Elton John | TOTP Rewind – the 90s

TOTP 18 JUN 1992

Posted on March 4, 2022 by 80stastic

We’ve missed yet another show due to the Adrian Rose issue and so find ourselves well into June of 1992 here at TOTP Rewind. The Euros international football tournament is well under way but England are already out having lost 2-1 to hosts Sweden two days before this episode aired. After the excitement of Italia ‘90, it was a huge disappointment for the nation but in truth the team had massively underperformed not having won a single game and scoring just one goal. Graham Taylor was vilified in the press especially by The Sun and their infamous ‘turnip’ campaign. I would never endorse anything in that publication but Taylor was not, by any metric, a successful appointment.

I was still working at the Our Price store on Market Street, Manchester at this time. There was another store in Manchester at Piccadilly above which there was office space which was used by area and regional managers for admin work. I had my initial interview as a Xmas temp there. It was also used for company events where directors were invited to come and address store employees and take questions from them about company policy, initiatives etc. At one point it also housed some unsaleable stock that needed sending back to the central warehouse in Heston, Greater London and I recall spending a day up there packing up all sorts of crap albums. It was soul destroying. The person I spent the day doing this with was called Matt who went onto be a senior product manager at EMI and now runs a campaign management company for music artists. Meanwhile, I’m currently…unemployed. I seem to remember Matt was much more conscientious in his work that day boxing up loads more than I did. There’s a lesson in there somewhere.

Anyway, that’s enough of my personal stuff…on with the show! We start with Utah Saints and their Kate Bush sampling hit “Something Good”. Watching this back, it’s interesting to note how much the performance comes over like that of a conventional rock/pop band due to the fact that there’s some actual instruments on show. There’s the energetic bass player, someone on keyboards and the bloke with the megaphone thwacking some drums. The Kate Bush vocal is taken care of via a guy on the decks spinning a picture disc of her. As such, despite it undoubtedly being a dance anthem, the TOTP producers don’t feel the need for all that garishly coloured special effects wash to be deployed as it has been in the past for dance acts on the show. It makes for a much more enjoyable experience or maybe it’s that it just appeals to my more traditional tastes. As you know I was never a ravehead.

Tonight’s presenters are Mark Franklin and…WTF? Bob Geldof?! Why?! What was going on here?! It’s true that just a few weeks before they had Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse as Smashie and Nicey guest present but that was a tie in to promote Enfield’s comedy show that was returning to BBC2 later that evening. Was Geldof there to promote something? He released his third solo album in 1992 called “The Happy Club” but it can’t have been to do with that surely? It seems there were some other guest presenters during the ‘year zero’ era. In December, Tony Dortie was joined by Mr Blobby (I kid you not) whilst several EastEnders actors took a turn but here’s Tony Dortie to explain that connection:

One of the things that isn't mentioned much is how old School #Eastenders and #totp got on so well @westbrookdanni Sid Owen wld always come n hang out for rehearsals they were also good and fun guest hosts. @deangaffney1 ledge. Albert Sq used to always have Pop star set visits
— Tony Dortie (@TonyDortie) March 4, 2022

So what was the deal with Sir Bob? Perhaps the more pertinent question is what the hell did he think he was doing with some of the comments he proceeds to make on the show? He comes across as a creepy, bitter, old bellend. Witness his first segue which is into one of those satellite link performances from the US this time with Sophie B Hawkins. “I don’t want to ask you any questions I just want to look at you” Geldof pervs. Eeeewww! Sophie just laughs nervously. What was he thinking?! Sadly it won’t be the last inappropriate comment he makes during the show. Here’s Tony Dortie again with his take on what went down:

#totp 2Bob Geldof was thoroughly unpleasant about the artistes appearing as well, just the worse ….being rude has never been in style. At the time nobody said anything cz Sir Soap dodger got given his "I'm Privileged pass"
— Tony Dortie (@TonyDortie) February 25, 2022

There’s more…

#totp I'll say it you SEXIST PIG 2Bob Geldof..you are just the worst ….you were a grown man at the time as well …
— Tony Dortie (@TonyDortie) February 25, 2022

Tony telling it how it was there. Anyway, back to the music and Sophie B Hawkins. Who was she and where had she come from? Well, she was a bit of a cultural all rounder being a singer -songwriter, musician and painter and hailed from New York City(baby!). As well as being a song title Shania Twain would pay good money for, “Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover” was her debut single and was a worldwide smash. This was one of those songs that’s all about the hook of the chorus with the verses actually being quite pedestrian. It works though; there’s even a false ending in there just to mix things up a bit. I don’t think that I picked up on the fact that the object of her affections in the lyrics is actually a woman and that the whole song is written from the perspective of the singer observing said woman in an abusive relationship and wanting to rescue her from it. Sophie comes across as quite the bohemian her bio suggests she was/is in this performance which does a good job of engaging the audience. As Mark Franklin says (and in a much more appropriate way than Geldof would have I’m sure), she seemed like a lot of fun. Not quite a one hit wonder (she had three more UK Top 40 hits), this is probably the one she is best remembered for though. It peaked at No 14.

Now if we thought that Utah Saints were subversive earlier when it came to being a dance act on TOTP when acting more like an archetypal rock band…well, we hadn’t seen anything yet! This ‘performance’ from The Orb must be one if the most outlandish in the show’s history. These ambient house innovators had already made a splash with their debut album “The Orb’s Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld” but they would become a sensation with the release of “U.F.Orb” which would go to No 1. It was previewed by the single “Blue Room” which would make history as the longest track to ever enter the UK singles chart. Clocking in at a mammoth 39 minutes, it took advantage of a change in regulations when the chart compilers allowed a maxi single to run to 40 minutes (alongside the existing 25 minute limit) as long as only one title was listed amongst the single’s tracks. It duly entered the Top 40 at No 12 before climbing to a peak of No 8.

Enough of the statistics though, let’s get to what was going down on screen. No DJs nor ponytailed fellas jigging about behind keyboards here. No, the best way to promote the track in the eyes of The Orb’s Alex Paterson and Kris Weston was to have the pair sat playing a sci-fi version of chess whilst passing a cross bearing orb between the pair of them. To pad it out a bit there’s some kaleidoscopic imagery of dolphins and some strobe lights flickering about. How to describe this performance? Avant- garde? Leftfield? Eccentric? Or maybe just plain old weird. Apparently it had a cosmic effect on Robbie Williams. Here’s @TOTPFacts:

“He thought it was so radical. He’d never seen a band come in and just dictate and piss people off so much and get away with it.” A collaboration resulted: this 1997 cover of The Bee Gees' "I Started A Joke" https://t.co/tJ0jwGircR #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) February 25, 2022

“Blue Room” features the guitar playing of Gong and System 7 member Steve Hillage. When working at the Our Price store in Stockport in the mid 90s, Steve was the inspiration for a saying we used if someone had a mishap with a brew. If anyone spilt their drink a cry of ‘Steve Spillage!’ could be heard. Well it amused us.

Geldof is back now having a dig at Elton John whose latest video is up next. We all knew that Elton’s hair wasn’t real but to bring it up by going on about his new wig seemed unnecessary at best especially coming from a man who was criticised himself over his appearance at the time of Band Aid/Live Aid (he was too busy for a haircut if you remember). As Elton was on just the other week, I’ll return to Tony Dortie and his tweets to cover this one…err…”The One”:

We need to do more to celebrate Elton John he is truly one of the most talented Living Musicians in the history of music since time began @eltonofficial there is nobody who doesn't like Elton #totp
— Tony Dortie (@TonyDortie) February 25, 2022

Ah. You see the thing is Tony that’s not quite true. I refer you to my comments last week about my friend Robin who dismissed all of Elton’s back catalogue as unlistenable bollocks. I was wrong about him not having a favourite Lionel Richie song though. “Three Times A Lady” was his choice which is presumably three times the song that “The One” is.

Despite 1992 being awash with dance anthems, there was still space in the UK pop landscape for a boy band. Enter Take That. Actually, was the term ‘boy band’ in use back in 1992 or am I using it retrospectively? Certainly there were groups* that attracted a predominantly female teenage fan base before then. Bay City Rollers in the 70s, Duran Duran and Bros in the 80s but were they referred to as boy bands at the time? I’m not so sure. The 90s was a boy band boom time though. Off the top of my head and not counting US groups there were the big three of Take That, Boyzone and Westlife but there were also 5ive, 911, A1, Bad Boys Inc, Upside Down, East 17 and many more probably including a number in their moniker. All of these (with the exception possibly of East 17) followed a template of pretty boys singing catchy but lightweight tunes and doing some nifty dance steps while they were at it. Their catalogue of songs would almost certainly include some cover versions.

*I’m not counting The Beatles on the grounds that the connotations of what it meant to be a boy band certainly didn’t apply to them.

I guess New Kids On The Block had shown what that set up could achieve sales wise as the new decade dawned. It was probably inevitable that the UK would find its own version of them eventually. It was just that Take That got there first. Anyway, here they are in the studio again performing “It Only Takes A Minute” again and judging by the screams of the audience, they know they’re on to a good thing. Interesting to note that even at this early stage the only other band member to get a vocal line and their own personal camera close up is Robbie Williams. Hmm. “It Only Takes A Minute” peaked at No 7.

Four Breakers this week starting with U2 and “Even Better Than The Real Thing”. The fourth single from their “Achtung Baby” album of the previous year, its original version was later eclipsed by the Paul Oakenfold Perfecto dance remix both in terms of chart peak and, for many a music lover, its artistic merit. I always liked the version as it was originally intended though. It sounded angular and dynamic propelled by another great guitar riff from The Edge, the distinctive sound of which was created by a DigiTech Whammy pitch shifter pedal which created a double octave sweep (for all you tech enthusiasts out there). The video was a Godley & Creme production with the continuous rotating footage created by a 360 degree camera rig. They certainly liked to innovate those guys. Remember the face morphing “Cry” video from 1985? “Even Better Than The Real Thing” peaked at No 12 whilst the dance mixes did even better than the real thing by going to No 8.

One of my favourite albums of 1992 was “0898” by The Beautiful South which spawned four great singles yet we hadn’t seen any of them on TOTP until now. We may have missed some appearances due to the Adrian Rose scenario I guess. That situation was finally rectified when third single “Bell Bottomed Tear” made it into the Breakers. Despite it being the biggest hit of the four peaking at No 16, we would not see it again on the show. After two faster paced singles with Paul Heaton as the main vocalist, it was the turn of Dave Hemmingway to come centre stage what with it being a ballad and all which seemed to be his forte. I say ballad though it seems to be more of a lament for a one night stand that didn’t turn into a relationship.

The final single released from the album (“36D”) was the least successful missing the Top 40 completely though was possibly the most notorious. Supposedly it was a trigger for Briana Corrigan to leave the band as she objected to it reflecting negatively on glamour models when it should have been the media that gave them the platform that was criticised. There was probably more to it than that but that was the story I heard.

A first sighting now of the best selling US girl group of all time. Yes, before Destiny’s Child, SWV and the rest came TLC and they were bigger than them all with sales of 85 million copies. With four No 1 singles and a No 1 album in America alone, no wonder the group were inducted to the Black Music & Entertainment Hall Of Fame this year alongside the likes of such legendary names as Stevie Wonder, Otis Redding and Michael Jackson. It all started with debut single “Ain’t 2 Proud 2 Beg” though I have to admit to not being particularly aware of it at the time despite it making No 13 in our Top 40. By the time the likes of “Creep”, “Waterfalls” and the “CrazySexyCool” album came around you couldn’t fail to notice them and I didn’t. Apparently the group’s them manager Pebbles (yes she of “Girlfriend” fame in the late 80s) makes an appearance at the end of the video for “Ain’t 2 Proud 2 Beg”. Tragically Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes died in a road traffic accident in 2002.

When I think about Diana Ross in the early 90s (not that I do very often you understand) the only song that comes to mind is her No 2 hit “When You Tell Me That You Love Me”. Taken from the album “The Force Behind The Power”, it was a huge hit over Xmas of ‘91. I was therefore taken aback to learn that the album actually generated five UK Top 40 singles. “One Shining Moment” was the third of those and even made No 10. It’s a smoother sound than WYTMTYLM which always seemed just ever so slightly hysterical in its yearning but it’s also fairly unremarkable and I’m surprised it was such a big hit.

Diana (or Ms Diana Ross to use her full title) would continue to have medium sized hits in the UK throughout the decade though interestingly not in her native US – none of the singles from “Force Behind The Power” were hits there. She even had a No 1 Best Of album in this country in 1993 when “One Woman: The Ultimate Collection” was a huge seller that Xmas.

Ah shit! Geldof’s back making more asinine comments although I can’t really quibble about his target here. When Def Leppard were on the show recently with their “Let’s Get Rocked” single, I derided it as one of the dumbest songs of the decade and I was right. However, they came pretty close to topping that ‘achievement’ with its follow up “Make Love Like A Man”. I can hardly bear to hear the lyrics on this but if I have to listen to them then you can read them. Look at this horseshit:

‘Make love like a man, I’m a man that’s what I am’

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Robert John Lange / Stephen Clark / Joseph Elliott / Philip Collen
Make Love Like a Man lyrics © Out-of-pocket-prod. Ltd., Bludgeon Riffola Limited, Bmg Rights Management (uk) Ltd (primary Wave), Bludgeon Riffola Ltd

Or:

‘I’m the one (I got it) I’m Mr. Fun, (you need it) I’m Captain Cool’

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Robert John Lange / Stephen Clark / Joseph Elliott / Philip Collen
Make Love Like a Man lyrics © Out-of-pocket-prod. Ltd., Bludgeon Riffola Limited, Bmg Rights Management (uk) Ltd (primary Wave), Bludgeon Riffola Ltd

And then there’s:

‘Don’t call me gigolo, don’t call me Casanova, just call me on the phone and baby come on over’

Source: Musixmatch

Songwriters: Robert John Lange / Stephen Clark / Joseph Elliott / Philip Collen

Make Love Like a Man lyrics © Out-of-pocket-prod. Ltd., Bludgeon Riffola Limited, Bmg Rights Management (uk) Ltd (primary Wave), Bludgeon Riffola Ltd

What. The. Fuck?! Lead singer Joe Elliott has stated that they weren’t trying to be macho with this song but rather funny. Remind me never to invite Joe round to my house if I need cheering up with a laugh. Even Elliott seems to have seen the light though. In a 2014 interview he admitted he would rather not play this song live anymore as the lyrics are a nod too stupid. No shit. Despite all of the above, did Geldof really need to introduce it with the following words:

“Here’s their new single I’d quite like to give you one big girl otherwise known as Make Love Like A Big Girl’s Blouse”? No he didn’t. What’s that? He was trying to be funny too? Add him to the list of people never to be invited around to my gaff. “Make Love Like A Man” peaked at No 12.

Erasure are No 1 with their “ABBA-esque EP”. It’s the video this week for the “Take A Chance On Me” track with Vince and Andy dressed up as Agnetha and Anna-Frid in their 70s pomp. I wonder if they argued about who would be who? Vince looks quite convincing as Agnetha, Andy not so much as Anna-Frid. I seem to remember there being a lot of praise about how amusing the video was at the time but I’m not sure if it’s retained that humour.

Geldof and Mark Franklin are reunited for the show’s ending and we discover that unbelievably the former was there to promote his latest release – a single called “Room 19 (Sha La La La Lee)”. You’ll be glad to hear that it didn’t make the Top 100.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Utah Saints	Something Good	Liked it, didn’t buy it
2	Sophie B. Hawkins	Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover	Nope
3	The Orb	Blue Room	Not really my bag
4	Elton John	The One	Nah
5	Take That	It Only Takes A Minute	No
6	U2	Even Better Than The Real Thing	No but I had the album Achtung Baby
7	The Beautiful South	Bell Bottomed Tear	No but I had the album 0898
8	TLC	Ain’t 2 Proud 2 Beg	Negative
9	Diana Ross	One Shining Moment	It’s another no
10	Def Leppard	Make Love Like A Man	God no!
11	Erasure	Abba-esque EP	No but my wife did…maybe

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/m0014rlm/top-of-the-pops-18061992

TOTP 04 JUN 1992

Posted on March 2, 2022 by 80stastic

It’s 4th June and I’ll be 24 in two days time or rather back in time as it’s 4th June 1992 I’m talking about as we head towards the mid point of that year at TOTP Rewind. I can’t specifically remember what I got up to on the big day but it would have been a Saturday so I’m hoping I booked the day off as I am still working in the Our Price shop on Market Street, Manchester.

Staying with the birthday theme, tonight’s opening act must gave thought all theirs had come at once as after spending the previous year desperately trying to crack the charts, Take That have finally got themselves a hit. I should qualify that last bit. They had visited the Top 40 before this moment at the back end of ‘91 when second single “Promises” made No 38 but it was hardly the splash they and record company RCA had been working towards. To compound the disappointment, third single “Once You’ve Tasted Love” returned them to the status of chart flops when it peaked at No 47.

Given this, there was a lot riding on fourth single release “It Only Takes A Minute”. In fact, they were probably lucky to get a fourth chance. Despite being regulars in the pages of Smash Hits and building up a fanbase by doing a constant stream of personal appearances at nightclubs and schools, the expected breakthrough as the UK’s answer to New Kids On The Block hadn’t transpired. One further chance it was though and as we have seen countless times, the go to strategy for an act that needs a hit is to record a cover version. A 90s update on the 70s disco sound was deemed the best way to go with the source material coming from Tavares. It worked a treat with the single going Top 10 and finally confirming Take That as bona fide chart pin ups. It all seemed very cynical to me but once that gate of having a substantial hit single and all the profile it brought had been opened; well, the bull of momentum rushed through and the inevitable happened – Take That were a thing.

Not that anyone could have known at the time but their story would last for 30 years and counting so I’m not about to try and retell it here. However, my memory of their rise to fame at this time was that the perception of the band was that they weren’t really a band but a singer and some backing dancers – to be fair, Gary Barlow is singled out by his red tunic with the rest in toned down garments. That criticism was also, conversely, flipped by some to take a swipe at Barlow for not being able to do all the dance moves that the others were cranking out. To be fair to Gary here, he was trying to do a live vocal which rather impedes his capacity to do back flips. By the way, I had no idea that he was called Gary Barlow and I referred to him just as ‘blondie from Take That’. By logical extension, if I didn’t know Barlow, I can’t have known the names of any of the others either. Within a year, the whole nation would know who they all were.

“It Only Takes A Minute” peaked at No 7.

Returning to the subject of birthdays and age, next is a song that could be the theme tune for this whole blog and what I am doing with it. “Midlife Crisis” was the lead single from Faith No More’s fourth studio album “Angel Dust”. Supposedly nothing to do with a crisis of identity and confidence in later life but more about dwelling on falsely created emotions, it delivered the band their second biggest UK single success ever by peaking at No 10. Their biggest was of course a cover version of a song which was coincidentally written by an artist on the very same show tonight but more of that later.

To say that the single went Top 10, I don’t have much memory of it but listening to it now it sounds like a watered down version of earlier single “Epic” though I’m no funk metal expert by any means. The album made it as far as No 2 in the UK charts but, according to the band, is considered by the record industry and the media to have been a commercial failure. That’s even with it including that cover version that would be their biggest hit. I say ‘including’ but the original release didn’t feature it in the track listing but I’m getting ahead of myself again…

…but I’ve caught up immediately. Yes, we arrive at the artist who provided the song for Faith No More’s biggest hit already (that song being “Easy” by The Commodores). It is, of course, Lionel Richie who like me was also celebrating his birthday in the month of June and who’s in the studio to promote his recently released Best Of album “Back To Front” courtesy of the TOTP producers featuring it in the album charts section. Said album was hugely successful in the UK reaching No 1 and going four times platinum. The album showcased three new tracks including the one Lionel performs here “My Destiny”. At the time of this broadcast the track hadn’t been released as a single as another new song called “Do It To Me” had received that honour but it had stalled at No 33. When eventually issued as a single in August, “My Destiny” made the Top 10.

This scenario with songs featured in the album chart section before being released as a single in their own right and subsequently getting a slot on the show again had happened before with Simply Red and “For Your Babies”. This feature could have been so much more interesting if less obvious album tracks had been given the TOTP exposure. The show had historically always been structured around the Top 40 singles chart but having made a decision to shake that up in the ‘year zero’ revamp why not try something really different? The whole thing was probably just a reaction to what The Chart Show was doing over on ITV.

Oh and that comment by presenter Tony Dortie in his intro that everyone has their favourite Lionel Richie song? Well my friend Robin once had a heated discussion with me when I said he couldn’t just dismiss every song ever recorded by Elton John as unlistenable bollocks and he said he absolutely could as music taste is subjective. I bet Robin doesn’t have a favourite Lionel Richie song.

Next to both Claudia Simon and Tony Dortie’s favourite hit in the show tonight (they both said that separately and independently of each other). “Hazard” by Richard Marx had now progressed to the Top 10 but he still wasn’t available to do a studio performance so it’s the video we see again so we might as well talk about it. As the track itself is one of those story songs, the video plot has to follow that narrative and it duly does thereby creating a mini film in effect. Marx takes the role of the misunderstood loner who has been treated with suspicion by the town folk all his life and does it pretty well. Granted the acting required is limited to looking lost and bereft apart from a line of dialogue that’s squeezed in towards the end but even so.

Just as the song never resolved the question of who killed Mary so the video leaves that open ended also. It does however expand on Marx’s character’s background with some imagery of him as a child. The suggestion is that he has feelings for Mary but she doesn’t feel romantic about him. He then sees Mary making out with some guy in a car which also reminds him of witnessing his mother’s infidelity as a child. Was all of this enough to tip him over the edge into the act of murder? The video is shot entirely in black and white which adds to its sense of foreboding. I’d sort of dismissed “Hazard” over the years but listening to it now combined with watching the video, I’m struck by its intensity.

In a nice bit of serendipity, Marx performed “Hazard” as a duet with Gary Barlow when the latter did his crooner sessions project during the first COVID lockdown. It’s actually not bad. No really.

“Hazard” peaked at No 3.

Meanwhile back in the studio it’s Utah Saints U-U-U Utah Saints! After the Eurythmics and Gwen Guthrie sampling hit “What Can You Do For Me”, the Harrogate rock and dance splicers were back with an even better tune in “Something Good”. This was a belter and let’s be fair, it takes a fair bit of vision to think a sample of Kate Bush’s “Cloudbusting” could form an infectious hook for a dance anthem. Stand back, genius at work! I’d always been intrigued and not a little beguiled by Kate’s 1985 No 20 hit so combining it in a dance tune was always going to work for me.

As for the performance here, I love the fact that they made the guy on percussion and kettle drum do a live vocal for the ‘Utah Saints U-U-U Utah Saints’ chant. Sadly they didn’t insist on Kate being on hand to do a live vocal for the “Cloudbusting” sample. That would have been great!

“Something Good” peaked at No 4.

My pal Robin’s favourite now as Elton John returns with a new song and album both called “The One”. The 90s had been a boom time for Elton so far with his first ever solo No 1 single in “Sacrifice/Healing Hands”, a chart topping parent album in “Sleeping With The Past” (a feat he repeated with a No 1 Very Best Of album) and another single that hit the top spot in his duet with George Michael on “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me”. Phew! One in the eye for Robin there.

“The One” the album didn’t quite scale those heights though it came close being kept at No 2 for three weeks by Lionel Richie’s aforementioned “Back To Front” collection. The title track always sounded very weak to me though. It starts off with some nice piano flourishes but then just descends into a right old bore-a-thon, chugging away relentlessly as Elton wails on about ‘the one’. Not for me this one Elton; I’ll give you that one (but not the one) this time Robin.

“The One” peaked at No 10 (this is all getting a bit confusing isn’t it?)

So here it is. No not Xmas but the absolute peak of Erasure’s commercial powers. After stalling at No 2 twice before, Andy and Vince will finally get themselves a No 1 single in a week with “Abba-esque” which was in fact a four track EP rather than a single of course. Apparently the original plan was to record a whole album of ABBA covers but in the end they ditched that idea. So, those four tracks then:

“Lay All Your Love On Me”
“SOS”
“Take A Chance On Me”
“Voulez -Vous”

Overwhelmingly it was track No 3 that got the airplay and which is performed on the show tonight. The duo had already recorded an ABBA cover previously- “Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man After Midnight) featured in the 12” of early single “Oh L’Amour”.

The last time they were on the show, it didn’t look as though much thought had gone into the staging of the performance but they’ve defo got their heads together about this one. The backdrop of a church ruin is the scene for Andy to don top hat and tails whilst there’s even a pulpit for the backing singers. It takes some doing to upstage all of that whilst standing with your back to the audience the whole time but I think Vince just about does so in his wedding dress. I always felt that the ragga rap breakdown went on for too long and I haven’t changed my opinion 30 years on.

Aside from a chart topping single, Erasure were also at the peak of their live powers performing twelve consecutive nights at the Manchester Apollo around this time. Sadly I never got a ticket as they sold out sharpish despite the number of gigs.

It’s the last week in the top spot for KWS with “Please Don’t Go”. Now you may at be surprised to learn (I was) that this Nottingham band weren’t classic one hit wonders. No, they had five (!) Top 40 hits all told including one in the Top 10 so we may not have seen the last of them on the show just yet. Their rise to fame got me thinking about which other artists originate from Nottinghamshire and there are a few. For a start there’s the soft rock man in motion John Parr, indie-folkster Jake Bugg, two of my mate Robin’s faves Sleaford Mids and Tindersticks and the unforgettable (or possibly unforgivable) Paper Lace of “Billy Don’t Be A Hero” fame. Can’t believe KWS didn’t cover that one.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Take That	It Only Takes A Minute	Ooh no
2	Faith No More	Midlife Crisis	Nah
3	Lionel Richie	My Destiny	Nope
4	Richard Marx	Hazard	No
5	Utah Saints	Something Good	No but I maybe should have
6	Elton John	The One	I’m with Robin on this one – no
7	Erasure	Abba-esque EP	I thought my wife bought this but I can’t see it in the singles box
8	KWS	Please Don’t Go	Negative

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/m0014rlk/top-of-the-pops-04061992

TOTP 12 DEC 1991

Posted on December 20, 2021 by 80stastic

Christmas is coming! Unlike in 2021 where the certainty of what our festive period will be like is now under threat again from the pandemic (or more accurately the government’s handling of it), 30 years ago, some of the most pressing issues we were facing included whether we had enough wrapping paper and remembering to buy a Radio Times to plan our TV watching (very important in the pre-digital age). If, like me, you were working in retail at this time, another consideration was when we could fit in any Christmas shopping of our own after facilitating everybody else’s by working behind a shop counter for hours on end. Oh, and what the Christmas No 1 would be… and please let it not be Cliff Richard again this year. Well, as it turned out, Cliff didn’t really get a look in but which records were in the charts back then? Let’s find out…

We start tonight’s TOTP with one of the year’s biggest breakout stars in Cathy Dennis who is in the studio to perform her fourth Top 40 hit of 1991 and her fifth overall. “Everybody Move” was the final single to be released from her gold selling No 3 album “Move To This” and was a return to the radio friendly dance material of her earlier hits after previous single “Too Many Walls” had seen her go down the slow ballad route.

In all honesty, “Everybody Move” should probably have remained an unreleased album track. It’s pretty lightweight stuff and certainly it doesn’t require a great leap of imagination from this to the kind of stuff that Cathy would end up writing for the likes of S Club 7 and Hear’say later in the decade. Accordingly, it only made it to No 25 in the UK Top 40.

Whilst the reaction on Twitter to this performance focussed on Cathy’s Joker-esque outfit, I was more drawn to her dance move which comes over like a half-hearted Mick Channon windmill celebration…

Now I know I quite often draw on football references for this blog and that I’ve just done it again immediately above but quite why presenter Tony Dortie decides to do the same in his intro to the Top 10 countdown remains a mystery. “It’s day 12 on the Advent calendar, Hearts and Leeds are currently topping things in the football world but let’s see which musical crackers are doing the business in the Top 10” he trills. Hmm. For completions sake, I should note that Leeds Utd would indeed go onto win the old Division 1 league title come May the following year however the 1991–92 Scottish Premier Division season was won by Rangers, nine points ahead of Hearts. Dortie messes up the countdown straight away when he announces that Nirvana are at No 10 with “Smells Like Teen”. What happened to your ‘spirit’ Tony?! Unlike Boris Johnson, at least Tony owns his mistakes…

And he failed miserably x
— DORTIE (@TonyDortie) November 19, 2021

There’s some more curious missing word action next as we get what would probably have been described as a ‘banging’ tune’ back then called “Running Out Of Time” by Digital according to co-host Claudia Simon. That wasn’t their full name though Claudia, was it? No, that was Digital Orgasm – ooh and indeed err missus! This wasn’t anything to do with presenter error by the way as the on screen artist and title graphics confirm that Claudia hadn’t just messed up her intro. This, it would seem, was a TOTP policy decision. Presumably, the use of the word orgasm would have been seen as far too offensive pre the 9 o’clock watershed and so was dropped.

As with all of these dance tunes from this era, I have zero recall of it despite working in a record shop while it was in the charts. Listening back to it now, it sounds like it’s been concocted in a rave laboratory with the basic tune of “Insanity” by Oceanic spliced together with snippets of “Charly” by The Prodigy. Both were huge hits so I guess if that really was the formula behind “Running Out Of Time” then it was a sound one.

As for the performance, it looks as if the TOTP producers have given a bit more thought to how to portray this seemingly endless conveyor belt of dance acts. There appear to be loads more camera cuts and in quick rotation meaning we get lots of different angles of the performers which I’m guessing was meant to try and replicate a more clubby experience. There’s also some slightly different distorted visual effect for the non vocal bits – they’ve lost the Doctor Who green which never worked for me anyway. The woman doing the singing looks almost otherworldly like one of Captain Kirk’s alien love interests which kind of helps things along as well.

“Running Out Of Time” peaked at No 16.

Oh no! It’s the dreaded Cliff Richard! Oh yes though as he’s not No 1! He’s nowhere near the top of the tree actually being at No 19 and there’s only two weeks until Christmas! Talking of trees, the show’s production team have pulled out all the stops for Cliff to make the stage look like his front room at Christmas. A fully decorated tree, a mock fireplace, cards and candles – were Health and Safety informed?! – and Cliff himself in an armchair dressed in a sparkly jacket. For some reason though, they haven’t bothered with the prop of a telephone for the faux phone call part at the beginning of the record leaving Cliff to mime speaking into an imaginary one and then putting it back in its cradle. It just looks weird. I was hoping that Cliff might go full Val Doonican and sing the whole song from that armchair but he’s up on his feet in no time to look sincerely into the camera at us and do some of those wavy arm moves of his.

Does anybody really remember “We Should Be Together”? It’s surely Cliff’s forgotten Christmas single after “Mistletoe And ~~Whine~~…sorry..Wine” and “Saviour’s Day”? You never hear it played on the radio come December despite some of the commercial stations like Magic having cleared all of their playlist schedules to play exclusively Christmas tunes. Somehow it did get to No 10 in the UK Top 40 though it was never a serious contender for the top spot.

We get the video for “Too Blind To See It” by Kym Sims next. It’s introduced by Claudia Simon who says Kym is “kickin’ up a flavour” (that’s probably ‘flava’ isn’t it?) whilst all the time a youth from the studio audience gurns away behind her looking remarkably like a young Mark Ronson.

It turns out that “Too Blind To See It” is a dance record that I do remember (finally)! I think it’s that shuffling back beat and the ‘no man in the world’ sample that must have lodged in my brain. It’s a pretty nifty tune I think and yet it was written and produced by my arch nemesis Steve “Silk” Hurley /aka the man who killed music with his “Jack Your Body” No 1 in 1987. Hmm. Anyway, on reflection it has a ring of “Finally” by Ce Ce Pension to it which is probably no surprise as Kym was the co-writer on her hit “Keep On Walkin'”.

Wikipedia tells me that “Too Blind To See It” was released on the East West Records label who were responsible for a string of dance hits around this time including “Peace” by Sabrina Johnston and “My Lovin’ (You’re Never Gonna Get It)” by En Vogue. They all had that simple yet distinctive, generic East West cover as I recall or was that only used if they’d run out of the official picture sleeve? Can’t remember now.

“Too Blind To See It” was Kym’s biggest hit peaking at No 5 in the UK although she would have two further and smaller Top 40 hits by the end of 1992.

“Salt n’ Pepa are in the house and rockin’ the mic!” says Tony Dortie as we move back to the studio for their performance of “You Showed Me”. They’ve all come dressed in what looks like black latex jackets while their three dancers have dungarees in the same material making them look like a kinky version of Rod, Jane and Freddy.

The staging of the performance has a feel of West Side Story to it but the choreographer hasn’t really worked out what to do with DJ Spinderella who seems redundant when the rapping kicks in and is left to wander off with her allocated dance partner and act out an argument between them. At the song’s finale she retreats to the back of the stage, goes up the stairs erected there and assumes a rather risqué position by wrapping her legs around his crotch area. I take it back about Rod, Jane and Freddy – they’d have never got up to such vulgar antics! Or would they?…..

Meanwhile over on the other stage we find Right Said Fred about to perform their next hit single “Don’t Talk Just Kiss”. Before we get to the Freds though, I noticed something that I don’t believe we’ve seen before in these TOTP repeats which was the studio audience actually running across the floor to be in place for the next performance. There’s literally about a dozen people behind Tony Dortie all in a rush, vying for a view of the next pop stars on the show. I always imagined that the studio audience was shepherded around the set, the flock to the floor manager’s sheep dog. However, they all seem like they have been let off the leash to roam (or run) wherever they wish. This year zero revamp has a lot to answer for!

Anyway, I must admit that I for one thought we had heard the last of Right Said Fred when “I’m Too Sexy” finally dipped out of the Top 40 and dismissed the whole thing as a one off novelty hit. How wrong I was. “Don’t Talk Just Kiss” was not only another smash for the trio but it was (SHOCK!) a decent tune to boot! How had this happened? Well, proving that they weren’t as daft as they looked, the Fairbrass brothers (and the other one) got soul diva Jocelyn Brown in to sing on the track. Jocelyn’s vocals had already been sampled for Snap!’s 1990 No 1 hit “The Power” whilst her own 1984 hit “Somebody Else’s Guy” would form the hook for George Michael’s 1992 Top 5 hit “Too Funky”. Here though, she was actually singing on the song rather than being sampled although she didn’t actually get any credits on the record. That seems a bit weird as she’s up there front and centre on stage alongside the band for this TOTP appearance so they obviously weren’t trying to play down her contribution.

“Don’t Talk Just Kiss” would prove to be another massive hit peaking at No 3 whilst their album “Up” (released in March of the following year) would top the charts and go double platinum. Over the pond though it was a different story and the band did indeed become the one hit wonder I had thought they were destined to be. “I’m Too Sexy” had been a US No 1 but “Don’t Talk Just Kiss” stalled at No 76. Supposedly radio stations were still playing that first hit when the follow up was released and there was little interest in any Right Said Fred material that wasn’t “I’m Too Sexy”. They would have no further hits Stateside.

The camera pans around to Claudia Simon up in the gantry for the next link and she advises us of four Breakers three of which are stone cold stinkers starting with Jason Donovan and the “Joseph Megamix”. After his surprise No 1 hit earlier in the year with “Any Dream Will Do” from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, it was always on the cards that some abomination like this medley would end up being churned out to cash in. With the Christmas party season upon us, it probably seemed like a decent bet that it would be a hit but can anyone say that they’ve ever been to a party where this was put on the turntable and if so, did they not leave immediately?!

“Joseph Megamix” peaked at No 13.

Another megamix! Are you kidding me?! What’s this one then? “The Bare Necessities Megamix” by UK Mixmasters?! Sorry? What? Pardon? And crucially, why? This was a Jungle Book medley that actually only featured two songs – “I Wanna Be Like You” and the titular “Bare Necessities”. You won’t be surprised to know that this heap of shit had Simon Cowell’s fingerprints all over it as it was released on his BMG subsidiary label IQ Records. UK Mixmasters was actually some bloke called Nigel Wright who was also responsible for the equally odious act Mirage who scored some hits in the late 80s doing medleys of house records under the umbrella title of “Jack Mix”. He also did that Saturday Night Fever medley earlier in 1991. What a talented guy!

Talking of talented guys, that’s all round entertainer Gary Wilmot up there promoting this garbage. However, when the track was performed in the TOTP studio the following week, another Gary (Martin) took over the vocalist role. I had to look this guy up but apparently he went onto make his name as an acclaimed voice over actor. We won’t get to see the TOTP with Martin as it’s one of those episodes hosted by Adrian Rose who didn’t give this consent for the repeat to be aired so we’ll miss it. So….just for you… here’s that performance below you lucky people!

Finally some proper music…even if it is U2! Only kidding I liked the “Achtung Baby” era of the band and “Mysterious Ways” was the second single to be released off that album. As a follow up to their No 1 song “The Fly” it was a strong if bold choice. There’s plenty going on in “Mysterious Ways” and most of it was maybe not what we would have expected from the band at the time. This was no po-faced, earnest rock anthem like “With Or Without You” but a groovy, exuberant tune that starts as it means to go on with that wah wah peddle guitar effect from The Edge setting the tone. It sounded so much better to me than “The Fly” and should have been a bigger hit than its No 13 placing although it did make the Top 10 in America. U2 would take this path towards dance experimentation again in 1997 with the electronic influenced No 1 single “Discothèque” but for me, “Mysterious Ways” trumps it by some considerable distance.

What?! New Kids On The Block were still in our charts in December 1991? Hadn’t that particular craze blown out long before this point? Well. yes it kind of had. This single “If You Go Away” was a final hurrah of the initial phase of their career before they briefly regrouped in 1994 for a less than glorious return. They would finally return as an entity in 2008 and are still touring to this day (I think).

“If You Go Away” is a soporific ballad that you can imagine Michael Bolton having rejected as too banal. It was included as the only new track on their first Best Of album called “H.I.T.S.” that was released for the Christmas market. I was the chart cassette buyer at the Our Price store I was working at then and have to admit to a gross over estimate of demand for that album. We hardly sold any and my over optimistic ordering left us with quite a few copies to go into the New Year sale when they again failed to sell. Ah well, yuh learn.

The black and white video is meant to make us perceive them as serious artists as opposed to the unobtainable desire of teenage girls. That and the fact that they had changed their name to NKOTB was a giveaway that they were looking for a new audience. For me though, they would always be more T’KNOB than NKOTB (over ordering of their album aside).

“If You Go Away” peaked at a surprisngly high No 9 in the UK Top 40.

Oh God! I’m in “Martika’s Kitchen”! Yes, it’s time for one of the stupidest song titles of the year courtesy of…well, Martika. On reflection, is it stupid or misunderstood? I don’t think I twigged it at the time but the general consensus on the internet is that “Martika’s Kitchen” is actually filthy! How did I not pick up on this back then?! Firstly, it’s written by Prince which should have been enough evidence of its salacious nature to close the case right there and then. Exhibit B (m’lud) comes in the form of the lyrics, for example:

The table is set, the oven is hot
Baby, when we get started, we won’t ever ever stop

and:

I don’t care I’ve got the chair, if you think your butt’ll fit it
You turn me all the way up, I admit it

In my defence, I think the fact that Martika has chosen to wear some very non-revealing clothes in this performance maybe misled me. As for the sound of the song, at the time it seemed very pop-orientated compared to previous single “Love… Thy Will Be Done” (also written by Prince) but which didn’t seem like it could possibly have been written by the same person. However, on reflection, “Martika’s Kitchen” has some definite Prince hallmarks attached to it although parts of it also remind me of Janet Jackson’s “Nasty”.

This was the second single from her album of the same name and although it sold reasonably in the UK, like T’KNOB before it, I’m pretty sure we had plenty of copies left over for the New Year sale. Perhaps I wasn’t that great at being chart cassette buyer!

George Michael and Elton John are still No 1 with “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me”. With two weeks to go, they must have been in the running for the festive chart topper but once “Bohemian Rhapsody” was re-released on the back of Freddie Mercury’s death, all bets were off. George would, of course, score a further No 1 with another cover version two years later, this time of Queen’s own “Somebody To Love” as part of the “Five Live EP” recorded at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert the year before. Elton meanwhile would return in 1992 with his “The One” album the title track of which really was a bit of a dirge.

As we’ve skipped the 19 December show, the next post will be the end of year review.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Cathy Dennis	Everybody Move	Nah
2	Digital Orgasm	Running Out Of Time	No chance
3	Cliff Richard	We Should Be Together	Never happening
4	Kym Sims	Too Blind To See It	Nope
5	Salt n’ Pepa	You Showed Me	No
6	Right Said Fred	Don’t Talk Just Kiss	Negative
7	Jason Donovan	Joseph Megamix	As if
8	UK Mixmasters	The Bare Necessities Megamix	Ditto
9	U2	Mysterious Ways	No but I bought the album
10	NKOTB	If You Go Away	I wish they would – No
11	Martika	Martika’s Kitchen	I did not
12	George Michael and Elton John	Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me	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/m0011myd/top-of-the-pops-12121991

TOTP 05 DEC 1991

Posted on December 6, 2021 by 80stastic

What? It’s December ’91 already here at TOTP Rewind? Wasn’t the last post on the blog from mid November? Well yes but we’ve missed the final show win November due to that confusing scenario of one of the presenters not giving permission for the repeats to be aired. We skipped numerous episodes back in the 80s due to the late Mike Smith not giving permission before his death in 2014 and the issue has raised its head again in the early 90s shows. So who is it that hasn’t given his blessings for these repeats to be aired? His name is Adrian Rose or rather was Adrian Rose. He’s not dead but he goes by a different name now. Or should that be names as I’ve found him referred to on the internet as Adrian Woolfe and Adrian Rose Woolfe. It turns out that he went on to have a successful career in TV production (he was involved in bringing Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? to our screens) though that doesn’t explain his reluctance to give permission for his TOTP shows to be repeated. There’s a whole load of theories circulating on the internet about what his reasoning might be with some tweets on the subject having been deleted so I’m not about to launch into an investigation as to what happened here for fear of any litigious action. However, Adrian’s fellow presenters Tony Dortie and Mark Franklin, both of whom seem very willing to tweet along with these TOTP repeats and answer questions about them, did add to the debate on Twitter :

Put it this way name a Famous Tom Cruise Movie and a stand out scene.that gives you a answer..
— Tony Dortie (@TonyDortie) November 3, 2021

err….

I would add I personally think as well maybe some people were never shown the deserved respect that should be expected..Adrian was a pleasure to work with and a very smart lad
— Tony Dortie (@TonyDortie) November 3, 2021

Hmm. If you really want to dig deeper into this issue, there’s lots more out there online not least from Tony and Mark but my take on it is that when the presenters were being supplied from the Radio 1 DJ roster then their existing contracts with the BBC covered any stints on TOTP but the presenters in the new format must have had separate and different contracts with clauses that required permission for future repeats to be shown but hey, I’m no lawyer…

Anyway, the bad news is that we will miss out on 15 TOTP shows that feature Adrian Rose between now and Sep ’92 but it’s OK as I’ve checked the running order for the shows affected and all the acts on them were crap anyway. I’m kidding! Having said that, there is an awful lot of shite we won’t be subjected to (I’m looking at you 2 Unlimited) but there are some good tunes in there as well. One of the very first casualties of the Rose pruning effect is the now iconic Nirvana performance from the 28 Nov ’91 show but I’m not going there in this post as I’ll try and round up the most notable missed performances in the review the year.

Enough though of those that we missed, how about the ones that we are getting to see all over again 30 years on? Well, after last week’s rave-tastic running order, we’re right back in amongst it again with opening act Shades Of Rhythm and their hit “Extacy”. Now as I’ve said many times before, I was no clubber or indeed raver but this looks and sounds to me like all kinds of wrong. What were they all wearing?! Have they come in their pyjamas?! Nobody could sleep in those surely?! I thought they’d topped the look off with a Santa hat (it being December and all) but on closer inspection they’re like those fur lined Russian hats with the flaps but colour coded to match the rest of the outfit with the flaps done up. If the ‘performers” on stage looked bad enough, what was going on with the backing dancers? Seriously, they look like an off his tits Andy Pandy! Please tell me people weren’t going to actual clubs dressed like that at the time. As for the track itself, it seems like a pretty unexceptional rave by numbers effort to me with the TOTP live vocal policy yet again not helping much. And that title! Surely the show’s producers must have realised what the theme here was?!

Interestingly, Shades Of Rhythm were on ZTT Records. Like many I’m sure, the acts that leap to the front of my mind when I hear that record label mentioned are Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Propaganda and Art of Noise but ZTT didn’t get stuck in the 80s as they had already had huge hits this decade with the likes of Adamski, Seal and 808 State.

“Extacy” peaked at No 16.

Before we get to the next act, just a quick note on how the charts were being handled in this period of TOTP history. Basically, they’ve f****d it! If new producer Stanley Appel was given the task by BBC bosses of coming up with the worst possible way to do a chart rundown, then he couldn’t have imagined anything better than this. For a start, there is no Top 40 countdown anymore just a Top 10. As if that wasn’t bad enough, they throw it away within the first 5 minutes of the show including revealing the No 1 record. We get to see tiny clips of the Top 10 records on screen (be they the official promo video or a TOTP appearance) but we don’t hear any of them as the new theme tune plays over the top of it. It’s insane! Appel seemed to be trying to move away from the show being based on the Top 40 singles as it had been for the whole of its existence this far by meddling with the countdown and having these new features like ‘exclusive’ performances and incorporating the album chart as well. New doesn’t always mean better and this certainly wasn’t.

Anyway, ho hum. On with the show and it’s those old reliables Andy and Vince of Erasure with their new single “Am I Right?”. These two had been TOTP staples since the mid 80s and were still a safe pair of hands into the new decade. That being said, this wasn’t one of their better tunes. The third single from their “Chorus” album, they’d gone for a slowie to follow up on the title track and “Love To Hate You” which had both had much faster bpm. Was it a definite decision at attempting to be a Christmas single? Certainly the staging of this performance would suggest so. Up there on stage with the duo are some Christmas trees, a sleigh and reindeer (of the plastic variety) and a rather forlorn looking snowman. It reminds me of the Santa’s grotto I worked in as Father Christmas in Debenhams back in 1989. I was only 21 but I filled in for the regular guys when they were having their lunch breaks. I must admit to looking at the collection of elves and penguins etc on the floor beside me and thinking to myself “where is your life heading mate?”.

Back with Erasure though and all of that paraphernalia is nothing compared to the fake snow coming down for the studio ceiling in the most unconvincing of ways. Snow has surely never been so inconsistent in its precipitation anywhere in the world as it is in this TOTP studio. I hope Andy and Vince didn’t watch the playback as they were totally undermined by this nonsense.

“Am I Right?” peaked at No 15.

Oh great, it’s Simply Red (sigh)! Hucknall and co (whoever the hell those people were) were never bigger than they were at this point. “Stars” was the title track from their fourth album and it felt like every other purchase made by a customer over Christmas ’91 in the Our Price store where I was working in Manchester was that album. We sold it over and over and over again. Then we went home, came back the next day and sold it some more. It was a monster. I guess it was the default present for all those blokes who didn’t know what to get their partner (see also, Celine Dion, Dido etc). The title track would certainly have helped sell it being a sultry, smooth as velvet pop/soul standard perfectly suited to Mick’s confident vocals. It sounded like it had been written to be played on the hour, every hour on daytime radio – indeed it probably was. Having to perform a live vocal on the show in keeping with its new policy wouldn’t have worried the Huckster at all. However, he should have been worried about the outfit that he chose for the show. He appears to have come dressed as a Wild West cowboy with his waistcoat and sheriff’s badge.

Talking of Mick’s appearance reminds me that we had a guy working as a Christmas temp in the shop who looked a bit like him. He certainly had the long, curly ginger hair anyway. In fact, now I come to think of it, didn’t he tell us that he had roadied for Simply Red before coming to work in the store? I’m not sure he was telling the truth and anyway, he didn’t last the whole of the festive period due to an incident at our pre-Christmas do. I say ‘do’ but I think we all just went to Manto bar in Canal Street which was the newly opened super bar that was packing in them in down at the gay village at the time. I think the Hucknall lookalike got pissed and decided it would be a good idea to tell the store manager exactly what he thought of him via the medium of insults. When we tried to advise him that it wasn’t a good idea he said, “What? Just because he’s the manager? F**k him!” and proceeded with his plan. I’m pretty sure we never saw him again after that night.

“Stars” the song peaked at No 8 and was the highest charting single taken from the album.

After all that talk of presenters at the top of the post, I should say that tonight’s hosts are Mark Franklin and Elayne Smith who pops up on our screen to introduce the ‘exclusive’ section of the show. This was the second of only two appearances for Elayne who, in an interview with BBC Radio Three Counties presenter Edward Adoo back in 2018, described her TOTP experience as “daunting” and that she was “completely rubbish” on it. To be fair to Elayne, there have been far, far worse presenters of the show down the years than her.

Anyway, the exclusive on tonight’s show is a screening of the video for Guns N’ Roses version of “Live And Let Die”. The original was of course written by Paul and Linda McCartney and recorded by Wings for the 1973 James Bond film of the same name. Now I had always believed that the Wings version had been a huge hit so was surprised to discover that it only made No 9 in the UK. It did better in the US where it stayed and No 2 for three weeks and was kept off the top spot by three different songs including “Touch Me In The Morning” by Diana Ross (more of whom later).

Routinely chosen in polls as the best Bond theme ever, it did then beg the question as to why the world needed a Guns N’ Roses version? Well, it was just a song that Slash and Axl Rose both loved apparently so they recorded it for their “Use Your Illusion” project (it was actually on “Use Your Illusion I” for all the pedants out there). Not everyone was happy about this and the song seems to spilt opinion accordingly. In short, it’s musical Brexit. Look at these couple of tweets for example:

Brilliant cover this and even better seeing Axl do it live
— GEOFF POOLE (@venicebeach73) November 19, 2021

See? Where did I sit on the debate? I don’t mind the Guns N’ Roses version I have to say although they did seem to overdo it with the cover versions – “Use Your Illusion II” included a version of Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door”. Both covers would be big hits in the UK with “Live And Let Die” making it to No 5 whilst “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” peaked at No 2. As with Elayne Smith’s final TOTP appearance, the live performance promo video was the last to feature rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin before he left the band.

I did promise earlier that there’d be more Diana Ross to come and here she is with her hit “When You Tell Me That You Love Me”. Such a huge megastar is Ms Ross that she doesn’t need any backing singers or band up there on stage with her – nobody is stealing any of her limelight thank you very much – but to be fair to her, the live vocal isn’t too bad.

The sales of this single seemed surprising to me. Diana hadn’t had many big hits in the UK throughout the previous 10 years (the notable exception being “Chain Reaction” going to No 1 in 1986 obviously). It’s a huge, syrup filled power ballad which I guess went down well over the festive period when we’re all filled with love for our fellow human beings (supposedly) but even so. It would end up selling 200,000 copies in this country and *SPOILER* only missed out on the Christmas No 1 spot by a couple of hundred units.

Someone who didn’t see those sales coming was our aforementioned store manager. I distinctly recall him having a word with myself as chart cassette buyer and the CD buyer advising us not to get influenced by the success of the single into ordering loads of copies of the parent album (“The Force Behind The Power”) as in all his years of record retail, he had never seen a Diana Ross album sell well. Unfortunately, he said all of this within earshot of our colleague Andy who was a huge Diana fan and took it personally that the manager was dissing one of his idols. I think he actually said something along the lines of “ignore him, he knows nothing, go big on the album”. So who was right? Well, I think it was Andy. The album did sell well over time going platinum with sales of 300,000 in the UK despite it never getting any higher than No 9 in the charts.

Four Breakers?! Oh come on! OK, well we start with Cliff Richard (of course we do, it is nearly Christmas after all) and a little ditty called “We Should Be Together”. After bagging two of the last three festive No 1 records for himself (and he even featured on the one he didn’t as he was in Band Aid II!), Cliff naturally wasn’t not going to chance his arm again and released this…well…this! Very much his forgotten Christmas single, it peaked at No 10. Not a bad return for most artists but this was Cliff we were talking about…at Christmas! This was not a good result!

The schmaltzy video and its plot of an offshore oil worker coming home to join his family for Christmas is almost unwatchable not least for the fact that the two teddy bears that he brings as presents for his two young daughters look really crap! Very badly made. He should have gone to Build-A-Bear! Boo!

After Guns N’ Roses earlier, we now get Salt ‘N Pepa and like the former, the rap trio are also having a hit with a cover version. “You Showed Me” was written by Gene Clark and Roger McGuinn of the Byrds in 1964 and has been covered by loads of different artists the first of whom to have a hit with it were The Turtles in 1968 who slowed its pace right down from its original incarnation and took into the US Top 10. The hit that Salt ‘N Pepa had with it in 1991 also took it in a different direction, making it a sassy yet also smooth whilst the rapped punctuations added their customary edge. Yet another variation on the original theme came in 1996 when The Lightning Seeds released this trip-hopped, blissed out version:

It’s also been covered by Lutricia McNeal and was sampled by De La Soul (the Turtles’ recording) for their song “Transmitting Live From Mars (Interlude)” on their 1989 album “3 Feet High And Rising” for which they were sued by the LA band. I have to admit that although I do know the song, it’s probably the version by The Turtles that comes to mind rather then any of the others mentioned here. I’m not sure I even realised that the Salt ‘N Pepa take on it was the same song!

The festive period in 1991 was fast turning out to be Queen dominated. No, not her majesty and her Christmas Day speech (had the trend to not bother tuning in to that already started 30 years ago?) but the band of course. By the time this TOTP was being broadcast, Freddie Mercury had been dead for just 11 days, the announcement of his death coming 24 hours after his public statement the he had tested HIV positive and had AIDS. Although rumours surrounding his health had been rife for months, the timing of his demise was still shocking.

Queen’s “Greatest Hits II” album had been released at the end of October and suddenly it was a required purchase following Freddie’s death. I’ve never quite got why a pop star’s death inevitably leads to a rush in demand for their back catalogue. Yes, I know sometimes cynical record labels re-release material just to cash in but they do so knowing that people probably will buy it. It always seems a bit morbid. I guess it was a slightly different case with “Greatest Hits II” as it must have been scheduled for a late Autumn release for the Christmas market for some time. Or, could EMI have been hedging their bets what with all those rumours about the perilous nature of Freddie’s health doing the rounds? All I know is that we had loads of the album in stock when it was initially released and it wasn’t shifting until Freddie’s demise and then it went batshit crazy reaching No. 1 on the UK albums chart and, as of 2014, was the tenth best-selling album in the UK with 3.9 million units shifted.

In amongst all of this Queen-mania, a solo venture by their guitarist Brian May was released called “Driven By You”.

May’s only previous solo single had been “Star Fleet”, the theme tune to some long forgotten Japanese puppet sci-fi show in 1983 which I don’t remember at all (probably because it didn’t make the Top 40). I’ve just found it on YouTube and it’s horrible. “Driven By You” sounded much more like May’s day job and indeed was included on Queen’s “Greatest Hits III” album. Wasn’t it first used on a car advert though?

*checks internet*

Yes! It was used for a Ford advertising campaign! Apparently May was asked to write a song to soundtrack it and when the advert was broadcast, it was so popular it convinced Brain to re-record the song with some changed words, an expanded running time and additional verses. The result was the version that was released as a single and that would become a No 6 hit.

It would make it onto May’s solo album of the following year called “Back To The Light” which would also feature his “Too Much Love Will Kill You” follow up single that made the Top 5. However, what I recall most about the album is that it had one of the worst covers ever. Whoever thought that the image opposite would be just the thing that they wanted to promote the album….

What’s the best cover version ever? Don’t bother answering as you’ll all have a different answer depending on your musical tastes which is subjective anyway. My friend Robin used that line in defence of what I saw as an outrageous statement that he once made down the pub which was that he didn’t like any Elton John songs. None. “What?! You can’t say that!” I replied but of course he could. Talking of Elton, here’s his song “Rocket Man” back in the charts but done by Kate Bush. How so? Well, it was a track from the tribute album “Two Rooms: Celebrating The Songs Of Elton John & Bernie Taupin”. The album featured artists like Phil Collins, Sting, The Beach Boys and Hall & Oates to name but a few who all covered songs from the John / Taupin canon but it was Kate Bush with her take on her favourite Elton hit that was released as the second single from the album. She actually retitled it as “Rocket Man (I Think It’s Going To Be A Long, Long Time)” for some reason, maybe to make a distinction between her version and the original? She needn’t have bothered as nobody would ever confuse the two. Kate’s take on it added a reggae lilt and totally reworked it. Well, if you’re going to cover a song, you might as well make it your own as the hateful Louis Walsh would no doubt have said if Kate had done this on the X Factor.

The black and white promo video sees Kate in a more playful mood than perhaps we were used to though her ukulele playing looks a bit suss. Meanwhile, the scene with the concertina player with his arm around her brought back memories of her duet with Peter Gabriel on “Don’t Give Up” to mind. Kate’s version would peak at No 12. Oh, and the best cover version of all time? That would be “Rocket Man (I Think It’s Going To Be A Long, Long Time)” according to readers of The Observer newspaper who voted it as such in 2007. So that settles that then.

The KLF were a bit out of the ordinary weren’t they? That’s quite the understatement I know. Maybe I could put it in football terms. They were like a musical José Mourinho when he famously said “I’m not one of the bottle. I’m a…I think I’m a special one” and just like José, I don’t think we’d seen anything like The KLF for a very long time.

After selling more singles than any other act in 1991 so far, they decided to do a collaboration with the ‘First Lady of Country Music’ Tammy Wynette on “Justified & Ancient (Stand by The JAMs)” ! WTF?! Bizarre? Out of left field? I’m not sure there are words to describe how weird this seemed in 1991. Surely the safe thing would have been to release another dance track in the mould of their ‘Stadium House’ trilogy of hits “What Time Is Love?”, “Last Train to Trancentral” and “3 a.m. Eternal” but then The KLF could never be described as being sensible. Apparently Tammy didn’t really know what she was singing about (she’d never head of a 99 ice cream) and originally thought the lyrics were ‘justified and anxious’ but somehow it all comes together magnificently.

The single with Tammy is radically different from the album version on “The White Room” which was a much less frenetic sound and featured the vocals of Errol “Black Steel” Nicholson which caused us record shop staff some problems when disgruntled shoppers, having bought the album on the strength of the single, returned them when they discovered that “that song about ice cream vans isn’t on it”.

And so to this TOTP performance. Would this have qualified as a water cooler moment had the phrase existed in 1991? I think maybe. So obviously Tammy wasn’t actually there in the studio with Jimi Cauty and Bill Drummond but was she really doing her bits live and in sync from “somewhere in concert in Great Britain” as Mark Franklin suggests in his intro? The staging of the performance has tribal drummers and some extras dressed in towering ice cream costumes with Tammy contributing to the visuals via a bank of TV screens in the background. It was officially bonkers. My eyes though are drawn to Jimmy Cauty (I think it’s Jimmy Cauty) who’s come dressed as Jeremy Healy from Haysi Fantayzee of “John Wayne Is Big Leggy” fame.

At the end of the performance, the ice cream van that was the visual image for the promotion of the single turns up at the back of the stage in which Elayne Smith pops up to do the link into the No 1 record. She does seem to waste the moment though, not making any reference to either the van or the performance that we have all just witnessed. Cauty and Drummond had a history of using vehicles to promote their singles – remember the American police car known as the JAMsMobile aka Ford Timelord that was the central image behind their “Doctorin’ the Tardis” No 1 from 1987 under their guise of The Timelords?

“Justified & Ancient (Stand by The JAMs)” was widely talked up as a potential Christmas No 1 but the death of Freddie Mercury put paid to that although it did go to No 2 in early 1992 which was the year when The KLF retired from the music industry by basically blowing up the whole project.

Now did I say that 1991 was remembered for being a Queen Christmas earlier? I may have jumped the gun as Elton John was certainly no shrinking violet (has he ever been?) when it came to records in the charts at this festive time. After Kate Bush’s version of his “Rocket Man” song earlier we now get the man himself with another of his older songs. I have to admit I’d kind of lost track of the timeline for Elton and George Michael‘s version of “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me” being a No 1 hit. In my head I thought it was a chart topper much later than this but I realise I’ve melded together this record and the “Five Live” EP which was also a No 1 but in April 1993 and featured George Michael performing, amongst other tracks, “Somebody to Love” at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert held at Wembley Stadium in April 1992. In addition, Freddie scored a posthumous solo No 1 in the August of 1993 with a remix of his ‘Living On My Own” single. There was clearly a George/Queen/Elton frenzy going on between Christmas 1991 and the Summer of 1993 – no wonder my poor memory couldn’t cope.

So why was this George / Elton live version of “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me” back in the charts? After all, hadn’t we already had a cover of the song in the charts recently courtesy of Oleta Adams from the aforementioned Elton John / Bernie Taupin album? Yes, yes we had – it peaked at No 33 back in October. Well, given that Elton donated the proceeds of his single 1990 “Sacrifice” to various AIDS related charities and that his friend Freddie Mercury had just died of an AIDS related illness and that he founded the Elton John AIDS Foundation in 1992, it’s no surprise that “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me” was to raise money for 10 different charities for children, AIDS and education. George, of course, was no stranger to charity having been front and centre of the Band Aid single and having performed at Live Aid where he actually sang “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me”. After his death, we learned that he had contributed loads of money incognito to many varied causes.

This live version of the song had been recorded on the final show of his Cover To Cover tour at Wembley Arena on 23 March 1991. The bit where George introduces Elton and the audience’s reaction to the surprise event is probably my favourite part. The single went straight in at No 1 (the fifth to do so in 1991 according to Mark Franklin) and would stay there for two weeks before giving way to the re-release of his old pal Freddie’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Shades Of Rhythm	Extacy	Nah
2	Erasure	Am I Right?	No but it’s probably on my Greatest Hits CD of theirs
3	Simply Red	Stars	Ooh no
4	Guns N’ Roses	Live And Let Die	See 2 above
5	Diana Ross	When You Tell Me That You Love Me	Nope
6	Cliff Richard	We Should Be Together	No we shouldn’t Cliff!
7	Salt ‘N Pepa	You Showed Me	No
8	Brian May	Driven By You	…but not bought by me
9	Kate Bush	“Rocket Man (I Think It’s Going To Be A Long, Long Time)”	Negative
10	The KLF	Justified & Ancient (Stand by The JAMs)	Thought I might have but singles box says no
11	George Michael and Elton John	Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me	It’s a no from me

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/m0011myb/top-of-the-pops-05121991

TOTP 25 OCT 1990

Posted on March 26, 2021 by 80stastic

It’s late October 1990 and I’m on my honeymoon in Germany. Yes, having tied the knot with my girlfriend five days prior to this TOTP broadcast, we were abroad (for the first time for me) thanks to one of our old friends from Polytechnic who had sorted out a cheap holiday for us as they were working as a temp in a travel agents at the time. Unfortunately for me, my feet were in spasms of agony after I had made a very poor choice when purchasing a pair of shoes for the big day on the morning of the wedding. Why I did this so late I can’t recall but I had no time to wear them in and the shape of them clearly didn’t agree with my feet. My despair was compounded when I realised that I hadn’t packed any other sort of footwear for the honeymoon and so had to spend the whole week wearing them in pain.

As a result of being out of the country, I am absolutely sure that I would not have watched this particular TOTP – if memory serves, I was bathing my poor plates of meat whilst watching some German football in our accommodation. I wonder if there was anything soothing on the show that night or was it a distinctly more painful experience….

We start with the song that closed the last show but this time the artist is in the studio. Not only that but, according to host Jakki Brambles, she had broken off rehearsals with the reformed Go-Go’s to be there. It can only be Belinda Carlisle with “(We Want) The Same Thing”. That Go-Go’s rehearsal was for a tour to promote their first Best Of album although according to Wikipedia, it peaked at No 127 in the US so I’m not sure that the tour was really that successful in achieving its aim.

“(We Want) The Same Thing” on the other hand was doing a great job of re-energising Belinda’s “Runaway Horses” album, surprisingly going Top 10 despite being the fifth single to be released from the album. When I joined Our Price the following week, there was a tip from the buying department in the weekly memos advising stores to stock up on the album noting that it was a record that, despite being over a year old, just wouldn’t stay dead.

Belinda’s beehived backing singers appear to include Sharon Watts from Eastenders in their number whilst her own outfit seems to have been inspired by a French maid character that you might see on those ‘saucy’ postcards back in the 70s. Thankfully it isn’t the same thing though despite what young teenage lads watching on TV may have wanted.

Another golden oldie back in the charts?! Oh and guess what? It was from yet another film. This time it was the supernatural romantic thriller Ghost starring Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore and Whoopi Goldberg that was to blame. The Righteous Brothers had already featured in a very successful film back in 1986 when they were included on the Top Gun soundtrack with “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin'” (there really was an all roads lead to Tom Cruise thing going on wasn’t there?) but now their version of “Unchained Melody” was at the centrepiece of Ghost’s most iconic moment – the pottery wheel scene. Cited as ‘one of the most iconic moments of ’90s cinema’, all that mucky clay business created a clamour for the song that could only be sated by a re-release that would become not only a No 1 record (it originally peaked at No 14 in 1965) but also *spoiler alert* the UK’s top selling single of 1990. The single’s success would be reason enough for a follow up and so, inevitably, “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin'” was re-issued and made No 3 as did a hastily arranged Righteous Brothers Best Of compilation.

The Righteous Brothers were, in their original format, Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield. Medley, of course, already had his own personal bit of soundtrack history when he duetted with Jennifer Warnes on “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” from Dirty Dancing. Given this info, I was immediately confused when I saw the video being used to promote “Unchained Melody” as there was only one Righteous Brother on display who was Hatfield, Where the Hell was Bill Medley?! Well, the legend goes something like this. Hatfield and Medley had agreed to do one solo song each per album. Both had wanted to sing “Unchained Melody” for their fourth album but Hatfield won the coin toss.

The song would cause another Top 40 phenomenon five years later when it was performed by actors Robson Green and Jerome Flynn in the ITV drama Soldier Soldier. I was working in the Stockport branch of Our Price at the time and the amount of people who had not been near a record shop for years that ventured in to enquire about that record from Soldier Soldier was unreal. When eventually released, like The Righteous Brothers five years before them, it would become the best selling single of the year in the UK. Strange times indeed. And we haven’t even mentioned the Gareth Gates version in 2002 but let’s not get into that eh?

An example of a new track being used to promote a load of old tunes next as we get “Don’t Ask Me” by Public Image Limited. This single was taken from a Best Of album called “The Greatest Hits, So Far” (although PiL never did manage another chart entry after this). It sounded so very pop music-like to me which was a surprise given John Lydon’s previous canon of work. When I was a full on pop kid back in ’83 influenced almost entirely by the Top 40, “This Is Not A Love Song” sounded like it had come from a different universe entirely compared to its chart peers. I didn’t know much of PiL’s back catalogue (although I obviously knew of Lydon’s Sex Pistols’ history) but anybody could hear how completely ‘other’ this song was in the shiny world of ‘new pop’ back then. Fast forward seven years, and although anything with Lydon’s vocals on it could never be described as mainstream, “Don’t Ask Me” was ….well…a good pop song. According to @TOTPFacts though, the band’s bassist Allan Dias who wrote it really wasn’t happy with how it sounded:

"I hate that version that's out, it's so soft. You should have heard my version – it was cutting, it kicked! They softened it up, they made it MTV-friendly." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) March 19, 2021

“Don’t Ask Me” peaked at No 22 and it took PiL a further two years to release any new recordings which arrived in the form of the album “That What Is Not”. Two years was nothing though as the album after that didn’t appear for TWENTY years as the band was put on hiatus.

I’ve always found Lydon a captivating character and been intrigued by his confrontational interviews. However, his support for Donald Trump in the 2020 US Presidential election was a step too far for me and I found his views totally unpalatable.

Oh come on! This is getting ridiculous now! After Maria McKee spent a month at No 1 with a song from a Tom Cruise movie and after seeing “Unchained Melody” back in the charts earlier from the film Ghost, here were Berlin riding high in the Top 40 once more with that song from yet another movie! And indeed, another Tom Cruise film! What was it with this guys films generating huge hits in the music charts back then? After Top Gun gave us the frankly awful (in my book) “Take My Breath Away”, we then had two singles from the soundtrack to Cruise’s 1988 flick Cocktail in “Kokomo” by The Beach Boys and Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” which both became massive successes.

Even his 1992 film Far And Away whose soundtrack was composed by John Williams and was a mixture of traditional Irish instrumentation and conventional orchestra; yes even that managed to give us “Book Of Days” by Enya! The following year his Interview With A Vampire film spawned what was seen as heresy for many a rock fan, the Guns N’ Roses cover of “Sympathy For The Devil” by The Rolling Stones (described by a record shop colleague at the time as ‘comedy record of the week’).

Out of interest, I just googled if there was an album of Tom Cruise film songs and there is! Called “Born On The Fourth Of July – Music From The Films Of Tom Cruise”, it’s yours for £369.32 from Amazon! All of this would eventually and inevitably lead to Cruise having a go at the old singing lark himself when he played rock star Stacee Jaxx in Rock Of Ages. Behold the Cruisemeister!

Finally some new music from a new band (sort of). Having finally hit big commercially with “I’m Free” over the Summer, The Soup Dragons needed a quick, sure -fire follow up to consolidate on that success. So what did they do? Well, they did what everyone does and re-released a previous single that had flopped and bingo! Another bona fide chart hit! The previous single in question was “Mother Universe” which for me was even better than “I’m Free” and I duly bought it. However, that original version that was released back in 1989 (which I hadn’t known) didn’t sound like the re-release….

Compare that rather turgid mix to the revamped, pimped up 1990 incarnation…

It’s as if the magic elixir that they had discovered for “I’m Free” had been liberally poured all over the original “Mother Universe” recording and what grew in its place was the slick, knowing and well-to-do cousin of its poor relative. The gospel choir, the Mikey Dread sample in the intro and all those other little elements that had conspired to make “I’m Free” so irresistible did the trick again. and “Mother Universe” (the re-release) was another chart hit, albeit much smaller than its predecessor peaking at No 26.

Despite that, and as much as I liked “I’m Free”, this will always be the better record for me (see also The Boo Radleys whose “Wake Up Boo!” is by far their biggest and most played hit but I infinitely prefer its follow up “Find The Answer Within”) Is there a name for that syndrome of preferring a more obscure song to the one that was an artist’s biggest hit that everyone else always chooses? Oh yes, I think it’s called being a precious, music snob.

Jason Donovan again?! For all that he was the pop prince of 1989 which was his year in the sun, he seems to have cast quite the shadow over 1990 as well. “I’m Doing Fine” was his fourth single release of the year (all taken from his “Between The Lines” album) and was also the worst performing, peaking at No 22. Now what’s Jakki Brambles saying about him in her intro? Something about him proving all his critics wrong by actually playing live at his…erm…live gigs. She protests too much I do fear. And what was that about The Beatles? This was his tribute to them? What’s that supposed to mean? OK, let’s have a listen then….

…well, as a Beatles influenced record it’s hardly Oasis is it? The opening guitar chords are very vaguely reminiscent of their “Rubber Soul” era but if anything, it sounds more like a track by The Monkees than the MopTops. It’s like a piss weak version of “Tonight” by New Kids On The Block which in itself was a piss weak take on The Beatles / Beach Boys sound. And what the heck was Donovan’s performance here all about? All that Billie from The Double Deckers thumbs up, arm jerking, his ridiculous hair and those frankly bizarre strides. Yet again, I say he protests too much.

Ooh! A single now from a new album that the music business is in raptures over according to Jakki B – what could it be? Oh… it’s “The Rhythm Of The Saints” by Paul Simon. This is probably a completely unfair opinion and I am certainly no expert on the album but wasn’t this just a retread of his iconic “Graceland’ album only not as good? As I said, probably unfair but the sales figures kind of back me up. Although it sold well (2 x platinum in both the UK and the US – indeed it was a No 1 album over here), those numbers were dwarfed by what “Graceland” achieved. Again, probably an unfair gauge but apart from lead single “The Obvious Child”, none of the other tracks lifted from “The Rhythm Of The Saints” were hits.

Although both were termed ‘world music’ albums, whereas “Graceland” had combined Western pop themes with African rhythms, its follow up relocated geographically to South America and took its inspiration from Brazilian drum beats. “The Obvious Child” was pleasant enough although those drums seemed a bit incongruous but it was nowhere near as memorably quirky as say “You Can Call Me Al”. I’m sure that in the intervening 30 years that some revisionism will have taken place and “The Rhythm Of The Saints” will no doubt be critically adored but it all felt a bit underwhelming to me at the time. “Graceland 2”? Bit obvious wasn’t it Paul?

A couple of Breakers next from two guys who knew each other well and had worked with together previously. George Michael was not happy with his record company Sony Music at this time as he perceived that they were not supporting him as an artist. So toxic had the relationship become that he refused to film a video for his last single “Praying For time” which had been the first track released from his second solo album “Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1”. As far as I can see, he didn’t film one for follow up single “Waiting For That Day” either. The clip below seems to be taken from the South Bank Show judging by Melvyn Bragg’s voice over. It’s quite an interesting clip though, explaining as it does how George put the track together by employing the ubiquitous James Brown “Funky Drummer” sample in a totally different way alongside some mellow folk style guitar chords. The melody borrows heavily from “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” by The Rolling Stones so George wisely drew attention to this by referencing that song in the lyrics and giving Mick Jagger and Keith Richards a songwriting credit.

After the mega success of “Faith” and its attendant singles, whatever came after from Michael would probably not be seen favourably in comparison but for me, “Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1” is by far the better album with “Waiting For That Day” one of the stand out tracks. However, much like Paul Simon, the album didn’t sell anywhere near as well as its predecessor and the singles were not huge hits. “Waiting For That Day” peaked at No 23 in the UK and No 27 in the US.

I don’t recall this Elton John single at all. “You Gotta Love Someone”? Nope – I’ve got nothing at all. Was this another track from “Sleeping With The Past”?

*checks Wikipedia*

FFS! It was from the Days Of Thunder soundtrack! Pissing Tom Cruise strikes again!

It’s not much of a song in truth. As with much of his early 90s output, it was a trudging, mid tempo ballad that Elton tried to liven up a bit at the end with the addition of a gospel choir – he should have got onto The Soup Dragons for help in that direction. It peaked at No 33 but was included on “The Very Best Of Elton John” album that was released this month and which would end up being the first thing I ever sold when I came to work at Our Price a week or so later.

Paul Simon, George Michael, Elton John and now Paul McCartney in the running order for this TOTP! Talk about big names! They weren’t exactly new and exciting though were they? We saw “Birthday” just the other week so I’ve very little left to say about it.

The 90s were not Paul’s most successful years I would argue. He didn’t have a single that even made the Top 15 let alone the Top 5. He did however dabble in a different musical genre when he released “Paul McCartney’s Liverpool Oratorio”, his first foray into classical music and a collaboration with conductor and composer Clive Davis to commemorate The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra’s 150th anniversary. Towards the end of the decade, he released the “Flaming Pie” album which, although not necessarily reversing his commercial fortunes, was critically well received.

“Birthday” peaked at No 29.

We arrive at what remains the only No 1 song ever penned by Paul Heaton*. Given his canon of work, this seems incredible. “A Little Time” was the first single from the second album by The Beautiful South called “Choke” and rather bizarrely was the only single from it to be a Top 40 hit. The album sold well enough – it went platinum and peaked at No 2 – but the two further singles released from it, (the Soul II Soul lampooning “My Book” and “Let Love Speak Up Itself”) peaked at Nos 43 and 51 respectively. The phenomenon of No 1 singles by established artists (so not one hit wonders) being followed by records that didn’t even chart is not a common one I’m guessing. I can think of “E.S.P” by The Bee Gees peaking outside the Top 40 after their chart Topper “You Win Again”. off the top of my head.

I recall that when I started at Our Price, whoever the chart LP buyer was in my store had gone a bit overboard with the orders for “Choke” and there was a massive overstock of it that I don’t think was ever cleared (a lack of further hit singles from it probably didn’t help!).

*”Caravan Of Love” was a No 1 for The Housemartins but was a cover version of an Isley-Jasper-Isley song

The play out video is “Dressed For Success” by Roxette whose re-release schedule was still in full effect at this point. Having hit it big with “It Must Have Been Love” (yet another film soundtrack single), the band’s record company had embarked upon a strategy of re-issuing their previous singles that hadn’t been hits first time around. We’d already had “Listen To Your Heart” go Top 10 and now it was time for “Dressed For Success” to try its luck. Despite its self prophesying title, it didn’t quite do the same job although its peak of No 18 was 30 places higher than its original release.

Not sounding as accomplished as either “It Must Have Been Love” or “Listen To Your Heart”, it was like a clunky version of early Abba material. It did the job of maintaining the duo’s profile though until new album “Joyride” was released in the March of 1991.

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

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Belinda Carlisle	(We Want) The Same Thing	Not sure we did Belinda because I didn’t buy this
2	The Righteous Brothers	Unchained Melody	It’s a no
3	Public Image Limited	Don’t Ask Me	Nope
4	Berlin	Take My Breath Away	No – not in 1990 nor 1986
5	The Soup Dragons	Mother Universe	Yes! Present and correct in the singles box!
6	Jason Donovan	I’m Doing Fine	No of course not
7	Paul Simon	Obvious Child	No but it was on that first Q Magazine album that I bought.
8	George Michael	Waiting For That Day	No but my wife had the album
9	Elton John	You Gotta Love Someone	No
10	Paul McCartney	Birthday	Negative
11	The Beautiful South	A Little Time	Not the single but I have it on their Best Of album
12	Roxette	Dressed For Success	Nah

Disclaimer

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000t888/top-of-the-pops-25101990

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

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

Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 19 JUL 1990

Posted on February 3, 2021 by 80stastic

Well, Italia ’90 may have come to a painful end a couple of weeks prior but the England football team were still in the news as three days before this TOTP aired, Graham Taylor was appointed full time manager of the national team following the pre-planned resignation of Bobby Robson. It wasn’t a universally welcome appointment and within three years and after a dismal Euro ’92 performance and failure to qualify for the ’94 World Cup, Taylor also resigned. The now infamous Channel 4 fly on the wall documentary film surrounding the doomed ’94 qualifying campaign originally broadcast as Graham Taylor: An Impossible Job is now, sadly for Taylor, the best remembered part of his legacy including the immortal line “Do I Not Like That”.

What’s all this got to do with TOTP? Very little although Taylor does, of course, have some legendary ties to music. Firstly, there is his relationship with Elton John (more of whom later) as Watford FC manager to Elton’s club chairman. Secondly, Taylor once admitted that his favourite ever singer was Forces’ Sweetheart Dame Vera Lynn, an odd choice for a man who was only a one year old child when the war ended but then he was very much seen as an old fashioned type of gentleman. Funny then that he always seemed to be swearing his head off in that documentary…

Finally, and most bizarrely, I found this musical connection on YouTube. Apologies in advance…

My own personal Graham Taylor moment of 1990 came when I walked past his office door when he was still manager of Aston Villa (prior to his taking the England job). I’d contacted the football club as I was unemployed and desperate for some sort of career direction at the time. I had a chat with their commercial manager about possible career opportunities within football and his office was a couple of doors down from Graham’s.

If you clicked on this post hoping for some 1990 music memories and are wondering why you have been reading about football for the past 450 odd words, stick with me. I’m going there right now. OK, tonight’s host is Mark Goodier who has come dressed as a zebra and the first act on are Craig McLachlan And Check 1-2 with “Mona”. They are up to the No 2 position and are eyeing a possible No 1 – they couldn’t could they? Well, *spoiler alert* no they didn’t but fair play, it was a gallant effort. He even got on the front cover of Smash Hits!

Craig and co are in the actual studio for the first time and he gets to show off his guitar playing credentials (or at least mime them) and they seem pretty convincing. In that Smash Hits article, he showed off his collection of guitars including the one he has with him on stage here. It’s not his most precious axe in his collection though which is an original series Ibanez Iceman made famous by KISS guitarist Paul Stanley who had a signature Iceman.

For all his rock credentials though, Craig was unable to forge a lasting music career despite a Top 10 album and halfway decent follow up single in “Amanda”. And whatever you may say about his cover of “Mona”, you have to admit it’s quite the ear worm.

Next up, the reason that poor old Craig failed to get that No 1 spot as it was stolen from under his nose by Partners In Kryme and their awful single “Turtle Power”. This was of course to promote the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise entry into the world of film. This tale of four turtles turned into crime fighting, pizza eating heroes after being exposed to radioactive sewer ooze had been around for a couple of years via the animated cartoon (retitled Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles for the more delicately natured UK audience). With turtle related merchandising also coming on line, the step into the big screen was inevitable. The film didn’t hit UK cinemas until late November but as it was already out in the US, the soundtrack was available well in advance. According to Wikipedia:

‘The collection is made up mostly of hip-hop and new jack swing styled tracks with several film score cues at the end.’

The film score bits were courtesy of John Du Prez who was the bald trumpet player in Modern Romance (no really) whilst the hip -hop was supplied by flavour of the month MC Hammer and some acts I’ve never heard of including Riff and the unedifyingly named Spunkadelic. And of course Partners In Kryme. This American duo from New York City seem to have existed solely to make music for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles phenomenon. According to their discography, they have only ever released three singles – “Turtle Power” and “Undercover” in 1990 and a track called “Rock The Halfshell” on the official Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles YouTube channel in 2015. They never released a full length album and the only other recorded material I can find accredited to them is a version of Donna Summer’s “Love to Love You Baby” retitled “Love 2 Love U” which appeared on another soundtrack album, this time for the Vanilla Ice vehicle Cool As Ice. This film was so bad that it was nominated for eleven Golden Raspberry awards and was disowned by director David Kellogg. Sadly for us all, the time of Vanilla Ice is nearly upon us.

For the moment though, we only have Partners In Kryme to negotiate. This always seemed like a novelty record to me; I felt much the same about “Ghostbusters” by Ray Parker Jnr. The lyrics do make some very specific references to the film and its characters which suggests a close connection to its source material (unlike say “World In Motion” whose football links are pretty loose). However, if you go down that route, make sure you get it right. Exhibit A m’lud:

“Splinter’s the teacher so they are the students.
Leonardo, Michelangelo and Donatello make up the team
with one other fellow, Raphael.
He’s the leader of the group, transformed from the norm by the nuclear goop”

Now I’m no turtles expert (pretty sure I’ve never seen any of the films or cartoon) but Wikipedia assures me that it’s Leonardo who is the leader of the group, not Raphael. Sometimes you do have to sweat the small stuff.

A recurring feature of these 1990 TOTP repeats is that they’re throwing up lots of hits that I have no recollection of at all. Here’s another one – the DJ Phil Chill remix of “I’m Still Waiting” by Diana Ross. As to why this was released or indeed why Motown thought we needed a nasty, dull, plodding dance remix of this song, I have zero clue. It really is one of the worst remixes I’ve heard for a long time.

Fast forward three years to 1993 and I am working as Assistant Manager for Our Price in the Altrincham branch in Cheshire. EMI have issued a Diana Ross Best of for the Xmas market called “One Woman: The Ultimate Collection” which is selling pretty well (it went 4 x platinum in the UK). There is a problem though. All the other musical outlets in Altrincham are selling the CD format of the album at £9.99 whilst our price point is holding at £11.99. Myself and the store manager, fearing we would never sell our considerable stocks of the album, therefore hatched a plan that we should price match our competitors which was completely against company policy and an action that was not within our remit at all. The plan worked and the CD was flying off the shelves and into our ringing tills …until the Area Manager descended upon the store for his Xmas ‘mince pie’ visit when he would come and ‘help’ out the staff by serving some customers. We all hated the ‘mince pie’ visits as inevitably the Area Manager would be more of an hinderance than a help as he didn’t know where anything was. Worse than that though, he might discover our unofficial Diana Ross price slash. As he began to serve in the shop, myself and the store manager desperately joined him to try and spot any customers in the queue that had the Diana Ross CD in their hands so as to head them off at the pass as it were before the Area Manager got a chance to serve them and discover our little plot. We must have looked completely hyper and preoccupied as we whittled down the queue of customers, all the while jumping in front of him should anybody approach the counter to purchase Ms Ross. Our efforts were rewarded though and he left without sussing anything untoward was occurring.

For the record, the original and vastly superior version of “I’m Still Waiting” was a No 1 record in 1970 whilst Phil Chill’s unwanted 1990 remix stalled at No 21 and it certainly was not on that Diana Ross Best Of that caused me so much anxiety.

A second appearance now for a song that only made it to No 27! Seems like a lot of exposure for such underwhelming sales. I’m pretty sure that this is just the original performance of “She Comes In The Fall” by Inspiral Carpets that was originally broadcast a couple of weeks previous. My suspicions are confirmed by @TOTPFacts:

This Inspiral Carpets performance (a repeat) was recorded the night England played West Germany in the World Cup semi-finals. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 29, 2021

There’s more to this story though:

Guitarist Graham Lambert: "We watched the game in the BBC bar. We saw Jimmy Hill after the game, and with him we re-enacted the penalty shoot-out in the Blue Peter garden." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 29, 2021

The Blue Peter garden! A fixture of the show since 1974, it was infamously trashed in 1983 supposedly by a gang that included teenage future footballers Dennis Wise and Les Ferdinand! I’ve never heard any stories about Jimmy and the Carpet boys damaging the garden thereby debunking the rock stars trashing hotel rooms template. I bet the band also tidied their hotel rooms before checking out on time whenever on tour. My friend Robin,who worked for the BBC for many years, told me recently that the Blue Peter garden is actually much smaller than it seems on screen which is very nearly a metaphor for the chart fortunes of “She Comes In The Fall”.

Host Mark Goodier goes into a weird segue next when he bangs on about how ‘trendy’ the show is! Remember when ‘trendy’ was a word we all used? Nowadays it’s all ‘on point’ or ‘cutting edge’ and the only reference to the word trend is when something trends on Twitter. Surely Goodier can’t be referring to himself in that two tone outfit of his? To be fair though, the girl in the James T-shirt would definitely have been ‘on point’ back then.

And he surely can’t mean the next act who is Paul Young. I’d almost forgotten this period of Paul’s career. He’d seemed consigned to history back in 1986 when his third album “Between Two Fires” and its attendant singles didn’t pull up the expected trees commercially. Somehow though, even in the dance obsessed charts of the early 90s, he pulled off a comeback of sorts. His “Other Voices” album spawned two hit singles in “Softly Whispering I Love You” and this one, a cover (well it is Paul Young!) of the old Chi-Lites number “Oh Girl”.

Paul does seem every inch the chart anomaly here, a position emphasised by his lime green shirt and jacket and his white trousers. At least he seems to have sorted his hair out a bit since his last appearance on the show when frankly his barnet was a right mess. As for the song, it’s all very pleasant and that but even Goodier seems to damn him with faint praise at the end when he sums it all up by pronouncing “It’s a good song well sung”

“Oh Girl” peaked at No 25.

Some pop puppets next. No, not New Kids On The Block but F.A.B. featuring MC Parker and “Thunderbirds Are Go!”. What a curious hit this was. I’m not quite sure what demographic it was appealing to but enough punters bought it to send it rocketing all the way to No 5. The framing of the Parker character as a DJ is its selling point I think. Certainly the video would not have been half as effective without the MC Parker bits inserted strategically.

Ever wondered what F.A.B. stands for though? Here’s head of the Thunderbirds operation Geoff Tracy…

…so nothing essentially. Just a clipping of the word ‘fabulous’. Other theories abound of course including ‘For Always Brothers’ as in the Tracy brothers presumably and also ‘Fully Acknowledged Broadcast’. Given that it doesn’t actually stand for anything, it was sure used a lot in the series…

Cripes! It’s that Madonna song! Yes, it’s time for some “Hanky Panky” people! An ode to sadomasochistic tendencies or just a bit of a laugh? Well, what’s for certain is that it was the follow up to her No 1 “Vogue” and it nearly repeated the trick by peaking at No 2 in the UK (though it only made No 10 in the US). This performance of it is from Madonna’s Blond Ambition World Tour and clearly gets in a bit of promotion for the Dick Tracy film in which she starred with the inclusion of a male dancer dressed as Dick towards the end of the routine.

Inevitably, the song attracted its fair share of controversy especially in Ireland where two women’s organisations accused Madonna of glorifying violence against women, specifically on the line “I’ll settle for the back of your hand”. Madonna played down the accusations stating that of course it wasn’t her saying that she liked to be spanked but rather her character in the movie Breathless Mahoney. And if you think that’s enough controversy for one year, think again. The next 1990 Madonna single is “Justify My Love” – hold onto your crotches!

Now here’s an interesting tune. DreamWarriors were a Canadian hip hop duo who briefly found success and fame with a couple of hit singles the first of which was “Wash Your Face In My Sink”. Can it really have been a complaint about someone using their sink and leaving a ring around the basin?! Online commentaries suggest it is about setting boundaries around behaviour in relationships although we must have all have shared houses/ flats with people who don’t seem to share the same standards of hygiene that we pride ourselves as having surely?

As I’ve made clear many times before, I’m not a massive hip-hop fan, but this little eccentricity always appealed to me. “Wash Your Face In My Sink” peaked at No 16.

It’s the final week of five at the top for Elton John and, to quote Captain Sensible, ain’t I glad?! I think I’m right in saying that not once in all that time did TOTP play the other song of the double A-side that was “Sacrifice / Healing Hands” so here it is…

…hmm…well, I prefer it to the gigantic turd that is “Sacrifice” but it’s hardly up there in Elton’s canon of work as anywhere near approaching his best. I’m pretty sure it didn’t get that much airplay (certainly not on the radio stations I was listening to) back then either with “Sacrifice” taking the lion’s share making it altogether quite the forgotten No 1 song – a ghost No 1 if you will, standing there in plain sight but never seen. Not a phenomenon with a large members list I would suspect – I can only think of Billy Bragg’s version of The Beatles ‘She’s Leaving Home’ which was the almost completely ignored other A-side to Wet Wet Wet’s Childline No 1 “With A little Help From My Friends”.

I was aware that Paula Abdul had a song called “Knocked Out” but I could not have told you what on earth it sounded like. I would also have said that it never made the Top 40. I was both right and wrong. It was released three times in the UK before becoming a hit. It was actually Paula’s debut single back in September 1988 but bombed completely at No 98. However, following the success of “Straight Up” and “Forever Your Girl”, it was reissued and peaked at No 41 in August 1989. It finally made the Top 40 on its third release albeit that it required a Shep Pettibone remix to do the trick. They say trouble comes in threes and this single certainly wasn’t worth all that trouble to be honest.

The Shep Pettibone remix of “Knocked Out” peaked at No 21.

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

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Craig McLachlan Check 1-2	Mona	I did not
2	Partners In Kryme	Turtle Power	This was a crime…against music. No
3	Diana Ross	I’m Still Waiting Phil Chill 1990 remix	And I’m still waiting for an explanation for this dire record’s existence
4	Inspiral Carpets	She Comes In The Fall	Nope
5	Paul Young	Oh Girl	Oh no
6	F.A.B featuring MC Parker	Thunderbirds Are Go	Loved Thunderbirds, didn’t love this – no
7	Madonna	Hanky Panky	Nah
8	Dream Warriors	Wash Your Face In My Sink	Liked it but not enough to buy it
9	Elton John	Sacrifice /Healing Hands	Not knowingly but I’ve since discovered that Healing Hands is on a Q Magazine compilation LP that I bought. That doesn’t count does it?!
10	Paula Abdul	Knocked Out	No

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000rpmn/top-of-the-pops-19071990

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

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

Some bedtime reading?

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

TOTP 12 JUL 1990

Posted on January 29, 2021 by 80stastic

So Italia ’90 is finally over, English pride in their football team has been restored and Gazzamania is upon us. Thankfully we have a few weeks yet before Mr Gascoigne enters the world of pop music. In the meantime, we have seven ‘new’ tunes to feast on at the top table of TOTP. If music be the food of love, play on…

…and we start with with Scottish rockers Gun (terrible name*) and their single “Shame On You”. When the band appeared in the Breakers section of TOTP with their debut hit “Better Days” back in the Summer of ’89, another band featured in that section that same show were The Stone Roses. In an unlikely turn of events, the Roses are again on TOTP alongside Gun tonight. In the blog post of that ’89 programme, I revealed that I should have been absolutely ripe to be swept away by the baggy movement spearheaded by Ian Brown and co and yet somehow I managed to nail my colours to the Gun mast! Fast forward a year and let’s see how that choice worked out. The Stone Roses are the coolest band in Britain and their debut album can be heard coming out of the bedroom window of just about every music fan who knows their stuff. And Gun? Well, they followed up “Better Days” with three further single releases none of which made the Top 40. Still, as presenter Anthea Turner (dressed like a tube of Opal Fruits tonight) says, they have been on tour with none other than The Rolling Stones (more of whom later).

It seems though that Gun’s luck is beginning to turn as they are back in the charts with “Shame On You” (the fifth single from their debut album “Taking On The World”). And guess what? I was still sticking to my guns (ahem) and that original choice of band as I bought this single! Yes, after months of never having bought any of the singles featured on the show, two songs come along at once that I purchased with this one and Bob Geldof’s “The Great Song Of Indifference” from the other week. I bought it on cassette single (cassettes were still my format of choice back then) and it was backed with a live version of “Better Days” on the B-side as it were. I loved the driving back beat that builds gradually and that twangy guitar riff. Unfortunately for me and for the band, it would stall at No 33 (the exact same peak as “Better Days”). Sophomore album “Gallus” released two years later was a moderate success but it was only when they released a cover of Cameo’s ‘Word Up” in ’94 that they would finally achieve a Top 10 hit.

Gun split in ’97 but reformed in 2008 and are still a going concern today…and you can’t say that about The Stone Roses can you?

*Previous incarnations of the band went by the monikers of Blind Allez and Phobia – not sure they are any improvement on Gun to be fair!

Who’s next on? Oh, yes River City People – I’d almost (but not quite) forgotten this lot. Wasn’t there a bit of fuss about them being the next big thing at this time or am I making that up? Why is Anthea Turner so enthused about the band? Well, she used to work with lead singer Siobhan Maher as presenters on Children’s BBC’s summer holiday morning programme But First This! apparently ( I’ve no recall of it at all). Maher was also an actress and appeared in Brookside spin off Damon And Debbie which I do absolutely remember (especially its tragic ending – heartbreaking it was).

Anyway, in addition to presenting and acting ambitions, Maher was also a singer and formed River City People in ’86. After a couple of false starts, they hit it big with a cover of The Mamas and the Papas’ “California Dreamin‘”. I’m guessing that after those initial mis-steps, their record label reverted to that tried and trusted career saving trick of a cover version. Cleverly they doubled it up with a River City People original in “Carry The Blame” as the other A -side though how much radio play it got, I’m not sure.

Siobhan certainly had a smooth voice and despite all the retro hippy trappings on display in this performance, it stands up pretty well I think.

The single rose to No 13 but despite its placing, it wasn’t the spring board for success that the band (and record label) must have hoped for. A re-release of debut single “(What’s Wrong With) Dreaming?” (they had a thing about dreams seemingly) only scraped into the charts at No 40 which was a shame as it sounds a bit like Lone Justice which is no bad thing in my book.

As Anthea announced, their debut album called “Say Something Good” was released later in ’90 and a second album followed in ’91 but the band split not long after that. Shame really.

OK, after some 60s folk pop, we get back to some dance music (well it is 1990) with “Naked In The Rain” by Blue Pearl and indeed this record does scream 1990 to me. I always though they were a one hit wonder but a glance at their discography tells me otherwise albeit that two of their four chart entries were with this track.

Fronted by the distinctively named Durga McBroom, this dance floor smash would make it all the way to No 4 in the UK charts. As with Siobhan Maher before her, Durga was also a multi-skiller being an actress as well. She appeared in the film Flashdance as a character called Heels and was also in music videos for the likes of Eurythmics, Janet Jackson and David Bowie no less. As Anthea mentioned in her intro (get her dropping her Knebworth references), Durga was very closely associated with Pink Floyd touring with them between 1987 to 1994. That might explain why they covered Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” for their debut album “Naked” as Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour helped produce the 16 year old Kate’s initial demo tape.

When asked in a Smash Hits interview what “Naked In The Rain” was about, Durga replied :

“It’s not a literal naked that I’m talking of. It’s not about running to Trafalgar Square and ripping all your clothes off and jumping into the fountain. It’s more an emotional naked; stripping oneself of frustrations and the things that hold us back from being really calm and really cool.”

Hmm. Not sure anybody explained that to the video director…

Not Glenn Medeiros again?! This is the third time “She Ain’t Worth It” with Bobby Brown has been on. This track was meant to represent a change of image and sound for the boy from Hawaii and looking at the titles of his albums, he did seem to suffer an identity crisis during his career. Starting with his debut album (the one with “Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love for You” on it) which was rather uninspiringly entitled “Glenn Medeiros” he then released an album called “Not Me” before a third album came out in 1990 (that included “She Ain’t Worth It”) which was called “Glenn Medeiros” again! So that’s:

Glenn Medeiros
Not Me
Glenn Medeiros

Wow! I bet his therapy bills were big!

Although, “She Ain’t Worth It” was a US No 1, Glenn only managed one more chart hit over there (another duet, this time with Ray Parker Jnr of all people) and his chart career did not sustain beyond that.

A band who have flown in all the way from LA to be on the show next (according to Anthea) but I’m not sure it was worth the bother to be fair. Thunder had entered the chart with their version of the old Spencer Davis Group hit “Gimme Some Lovin'” at No 38 but following this TOTP performance it only went up two places to a peak of No 36 before crashing out of the Top 40 altogether. This was however their third chart hit of the year and indeed the third of five singles to be released from their “Backstreet Symphony” album in total. The album was produced by ex-Duran Duran guitarist Andy Taylor who also produced “Shame On You” by the show’s opening act tonight Gun. Andy had clearly moved well beyond his new romantic pop star beginnings by this point and had fully thrown in his lot with his true love, heavy rock.

Unlike producer mates Gun who were looking to re-start their chart lives after a drop in commercial fortunes when they covered Cameo’s “Word Up”, I’m not quite sure why Thunder (or possibly their record label) felt the need to release a cover version over their own material at this very early point in their career but there you go. It didn’t seem to add anything much to the original to me.

Tune! A great song up next from The Soup Dragons featuring Junior Reid with “I’m Free”. Looking a bit like a hybrid of Primal Scream and Happy Mondays, it was easy to labour under the misconception that this lot were part of the ‘Madchester’ movement (pretty sure I did). The Soup Dragons were in fact from Scotland (Bellshill* near Motherwell specifically). A few months later when I was a wet behind the ears sales assistant at Our Price in Manchester, a distributor rep called in to the store with some product on his van he was trying to sell in. I can’t recall which distributor he worked for but it was one of the small ones so a lot of his stuff was quite niche. One of the artists he had on the van were BMX Bandits whom he triumphantly announced went onto be chart stars The Soup Dragons hoping this would influence the store manager to take a punt on their stock. I believed that story for ages but it wasn’t strictly true. BMX Bandits existed alongside The Soup Dragons although they did often share band members including lead singer Sean Dickson.

The group’s origins weren’t the only thing I wasn’t aware of at the time – I also was oblivious to the fact that “I’m Free” was a Rolling Stones song. It’s not a strict cover of it though. The lyrics were changed slightly, necessitated by the fact that they didn’t have them (this was pre the internet remember) so Dickson sang what he could remember and made up the rest.

Can I say that I loved the groove on this record or will I sound like a middle aged man (which is what I am)? OK, sod it – I loved the groove on this record and the toasting from Junior Reid made the song their own (as Louis Walsh would say). By the way, Reid doesn’t rap ‘Free from the Loch Ness Monster, free from the deep’ but ‘Free like a butterfly, free like a bee’ just in case you had been wondering all these years.

The song is featured brilliantly in the Simon Pegg comedy The World’s End where main character Gary King is still living in 1990 in his head.

“I’m Free” would be the band’s biggest ever hit peaking at No 5.

*The little town of Bellshill was also home to Teenage Fanclub, Mogwai and erm…Sheena Easton. Quite a roll call.

If The Soup Dragons weren’t part of ‘Madchester’ then the next act certainly were. The time of The Stone Roses was now. Everyone was talking about them and ‘Madchester’ and the legendary Manc nightclub The Hacienda. I recall reading earlier in the year in the Daily Mirror (my parents’ choice of newspaper) about coach trips being organised throughout the country to take hordes of ravers up to Manchester to visit The Hacienda like it was some sort of spiritual pilgrimage.

“One Love” was a non -album single that should have been released to coincide with the band’s infamous Spike Island gig (that my elder brother went to) but it took so long to mix, its release was delayed. Having naively chosen Gun over the Roses the year before, I was ready to be bowled over this time and to get fully on board with the whole sound. “One Love”, yeah, too right! This is going to be mega I thought. And then I heard the song. I was completely underwhelmed. It seemed very laboured and didn’t really go anywhere and the chorus was lame. Even Ian Brown agreed with me on that in time…

Ian Brown on "One Love": "We tried in vain to cover all bases – we wanted to appeal to everyone in clubs and indie kids and whoever, but it was a poor chorus." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 22, 2021

There was no way I was wasting my money on this and so for the second time, I chose Gun over The Stone Roses when I bought their current single instead. The band’s fan base was big enough by this point to take the single to No 4 in the charts but it was a false dawn. It would be the last original material released by the band until “Love Spreads” some four and a half years later!

Ah bollocks! Elton John is still at No 1 with “Sacrifice / Healing Hands”. Three months on from this, Elton would release a career retrospective double album called “The Very Best Of Elton John” spanning 1970’s “Your Song” through to “Sacrifice” (though not curiously “Healing Hands”). The album was hugely successful going to No 1 and nine times platinum in the UK alone. It was also the very first item I ever sold to a customer when I joined Our Price in October of 1990 – and I needed some help from the Assistant Manager to do so!

The play out video is “Rockin’ Over The Beat” by Technotronic. This lot of Belgian Eurodancers were becoming chart regulars by this point as this was their fourth consecutive Top 40 hit and the second to feature Ya Kid K. As with all their other stuff, I couldn’t stand it. To rub my face further in their shit, the next single they released called “Megamix” was just as it said on the tin – a mash up of all four of those previous singles! And guess what? The British public lapped it up all over again sending it to No 8. “Rockin’ Over The Beat” by contrast only made it to No 16. I guess the four in one option seemed better value.

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

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Gun	Shame On You	I did! No shame on me though – great song!
2	River City People	California Dreamin’ / Carry The Blame	Nope
3	Blue Pearl	Naked In The Rain	It’s a no
4	Glenn Medeiros and Bobby Brown	She Ain’t Worth It	And neither was this song
5	Thunder	Gimme Some Lovin’	Nah
6	The Soup Dragons featuring Junior Reid	I’m Free	Thought I did but singles box says no. I did however by the follow up single Mother Universe
7	The Stone Roses	One Love	No love from me for this one
8	Elton John	Sacrifice /Healing Hands	Not knowingly but I’ve since discovered that Healing Hands is on a Q Magazine compilation LP that I bought. That doesn’t count does it?!
9	Technotronic featuring Ya Kid K	Rockin’ Over The Beat	This beat is…shit. No

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000rgm6/top-of-the-pops-12071990

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

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

Some bedtime reading?

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

TOTP 05 JUL 1990

Posted on January 27, 2021 by 80stastic

It is Thursday the 5th of July 1990 and it is less than 24 hours since the England international football team bowed out of Italia ’90 in the cruelest of circumstances. Just four days earlier, a 3-2 quarter final win over unexpectedly tricky opponents in Cameroon had unleashed emotions and hopes not witnessed since 1966 (and all that). But football is a cruel business – just this week my beloved Chelsea have sacked our greatest ever player – and by the time of the usual TOTP broadcast on the following Thursday, England were out, denied at the last by a penalty shoot-out defeat to West Germany. It hurt, so close but yet so far. Buoyed by the feel good factor that the team’s progress (if nor performances ) had instilled, we allowed ourselves to believe we were back and there would be many more tilts at the big prize to come. Little could we have imagined that it would be another 28 years and 7 tournaments before we would get to the World Cup semi final again.

Two days after this TOTP, England would lose again in the pointless third place play off match to hosts Italy whilst the final itself a day later was one of the worst games of football I have ever had to endure. After Gazza’s tears in the semi-final, we had Maradona’s as his Argentina team, who barely deserved to be there, lost a bad tempered match 1-0. The England team were hailed as heroes on their return (despite Gazza’s ‘hilarious’ fake breasts outfit) and a country’s appetite for football was rekindled after the dark days of the mid to late 80s.

Just in case you haven’t seen this enough times in the intervening 30 years…and who the hell is ‘Christopher’ Waddle?

Enough of the football though, this is supposed to be a music blog isn’t it? Yes, you’re right – it is. Let’s get to it then and tonight’s host is the ever snarky Nicky Campbell and the first act on tonight are Inspiral Carpets with “She Comes In The Fall”. This was their follow up to breakthrough hit “This Is How It Feels” and for me, it wasn’t anywhere near as captivating as its predecessor. I mean, compared to some of the utter dross inhabiting the Top 40 at the time it was like musical ambrosia but it seemed a bit…I don’t know….conventional? No, not conventional… erm…unexceptional? I think maybe they peaked too early with “This Is How It Feels” for me. “She Comes In The Fall” has all the right ingredients – Clint Boon’s swirling organ sound, driving back beat and Tom Hingley’s no frills vocal stylings but it just didn’t grab me in the same way.

Talking of Clint Boon, I saw him live a couple of years ago when I caught the Happy Mondays play at Hull. It was an open air gig and the support were Peter Hook and The Light so a very Manc based line up. Boon, with his DJ hat on, provided the tunes in between acts and it seemed like money for old rope to me as he rolled out the most obvious of Manchester tunes. It was almost like a musical version buzz word bingo. Still, the crowd seemed to lap it up. Having said that, they were mainly middle aged men reliving their hedonistic youth by being of their tits on coke so they weren’t the most demanding of audiences.

“She Comes In The Fall” peaked at No 27.

What? Another Janet Jackson single? As with a lot of Ms Jackson’s output, it’s also another single I don’t recall at all. “Alright” was one of seven singles lifted from her “Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814” album and although the video shown here won a Soul Train Music Award for Best Music Video, I don’t remember that either. It starts off looking like Bugsy Malone before the inevitable big production dance routines kick in. The plot, for what its worth, resolves with it all having been a dream which is fitting as “Alright” is one big snooze*. It peaked at No 20 over here and No 4 in the US.

*Yes, I know the video was the inspiration behind Bill Bailey’s “Rapper’s Delight” routine on Strictly last year. I wasn’t arsed about that either.

Seven of the eleven songs on tonight’s show have already been seen before and here’s a run of three on the trot beginning with Poison and “Unskinny Bop”. Supposedly the title doesn’t refer to anything at all and was just a guide vocal that fitted phonetically into the song’s structure but having read the lyrics back, it’s pretty clear that it was all about having ‘A bit of How’s Your Father’. Check out these lyrics:

Like gasoline you wanna pump me, And leave me when you get your fill yeah

Still need convincing? How about these then:

You’re sayin’ my love won’t do ya
But that ain’t love written on your face
Well, honey I can see right through ya
Yeah, who ridin’ who at the end of the race?

I don’t think you need to be a cunning linguist to understand what was being sung about.

“Unskinny Bop” peaked at No 15.

As he introduces the next act who are Double Trouble with “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore”, Nicky Campbell appears spooked by the studio audience member stood next to him. To be fair to him, her look does require a double take. She looks like she’s turned up for the Halloween show about four months too early. Dressed head to toe in black and white with a massive floppy hat and two tone hair, she’s not your regular TOTP attendee. Judging by her outfit, I din’t think Double Trouble would have been her musical act of choice. In all honesty, they’re not mine either. Their shiny R’n’B cover version of the old Rose Royce classic is functional at best.

After name checking Madonna and Jimmy Nails’s versions of the song in last week’s post, it got me thinking about just how many times it had been covered. It’s loads. The recently spied Yazz did a version for her 1997 album “The Natural Life” then there’s Seal who recorded it for his second album of Soul covers (“Soul 2”) in 2011. Of course , there are also the usual easy listening treatments of it by the likes of Michael Ball and Bill Tarmey (aka Jack Duckworth) but I think the one that really caught my eye was by “Pompeii” hit makers Bastille. Let’s have a listen then…

Hmm…I’ll stick with Jimmy Nail thanks. Double Trouble’s 1990 version peaked at No 21.

A third outing for Nicky Lockett now otherwise known as MC Tunes and his mates 808 State with “The Only Rhyme That Bites”. Fair play to the TOTP producer Paul Ciani I guess for really promoting an out and out rap sound so heavily. However, we only get 1 min and 20 seconds of the track which was again due to Mr Ciani who, in an attempt to shoehorn in more songs into the show’s half hour slot, restricted the duration of studio performances to three minutes and videos to two minutes. Not sure what MC Tunes, who looked like he could handle himself, would have made of his massively edited screen time.

“The Only Rhyme That Bites” would get no higher than its No 10 peak here.

I’m guessing that Paul Ciani was also responsible for this new segment of the show – the Best selling albums of the month. Why the new format? TOTP had always been based around the template of the Top 40 singles chart. This new feature seemed incongruous to say the least. And where was the sales info coming from? Gallup presumably. I have to admit to not recalling this bit of the show’s history so I have no idea how long it lasted. No doubt future TOTP repeats will have the answer. For the record, the Top 5 albums for June 1990 were:

1. Luciano Pavarotti – The Essential Pavarotti

2. Soull II Soul – Volume II 1990: A New Decade

3. Jason Donovan – Between The Lines

4. Talk Talk – The Very Best Of Talk Talk

5. New Kids On The Block – “Step By Step”

Back to that Top 40 singles chart though and we find an unusual new entry at No 12 in F.A.B. featuring MC Parker and “Thunderbirds Are Go”. Yes, after MC Tunes we got MC Parker, that bloke that drove Lady Penelope around in Gerry Anderson’s wonderful puppet adventures series Thunderbirds. I loved the Gerry Anderson creations when I was a small boy (Captain Scarlet And The Mysterons was my favourite) and, in retrospect, I’m not sure that he gets the credit that he deserved for what he achieved. I’m also not sure that this mash up of theme tunes from his shows given a then contemporary house dance sheen was a suitable tribute either.

The single was part of a bigger project that culminated in the “Power Themes 90” album that contained 12 tracks based around British TV show theme tunes – six were Anderson vehicles with the others made up from the likes of The Prisoner, The Saint and The Avengers. I remember the album from my first few weeks in employment at Our Price later in the year but apart from the Thunderbirds single I’m not sure I heard any of the rest of the tracks. I wonder what the Captain Scarlet one was like….

…well, that was horrible! Bloody Hell! OK, back to MC Parker and according to my Supermarionation book (yes I am that sad), Parker’s character was initially conceived as a simple dramatic support to Lady Penelope but his comedy value meant that he was often the star of the show. His incorrect use of the letter ‘h’ which would preface all vowels became his trademark. As such, I guess it made sense to promote the “Thunderbirds Are Go” single around him.

Two years after this single, The Thunderbirds TV series was rebroadcast on BBC and picked up a whole new generation of fans leading to a relaunch of a range of Thunderbirds branded toys, the biggest seller of which was the model for Tracy Island. So hard to get was the item that Blue Peter famously showed desperate parents how to make their own version out of cereal packets, pipe cleaners and washing up liquid bottles etc as demonstrated by one time TOTP presenter Anthea Turner:

In hindsight, was “Thunderbirds Are Go” a novelty record? I’m saying yes but then, we’d already had a dance record featuring samples of dialogue from Thunderbirds two years earlier when “Beat Dis” by Bomb The Bass was a huge hit and I don’t recall anyone saying that was a novelty record. Fine margins and all that.

“From plastic puppets to Australian soap operas” says Campbell as he gleefully puts the boot into the next act who are Craig McLachlan And Check 1-2 with “Mona”. Craig won’t care though as he is up to No 4 in the charts and if anyone is getting a kick in the knackers it’s his ex Neighbours co-star Jason Donovan whose chart career is showing definite signs of starting to peter out. When asked about how he felt about having a bigger hit than Donovan in Smash Hits magazine, McLachlan replied:

“Ah look we’re over the moon. It’s fantastic…The music’s pretty Australian and we didn’t know how it would go down over there in a fairly techno chart. Our music is back to cranking the amp up and sweating a lot…“

Cranking and sweating? He sounds like my 11 year old when he’s playing Fortnite. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, being ‘sweaty’ in Fortnite means you’re a top player and ‘cranking’ refers to ‘cranking 90s’ which is a technique of building that is considered the fastest way to get high ground on a player. I feel so old.

Back to Craig though and although his music career fell away after the success of “Mona”, he remained inextricably (and some might say bizarrely) linked to Jason Donovan as they both played the role of Dr Frank-N-Furter in Rocky Horror Picture Show and also Caractacus Pott in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (I saw Donovan in the latter show – his performance was limited to say the least).

What was it with the 1990 and soul dance re-workings of classic old tunes? After Double Trouble’s version of the Rose Royce song “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore” earlier in this very show, we get some act called Massivo featuring Tracy and their interpretation of the Minnie Riperton hit “Loving You”. The other week we had Maureen doing Sister Sledge’s “Thinking Of You” and earlier in the year we had The Chimes giving an R ‘n’ B rendition of U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” – now this. I’m not sure I recall this at all. Who was Tracy? Well she was nothing to do with the Tracys from Thunderbirds nor was she Tracy Tracy from The Primitives (despite her peroxide blonde hair). Who was she then?

Here’s @TOTPFacts with the answer:

Tracy Ackerman previously appeared on #TOTP as long ago as 1981, when she fronted This Year’s Blonde's mash-up of Blondie hits, “Platinum Pop”. (That only peaked at 46, though.) https://t.co/razsNRMGrq
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 22, 2021

OK – still none the wiser to be honest. What? There’s more?

Tracy Ackerman went on to write or co-write tracks for the likes of Hear'Say, Geri Halliwell, B*Witched, S Club 7, Dannii Minogue and Will Young. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 22, 2021

So a bit like Betty Boo in that respect then. Watching this back, Tracy doesn’t quite nail the famous descending F sharp note for me – bit screechy (like I could do it).

Massivo peaked at No 25 but the seemingly endless conveyor belt of this type of thing (what was this genre called?) carried on into the 90s with Quartz featuring Dina Carroll (yes that one) giving us a danced up version of Carole King’s “It’s Too Late” in 1991 and The Fugees adding some beats to Roberta Flacks’ “Killing Me Softly” in 1996.

Stop! Hammer time! Shouldn’t that be MC Hammer time though? It’s the third ‘MC’ of the show and I’m sure at some point MC Hammer did actually drop the MC bit from his stage name (was it when he released “Too Legit* To Quit” in 1991?). Anyway, for now he’s got the MC prefix and he’s tearing up the charts with “U Can’t Touch This”. The single was taken from his Diamond (not platinum but diamond) selling US album “Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em”. I’m glad I took notice of the title at the time as a few months later when I went for an interview for a sales assistant position with Our Price, one of the questions on the music quiz applicants had to take was ‘What is the name of MC Hammer’s current album?’. Boom! Back of the net!

Given that his commercial peak lasted only from 1990-92, Hammer’s name does still seem to resonate all these years later. Was it all about the trousers or did he actually have some good tunes in there as well? One thing is for sure, he never got so big that if you google the word hammer the first results that come up are not this:

* ‘Legit’ is another word that my 11 year old uses on a regular basis. I’m not sure what he would make of Hammer’s oversized pants though. On that theme, I once showed a younger colleague at work a video of the Bay City Rollers and she could not get her head round their tartan ~~trousers~~ troosers.

England’s World Cup may be over but Elton John‘s reign at the top of the charts carries on. What was it about this song that the nation couldn’t get enough of? Truly baffling. Well, here’s the aforementioned MC Tunes giving his verdict from a Smash Hits article on “Sacrifice”:

“I’ve always admired Elton John. He’s not my kind of groove if you get what I mean but I’ve always admired him because he’s a good writer. ‘Candle In The Wind’ is a fabulous song and the lyrics in his new one are really good so I’m into the Elton record, yer.“

Oh, it was the lyrics then. Let’s have a look at them again. This is the chorus:

And it’s no sacrifice
Just a simple word
It’s two hearts living
In two separate worlds
But it’s no sacrifice
No sacrifice
It’s no sacrifice at all

Hmm. Doesn’t seem to be a lot going on there except the repeated use of the word ‘sacrifice’. I’m not having it Mr Tunes – don’t tell him I said that though.

The play out video is “She Ain’t Worth It” by Glenn Medeiros and Bobby Brown. After his music career ended, Medeiros took up teaching and is now the president of St. Louis School, an all boys Catholic school in Honolulu. Sounds impressive doesn’t it…until you realise that he has a son called Chord and a daughter called Lyric. No, really.

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

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Inspiral Carpets	She Comes In The Fall	Nope
2	Janet Jackson	Alright	All wrong – no
3	Poison	Unskinny Bop	No
4	Double Trouble	Love Don’t Live Here Anymore	No love for this one at my house
5	MC Tunes versus 808 State	The Only Rhyme That Bites	Liked it, didn’t buy it
6	F.A.B featuring MC Parker	Thunderbirds Are Go	Loved Thunderbirds, didn’t love this – no
7	Craig McLachlan Check 1-2	Mona	I did not
8	Massivo featuring Tracy	Loving You	Nah
9	MC Hammer	U Can’t Touch This	And I didn’t – no
10	Elton John	Sacrifice /Healing Hands	Not knowingly but I’ve since discovered that Healing Hands is on a Q Magazine compilation LP that I bought. That doesn’t count does it?!
11	Glenn Medeiros and Bobby Brown	She Ain’t Worth It	And neither was this song

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000rgm4/top-of-the-pops-05071990

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

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

Some bedtime reading?

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

TOTP 28 JUN 1990

Posted on January 23, 2021 by 80stastic

It’s Summer 1990 and World Cup fever is on the rise. The England national team have just secured a place in the quarter finals of the competition two days prior to this TOTP broadcast when David Platt produced a swivelling volley moments before the end of extra time against Belgium to win the game 1-0 for England. Platty’s memorable intervention saved the nation from a penalty shoot out, something we had no experience of back then but which, by the end of the tournament, we would know the heartache and darkness of only too well.

But for now, the nation rejoiced and, labouring under the misapprehension that we had a bye into the semi finals as we faced Cameroon next, were starting to believe something truly special might be afoot. So were there any ‘special’ tunes in the chart to match the nation’s mood? Let’s see…

…well we start with “Oops Up” by Snap! and a bizarre performance that includes a rubber duck (supplied by presenter Gary Davies from the side of the stage via a throw of admirable accuracy) that appears to get squeaked throughout the song. I hadn’t noticed that sound effect on the original recording but, having checked, it is there.

If the rubber duck was meant to soften the image and reputation of rapper Turbo B, it had a lot of work to do. Around this time, he was involved in a very unsavoury incident at a benefit show. The group had been asked by a promoter to do a PA at a nightclub for a benefit event but what Turbo hadn’t realised was that it was for an AIDS charity and the event took place in a gay nightclub. When the lights went up, Turbo found himself in a room full of drag queens and freaked out. Demanding to see the club owner, he allegedly proclaimed “If you ever book me in a place like this again, I’ll kill you”. The owner replied, with hands on his hips, “This is a gay club seven nights a week” at which point Turbo got him by his throat and began throttling him and then all hell broke loose. In a Smash Hits interview when quizzed about the incident, Turbo B’s version was a bit different:

“…if a man gets his ass grabbed by another man he tends to be upset. I tried to talk to this guy and tell him this is not supposed to be like this. His justification of my ass getting grabbed was that it was cool. It wasn’t, so he got choked.”

Despite his protestations that he wasn’t anti-gay later in the interview, it seems pretty clear that Turbo B was not exactly well informed nor accepting of anything that wasn’t strictly heterosexual. As a result of the incident, an organisation called Zap Snap! formed who would protest at Snap! gigs and this would inform singer Penny Ford’s decision to leave the group. In a songfacts website interview she stated:

“And that was another reason why I decided to leave Snap! Because my sister was a serious, staunch gay advocate, and it was like a blow to my family to have me out there being represented with a gay basher. So that’s what started Turbo’s decline“.

Sadly, I think we will be seeing more of Turbo B and his prejudiced views before 1990 is through.

Onto much safer and non-threatening ground next (or is it?*) as we get Jason Donovan and his latest single “Another Night”. From late ’88 to the end of ’89, Jase’s run of hit singles looked like this in terms of their chart peaks:

5 – 1 – 1 – 1 – 2 – 2

However, as the new decade dawned, the spell appeared to be broken. His first single release of 1990 (“Hang On to Your Love”) peaked at No 8 whilst “Another Night” would really set alarm bells ringing when it failed to even make the Top 10 (topping out at No 18)! When asked about the charts and his position within them in Smash Hits at this time, Donovan had this to say:

“Do I worry about where my records get to in the charts? Oh yeah, of course I do. It wasn’t so great that “Hang On to Your Love” didn’t do as great as some of my other singles have done but looking back on it, I think I would have to put the blame on the strength of that particular song….I think it was a bit of a grower and not nearly as catchy as say “When You Come Back to Me”.

So how did you explain the chart performance of “Another Night” then Jason? It didn’t shift the required amount of units because it was a basically proper dog shit? It is actually dreadful. It sounds like a failed Song For Europe entrant, not good enough even for the Eurovision Song Contest.

*Donovan of course had his own homophobic incident in 1992 when he sued The Face magazine for publishing allegations that he was homosexual. The lawsuit led to a backlash in which he was accused of being homophobic. In his 2007 autobiography, Jason stated that suing The Face was the biggest mistake of his life.

Pretty sure we are on safe ground finally with Maureen and her version of “Thinking Of You”. I’m very doubtful that there are any scandals surrounding Ms Walsh. As Gary Davies mentioned, she was the vocalist on Bomb The Bass’ “Say A Little Prayer” back in ’88 and…what? She lied to Tim Simenon about what she did for a living when she met him in a nightclub by telling him she was a singer when she wasn’t? So there is a skeleton in her cupboard (albeit a small one). So what was her job at the time? Well, it was either (depending on the date of that nightclub meeting) working in Miss Selfridge or working in an admin position in the police force. Lying whist she was employed by the rozzers? Shameful.

Back to the music though and that guy who comes on and raps in the middle? What was with the cane?

Three Breakers next and we start with Double Trouble and “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore”. Were these the guys who had a hit with “Street Tuff” along with that Rebel MC bloke? A quick search of Wikipedia says they are and that their cover of the Rose Royce classic was actually on their album “As One” which features ‘Street Tuff”. Coincidentally, they also did a remix of tonight’s opening song “Oops Up” by Snap!.

I don’t recall them doing this track though and on hearing it back, I’m not sure why they bothered. Jimmy Nail’s version back in ’85 was far more interesting and I’m not joking.

Hell, I’d even choose Madonna’s version over Double Trouble’s and her take on it was rubbish.

“Love Don’t Live Here Anymore” (the Double Trouble version) peaked at No 21.

Right, what’s this? Bobby Brown and Glenn Medeiros? WTF?! Really?! How? Why? So many questions. This seems an even more unwanted pairing than last week’s Sonia and Big Fun coupling. So, apparently this collaboration came about through Medeiros’s friend Rick James who …wait a minute! Rick James?! Funk legend Rick James?! He was a friend of wimpy Glenn Medeiros of “Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love for You” fame?! That requires more explanation than the Bobby Brown connection even. Anyway, it was Rick who put Glenn in touch with Bobby Brown who was looking for someone to produce while he had some free time on his hands and so they worked on a song called “Love Me Little Lady” *pause while blogger vomits* which went on Glenn’s latest album. After Brown called him up to say how much he liked said album, Medeiros asked him to put a rap on the track “She Ain’t Worth It”. And the rest is…

“She Ain’t Worth It” was a No 1 record in the US and a no 12 hit in the UK. This was Glenn’s attempt to beef up his image (he even got a new haircut!) and sound but it’s like something New Kids On The Block would have rejected as trying too hard. In short, it wasn’t worth it Glenn.

Oh OK. I hadn’t realised that Del Amitri had another Top 40 hit in 1990 after “Nothing Ever Happens” at the start of the year but here they are on TOTP again. I knew that they had re-released “Kiss This Thing Goodbye” as a follow up to “Nothing …” but it had failed to be a hit for a second time despite some heavy radio play. I mistakenly believed that the same fate befell “Move Away Jimmy Blue” but it crawled to a high of No 36. Not as intriguing as “Nothing …” nor as immediate as “Kiss This Thing…”, it’s still a pretty good tune I think although not one of my favourites of theirs.

Now then, here was a chart anomaly and a half! A Irish jig complete with accordian, fiddle and a double bass? What the Hell was this?! It was, quite simply, magnificent in my book. The perfect antidote to all this homogenised house music, when asked about the sound of “The Great Song Of Indifference” in a Smash Hits interview, Bob Geldof admitted that it wasn’t a modern sound:

“Nope, it’s not a current record but then I’m hardly a major force in modern music. I’m frankly tired of hip hop and house and that. I know nothing about it except that I hear it a lot but it just sounds old hat”

Well said Sir Bob! This was only the second chart hit of Geldof’s solo career and it remains his last. His first had been the rather worthy sounding “This Is The World Calling” back in ’86 but “The Great Song Of Indifference” was a different beast altogether. Made with his band The Vegetarians Of Love (which was also the name of the accompanying album), its subject matter of world apathy in the face of humanitarian disasters and horror was in stark contrast to its knock about, almost joyful sound. Witness:

I don’t care if the Third World fries
It’s hotter there I’m not surprised
Baby I can watch whole nations die
And I don’t care at all

Supposedly Bob had wanted to infuse it with a cajun feel and had spent some time in Louisiana soaking up the cajun vibe before recording the album. The Irish dancing element of the performance here from the wee guy in the shirt and dickie bow at the front pre-dates Riverdance by four years! Marvellous stuff all round.

A couple of personal tie -ins to Bob and this record before I move on. At some point either myself or my wife must have bought this single as we used to dance around our one room flat to it when we first married. We used to really fling ourselves around. We were skint at the time and this would be what passed for a Friday night’s entertainment. Skint or not, they were happy, simpler times. Right at the end of the record there’s a bit when the musicians fall about laughing before Geldof’s distinctive tones clearly cut in with “Let’s listen…”. One of the guys laughing really sounds like Nick Heyward but I’m guessing it’s not.

And that second Geldof story? I once had a friend who did some freelance PR work and one of the people she worked for was the sadly departed Peaches Geldof. My friend found it all a bit demanding and was ready to jack it in. The final straw that broke the camel’s back? It was when Bob got involved and began calling her to to sort stuff out for Peaches. Not known for his tact and diplomacy, Bob’s phone calls prompted her to throw her work phone into the Thames whilst mid conversation with Geldof!

“The Great Song Of Indifference” peaked at No 15.

Damn. I thought for a moment when Gary Davies said “Still with the charts here’s Bruce…” in his intro to the next artist his next word would be Springsteen. Unfortunately for me, it was Dickinson. Yes, the Iron Maiden front man’s video for “All The Young Dudes” gets another airing for some reason. What? He went up 9 places to No 23 that week? I don’t care! His version of the Mott The Hoople* classic was awful! To be fair to Bruce Dickinson, he does seem to be a man of many talents. He’s a fully trained pilot and worked for a commercial airline for a while. He’s also a published author, he’s been a champion fencer (once rated the 7th best fencer in England), he’s presented his own radio show on BBC Radio 6 Music from 2002 to 2010 and he’s even created a successful beer called ‘Trooper’ with Robinsons brewery in Stockport. If only he’d left the singing alone.

*When I first started working in Our Price there was guy who used to come in who was obsessed with Mott The Hoople. He would come in regularly to check what albums we had of the band in stock (not many!) and would hang around for ages hoping to strike up a conversation with an unsuspecting member of staff about his faves. Takes all sorts I suppose.

Nest it’s a re-run of Maxi Priest‘s performance of “Close To You” from the other week next although Gary Davies tries to make out that Maxi is actually in the studio again.

Maxi never really did it for me and I got nothing else to say about this one. Do me a solid @TOTPFacts and help me out will you?

Maxi Priest was named after Max Bygraves. "He's my mum's favourite singer." He changed his surname from Elliott to Priest after discovering Rastafarianism. "It comes from the Priest Levi, a figurehead of the 12 tribes of Israel."#TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 15, 2021

Sorted!

Still at No 1 we find Elton John with “Sacrifice / Healing Hands”. Infamously, both songs on this double A-side had been flops when initially released individually at the end of ’89 but parent album “Sleeping With The Past” also had a truncated route to the top of the charts. Although it debuted at No 6 when released in Sep ’89, it departed the Top 10 the following week and fell out of the Top 40 completely after a month. Inevitably, once the success of the re-activated single kicked in, so the album was also revitalised. After knocking around the lower reaches of the Top 100, it climbed from No 54 to No 2 in one week! After three consecutive weeks in that position it embarked on a five week run at No 1 eventually going three time platinum in the UK alone. Yet for all that, it’s hardly regarded as one of his best albums I would speculate. Apart from “Sacrifice” and “Healing Hands”, are any of the other tracks on the album well known? Follow up single “Club at the End of the Street” didn’t even get into the Top 40. Elton in the Summer of 1990 was a very curious phenomenon indeed.

The play out video is “Unskinny Bop” by Poison. Having checked out their discography, I was amazed to discover that Poison had eight UK Top 40 hits. I could have named …let me think…four absolute tops. “Unskinny Bop” would have been one of the four. The timeline of their hits would have been beyond me though, not helped by a re-release of “Nothin’ But a Good Time” with nearly 18 months in between releases. I could not have told you when “Unskinny Bop” had been a hit for example but I can tell you that it did very little for me. It was a bit like “Your Mama Don’t Dance” (i.e not that good). And what the Hell was an “Unskinny Bop” anyway? Is ‘unskinny’ even a legitimate word? Supposedly it was just a guide lyric according to guitarist C.C. DeVille, a phonetic place holder until the proper lyrics had been written but it stuck (see also the lyrics to “The Riddle” by Nik Kershaw).

“Unskinny Bop” peaked at No 15.

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

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Snap!	Ooops Up	Nope
2	Jason Donovan	Another Night	Another shite more like – no
3	Maureen	Thinking Of You	Not for me thanks
4	Double Trouble	Love Don’t Live Here Anymore	No love for this one at my house
5	Glenn Medeiros and Bobby Brown	She Ain’t Worth It	And neither was this song
6	Del Amitri	Move Away Jimmy Blue	No but it’s on my Best Of CD of theirs
7	Bob Geldof	The Great Song Of Indifference	Yes – present and correct in the singles box!
8	Bruce Dickinson	All The Young Dudes	As if
9	Maxi Priest	Close To You	Not my bag
10	Elton John	Sacrifice /Healing Hands	Not knowingly but I’ve since discovered that Healing Hands is on a Q Magazine compilation LP that I bought. That doesn’t count does it?!
11	Poison	Unskinny Bop	No

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000r6j0/top-of-the-pops-28061990

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

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

Some bedtime reading?

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

TOTP 22 JUN 1990

Posted on January 20, 2021 by 80stastic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Victims Of Success” peaked at No 36.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The video for "The Only Rhyme That Bites" was shot in the then-disused Daily Express building on Ancoats Lane in Manchester. It was directed by Ken Horn (Trevor's brother), also a director on Emmerdale at the time. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 15, 2021

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

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

Tunes still lives in Manchester.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Magnum	Rockin’ Chair	Nah
2	Roxette	It Must Have Been Love	Negative
3	Sonia and Big Fun	You’ve Got A Friend	But it’s not me!
4	Wilson Phillips	Hold On	No
5	Red Hot Chili Peppers	Taste The Pain	Nope
6	Bruce Dickinson	All The Young Dudes	As if
7	Dogs D’Amour	Victims Of Success	It’s a no from me
8	Yazz	Treat Me Good	It was really weak sounding to me – no
9	Craig McLachlan Check 1-2	Mona	I did not
10	Luciano Pavarotti	Nessun Dorma	For all the memories it always invokes, I didn’t but it
11	MC Tunes versus 808 State	The Only Rhyme That Bites	Liked it, didn’t buy it
12	Elton John	Sacrifice /Healing Hands	Certainly not!
13	MC Hammer	U Can’t Touch This	And I didn’t – no

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Some bedtime reading?

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