending three weeks at No 22. It’s a lively, soul pop number with Andrew Roachford delivering a good vocal and parent album “Permanent Shade Of Blue” sold steadily if unremarkably off the back of it. I’m pretty sure I saw them live at The Academy in Manchester around this time but I think I only went as I got in for free thanks to the Sony rep John who used to sell into the Market Street store I was working at. He must have got me on their guest list or given me a free ticket or something.

Andrew Roachford is still making and releasing music to this day plus he was the vocalist for Mike + The Mechanics for a few years. He was awarded an MBE for services to music in 2019. By the way, I can’t find a clip of the TOTP performance so the official video will have to suffice.

Something odd is going on with the onscreen graphics in this TOTP. The show started off with each artist getting its own little description to go with its basic name and song title details. So Blur got ‘New entry in Top 5’, Alison Moyet got ‘Climber in Top 30’, Bruce Springsteen had ‘Highest New Entry Björk even received ‘Double Platinum Album Seller’! And then it pretty much stopped. Tori Amos got nothing at all (not even the basic artist/song title tile. Neither did Roachford and nor did the next act Roxette. What was all that about?! Did the graphics person get distracted and leave their desk for about 15 minutes?!

Anyway, Roxette are indeed back with a new single called “Sleeping In My Car”, the lead single from their fifth studio album “Crash! Boom! Bang!”. Although the album shifted 100,000 copies in the UK, it was nowhere near the double platinum sales of “Joyride” just three years before. That didn’t stop muggins here from completely over ordering it at the Our Price in Market Street, Manchester where I was working. Oh dear. What was I thinking?! The single did OK peaking at No 14 though all subsequent releases from it suffered from a case of diminishing returns.

“Sleeping In My Car” is orthodox Roxette although the lyrics are filthier than normal :

My heart is going boom
There’s a strange taste in my mouth
Baby babe, I’m moving real fast
So try to hold on
Try to hold on
Sleeping in my car, I will undress you
Sleeping in my car, I will caress you
Staying in the backseat of my car, making out
So come out tonight
I’ll take you for a ride
This steamy ol’ wagon
The radio is getting wild
Baby babe, we’re moving so fast
I try to hang on
Oh, I try to hang on
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Per Gessle
Sleeping in My Car lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Chappell Music, Inc

Blimey! I haven’t heard lyrics like that about sexual shenanigans in the back of a car since Bon Jovi’s “Never Say Goodbye”:

Rememberin’ when we used to park
On Butler Street, out in the dark
Remember when we lost the keys and
You lost more than that in my backseat, baby
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Jon Bon Jovi / Richard S. Sambora
Never Say Goodbye lyrics © Bon Jovi Publishing, Polygram Int. Publishing, Inc.

Marie looks like she’s had a haircut for this performance but that isn’t what really catches my attention. No, that would be the drummer who drops a stick midway through the song and sheepishly has to go and pick it up. Crash! Boom! Bang! indeed.

“Doop” by Doop? I’d rather have “Doot- Doot” by Freur or ‘squiggle’ as they were otherwise known. Yes, 10 years before Prince tried rebranding himself as a symbol, these Welsh synth poppers beat him to it. They gave in to record company pressure for a more pronounceable name and “Doot-Doot” was their biggest hit peaking at No 59. They would morph into Underworld of “Born Slippy” fame in the 90s.

What has this got to do with Doop?! Nothing but it’s far more interesting than that awful Charleston nonsense that was still at No 1.

https://youtu.be/jSySwTpTZG8

The play out tune is “U R The Best Thing” by D:Ream. This was the follow up to the No 1 single “Things Can Only Get Better” and in a rather unlikely twist of fate, was the second time it had been the follow up release to that single. Back in January 1993, TCOGB had made No 24 on its initial issue and “U R The Best Thing” outdid it by 5 places when it followed it in the April. In fact, this 1994 release was the third time it had been out after being D:Ream’s very first single in 1992 when it peaked at No 72. It was a very confusing time!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Blur	Girls & Boys	No but I bought Parklife (the album). Didn’t we all?
2	Alison Moyet	Whispering Your Name	Nope
3	Bruce Springsteen	Streets Of Philadelphia	No but I must have it on something
4	Björk	Violently Happy	I did not
5	Tori Amos	Pretty Good Year	No
6	Madonna	I’ll Remember	Negative
7	Roachford	Only To Be With You	It’s another no
8	Roxette	Sleeping In My Car	Nah
9	Doop	Doop	Of course not
10	D:Ream	U R The Best Thing	And no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001j656/top-of-the-pops-17031994

TOTP 10 MAR 1994

Posted on February 20, 2023 by 80stastic

Welcome to TOTP Rewind where I, a man now in his mid-50s, have spent the last six years reviewing every BBC4 repeat of the fondly remembered music show. Why have I done/continue to do this? It’s a question I have repeatedly asked myself especially when they start to back up and I find myself in catch up mode as I am now. Well, I’m a nostalgic person and hiding away from present day concerns with a trip down memory lane seems quite appealing right now. Mark Goodier is our host for tonight’s show so let’s do it…

We start with a belting tune from Primal Scream. After the critical, commercial and chemical highs of the groundbreaking, inaugural Mercury Music Prize winning “Screamadelica” album, the band went in a different direction for the follow up “Give Out But Don’t Give Up”. Rejecting the acid house beats that informed its predecessor, they embraced a retro, rock ‘n’ blues sound that was no more evident than on lead single “Rocks”. The very definition of a stomper, I liked the kitchen sink approach to it in that they threw everything but it into the mix. It kicks off with a purposeful opening drum beat before being joined by that muscular guitar that elicits a searing, slide of the fretboard and then it really gets going. A T-Rex style riff hammers out the song’s template before Bobby Gillespie delivers the those opening eight lines:

Dealers keep dealin’, thieves keep thievin’
Whores keep whorin’, junkies keep scorin’
Trade is on the meat rack, strip joints full of hunchbacks
Bitches keep a bitchin’, clap just keeps itchin’
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Robert Young / Bobby Gillespie / Andrew Innes
Rocks lyrics © Complete Music Ltd.

How did they get past the BBC censor?! I don’t think there’s ever been a sanitised radio edit of the song has there? Apparently, Theresa May walked off stage to “Rocks” following her speech at the Tory Party conference in 2011. For a woman who is on record as stating that the naughtiest thing she had evet done was to run through fields of wheat as a child, it does seem an unlikely song choice. However, if you factor in that she was Home Secretary at the time, the fact that she chose a song that includes lyrics like “dealers keep dealing”, “thieves keep thieving” and “junkies keep scoring” hardly speaks well of her ability to keep law and order.

Reaction to this ‘new’ Primal Scream sound was mixed. Some (like me) loved it while others found it too derivative and accused the band of just doing their best Rolling Stones impression. I think retailers expected “Rocks” to do big things sales wise though. I recall that we had a big scale out of the single from Head Office at the Our Price I was working in at the time but although it performed well initially leading the band to achieving their second highest chart peak ever of No 7, it fell away quickly. Maybe the release of the album just three weeks later had something to do with it.

The original recordings of the album were made in Memphis using the legendary Muscle Shoals rhythm section but were rejected by Creation boss Alan McGee. Said recordings eventually surfaced in 2018 and an entertaining documentary about the rediscovery of them was aired on the BBC. There wouldn’t be another Primal Scream album for three years when “Vanishing Point” appeared which was the first album to feature ex-Stone Roses bassist Mani who had joined the band in 1996. I was working in the Stockport Our Price by then with original Roses bassist Pete as my manager. I distinctly remember Mani coming into the shop one day to have a catch up with Pete but also to buy up all the Primal Scream albums we had so he could learn the bass parts.

The performance here with Denise Johnson on vocals alongside Bobby Gillespie is just glorious. Sadly, the band have seen much tragedy in recent years with three members dying fairly close to each other starting with Robert ‘Throb’ Young in 2014, then the aforementioned Denise Johnson in 2020 and finally Martin Duffy just last year.

Now, what links M People with Primal Scream? Apart from being on the same TOTP together and both having recordings with very similar titles (“called “Movin’ On Up” and “Moving On Up”) obviously. Well, they both have had a song used to soundtrack a speech at a Tory Party conference. Yes, just as Theresa May used “Rocks” in 2011, the six-week Prime Minister Liz Truss used the aforementioned “Moving On Up” in 2022. There’s more similarities though. Both artists were extremely pissed off that their material had been used by a political party they were adamantly opposed to and both songs used included lyrics that were totally unsuited to the purpose for which the song was chosen in the first place. Given her precarious position as Prime Minister, did nobody in her inner sanctum listen to these lyrics?

You’ve done me wrong, your time is up
You took a sip from the devil’s cup
You broke my heart, there’s no way back
Move right out of here, baby, go on pack your bags

Just who do you think you are?
Stop actin’ like some kind of star
Just who do you think you are?

Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Mike Pickering / Paul Heard
Moving On Up lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Royalty Network, Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Chappell Music, Inc

FFS! Anyway, M People are on the show to perform “Renaissance” not “Moving On Up” which was their fifth Top 10 hit in just over a year. Quite the achievement. This was the fourth and final single released from the “Elegant Slumming” album and was a track that many had expected for a while to be given such a release seeing as it had been used as the title song to early reality TV show The Living Soap. It would also provide the title for the band’s 11 disc 2020 retrospective box set.

There’s a little teaser trailer before the next artist as we cross to New York for a roof top chat with Bon Jovi who are on the show later doing an exclusive live by satellite performance. Presumably new producer Ric Blaxill wanted to make more of this slot by working in a bit of extra mileage with it courtesy of this little clip which actually gets Jon Bon Jovi to introduce the next song. It’s quite a neat trick and works quite well in the safe hands of the unflappable frontman.

Said next artist is Janet Jackson and like her music or not (and I don’t especially), you have to admit she’s prolific. Her discography tells me she has released 70 singles during her career and this one – “Because Of Love” – was the 10th of the 90s already. The fourth of six singles released in the UK from her “Janet” album, it was the follow up to the surprisingly robust Christmas No 6 hit “Again”. In a ever more familiar trend for singles in general, it would get no further than its entry week high of No 19 (see also Primal Scream’s “Rocks”). By the end of the decade, singles would be in one week and out the next on a regular basis due to record company pricing strategies with heavily discounted prices in week one.

It’s not one of Janet’s more memorable tunes despite the “shoop, shoop, doop, doop” hook she sings. Apparently, it was her first single since “The Pleasure Principle” in 1987 to miss the Top 5 in the US and is regarded as one of the last New Jack Swing records to make the charts.

From “Doop Doop” courtesy of Janet Jackson to “Doop” courtesy of…well…Doop. This Charleston based dance track was the highest new entry of the week straight in at No 3 on its way to the top of the charts. So what the Hell was all this all about? Well, they were a Dutch production duo who hit upon the ludicrous idea of added a house beat to a big band sample and turned it into a European dance craze. Supposedly this was always going to be a huge hit due to the buzz created in the clubs for this record but nowhere was it a bigger hit than in the UK. Yay, well done us!

As there’s no lyrics in this apart from the occasional “doop”, it’s left to a load of dancers obviously dressed in 1920s style dresses and headgear to deliver some sort of performance. If it wasn’t from the obligatory two male DJ nerds lurking around at the back of the stage (one looking like Rick Wakeman), this could be a dance routine by Pan’s People. I know Ric Blaxill had brought back some of the Radio 1 DJs from the 80s as hosts of the show but this was ridiculous!

Doop would become only the third ever Dutch act to have a UK No 1 after Pussycat with “Mississippi” and “No Limit” by 2 Unlimited. In a bizarre twist of fate, it would become the first instrumental chart topper since “Eye Level” by the Simon Park Orchestra in 1973 which was the theme tune for Van der Valk about a Dutch detective. And that reference just might be more oblique than the angle from which Marco Van Basten scored his wonder goal for Holland in the 1988 European Championships.

A largely forgotten hit next though a pretty good song. Just two short years after Shakespear’s Sister took “Stay” to No 1 for six weeks, Marcella Detroit and Siobhan Fahey’s working relationship had been dissolved and the former was striking out on her own with a solo album. Wikipedia tells me that it wasn’t her debut though as that came in 1982 after a protracted gestation period but failed to sell in any territory. Marcella looks pretty different on the cover with an 80s perm and highlights. Her transformation into a Louise Brooks coiffured model type is almost as huge a change as that of Alanis Morrisette who made a similar image change from her early incarnations to her commercial peak.

So, 12 years and one pop duo later came her sophomore album “Jewel” which got mixed press reviews but which sold reasonably well going to No 15 in the charts. The lead single was “I Believe” which also sold steadily rising to No 11. Its a very accomplished, nicely produced song which makes the most of Marcella’s dynamic yet pure vocals. It probably should have been a bigger hit.

The performance here employs a very basic black and white to colour change just at the moment where the song really blooms at the chorus. I wonder if whoever came up with that were really pleased with themselves? To be fair, I was when, as a student at Sunderland Polytechnic, our group came up with the same wheeze when producing a video as part of a module. Our plot revolved around a bored student falling asleep in a tedious lecture and daydreaming about being pushed into a swimming pool at which point he wakes up. We called it Wet Dream (genius!) and had the lecture part in black and white and the dream sequence in colour (also genius!). I really must find it out and get it online one day.

Anyway, back to Marcella (or Marcy as host Mark Goodier calls her). We (my wife and some friends) were supposed to go and see her live at the Academy in Manchester but she called off the gig at the last minute. We all went out drinking at a pub called Briton’s Protection instead. My friend Robin was delighted as he hadn’t wanted to go to see Marcella in the first place and the pub had his favourite ale (Jennings) on tap. Fast forward 25 years and Marcella and Siobhan would work out their differences and reunite for a tour and EP of new material. I never did see Marcella live but Robin continues to enjoy a nice pint of Jennings to this day.

https://youtu.be/lYE15R-KGfY

Some Breakers now starting with The Beautiful South and their new single “Good As Gold (Stupid As Mud)”. I seem to remember many people believing the title to be “Carry On Regardless” due to the phrase featuring heavily in the lyrics and also possibly because of the Carry On film of the same name. The band hadn’t released anything in 1993 so this was a taster from new album “Miaow”. It was still cast from the same mould as some of their earlier material with catchy melodies and socially observant lyrics to the fore but there had been one big change since we last saw/heard them. Vocalist Briana Corrigan had left the band with rumours abound that she was less than impressed by some of Paul Heaton’s lyrics including on the single “36D” which criticised the glamour industry by making targets out of the models. Briana was replaced by Jacqui Abbott who would stay with the band for four albums before leaving and then rekindling her creative relationship with Heaton in 2014.

Sales of the album would not halt the decline that third album “0898” had suffered from after predecessors “Welcome To The Beautiful South” and “Choke” had both gone platinum but by the end of 1994 they would have the Christmas No 1 album and the second best selling record of the whole year in their first Best Of album “Carry On Up The Charts” (Heaton was clearly a bit of a fan of the Carry On franchise). For the second time in the band’s history, the artwork for the album’s cover got them into hot water. After thejr debut received a ban from Woolworths for originally featuring a woman with a gun in her mouth, “Miaow” had to undergo a change of image as well when HMV objected to the picture of a crowd of dogs seated in a music hall with a gramophone on stage as it impinged in their legendary logo.

“Good As Gold (Stupid As Mud)” remains one of the Beautiful South’s most well known songs I think despite it only making it to No 23 in the charts. The follow up would be the second song made famous by Harry Nilsson to return to the charts this year after Mariah Carey’s take on “Without You” when the band released a cover of “Everybody’s Talkin’”.

https://youtu.be/dMfb9TRbUJc

Hell’s teeth it’s Therapy? again! “Trigger Inside” was these Irish rockers fifth Top 40 hit in the past year and second of 1994 already! Talking of teeth, the band seemed to have a bit of a dental obsession. Having already released a single called “Teethgrinder” with a particularly graphic front cover, this one starts with the lyric

Here comes a girl with perfect teeth
I bet she won’t be smiling at me
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Andrew Cairns
Trigger Inside lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group

The very next line name checks serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer which TOTP wisely avoids showing in this short clip. This track seems to be at the heavier end of the rock scale and not especially radio friendly (and that’s before considering the Jeffrey Dahmer reference) but the band’s fanbase was by now large enough to guarantee them a chart placing. “Trigger Inside” was at its No 22 peak despite it being its first week on the charts.

Apart from one solitary entry at No 40, Alison Moyet hadn’t had a UK chart hit since her cover of “Love Letters” made No 4 in 1987. That outcome would have seemed unlikely back then. After all, she’s had two massive hits from her album of that year “Raindancing” in “Is This Love?” and “Weak In The Presence Of Beauty”. However, a delay of four years until her next album “Hoodoo” had seen her lose her place amongst pop’s big hitters and the album sold respectably but significantly less numbers than its predecessors.

Commercial success wasn’t what mattered to Alison though who fought her record company Sony for artistic control of her work which led to a confrontation over the release of her next album “Essex”. Sony refused to release it unless tracks were re-recorded and re-produced to make a more radio friendly pop album that stood a better chance of success. The result of this stand off was “Whispering Your Name”, a 1983 song written by Jules Shear but originally recorded by Ignatius Jones, leader of shock rock band Jimmy and the Boys. In an act of compromise, Alison committed to two versions of the song; an acoustic “MacArthur Park”* style ballad that appeared on the album and the danced up version that was released as a single.

*The Richard Harris version, not Donna Summer’s

The former is clearly the better version to my ears with the latter sounding like something Dusty Springfield might have recorded as a B-side during her Pet Shop Boys collaboration era. Mind you, even that version is a million times better than the Ignatius Jones take which is an abomination:

Mark Goodier makes a big deal in his intro of the fact that Dawn French appears in the video for “Whispering Your Name” just as she’d done seven years prior for the “Love Letters” promo. Now don’t get me wrong, I like Dawn French (we even had a French And Saunders VHS on our wedding present list!) but I don’t think her ‘zany’ antics added anything to the video at all. Maybe I felt differently back then but viewed in 2023 it all seems a bit tired. The single would make No 18 perhaps validating Sony’s strategy but it would be Alison’s last ever chart entry as a solo artist.

Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine’s time as chart dwelling pop stars was entering the final bend come 1994 – in short, it turned out that they could be stopped after all. After the unlikely gold selling albums that were “30 Something” and “1992 – The Love Album” (a chart topper no less), subsequent releases suffered from a dose of diminishing returns. Not that they were suddenly outside of the charts being refused entry but the numbers were in decline. This single “Glam Rock Cops” and its predecessor “Lenny And Terence” were their lowest peaking singles (Nos 24 and 40 respectively) since their first ever chart hit, the 1991 reissue of “Sheriff Fatman”. The quality of their material was still there though. “Glam Rock Cops” is a great song and the performance of it here shows how comfortable Jimbob and Fruitbat had become by this stage with the whole idea of being pop stars. As ever, the lyrics are clever and intriguing though were they influenced by The Jam’s “Going Underground” with the line “The public gets the music that no public could deserve”?

We rejoin Bon Jovi now who have come in off that roof in New York and are performing on, yes you guessed it, yet another nondescript stage that could just as easily have been located round the corner from the TOTP studio as where it actually was, 3,500 miles due West. Really? I thought new producer Ric Blaxill was trying to get away from all that and have artists performing against landmark backdrops.

Anyway, the single the band are plugging is “Dry County” which was the sixth and final single to be released from their “Keep The Faith” album. Remember, this was an album that had been released on 3rd November 1992 and this TOTP aired on 10 March 1994 – that’s 16 months later! This was almost Michael Jackson-esque! As well as the length of time between album and single releases there was also a small (or large as it happens) matter of the length of time of the track itself. Apparently, this is Bon Jovi’s longest song clocking in at 9:52. It was edited down to 6:00 for single release. The band and or their record company clearly had plenty of confidence in the track’s potential for success. Hey! They must have ‘kept the faith’ in it (I’ll get me coat). Or maybe it was just their “Bohemian Rhapsody” moment.

The title referred to a county that prohibits alcohol but here it also acts as a metaphor for the decline of the US oil industry with the song describing the effects of such on the inhabitants of towns whose economies were reliant on the resource. It’s a bit of a retread of Tommy and Gina’s struggles in “Livin’ On A Prayer” or, indeed, most of Bruce Springsteen’s back catalogue. “Dry County” managed a very respectable peak of No 9 in the UK. They would end the year with the 21 million selling Best Of album “Crossroads” which was also the UK’s best selling album of 1994.

Oh and one last thing. The BBC censors were asleep at the wheel again as for the second time on tonight’s show we get the use of the word ‘whore’ in a song’s lyrics:

Man spends his whole life waiting, praying for some big reward
But it seems sometimes the payoff leaves you feeling like
A dirty whore

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Jon Bon Jovi
Dry County lyrics © Bon Jovi Publishing, Polygram Int. Publishing, Inc.

It’s a fourth and final week at the top for Mariah Carey and “Without You”. As successful as Mariah’s version of the song was, she isn’t the only artist to have taken on this monster pop song. The list of those who have tackled it includes Air Supply, Shirley Bassey, Petula Clark, Glen Campbell, Elaine Paige, Rose Marie…wait. Rose Marie? I know a story about her and it involves my time at Sunderland Polytechnic again. My friend Robin (he with the passion for Jennings ale) had a friend named Cess (short for Cesspit) come to visit him in Sunderland. Unfortunately for Cess, Robin was out when he arrived at his gaff and so, in an era before mobile phones, he had some time to kill. Looking for something to do, Cess wandered into Sunderland town centre and noticed that there was a matinee gig going on at the Empire Theatre. “That’ll do” thought Cess and in he went. The gig was by Rose Marie – the Irish Bette Midler as some named her – and the audience was mainly made up of elderly ladies having a nice afternoon out. I should have pointed out that Cess was a bit of a punk back then and at the time was sporting a pink Mohican hairstyle so I’m not entirely sure the rest of the audience were really his people but apparently he spent a great afternoon singing along with Rose Marie and her fans.

The play out song is “Rock My Heart” by Haddaway. Hadn’t we all had enough of this bloke by this point? This was the fourth and final hit from his debut album and, just like the preceding three, went Top 10. After doing a ballad for his last single, he’d cranked up the beats again for this high tempo Eurodance number which was not a million miles away from his biggest hit “What Is Love”. I wasn’t going to any of the clubs that might have played this sort of stuff back then (indie night at Fifth Avenue in Manchester was more my scene) so maybe I wasn’t its target audience but why was this guy so successful? Really though, why?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Primal Scream	Rocks / Funky Jam	No but I bought the album
2	M People	Renaissance	No but my wife had the album
3	Janet Jackson	Because Of Love	No
4	Doop	Doop	Of course not
5	Marcella Detroit	I Believe	Liked it, didn’t buy it
6	The Beautiful South	Good As Gold (Stupid As Mud)	No but I have that Best Of album it on
7	Therapy?	Trigger Inside	Negative
8	Alison Moyet	Whispering Your Name	Nah
9	Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine	Glam Rock Cops	See 5 above
10	Bon Jovi	Dry County	No but I had a promo copy of the album
11	Mariah Carey	Without You	Nope
12	D:Ream	U R The Best Thing	And no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001hyxn/top-of-the-pops-10031994

TOTP 24 FEB 1994

Posted on February 11, 2023 by 80stastic

Musical comebacks – there have been a few across the decades, some more successful than others. Take That made a remarkable return to the charts in 2006 ten years after they had disbanded with a No 1 album and single and sold out tour dates, all without the presence of Robbie Williams in their ranks (at least initially). In 1983, Tina Turner’s “Private Dancer” album would bag her four Grammy Awards following years in the commercial wilderness after finally escaping her abusive relationship with husband Ike. And what about Elvis Presley’s 1968 TV Special which would become unofficially known as ‘The ‘68 Comeback Special’, reinvigorating his career which had declined into a spiral of those awful movies he made. Even in these BBC4 TOTP repeats, we’ve seen both Meatloaf and Duran Duran rise from the ashes of their past careers to record huge sellers in 1993.

Then there’s the less well received comebacks. When Guns N’ Roses self destructed causing a massive delay of fifteen years between albums, by the time “Chinese Democracy “ finally came out, there was little appetite for Axl Rose and his new band line up. Spandau Ballet did pull off a successful reunion in 2009 with a sell out tour, an album of re-recorded versions of songs from their back catalogue and a feature length documentary biopic Soul Boys Of The Western World. However, when lead singer Tony Hadley left for good in 2017, the band tried to carry on by replacing him with relative unknown Ross William Wild. They only lasted a handful of gigs before realising that a Hadley-less Spandau wasn’t really what the people wanted. Nor did people have any room in their lives for the second coming of Vanilla Ice who attempted a comeback in 1998 with a nu-metal influenced album called “Hard To Swallow” (indeed it was). And then there was Level 42 who kick off this edition of TOTP. Was it a return to their glory days of the mid 80s or did they illicit an indifferent reaction?

The dawn of the 90s saw the band looking every bit the 80s anachronism. Their long term record label Polydor allegedly rejected their first new material of the decade (the 1991 album “Guaranteed”) which led to the band relocating to RCA but the album wasn’t well received when it finally appeared. Could they achieve an unlikely comeback three years on just as Britpop was brewing?

“Forever Now” was the title of both their tenth studio album and lead single from it. It was also the last album to feature three members of the original line up in Mark King, Mike Lindup and Phil Gould with the latter returning to the fold for the first time since 1987. It was a short lived return for Gould who refused to tour the album due to his lack of confidence in the record company. The fan base saw the album as very much a return to form but for an uncommitted observer like me, it sounded a bit directionless. They’d added a load of horns into the mix alongside King’s trademark slap bass but it just seems to meander along without really going anywhere ultimately. Maybe channeling the origins of the band’s name (with 42 being the answer to “the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything” as per The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy), the song’s lyrics seem to ponder the existential mystery of time, coming up with the conclusion that we should all just live for the moment. However, it expresses that sentiment in the most cack-handed of ways with these words:

Holy grail, holy cow

I just want to live forever now
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Frank John Musker / Mark King / Richard Simon Darbyshire
Forever Now lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Chappell Music, Inc

Dear oh dear. Later in the year, another song would appear with the lyrics “live forever” in it. It was so much better than Level 42’s effort, you could see the difference in quality between them from space.

“Forever Now” the single did achieve a respectable peak of No 19 though whilst the album made the Top 10. The band would break up in the October of 1994 before reappearing with King and a new touring line up in 2001.

https://youtu.be/Y7Jfa_-b0GE

Level 42 weren’t the only ones in revival mode on this show as the host was also on the comeback trail. Bruno Brookes hadn’t been on the show since 1991 just before the ‘year zero’ cull but was brought back into the fold alongside Simon Mayo, Mark Goodier and Nicky Campbell by new producer Ric Blaxill. So here he was in 1994 with the same hairstyle that he had on his first TOTP appearance back in 1984. Quite remarkable. Bruno Brookes introducing Level 42 on TOTP – this really was an 80s flashback.

The next act weren’t exactly looking to make a comeback as they’d had a No 1 single less than 12 months earlier but the comparative lack of success of its follow ups had led me to believe we’d maybe already seen the last of them. How wrong I was. Ace Of Base have sold an estimated 50 million records worldwide to date making them the third best selling artist from Sweden ever behind the mighty ABBA and..ahem…Roxette. Their debut album sold 9 million copies in the US alone and it’s from that album that this track – “The Sign” – came. Sort of. As with Red Hot Chili Peppers the other week, Ace Of Base’s release history was a bit complicated. Originally entitled “Happy Nation”, it was initially released in the UK in June 1993. However, it was kept back for nearly 6 months in the US and retitled “The Sign” with that track plus two others added to it. When the title track went to No 1 over there for 6 weeks, the single was given a release in the UK whilst the “Happy Nation” album was also rereleased with those extra tracks added and retitled “Happy Nation (U.S. Version). Got all that? Good.

In my head, “The Sign” went to No 1 over here just as it had done in the US but Wikipedia assured me it was a No 2 record. Depending on your point of view it’s either incredibly catchy or intensely annoying (I’m in the latter camp) yet it many circles it is cherished. Katy Perry has acknowledged it as a big influence on her music and it regularly appears in those 50 Best Songs of the 90s polls. For me though, it was always a very slight, lowest common denominator pop song. Its Wikipedia entry refers to it as ‘techno-reggae’ whatever the hell that was. As with all of Ace Of Base’s hits, I couldn’t get along the overly nasal vocals. As for its legacy, it surely doesn’t get any bigger than Pitch Perfect?

Another comeback of sorts now as we find the rather unusual event of a record going back up the charts having already peaked once. There’s no great mystery to why this happened though. “All For Love” by Bryan Adams, Rod Stewart and Sting had entered the charts at No 7 back in mid January before making its way to a peak of No 2 and then descending the charts. However, the film it was from – The Three Musketeers – was released to UK cinemas just two weeks before this TOTP aired and so, with it playing over the end credits, people’s attention was drawn to it once more resulting in a sales spike. It’s still a shocking song though.

No comebacks here – “Stay Together” was a bit of a stop gap single though between Suede albums. Crashing straight into the charts at No 3, was this official proof that they were not just the next big thing but indeed, the current big thing? As for that by rather out there Derek Jarman reference by Bruno Brookes, here’s @TOTPFacts with the story behind it:

No, you didn't dream that, Bruno Brookes just mentioned avant garde filmmaker Derek Jarman, who died of an AIDS-related illness on 19 February 1994. Jarman directed the video for Suede's "So Young". #TOTP https://t.co/p1HxIRGrJy
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) February 3, 2023

They’ve also got the info on drummer Simon Gilbert’s 16 T-shirt:

Suede drummer Simon Gilbert's "16" t-shirt was a message in support of lowering the gay male age of consent to 16. At this point it was still 21. On 21 February 1994, the House of Commons had voted to reduce it to 18. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) February 3, 2023

Look, it takes a long time to write these reviews so sometimes I allow myself a shortcut by relying on other sources to tell the stories – OK? And anyway, Suede were only just in the TOTP studio performing “Stay Together” the other week so I’ve already said everything I wanted to say about it.

An artist next who would achieve a couple of comebacks during her time and in 1994, her career trajectory would suggest she’d be in need of one soon enough. After bursting into the charts in 1993 with a debut No 1 single in “Dreams”, Gabrielle had failed to replicate that success with the follow up singles which had peaked at Nos:

9 – 26 – 24

“Because Of You” was the last of those figures and, in its defence, it was the fourth and final track released from an album that had been out for four months already including the busy Christmas period. Even so, these were surely disappointing numbers for both artist and record company. Another reason why “Because Of You” underperformed could be that it was basically “Dreams” without the killer chorus. However, Gabrielle would pull off the first of those aforementioned comebacks two years later with a Top 5 single in “Give Me A Little More Time” and a platinum selling eponymously titled sophomore album. In 2000 she would produce an even better comeback with her chart topping “Rise” single and album.

Oh, and if you need a song called “Because Of You” in your life, there’s always this…

Here come the Breakers starting with an artist who had already made a comeback at the start of the decade after his last two albums of the 80s had seen his sales fall away dramatically. Both 1986’s “Leather Jackets” and 1988’s “Reg Strikes Back” had underperformed commercially and 1990’s “Sleeping With The Past” looked to be going the same way until a rerelease of “Sacrifice” coupled as an A-side with “Healing Hands” made Elton John relevant again by giving him his first solo UK No 1. Elton built on that success with a No 2 album in “The One” and a platinum selling “Duets” album. It was from the latter that this ghastly single was taken – a reworking of his 1976 No 1 with Kiki Dee “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” but this time fine with US drag queen and TV celebrity RuPaul.

This was just a terrible idea badly executed. Elton’s last single had been a duet with the aforementioned Kiki Dee on the Cole Porter song “True Love”. Couldn’t he have ditched that and done a revamped version of “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” with her instead? The nasty, tinny sounding production on the Hi-NRG RuPaul version here does nothing for either of the protagonists’ careers. And the video is just a cringe fest. Perhaps due to its then recent performance at the BRITS, the 1994 version of “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” peaked at an inexplicable No 7.

No comebacks here as this was one of the first chart hits for Soundgarden that took them from being just another grunge rock band from Seattle to global recognition. I have to admit to not knowing that much about Soundgarden. I knew there was a small, dingy club at Back Piccadilly, Manchester called Soundgarden as we had an Our Price Christmas do their once – caterer ran off with the food budget without supplying any actual grub – but the band? Not much. Did they do one called “Black Hole Sun”?

*checks their discography*

Yes, that was them and that track was the third single from their 1994 album “Superunknown”. The first though was this one – “Spoonman”. Nothing to do with Noel Gallagher’s quote about sibling Liam being “as angry as a man with a fork in a world of soup” nor Mr Spoon from Button Moon, it was actually inspired by something I did have some knowledge about – the film Singles. The plot revolves around the love lives of some Generation X’ers in Seattle including the wannabe rock star character Cliff played by Matt Dillon. Soundgarden and Pearl Jam worked on songs for the soundtrack with the latter’s bass guitarist Jeff Ament tasked with coming up with names for Cliff’s fictional rock band in the film. ‘Spoonman’ was one of his suggestions but in the end they went for ‘Citizen Dick’. Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell used the title as the basis for this track. It didn’t appear in the soundtrack album initially though a version was included on a 2017 super deluxe edition. It would peak at No 20 on the IK charts.

This next song is from a band not so much attempting a comeback as being at the centre of a rerelease campaign for their decade old back catalogue. “Two Tribes”, perhaps surprisingly, was the last of Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s first four singles to get the 90s remix/rerelease treatment after “Relax”, “Welcome To The Pleasuredome” and “The Power Of Love” before it. Surprising in the respect that it was No 1 for 9 weeks in 1984, the longest running No1 record in the UK during the entire 80s. Is it their most popular/well known song though? Could a case be made for “Relax” which is, after all, the 7th best selling single in the UK of all time. Or how about “The Power Of Love” what with its festive season associations and place on many a Christmas playlist? What is not surprising is that none of the singles from Frankie’s second album “Liverpool” were deemed worthy of a second outing. “Two Tribes (Fluke’s Minimix)” achieved a peak of No 16 whilst “Bang!…The Greatest Hits Of Frankie Goes To Hollywood” made No 4.

A second helping of Sting on the show now as we go live by satellite to Sydney, Australia for a performance of his latest single “Nothing ‘Bout Me”. This exemplified new TOTP producer Ric Blaxill’s approach to these live by satellite links to have artists doing a turn in front of a famous landmark (in this case Sydney Opera House). This was the final single from the “Ten Summoner’s Tales” album which brought a nice symmetry to the tracks taken from it if you include one that originally featured on the Lethal Weapon 3 soundtrack but ended up on the Sting album. Why? Well, it was called “It’s Probably Me”. Mr Sumner was obviously keen on three word song titles where the last one was ‘me’ at this time.

It’s a fairly jaunty number and was written as Sting’s retort to all the attempts by the music press to dissect his psyche every time he released an album. It suffered from being the last single from an album that had already been out for nearly a year and got no higher than its No 32 chart position it was at here. Bruno Brookes talks about Sting having “a cast of thousands” with him in this performance and there’s certainly a fair few there with him including seven backing singers! However, even that’s not the most noticeable thing about this performance. Where did you get that outfit sir?!

https://youtu.be/x8jTa6ksKVI

So here’s a bit of a thing as UK music fans get their first look at Beck. What an interesting artist this guy is but he would probably say that the least interesting thing about him is his debut hit “Loser”. There’s so much to unpack and discuss about Beck but I’m pushed for time again this week so let’s start by dispelling a couple of myths:

He is not related to the Hanson brothers of “Mmm Bop” fame. His surname is spelt Hansen.
“Loser” is not a stoner rap or anti-establishment slacker anthem that speaks of Generation X ennui. The ‘loser’ theme is, according to Beck himself, merely a description of his lack of skill as a rapper, made up on the spot when he was writing the song.
It has nothing to do with Nirvana nor Kurt Cobain’s death a few weeks after it was a hit despite their label Sub Pop selling T-shirts emblazoned with the word ‘LOSER’ on them.

It remains, however, a great track in my humble opinion despite Beck declaring it interesting but ultimately unimpressive. It would not be indicative of his future musical direction though with many fans of the song being caught out by the rest of his material. A bit like when those people who loved “More Than Words” by Extreme being disappointed at the rest of their funk metal back catalogue perhaps?

“Loser” with its bizarre lyrics (“beefcake pantyhose” indeed!) would go Top 10 in the US though we were slightly more conservative in our liking of it over here where it peaked at No 15. By the way, I’ve no idea who these old fellas are up there on stage with Beck or why they are there but they’re great all the same.

https://youtu.be/KJ7mEbf29lk

There is a rather tragically poignant version of the song in the TV series Glee. Both the actors featured in the performance are now no longer with us. Cory Monteith died in 2013 of an accidental drug overdose whilst Mark Salling committed suicide by hanging in 2018.

No comebacks apparent in the No 1 slot as Mariah Carey holds steady for another week with “Without You”. The popularity of her version led to a surge in sales for parent album “Music Box” which had been out for six months already giving her the double whammy of a No 1 single and album simultaneously. Curiously, despite eight of her previous ten singles going to No 1 in the US, it peaked at No 3 over there. Mariah would eke out another UK Top 10 hit from “Music Box” in “Anytime You Need A Friend” before undertaking another cover of a love song when she duetted with Luther Vandross on Lionel Richie’s “Endless Love”. She would end 1994 by releasing that Christmas song.

The play out song this week gives us one final comeback and how unlikely was this one?! Anyone who had a bet on the Charleston dance craze being back in 1994 must have coined it in. “Doop” by Doop was a mash up of ragtime, the aforementioned Charleston and some house beats and would be at No 1 in the UK soon enough. Criminally, it denied Bruce Springsteen what would have been his first and so far only solo UK chart topper.

Although the bpm are completely different, it does put me in mind of this intensely creepy single that was released in 1982. A synth pop version of Irving Berlin anyone? Although UK record buyers were unable to resist the ‘charms’ of Doop in 1994, back in the 80s we had a bit more taste as this drivel bombed over here whilst going to No 4 in the US.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Level 42	Forever Now	Nah
2	Ace Of Base	The Sign	Never happening
3	Bryan Adams, Rod Stewart and Sting	All For Love	See 2 above
4	Suede	Stay Together	Could have but didn’t
5	Gabrielle	Because Of You	Nope
6	Elton John and RuPaul	Don’t Go Breaking My Heart	As if
7	Soundgarden	Spoonman	No
8	Frankie Goes To Hollywood	Two Tribes	Bought it in 1984 but not 1994
9	Sting	Nothing ‘Bout Me	I did not
10	Beck	Loser	See 4 above
11	Mariah Carey	Without You	Negative
12	Doop	Doop	And no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001hqvk/top-of-the-pops-24021994

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 31 MAR 1994

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TOTP 24 MAR 1994

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TOTP 17 MAR 1994

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TOTP 10 MAR 1994

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TOTP 24 FEB 1994

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