Fugees

TOTP 14 MAR 1997

The era of Chris Cowey as TOTP executive producer may not have properly got underway yet but there have been some changes made already. Whether it’s down to this John L. Spencer guy who’s listed in the credits as the show’s director for some of this period or from higher above I’m not sure but what I do know is that the direct to camera piece at the start of the show by a featuring act has disappeared and the vintage clip advertising the TOTP2 brand at its end has also gone. I think I prefer it like this. The top and tail approach always seemed a bit clunky. Tonight’s host is Ian Broudie from the Lightning Seeds who’s got the gig for a second time in a short period – somebody on the show clearly really liked him but he’s not the most effervescent of presenters is he?

Anyway, we start with an absolute banger! I have a personal (albeit a bit tenuous) connection to this one – it’s “What Do You Want From Me” by Monaco. With New Order on hiatus following the release and promotion of the “Republic” album, the band members pursued side projects to give formation to their creativity. Whilst couple Stephen Morris and Gillian Gilbert worked together on their The Other Two material, Bernard Sumner always had the Electronic collective to fall back on. As for Peter Hook, thoughts that he might reactivate his late 80s/early 90s band Revenge were way off the mark as he came up with a new entity altogether in Monaco. I say new but his partner in this endeavour was David Potts who had been a part of Revenge but you get my drift. “What Do You Want From Me” was their first and biggest hit when it peaked at No 11. Accusations of being New Order-lite were as inevitable as they were obvious but none of that detracted from the general consensus that it was a great tune. Hooky’s distinctive bass playing style was allied to a catchy as hell ‘sha-la-la’ chorus that was both suitable for daytime radio and to maintain a lofty position in the credibility stakes.

So then. This personal connection story. Well, there was a lot of excitement about the release of this single at the Our Price in Stockport where I was working as David Potts had been one of us not so long before. Yes, the guy up there on our TV screens opening TOTP? We knew him! Now admittedly some of my colleagues knew ‘Pottsy’ better than me but I had worked with him for a brief period of a few months in the Manchester Piccadilly branch a couple of years before and his then girlfriend worked on a Saturday at the Stockport store at this time. As such, we were very aware of Monaco and were desperate for their single to be a big hit. I guess it was – No 11 was not to be sniffed at. Obviously we all bought “What Do You Want From Me” and aside from that track there’s also a fabulous song as the B-side called “Bicycle Thieves” presumably inspired by the 1948 Italian film of the same name. The CD single also featured an instrumental version of the title track and there’s a hidden bit that kicks in at the end after the track has finished which is basically a man laughing almost maniacally over a what sounds like a Wurlitzer organ. The guy doing the laughing was someone I’ve mentioned before in this blog, a larger than life character who was well known in Manchester as ‘Mirror Man’ on account of the way that he would talk to you through a hand held mirror. His real name was Ray and he used to wear a bus driver’s uniform despite the fact that he didn’t work on the buses and he would come into the shop where I worked and refer to all the staff by pop star names (I was Billy Idol for some reason). Anyway, Ray had this amazing, enormous, fill-the-room laugh and somehow he made it into the end of that Monaco track. RIP Ray.

As for Monaco, that initial success only sustained for one more single though their album “Music For Pleasure” matched the chart high of “What Do you Want From Me” and sold 500,000 copies worldwide. They split in 2000 but have come together again as part of Peter Hook and the Light playing New Order and Joy Division songs to live audiences. I caught them a few years back supporting Happy Mondays at an outdoor gig in Hull. I wasn’t anywhere near the front so there was no chance of Pottsy seeing me but even if he had I doubt he would have remembered me. It was all a long time ago after all.

We’re coming to the end of the era of Ant & Dec as pop stars but we’re not quite there yet. “Shout” was their twelfth consecutive Top 40 hit though only the third to make the Top 10. Sadly, it was not a cover of the Tears For Fears hit (though Wikipedia tells me that the lyrics of the chorus were influenced by it) but thankfully neither was it the duo’s take on that Lulu song. What it was though was quite a change of pace to those preceding hits. A slowed down number that verges on melancholy, one definite influence on it was the bass line from Lou Reed’s “Walk On The Wild Side”.

I recall being almost impressed by their ability to change direction but on reflection, just as with Eternal’s “Don’t You Love Me” in the last post, I think I may have exaggerated its quality. Firstly, there’s the sixth form ‘state of the nation’ lyrics and then there’s the image of Dec on the guitar. Really?! Can he actually play the instrument? I’m no virtuoso but I have had a few lessons down the years and having looked at the chord shapes his left hand is making, they might be correct but his strumming action is not convincing at all. With this change of pace and public face (Ant on solo lead vocals and Dec sat down with a guitar), what then didn’t make sense to me was the fact that they’d ditched the pop star career by the end of the year*. Why try out a new sound if you had no intention of carrying on? I’m sure, given the longevity of their TV careers, that they would argue it was clearly the correct decision and to be fair to them, they’d be right.

*I’m ignoring the 2002 World Cup song “We’re On The Ball”.

A bit of admin for Ian Broudie next as he explains why Kula Shaker weren’t on the show last week despite going straight into the charts at No 2 with their cover of “Hush”. Well, they were meant to be on but singer Crispian Mills had a sore throat and so was tucked up in bed with his actor Mum Hayley looking after him. OK, that makes sense except why have they just shown the video this time. Why wouldn’t they have just done that last week when it was at its chart peak rather than when it had slipped four places down the chart? The way the charts were back then, John L. Spencer or whoever must have known there was a chance the single would slip after its first week position. Ah well, the thing was that with Ric Blaxill gone some of the appearance rules with regard to chart positions seemed to be…well…disregarded. Songs would be featured on consecutive weeks which historically would only happen if it was the No 1 single. Also, those going down the charts would be featured, again in contravention of previous norms and conventions. To disguise this practice, the artist/title/chart position captions have been removed from the start of the performance and added in right at the end. Sneaky.

Anyway, Kula Shaker and “Hush”. I’m guessing this was the classic standalone single to bridge the gap between albums tactic. Debut “K” came out in September 1996 whilst follow up “Peasants, Pigs & Astronauts” didn’t arrive until March of 1999. So long was the wait that the lead single for the latter – “Mystical Machine Gun” – was released nearly twelve months before the parent album. Now, being a pop kid, Deep Purple who had recorded “Hush” in 1968 had never interested me so I’m not sure if I even knew the song before this but when I did finally hear it, I liked it. My research tells me that the Deep Purple version itself was a cover with the original song recorded by country singer Billy Joe Royal and was written by Joe South who also wrote “Rose Garden” that became a hit for Lynn Anderson which I think my parents had. So I’m guessing that “Hush” wasn’t an out and out heavy rock song which may explain why I was open to the charms of the Kula Shaker version? Hush my mouth!

Here’s another band whose name I remember but I couldn’t tell you how one of their songs went. 3 Colours Red (their name came from putting a pin in London listing magazine Time Out and landing on an advert for the final film of the Three Colours trilogy) would rack up six UK chart hits before the end of the 90s. This one – “Sixty Mile Smile” – courted some controversy when rumours circulated that it was about lead singer Pete Vučković’s hospitalisation after a bad ecstasy trip. This sort of thing did not go down well in the media back then – just ask Brian Harvey.

The majority of the band’s hits would peak between Nos 30 and 20 except 1999’s “Beautiful Day” which was their biggest reaching No 11. There seemed to be a few bands in this period like 3 Colours Red that had a big enough fanbase to ensure that every single they released would be a medium sized hit which would then fall away dramatically – I’m thinking Gene, Therapy? and Terrorvision (apart from that “Tequila” hit of course). Having listened to “Sixty Mile Smile” in the present day, my opinion would be that it’s a decent sound without being anywhere near exceptional. 6/10 is about right in my book.

Like “Hush” before it, here’s another hit that had already reached its peak position and was on its way down the charts though this one was at least holding in the same position for two weeks running. “Encore Une Fois” by Sash! would actually prove to be a very hardy and resilient track taking another month after this before it even departed the Top 10 and spending twelve weeks in the Top 40 altogether. Apparently this German DJ/production team hold the record for the most amount of No 2 hits (five in total) without ever having a chart topper. That’s a lot of No 2s! You can make your own jokes up…

Talking of artists who had a run of hits that peaked at the same chart position each time, check out Alisha’s Attic’s chart stats for their first five singles:

14 – 12 – 12 – 12 – 13

Now that’s consistency. “Indestructible” came bang in the middle of that run and was the third track to be released from the sister duo’s debut album “Alisha Rules The World”. I remember this as being better than it was listening back to it now. It’s all very pleasant and has a dreamy quality but ultimately it comes off as a bit insubstantial. Perhaps the CGI video that was probably cutting edge at the time isn’t helping by dating it rather so probably not indestructible after all.

Right, this messing around with the TOTP appearance rules has got out of hand now. Why the hell are No Mercy on again?! Their hit “Where Do You Go” has been on the show at least three times now and this is the fourth week in a row that it has gone down the charts! Make it make sense! I’ve also noticed that as well as shifting the artist/title/chart position graphic to the end of the performance, there’s no longer an arrow indicating that a song was climbing the charts. That used to be a thing didn’t it? Surely the chart countdown graphic had something like that which it doesn’t appear to anymore. It all stinks a bit of hoodwinking the TV audience to me.

Ian Broudie refers to the next artist as his showbiz mates and I don’t think he’s making it up as he did produce their debut album and one of them clearly says “Thanks Ian” as the camera pans from him to the band. Our host was talking about Dodgy whom he also refers to as “probably the best group in the country”. Hmm. It’s a bold claim. Whilst I did quite like them, I don’t think I’d have gone that far. They’re in the studio to perform their latest hit “Found You” which was the fourth and final track lifted from their “Free Peace Sweet” album. Looking at their discography, this could be the last time we see them on TOTP as they only had one more Top 40 hit in 1998 and that only made No 32. What is their legacy? As I said, I quite liked their jaunty, melodic brand of Britpop (if that’s what they were) but sadly if you type the word ‘dodgy’ into a search engine, you more likely to be prompted to look for ‘dodgy fire stick’ than the band.

The Spice Girls are No 1 (of course they are) with double A-side “Mama/Who Do You Think You Are”. We get the latter song this week and it really is a great pop track. An instant floor filler – contemporary sounding but with a retro disco style flavour (I think they called it nu-disco). Despite not having her own solo part on any of the verses, it’s Melanie C’s vocals that stand out and hold it all together with her counterpoint harmonies. In a glorious bit of symmetry, she would appear in 2024 in Series 21 of the genealogy show Who Do You Think You Are, the only Spice Girl to do so up to now.

As mentioned previously, the plug for TOTP2 has gone and is replaced by a play out video of a current song. This week we get “Rumble In The Jungle” by the Fugees featuring A Tribe Called Quest, Busta Rhymes and John Forté. Taken from the soundtrack to the documentary When We Were Kings about the Muhammad Ali /George Foreman boxing match that took place in the former Zaire in 1974, it famously features the bass line from ABBA’s “The Name Of The Game” and the melody from “Angel Of The Morning” made famous by Juice Newton. Now apparently, the Fugees’ record label Columbia had planned to rerelease “Fu-Gee-La” as the group’s next single and had even sent out promo copies to radio stations to plug the track. However, in America, Mercury Records released the When We Were Kings soundtrack and “Rumble In The Jungle” to promote it which led to canny record dealers in the UK getting hold of import copies of the single and selling them over here thus undermining any potential sales for “Fu-Gee-La”. In the end, Columbia relented and the planned rerelease never happened leaving the way clear for an official release for “Rumble In The Jungle” which made No 3. As with Dodgy, I think this might be our last glimpse of the Fugees on TOTP. For a group of such influence, the small size of their discography seems like a contradiction.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen the documentary all the way through which I should probably correct one day. I do know that Ali won the fight and was massively popular in Zaire where he won over the locals with his charm. Of course, the Fugees song wasn’t the first to use the Rumble In The Jungle as its subject matter. There is also this…

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Monaco	What Do You Want From Me	YES!
2	Ant & Dec	Shout	NO!
3	Kula Shaker	Hush	Negative
4	3 Colours Red	Sixty Mile Smile	Nah
5	Sash!	Encore Une Fois	Never
6	Alisha’s Attic	Indestructible	Nope
7	No Mercy	Where Do You Go	As if
8	Dodgy	Found You	No but my wife had the album
9	Spice Girls	Mama/Who Do You Think You Are	I did not
10	Fugees	Rumble In The Jungle	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/m0027fvz/top-of-the-pops-14031997?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 1996 – the epilogue

Posted on January 8, 2025 by 80stastic

That’s 1996 done and dusted. What were we to make of it and was it worth revisiting in quite the depth that both myself via this blog and BBC4 via their TOTP repeats schedule did? Possibly not but I’m nothing if not a completist! So, what was wrong (or right depending on your point of view) with 1996? Well, let’s use the admittedly blunt tool of sales to give us an overview of what was going on. Starting with the best selling albums of the year, on first inspection it would seem that it was a case of business as usual with established artists such as Simply Red, Celine Dion and the returning George Michael all in the Top 10. Then there was the decidedly mainstream like Robson & Jerome repeating their commercial phenomenon of the previous year. Talking of phenomenons, the biggest new artist of the year was surely the Spice Girls who were No 3 in the year end chart. Could a case be made to say that they were mainstream as well? Maybe though there was a world of difference between what they and the two Soldier Soldier actors were peddling. It’s an interesting question – what makes you a mainstream artist? Look at who had the best selling album of the year – Alanis Morissette. Was she mainstream just because loads and loads of people bought her album? I don’t think there’s anything mainstream about a track like “You Oughta Know”.

Just behind her at No 2 was an album that occupied that same position in 1995 – “(What’s The Story) Morning Glory?” by Oasis. It says much about their popularity that their album could sell so many copies in two consecutive years. Did this mean that Britpop was still in the ascendancy? Well, there is a theory that the movement ended when Oasis’s third album “Be Here Now” was released and that didn’t happen until 1997 so by that criteria it was certainly still a going concern in this year. However, there is no other artist that would be considered to be Britpop in the albums Top 10 (though Ocean Colour Scene made a splash by finishing in 11th). Further down the chart came Kula Shaker at a respectable No 16 and Pulp’s “Different Class” still going well at No 19 though despite their Lazarus style return, Manic Street Preachers’ most commercial album yet “Everything Must Go” was only No 20. For me, not enough evidence that Britpop was as strong a force as it was in 1995 when it peaked around the Blur v Oasis chart battle.

Indeed, many of the other artists in the list of bestsellers were either music royalty (Tina Turner, Bryan Adams, Michael Jackson, Rod Stewart) or very established artists (M People, Boyzone, Jamiroquai). There were a surprisingly high number of albums in the Top 50 that had actually been released in 1995 which suggests a certain amount of stagnation though there were some debut albums in there as well from the likes of Cast, Ash and Space. Unbelievably, there were two entries for The Smurfs (WTF?!) though pleasingly only seven albums on the end of year chart were Best Ofs. Finally mention must go to an act who carved out their own little niche for themselves this year as Fugees bagged the seventh best selling album of 1996 thanks in no small part to that single…

OK, so let’s talk singles. Fugees claimed the year’s biggest hit with “Killing Me Softly” – quite the feat for an R&B artist whose only other UK chart hit had been the No 21 single “Fu-Gee-La”. The rest of the Top 10 belonged to Scary, Baby, Ginger, Posh and Sporty whose first three singles occupied the Nos 2, 4 and 10 positions. Babylon Zoo were the latest beneficiaries of soundtracking a Levi’s advert as “Spaceman” landed at No 3 whilst Mark Morrison came in at a No 5 with the ubiquitous “Return Of The Mack”. Only two non No 1s made the Top 10 – the execrable Peter Andre and dream house poster boy Robert Miles. Gina G became the first Eurovision chart topper since Nicole in 1982 and Baddiel & Skinner with the Lightning Seeds saw Euro 96 fever put them at No 7 with the very first incarnation of “Three Lions”. Pick the bones out of that lot! Out of the whole year end Top 50, I bought precisely three and only one of them was actually for me with the other two being for other people. The majority of Nos 11 to 50 could be classified as mainstream (there’s that word again) or at the very least daytime radio friendly with honourable exceptions being both chart toppers from The Prodigy, Underworld’s “Born Slippy” and “Faithless” by Insomnia. What does all this mean? Possibly what we already knew. You can’t rely on sales numbers alone to work out musical trends.

Best-selling singles

No.	Title	Artist	Peak position
1	“Killing Me Softly“	Fugees	1
2	“Wannabe“	Spice Girls	1
3	“Spaceman“	Babylon Zoo	1
4	“Say You’ll Be There“	Spice Girls	1
5	“Return of the Mack“	Mark Morrison	1
6	“Ooh Aah… Just a Little Bit“	Gina G	1
7	“Three Lions“	Baddiel & Skinner & Lightning Seeds	1
8	“Children“	Robert Miles	2
9	“Mysterious Girl“	Peter Andre featuring Bubbler Ranx	2
10	“2 Become 1“	Spice Girls	1
11	“Don’t Look Back in Anger“	Oasis	1
12	“How Deep Is Your Love“	Take That	1
13	“Un-Break My Heart“	Toni Braxton	2
14	“Breathe“	The Prodigy	1
15	“Firestarter“	The Prodigy	1
16	“Words“	Boyzone	1
17	“Breakfast at Tiffany’s“	Deep Blue Something	1
18	“If You Ever“	East 17 featuring Gabrielle	2
19	“What Becomes of the Broken Hearted“/ “Saturday Night at the Movies“/”You’ll Never Walk Alone“	Robson & Jerome	1
20	“Anything“	3T	2
21	“Fastlove“	George Michael	1
22	“Macarena“	Los del Río	2
23	“Born Slippy .NUXX“	Underworld	2
24	“Ready or Not“	Fugees	1
25	“The X Files“	Mark Snow	2
26	“One & One“	Robert Miles featuring Maria Nayler	3
27	“Because You Loved Me“	Celine Dion	5
28	“Give Me a Little More Time“	Gabrielle	5
29	“Nobody Knows“	The Tony Rich Project	4
30	“You’re Gorgeous“	Babybird	3
31	“Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door“/”Throw These Guns Away”	Dunblane	1
32	“Cecilia“	Suggs featuring Louchie Lou & Michie One	4
33	“Flava“	Peter Andre	1
34	“Don’t Stop Movin’“	Livin’ Joy	5
35	“It’s All Coming Back to Me Now“	Celine Dion	3
36	“I Love You Always Forever“	Donna Lewis	5
37	“How Bizarre“	OMC	5
38	“Jesus to a Child“	George Michael	1
39	“Virtual Insanity“	Jamiroquai	3
40	“Forever Love“	Gary Barlow	1
41	“Hillbilly Rock Hillbilly Roll“	The Woolpackers	5
42	“I Wanna Be a Hippy“	Technohead	6
43	“There’s Nothing I Won’t Do“	JX	4
44	“Insomnia“	Faithless	3
45	“What’s Love Got to Do with It“	Warren G featuring Adina Howard	2
46	“Freedom“	Robbie Williams	2
47	“I Got 5 on It“	Luniz	3
48	“Earth Song“	Michael Jackson	1
49	“Spinning the Wheel“	George Michael	2
50	“A Design for Life“	Manic Street Preachers	2

And what of TOTP? 1996 saw changes that would herald the beginning of the end for the grand old show. The BBC’s coverage of the Euros football tournament saw its weekly music programme temporarily shifted from its traditional Thursday night slot to a Friday. However, somewhere along the line, someone high up took the decision to keep it there after Euro ‘96 had finished. It would prove to be a catastrophic choice for the show’s future. This was compounded by the subsequent shifting of its 7.00 start time to 7.30 meaning it was up against Coronation Street on ITV which aired at exactly the same time. Who thought that was a good idea?! It was as if there was a deliberate plan within the corridors of the Beeb to deliberately kill the show off. 1997 would see the end of Ric Blaxill’s tenure as executive producer who was replaced by Chris Cowey but that’s all for future posts. In 1996, TOTP was in a state of transition and the outlook was far from certain.

Hits That Never Were

Whipping Boy – “When We Were Young”

Released: Feb ’96

Chart Peak: No 46

When having a three way What’sApp chat with my mates Robin and Steve once, the subject of who was our favourite Irish band of all time came up. The usual names were chucked about by me and Steve like U2, The Boomtown Rats, The Undertones, The Pogues, Westlife (joking!) until Robin threw a name into the hat that I’d never heard of before – Whipping Boy. So I looked them up on Spotify and this track was their most streamed at the time so I checked it out and I’m glad I did. They were kind of like a prototype, early era Stereophonics both in terms of their storytelling lyrics and sonically. Their lead singer was one Fearghal McKee whose name sounds like the love child of the ex lead singer of The Undertones and the “Show Me Heaven” No 1 artist and ex-Lone Justice vocalist (who share their own real life connection actually but that’s a whole other story). McKee was prone to cutting himself onstage with broken glass so maybe they were more like Manic Street Preachers than the Stereophonics? Whipping Boy split in 1998 after second album “Heartroom” earned critical acclaim but few sales and they were dropped by record label Columbia.

Crush – “Jellyhead”

Released: Feb ’96

Chart Peak: No 50

PJ & Duncan (or Ant & Dec if you prefer) weren’t the only duo to emerge from Byker Grove. Oh no. There was also a female trio called Byker Grooove (no really!) who even had a minor hit with a single called “Love Your Sexy…!!” which reached No 48. That was enough success to convince label Telstar to give the girls another go but with a tweak. Byker Grooove wasn’t going to cut it as a name so the rather uninspired Crush was chosen. A bigger change though was that the trio became a duo after Vicky Taylor left the project. This left Jayni Hoy and subsequent actor and presenter Donna Air to carry the Geordie flag with the single “Jellyhead”. Now, it really should have been crap and maybe it is but it was also a stunningly catchy pop tune that I really thought was going to be a hit. Its lyrics were almost like an updated version of “I’d Rather Jack” by The Reynolds Girls name checking Bros and The Prodigy but unlike those Stock, Aitken and Waterman pop starlets, Crush couldn’t even achieve the status of one hit wonders. After “Jellyhead” peaked at No 50, follow up “Luv’d Up” could only make No 45 and that was it for the whole project. However, there was one female member of the Byker Grove cast who would secure themselves not one, not two, not three but four UK Top 40 hit singles – Emmy-Kate Montrose, the bassist with Sunderland pop-punk four piece Kenickie appeared in the series under her real name of Emma Jackson.

Kenickie – “Punka”

Released: Sep ’96

Chart Peak: No 43

Talking of whom…If you think of Sunderland what immediately comes to mind? The 1973 FA Cup winning team? Maybe. The River Wear? Possibly. What about music though? How many bands can you name that came out of Sunderland? The list isn’t long nor does it spring to mind easily. I’m not putting the place down by the way. I will always have a fondness for Sunderland having spent three years there as a student in the 80s and it’s also where I met my wife. I don’t remember much about the local music scene though. There must have been one I guess. Think man! Well, there’s the glorious Martin Stephenson (with and without The Daintees) who should be a national treasure but still doesn’t have widespread recognition. The Toy Dolls of “Nellie The Elephant” fame came from there as did that other novelty record outfit A Tribe Of Toffs. I’m not sure either are a winning endorsement of the place though. Dave Stewart is a Mackem but you don’t really associate Eurythmics with Sunderland do you? In later years there have been bands like Field Mice and The Futureheads but what about the 90s? The only act I can think of who flew the *city’s banner was Kenickie.

*Yes, Sunderland is a city

Named after their favourite character from Grease, this post-punk four piece (including a very young Lauren Laverne) turned down an offer of a deal from Alan McGee of Creation Records before signing to EMIDisc and releasing “Punka”. A scratchy, raw sounding track that thrashed around a nursery rhyme hook complete with a chorus of children shouting its title, it only missed the Top 40 by three places. However, that was enough to create a buzz about the band and despite follow up single “Millionaire Sweeper” also missing out, they finally broke through in January of 1997 with third release “In Your Car” making it to No 24 and earning them a slot on TOTP. “Punka” itself would earn itself another shot at it duly became a bona fide Top 40 hit (albeit a minor one when it peaked at No 38). After two albums, the band split but their Wikipedia entry says that they influenced end of the decade all girl groups like Hepburn and Thunderbugs. I’m not sure that’s really the legacy that they would have wanted. Lauren Laverne would leave the music industry behind switching careers to become a TV and radio presenter. She currently hosts Desert Island Discs on Radio 4 and The One Show on BBC1.

Billy Bragg – “Upfield”

Released: Aug ’96

Chart Peak: No 46

By 1996, it had been five years since Billy Bragg’s last album “Don’t Try This At Home” which had gone Top 10 and furnished him with the hit single “Sexuality”. Why the gap? Well, Billy became a father in 1993 and so took time out to concentrate on his family. He would return in this year with the album “William Bloke” (a pun on the name of 18th century poet William Blake). With songs written about how his life had changed and with an eye on his approaching 40s, it was perhaps a more reflective piece of work than his overtly political 1980s albums. However, the only single released from it was “Upfield” which was an uptempo, joyous number that passed me by at the time but which I discovered when I bought Billy’s 2003’s retrospective album “Must I Paint You A Picture?”. It deserved better than its No 46 chart peak. Billy would spend the rest of the 90s working with American alt-country rockers Wilco on the “Mermaid Avenue” project putting music to previously unheard lyrics by folk artist Woody Guthrie which I quite liked especially the tracks “Walt Whitman’s Niece” and “Way Over Yonder In The Minor Key”.

Hits We Missed

Nick Heyward – “Rollerblade”

Released: Jan ’97

Chart Peak: No 37

I said in my review of 1995 that I would no doubt talk about this single in the ‘TOTP 1996 – the epilogue’ post and I’m nothing if not a man of my word. To be honest, given my lifelong loyalty to Nick, it was never in doubt. A whole twelve years after his last Top 40 entry came “Rollerblade”, the second and final single from his marvellous “Tangled” album. A high-tempo, dash through a hook laden tune, it clocked in at under three minutes – I’m not sure if that aided or hindered its airplay chances. No doubt its early January release date in the traditional lull period after Christmas helped it to glide into the upper end of the Top 40 albeit just for one week. Whilst I was delighted to see Nick back in the charts, I couldn’t help thinking he’d missed a trick in not releasing “Believe In Me” from the album instead which I thought was a surefire winner for a hit given the era of Britpop that it had been recorded in. I guess we’ll never know if I was right.

Nick would return in 1998 with the similarly excellent album “The Apple Bed” on the Creation label (see…there’s that Britpop connection again). With the exception of two albums in collaboration with actors Greg Ellis and India Dupree, he wouldn’t have another album out until the wondrous “Woodland Echoes” in 2017. If you’ve never heard it, do yourself a favour and get on Spotify and give it a go. Nick has spent the last couple of years reactivating Haircut 100 who even released their first single for over 40 years – “The Unloving Plum” – which topped The Heritage Chart. I saw them live at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire and York Barbican in 2023 and to further prove my Nick credentials, pretty much the only CDs left in my possession after a clear out purge this year? Yep, you guessed it.

The Wannadies – “You & Me Song”

Released: Apr ’96

Chart Peak: No 18

One of just three Top 40 entries for Swedish indie rockers The Wannadies, “You And Me Song” is surely their best known. Originally released in August 1995, it barely limped into the Top 100. However, its inclusion on the soundtrack to Baz Luhrmann’s film Romeo + Juliet and the latter’s subsequent success (it grossed $147.6 million against a budget of $14.5 million) raised its profile and warranted it a second shot at the chart in 1996. This time it would break into the Top 20 peaking at No 18. Curiously, the rerelease changed the title of the song from “You And Me Song” to “You & Me Song” – not sure why. Maybe it was talking its lead from Baz Lurhmanm who renamed Shakespeare’s original tale of Romeo And Juliet as Romeo + Juliet?

My wife liked this at the time but wasn’t sure who it was by so tried to explain it to me so I could identify it. Not an unreasonable request what with me working in a record shop and all. Somehow though, I managed to be incredibly dumb that day and despite her describing it as that song that goes “you and me always and forever” I assured her that there was no such song only to come back to her a couple of minutes later after a lightbulb moment and say “Oh, do you mean “You and Me Song” by The Wannadies? She still brings it nearly 30 years later when I’m being particularly obtuse.

Gene – “Fighting Fit”

Released: Nov ’96

Chart Peak: No 22

I have to admit that there have been times during my life when I’ve been completely out of touch with what would have been described as “trendy” when I was growing up but which would come to be labelled the “zeitgeist”. The Smiths back in 1983 when I was 15 should have been a band that I fell in love with. I was absolutely ripe for their sound and Morrissey’s otherness should have appealed to my teenage angst and yet I ignored them for years before seeing the light (that never goes out). Fast forward to 1989 and along came the Stone Roses and I was a mere 21 year old with my whole life in front of me. Surely I would fall for their swagger and profile as the leaders of the ‘Madchester’ movement? Nope. I somehow got distracted by their songs always seeming to have the word ‘stone’ in them. I would later see the error of my ways and even ended up working alongside their original bass player, the much missed Pete Garner.

And then there was Gene. Why I dropped the ball with this lot when I was actually working in a record shop at the time beggars belief. Ten Top 40 singles and two Top 10 albums and I ignored the lot. My mate Robin certainly didn’t though. Not only was he a big Smiths fan when I wasn’t but he embraced Gene fully to the point that they would become his favourite band ever. To be fair, he might have had a head start on me as his interest in them was surely kindled by all the music press comparisons between them and his other heroes and indeed between lead singer Martin Rossiter and Morrissey. It still doesn’t answer the question though of how I failed to hear their music whilst working in a record shop. Can I blame my work colleagues who clearly weren’t interested in Gene either? I think that’s a stretch. Anyway, “Fighting Fit” was the fifth of those ten hits and the lead single from their second studio album “Drawn To The Deep End”. It’s a driving, indie rock stomper that lulls the listener in with a tinkling, gentle intro before the drums kick in and we’re off on a four minute, high octane, daredevil, wall of death ride before being deposited safely back to the ground with a false ending and a repeat of the intro as the outro. Genuinely thrilling stuff!

Mansun – “Stripper Vicar”

Released: Sep ’96

Chart Peak: No 19

As with The Boo Radleys, Mansun were a band that I only really got into for one album but that one album, their debut “Attack Of The Grey Lantern”, was a real winner. It took me a while to get into it via a promo CD that we had at the Our Price where I was working but the payoff when I got there was beautiful. Initially written as a concept album around the idea of a village of characters of dubious morals with The Grey Lantern as a superhero figure come to sort them all out, it would get to No 1 in the UK. Frontman Paul Draper admits that he ran out of steam when it came to finishing the album in the form of its original concept and so described it as “half a concept album – a ‘con’ album”. A similar thing happened to Paul Weller and The Jam’s “Setting Sons” album. “Stripper Vicar” was the lead track from an EP entitled “Three” and there’s a lot going on in it, like there’s three different songs in there all striving to be heard. It all comes together as a driving, indie tune that tells the tale of its titular character whose was a vicar by day but a stripper by night. The wordplay in the lyrics – rhyming “plastic scouser” with “plastic trousers” and “suspended” with “suspenders” – shouldn’t really work but somehow does magnificently.

I caught Mansun live in 1997 supporting Suede at a gig in Blackburn and they were great. Somebody I worked with once had been at university with some of the band and said they were always destined for success. Everyone around them knew it. Eventually I did too.

Super Furry Animals – “Something 4 The Weekend”

Released: Jul ’96

Chart Peak: No 18

The 90s was quite a time for Welsh bands. Sure the 80s gave us The Alarm and to a lesser extent The Darling Buds but the following decade saw a host of groups making their mark. Manic Street Preachers, Stereophonics, Catatonia, Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci and this lot – Super Furry Animals whose TOTP debut on the BBC4 repeats we missed due to (I think) one of the show’s ‘Meet a Pop Star’ competition winners going on to doing something unpalatable in their personal life in later years. That was unfortunate as their hit “Something 4 The Weekend” was quite the tune.

Unlike the first two names in that list above, SFA started their career singing Welsh language songs and unlike the aforementioned Kenickie, did sign with Creation records when offered a deal by Alan McGee and it was him who encouraged them to sing in English. In fact, the band had already made that decision for themselves but their strong Welsh accents bewildered McGee into believing they were still singing in their native tongue. The Welsh media gave the band some criticism for this but it turned them into chart stars when they hit the Top 40 with just their second single “God! Show Me Magic”. Its follow up “Something 4 The Weekend” did even better making the Top 20 becoming part of a curious footnote in pop history when it was in the charts at the same time as The Divine Comedy’s hit of the same name. Well, almost. The Furries replaced the word ‘for’ with the number ‘4’ for the single release of the track (the album version was called “Something For The Weekend”).

Ah yes, that debut album. It was called “Fuzzy Logic” but it wasn’t its title that intrigued us all at the Our Price store in Stockport where I was working. No, it wasn’t the cover art which was a montage of images of the same man in a number of different disguises and looks. Now none of us realised that they were all of Welsh drug dealer turned raconteur Howard Marks because we were all hung up on the notion that the image at the top in red and yellow was of our manager, the aforementioned late, great and much missed Pete Garner in his early years. Even Pete himself was convinced it was him! So why was Howard Marks on the cover of the album? Apparently the band’s lead vocalist Gruff Rhys had an association with Marks having invited him down to the recording sessions for “Fuzzy Logic” at the Rockfield Studios in Monmouthshire. The link goes further though. In the film of his life called Mr Nice, Marks was portrayed by actor Rhys Ifans who had once been a member of Super Furry Animals.

As for the band’s sound, it could claim to be hard to categorise though many a music journalist would try and shoehorn them into the Britpop movement or the Welsh equivalent Cool Cymru. My best attempt to describe it would be an eclectic mix of styles including 60s psychedelia, indie rock, glam rock and 90s dance that created a truly imaginative noise. “Something 4 The Weekend” was a prime example of this though I think my favourite of theirs might well be the marvellously titled “Juxtaposed With U”.

My Life Story – “12 Reasons Why I Love Her”

Released: Aug ’96

Chart Peak: No 32

Here’s another song that I didn’t cotton onto at the time but which I’ve since discovered in later life. Now, I thought My Life Story came along much later than this but according to their Wikipedia page they formed in 1984! They didn’t experience chart success though until the mid 90s when they got caught up with the coming of Britpop and they clocked up six Top 40 singles though none of them got any higher than No 27.

The first of those was “Twelve Reasons Why I Love Her” and it’s a quite extraordinary song. Essentially a list of things that the protagonist loves about the object of his affection, it’s kind of like the Britpop version of “Twelve Days Of Christmas”. I’m going on a lot about Britpop which is probably unfair to My Life Story who, if they were part of that scene, were in their own little corner of it. Yes, lead singer Jake Shillingford’s vocals wouldn’t have sounded out of place on a track by Menswear or maybe Rialto but My Life Story weren’t your identikit Britpop outfit. For a start, there were twelve members in their line up at one point and the sound that they made was often nearer to that of a chamber orchestra than a rock/pop band. Listen to those descending strings on “12 Reasons Why I Love Her”! It took me a few listens to place them but they sound very similar to “The Tunnel Of Love”, the 1983 No 10 single by Fun Boy Three. In a way, they had more in common with French chanson singer Jacques Brel than Britpop or maybe Marc Almond covering Jacques Brel at least. Or The Walker Brothers? OK, I’m reaching a bit now but you kind of get my drift. My Life Story disbanded in 2000 but there have been various reunions since and they released their fifth studio album in February 2024.

Their Season In The Sun

Though they had been around since the turn of the decade, 1996 was undoubtedly the year when Lauryn Hill, Wyclef Jean and Pras Michel went stratospheric. Their album “The Score” would ultimately sell 22 million copies worldwide and provide them with huge hit singles in “Killing Me Softly”, “Ready Or Not” and “No Woman, No Cry”. At the height of their fame and success though, they split. Why? My research suggests that one of the reasons was that Lauryn and Wyclef had an affair with the former misleading the latter into believing he was the father of her child when in fact it was Bob Marley’s son Rohan. Well, it makes a change from musical differences I guess.

All three members would go on to have successful solo careers with the Fugees reforming for a reunion tour before splitting again. Another reunion was announced in 2021 to celebrate 25 years since “The Score” was released but the promised tour dates have been cancelled not one time, not two times but three times so far with the latest cancellation coming just three days before the tour was due to start in August 2024. Ready or not? It would seem not.

Upside Down

One of the most manufactured boy bands ever, these also rans even had a documentary made about their formation informing their publicity machine and they still couldn’t get any higher than No 11 in the charts. That said, they did manage four hit singles in the calendar year but it was a case of diminishing returns and even that well worn strategy of releasing a cover version (Chicago’s “If You Leave Me Now”) couldn’t save them. They weren’t helped by their record label (which had gambled everything on their act being successful) going bankrupt but the decision to relaunch with the worst band name ever in the history of band names – Orange Orange – was criminal.

Babylon Zoo

One massive hit then (almost) nothing. It’s a much told music industry story but perhaps what is best remembered about Jas Mann and his pop vehicle Babylon Zoo was the deception that his song “Spaceman” pulled on the record buying public. That Levi’s advert which only used the speeded up vocals of the intro and outro that created the impression that the whole track was like that led to many a punter being disappointed once they got home and played the single to discover it was essentially a hoary, old rock song. That didn’t stop it becoming the third biggest selling hit of the year in the UK mind. Following it up proved impossible and a couple of minor hits was never going to establish Babylon Zoo as long term contenders. At least their final chart foray had an element of self knowledge – “All The Money’s Gone”.

Alanis Morissette

Against the odds, the biggest selling album of 1996 in the UK was a huge slow burner having debuted on the chart at No 76 in the August of the previous year. The story of “Jagged Little Pill” which included eleven weeks at No 1 and 3 million sales in the UK alone is all the more remarkable because it came from a Canadian solo female artist that most of us had never heard of before. It took nearly six months for it to rise to the UK Top 10 and then spent nearly a year inside it once it got there. Inevitably, following it up was always going to be difficult and 1998’s “Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie” duly failed to match its predecessor’s heights only managing a tenth of “Jagged Little Pill”’s sales. Alanis has continued to record new material though with her most recent album being released in 2022.

Mark Morrison

With a gold selling album and No 1 single both titled “Return Of The Mack” in this year, Leicester’s Mark Morrison was never bigger than in 1996. Sure he had a few hits after then but it was those 12 months that saw him rise to fame as he clocked up three more Top 10 hits in the wake of his chart topper. It would seem though that he couldn’t handle his celebrity as his personal life spiralled with the R&B artist facing a number of criminal charges including bringing a firearm aboard an airliner, affray, kidnapping and paying a lookalike to complete his community service sentence. He still has some presence in the music world though it mainly seems to be due to adverts by McDonalds and Burger King featuring his most famous track for obvious reasons.

Last Words

So, 1996 – was it any good? Like most years it was a curate’s egg. Some good, a lot of bad and a fair sprinkling of utter tosh. Sadly, I don’t think the remaining years of the decade will prove to be any different. The charts were becoming increasingly manipulated by record company marketing strategies to maximise first week sales. This resulted in 24 different No 1 singles this year, the most since 1980 with an increasing trend for records debuting at No 1 and then falling away. This would only increase for here on in. As for me, I’d completed my second year at Our Price Stockport and things were pretty stable. 1997 would see changes to my work life and things start to unravel with my mental health. Some of the posts for that year might be difficult to write…

TOTP 29 NOV 1996

Posted on December 20, 2024 by 80stastic

We’re getting close to Christmas both in present day 2024 and 28 years ago in 1996 here at TOTP Rewind where the BBC4 repeats are knocking on the advent calendar doors of December. Back then, I was about to work my seventh consecutive Christmas at Our Price and my second on the spin at the Stockport store. I can’t remember all the specifics of what went down that year – over time the details such as who my work colleagues were have become jumbled up as my memory has shifted and re-edited – but one thing I do recall is that Oasis were selling their fans empty boxes for Christmas. Yes, with no new album available until the following year and no single having been released by the band since “Don’t Look Back In Anger” in the February, their record label Creation needed something to flog to the legion of Oasis followers – it was Christmas after all. What they came up with was unbelievable and yet somehow they sold. To house all those CD singles the band had released, you could purchase two boxes designed to look like a packet of cigarettes – one for the tracks from “Definitely Maybe” and one for the songs from “”(What’s The Story) Morning Glory?”. The latter was gold and the former silver and both carried the warning ‘Rock ‘N’ Roll Can Seriously Damage Your Health. I can’t remember exactly how much they cost but I’m guessing a fiver each. What a racket!

Anyway, tonight’s hosts are Ronan and Stephen from Boyzone – nice lads who would never attempt to fleece their fans by selling them some old tat I’m sure. Ahem. After an ill advised impression of The Prodigy’s Keith Flint from Ronan at the top of the show, we’re off with the first artist of the night who is Belinda Carlisle who was experiencing her penultimate UK Top 40 hit with “Love In The Key Of C”. Now, I’m no musician but I did take a few guitar classes over the years which did cover elements of music structure so I know the chord progression in the key of C major is C – G – A – F for example. What I don’t know though is what love in the key of C is. A quick google of the phrase ‘Key of C’ tells me that it’s one of the most common keys in music as it’s also one of the simplest with no sharps nor flats making it easier to play as its key signature is a blank staff. It’s also a neutral key that doesn’t evoke strong emotions making it versatile for various genres and moods. Hmm. A blank staff and doesn’t evoke strong emotions – why that’s a perfect way to describe “Love In The Key Of C” as it’s as dull as Tess Daly’s presenting skills. What’s worse is that one of the lyrics says:

Love in the key of C, you’re my life’s sweet harmony,

It’s the key of Amazing Grace

Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Rick Nowels
Love in the Key of C lyrics © Spirit Music Group

Well, I’m sorry Belinda but that’s just not true. “Amazing Grace” was written in the key of F Major. Not since Alanis Morissette came up with “Ironic” had a lyric been so wrong.

Next, it’s another artist whose poster would have adorned the wall of many a teenage lad’s bedroom back then. Following Belinda Carlisle comes Louise with her fifth hit single in a just over a year, all taken from her debut album “Naked”. This one was called “One Kiss From Heaven” and was…hang on a minute…didn’t her ex-band Eternal have a hit called that?!

*checks Eternal discography*

My bad. Their third single was called “Just A Step From Heaven” so I was close – just round the corner you might say. I thought Louise had been recycling a tune for a minute. Anyway, her song was all sultry and sensual but it sounds to me as if it was trying a little too hard to be those things. It was co-written by Simon Climie of Climie Fisher fame who knows his way around a decent pop tune but I’m not sure slinky seduction is his thing really. I guess it was the logical next step in the master plan to change our perception of Louise from wholesome, girl next door to sex goddess but it doesn’t quite convince for me although I’m sure it would have for all those aforementioned teenage boys.

It turns out that Louise did record her own version of that Eternal song for her 2023 Greatest Hits album and called it “Just A Step From Heaven (Reimagined)” and guess what? It sounds just like the Eternal version. Never has the word ‘reimagined’ been so misused since Tim Burton reimagined Planet Of The Apes.

Nice to see Roman Keating get in a name check for my beloved Chelsea in his intro to Robert Miles and Maria Nayler. How so? Well, they feature in his list of things you associate with Italy (Miles was Italian) as, at the time, their team included Gianluca Vialli, Roberto Di Matteo and Gianfranco Zola. Club legends every one of them. Sorry? What about the music? Oh, well “One And One” was holding for a third week at No 6 and so was deemed due another TOTP appearance. The showing of the video would move it up the charts in increments one place at a time until it peaked at No 3 before undertaking a descent down them that would take nearly two months. You’d think given the amount of time it spent inside the Top 40 that I would have strongly associated it with Christmas ‘96 but I don’t, I really don’t. To be fair, there aren’t many singles that do spring to mind when I think of that particular festive period. There’s the Spice Girls obviously and Madonna’s version of “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina” but after that, nothing much. The Christmas chart had Toni Braxton at No 4 but it had already been in the Top 10 for nine weeks by that point so maybe it was inevitable with long running hits like that and Robert Miles’ that it would be hard to connect them to Christmas when they’d been with us for months. Or maybe, yet again, my memory has just failed me. Always a possibility.

1996 saw a number of artists put together consistent runs of multiple UK Top 40 hits. I’m thinking Shed Seven, Manic Street Preachers and indeed, from this very show, Louise. All of them had at least four singles make the charts and to that list can be added Skunk Anansie for whom “Twisted (Everyday Hurts)” was their fourth hit of the year. Unlike those other acts though, it also started a run of three consecutive songs that would not only chart but which had brackets in their titles. Following this, they had hits with “Hedonism (Just Because You Feel Good)” and “Brazen (Weep)” and it got me to thinking why people put brackets in their song titles. Well, let’s start with what brackets are used for grammatically which is to provide clarity or add extra information. Do we need either of those in a title of a song? Maybe but I would say not. Surely the art form of the musical composition should be about the emotional response that it illicits rather than its syntax? So why do any song titles feature brackets? To add an element of mystery or intellectual rigour to them? I’m not convinced that any song title should have brackets to be honest. And in any case, some of the songs that have employed brackets that I can think of haven’t made any sense at all. Take George Michael and Aretha Franklin’s 1987 duet “I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)” for example. What was the need for the brackets here? Or what about the near hit single by The Icicle Works called “Birds Fly (Whisper To A Scream)” that was retitled “Whisper To A Scream (Birds Fly)” for the American market? What was that all about?

As for Skunk Anansie’s foray into bracket world, were they trying to distinguish themselves from the Sad Cafe 1979 hit “Every Day Hurts”? Surely not including those words in the title would have done that? Enough of the linguistics though, what about their song? Well, as with previous single “All I Want”, I actually quite enjoyed it though I couldn’t have told you how it went before watching this TOTP repeat. And there was I thinking that all there was to them was “Weak”.

So what sort of banter or should I say craic did Ronan and Stephen have together as a presenting duo? Well, it was a little bit stilted but their winning Irish accents saw them through even the most cringey of exchanges such as the Bob Marley/ Bob Geldof one that happened in the segue to the Fugees. There’s one bit in it where Ronan sounds as if he’s saying a line from Father Ted. Anyway, “No Woman, No Cry” is straight in at No 2 but I like previous single “Ready Or Not” that also debuted in the same chart position, it wasn’t able to make that leap to the top of the charts the following week.

Was it sacrilege to cover a Bob Marley song? I think they probably just about pulled it off but did Bob himself ever indulge in the art of the cover version? Well, I did find this which is quite extraordinary in its unlikeliness…

Now, I like to think of this blog as irreverent in nature (though many who have read it might use the word ‘irrelevant’ instead) but that tone isn’t really going to cut it for this next song so I’m going to stick to the facts rather than pass any judgement on it.

On 13th March 1996, 43 year old Thomas Hamilton entered the gymnasium of Dunblane Primary School, Stirling and shot dead one teacher and 16 pupils aged between five and six and injured a further 15 people before turning the gun on himself. It remains the deadliest mass shooting in British history and led to the introduction of the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1997 and the Firearms (Amendment) Act No 2 1997 that banned all cartridge ammunition handguns in England, Scotland and Wales. This legislation was the result of the official enquiry into the incident (Cullen Report) and a public campaign (Snowdrop Petition) to ban private ownership of all handguns.

On 9th December 1996, a version of Bob Dylan’s “Knocking On Heaven’s Door” was released accredited to Dunblane which was Scottish musician Ted Christopher with the help of Dire Straits’ Mark Knopfler and featuring singing by children from the town of Dunblane itself (including the siblings of some of the children who were murdered). I can’t find anything online which connects the single explicitly to the Snowdrop Petition campaign but no doubt the two would have been linked in the minds of some parts of the public. The song was rewritten (with Dylan’s consent) to refer specifically to the events of Dunblane with the proceeds from its sales going to children’s charities. The release schedules were cleared by the record labels of all other major artists (including the Spice Girls) at the time so as to give the single a clear path to becoming No 1. Bookmakers agreed to not take bets on it being the Christmas No 1, not wanting to appear to be making profit out of such a tragedy, with a promise that bets on any other artist being honoured if they were at No 2 and Dunblane topped the charts in Christmas week. Although the single did indeed go to No 1, it would only stay there for only one week.

There appears to have been some thought given to the running order by TOTP executive producer Ric Blaxill as the Dunblane single is followed by the aptly named “Child” by Mark Owen. Not only that but there is no intro from the Boyzone lads just a respectful segue from performance to performance. And not only that but the first line Owen sings is “Sleep peacefully now, my child”. Definitely some consideration there of how to schedule the Dunblane song into the show. As for Mark, he gives a curious delivery of his single, hardly moving and when he does it’s in faint, jilted movements as if he’s the worlds worst escapologist, half-heartedly trying to work out how to get out of the straight jacket he’s in. It does make him look quite vulnerable which was maybe the image he was looking for to match the tone of his single but it’s slightly at odds with the four lads backing him who look like they want to be in a Britpop band – one of them even breaks rank to turn and give a little smile to the camera. Cheeky!

The last artist in the studio is Sheryl Crow who was really getting into her stride by this point. After “All I Wanna Do” had been her massive breakthrough hit two years earlier, her next four singles had underwhelmed in the UK but she bounced back with eponymous, sophomore album the lead single from which “If It Makes You Happy” had restored her to our Top 10. She followed that up with “Everyday Is A Winding Road” which sounded even better than its predecessor to me. Inspired by Crowded House drummer Paul Hester whose character and joie de vivre had a lasting impact on her when she toured with the band as support act, it fair stomps along with a slide guitar and tom tom drums to the forefront. Some critics lambasted it for stealing from “Sympathy For The Devil” by the Rolling Stones but I can’t hear it.

If the line “He’s got a daughter he calls Easter” is about Hester, then there’s a bit of creative licence going on as his daughters are called Olive and Sunday but to be fair if she’d used the latter name, it wouldn’t have scanned at all and might have prompted images of Olive Oyl or Olive from On The Buses (for me at least). Tragically, Hester struggled with depression and lost his battle with it in 2005 committing suicide at the age of 46.

I was in good company with those who liked the song – Prince was such a fan that he recorded a version of it for his “Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic” album and has even performed it live with Sheryl herself.

The Prodigy remain at No 1 with “Breathe” for a second week – a fine achievement for a dance act but there was no way that they would ever cling on to be the Christmas chart topper. Indeed, three other artists would occupy top spot before the actual festive No 1 was announced. That probably said much of how record company release scheduling and promotional campaigns had changed. I can’t imagine such activity could have happened just 10 years prior. To The Prodigy’s credit, “Breathe” would still be in the Top 10 in the Christmas week chart.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Belinda Carlisle	Love In The Key Of C	Nope
2	Louise	One Kiss From Heaven	Nah
3	Robert Miles and Maria Nayler	One And One	I did not
4	Skunk Anansie	Twisted (Everyday Hurts)	No but its not bad
5	Fugees	No Woman, No Cry	No but my wife had the album
6	Dunblane	Knocking On Heaven’s Door	No but please don’t judge
7	Mark Owen	Child	See 4 above
8	Sheryl Crow	Everyday Is A Winding Road	No but I had her Best Of with it on
9	The Prodigy	Breathe	No but I had it on one of those Best Album Ever compilations

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/m0025gmv/top-of-the-pops-29111996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 22 NOV 1996

Posted on December 15, 2024 by 80stastic

As I write this, the latest series of I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! has just concluded with Danny Jones being crowned as the new King of the Jungle and it strikes me that there’s a couple of tie ins between that show and this episode of TOTP. No, nothing to do with McFly who wouldn’t be invented for another eight years nor The Communards whose Reverend Richard Coles came third this year. Neither is there a connection to contestant Tulisa formerly of hip-hop trio N-Dubz who wouldn’t start having hits for a further ten years. However, the first link is really obvious and it’s the show’s opening act who are Ant & Dec. Told you it was obvious! The ever present hosts of I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! since the first series in 2002 (apart from they one year when Ant was in rehab and was replaced by Holly Willougby), the diminutive duo were still very much pop stars at this point in their career though that was rapidly approaching its natural end.

“When I Fall In Love” was their eleventh consecutive UK Top 40 hit but there were only two more to come in their original incarnation. Although the title of this one suggests images of Nat King Cole or maybe even Rick Astley (!), thankfully it was nothing to do with that classic 50s hit though maybe it would have been better if it had been as this was absolute garbage. A totally nothing tune but even that chronic lack of substance was too much for Dec’s weedy voice. Meanwhile, Ant’s rap was clearly inserted to give him something to do whilst his pal tried and failed to do the vocal heavy lifting. On the CD single, you had the choice of playing the radio edit with or without the rap though that’s like choosing whether you’d rather eat your left or right arm. Talking of arms, Dec seems to be unsure what to do with his right one during this performance, slashing about wildly with it as if he’s swatting flies. And what was going on with his hair? That mullet bit…was that even real? It looks like a wig that might have been used in a really poor quality Beatles biopic. In short (unlike Dec’s hair), everything about this was a bit naff (exactly like Dec’s hair). I think they made the right decision to knock the pop star thing on the head not long after this.

There’s no Shed Seven connection to I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! that I’m aware of but in 1996, the York indie rockers were at the top of their game. Five UK chart hits in one calendar year was quite the achievement – they were literally at the apex of their career which was quite apt given that four of those hits came from an album called “Maximum High”. In fact, two of those singles continued the theme in “Getting Better” and “Going For Gold”. Sadly, “Bully Boy”can’t really be shoehorned in at all whilst “On Standby” and “Chasing Rainbows” not just end the metaphor but invert it.

It’s that last song that concerns us here though. This wasn’t from “A Maximum High” but the lead single from third studio album “Let It Ride” though it was released a good six months before it. So why was that? Well, Rick Witter is on record as having an issue with the release schedule but it’s nothing to do with the gap between the single and album coming out. He believes that if “Chasing Rainbows” had been released in a different week to its actual release date, it might have been a No 1. Does he have a point? On first glance, that seems a stretch for a single that peaked at No 17. However, was he meaning that they should have waited a few weeks until that sales lull after Christmas when traditionally it took much fewer sales to get a single to the top of the charts? I’m thinking Iron Maiden’s “Bring Your Daughter…To The Slaughter” for example. Well, a quick look at the first chart of 1997 shows the Christmas No 1 was still in pole position but the two highest new entries came at Nos 2 and 3 and from unlikely artists in Tori Amos with that dance remix of “Professional Widow (It’s Got To Be Big)” and Orbital with their dramatic track “Satan”. There’s no guarantee that Shed Seven would have gone to the top of the pile if they’d released “Chasing Rainbows” in that same week but I’m betting they would have got higher than No 17.

P.S. One of my favourite bands is Embrace and just this week I attended a very intimate Q&A session with lead singer Danny McNamara in which he divulged that when they were starting out, the feedback they got from labels and A&R men was that they didn’t sound enough like Shed Seven. Hmm.

I’m pretty sure that Tina Turner was never a camp mate in I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here nor Adina Howard or Warren G who remade her hit “What’s Love Got To Do With It”* in 1996. Despite its No 2 chart peak, this had totally disappeared from my poor, overworked memory. And thank f**k for that because it was a shoddy idea horribly executed. Warren G, of course, had scored a major hit two years prior to this with the track “Regulate” whilst Adina had bagged herself a minor UK hit the previous year with “Freak Like Me” which the Sugababes would take to No 1 seven years later as part of a mash up with Tubeway Army’s “Are Friends Electric?”.

*Breaking news: Before Tina Turner was offered the track, it was recorded by Bucks Fizz but shelved after Tina’s version was a hit. Is there a connection between the 1981 Eurovision winners and I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here!? Surely Cheryl Baker has been on it, she’s been on everything else.

This version of Tina’s 1984 UK No 3 and US No 1 hit was nothing like as stunning as the Sugababes’ offering. It just seems like a cynically constructed vehicle for Warren G much as he had done with “Regulate” which was built around Michael McDonald’s yacht rock classic “I Keep Forgettin’ (Every Time You’re Near)”. This time though, it felt like a complete cut and paste exercise with Adina doing a passable Tina impression before Warren would come barging in with his rapping. It was part of the soundtrack to a film called Police Story 3: Supercop starring Jackie Chan hence his featuring in the video. Said soundtrack includes a version of Carl Douglas’s “Kung Fu Fighting” as covered by Tom Jones. If that sounds horrendous then I can assure you that it absolutely is…

If “Star” was Bryan Adams’ shot at securing a Christmas No 1, he was wildly off target. Maybe he thought having the word ‘star’ in the title would tip the seasonal scales in his direction. What he should have done was write a half decent song instead of this awful dirge. I think I used that word to describe his last single “Let’s Make A Night To Remember” as well. It was all a bit of a disappointment after his “The Only Thing That Looks Good On Me Is You” track had spearheaded the campaign for his “18 Til I Die” album in fine form.

The single released after this was yet another love song, this time a duet with Barbara Streisand from the film The Mirror Has Two Faces called “I Finally Found Someone” which was equally as tedious. Following that, the title track from “18 Till I Die” was was released and was an uptempo rocker which was perfectly serviceable so it seemed to me that Bry was in a bit of a slump when it came to ballads around this time. If he wanted a Christmas hit, he could always have rereleased this which originally a single way back in 1985 before it got used in the 2022 film Violent Night.

Now, I’m confident that neither Bryan Adams nor Barbara Streisand have been on I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! (can you imagine the fee they’d have to pay Babs to appear!) but how about next year the programme makers take a left field punt on Crispian Mills from Kula Shaker? Not only is he the lead singer of a band (albeit one that stopped having hits a quarter of a century ago) but his family background is acting royalty being the son of Haley Mills (Whistle Down The Wind, The Parent Trap etc) and the grandson of Sir John Mills (Ice Cold In Alex, Ryan’s Daughter etc and indeed etc). OK, it might be a bit of a stretch to assume that the watching TV audience would know who he was these days but back in 1996, he and his band were one of the breakout stars of the year. Rivalling Shed Seven for the most hits in those 12 months, “Govinda” was Kula Shaker’s fourth single to chart and their third to make the Top 10 when it peaked at No 7.

As host Nicky Campbell says, mixing Eastern mysticism with Western pop had indeed proved to be a good idea for the band, providing the blueprint for their whole career pretty much. It was never more evident than on “Govinda” which was sung totally in Sanskrit with the text taken from a devotional chant entitled “Govinda Jaya Jaya” which had been recorded back in 1970 by the London Radha Krishna Temple and produced by George Harrison who was also responsible for the collective’s No 12 UK hit “Hare Krishna Chant”. Growing up as a child in Worcester in the 70s, my only experience of the Hare Krishna movement had been people laughing at them as a procession of them snaked down the High Street on a Saturday afternoon chanting their mantra and dressed in saffron orange. Probably like most people who knew nothing of their beliefs, I was left wondering who this bloke Harry Krishna was. Fast forward to the mid 90s and whilst I hadn’t converted to their faith, I was fully into Kula Shaker and especially this single. Sadly, the Krishna teachings of humility, selflessness and global oneness didn’t reach everyone out there. Whilst working in the Stockport branch of Our Price, a man came to the counter and asked me if we had “that Paki song”. He meant “Govinda” and the irony of the dichotomy he represented (a man using a racist term to ask for the Eastern influenced song he liked) wasn’t lost on me though it certainly was on him.

“Govinda” would draw a line under the band’s prolific output with only two singles being released over the next two years until their second album “Peasants, Pigs & Astronauts” finally appeared in 1999 by which time, the band’s momentum, if not lost, had certainly been misplaced. They are still a going concern today though having released their latest album “Natural Magick” just this year.

P.S. I quite often watch these TOTP repeats with subtitles on so that if I comment on a song’s lyrics or a presenter’s links, I’m not misquoting people. The subtitles for “Govinda” just say ‘He sings in Sanskrit’. Bit of a ‘can’t be arsed’ approach to the job isn’t it?

Did I say that Kula Shaker were one of the biggest breakout acts of 1996? Like a back-pedalling, dodgy politician I may have mis-spoke as the official Breakthrough Artist of 1996 were actually Garbage who even won an award as such at the MTV Europe Music Awards (Kula Shaker weren’t even nominated). How so? Well, their eponymous debut album would sell 4 million copies worldwide and that calendar year saw them in the Top 10 of the UK singles charts with “Stupid Girl” and this track “Milk”. The last track on that album, it wasn’t the album closing, big ballad that might have been assumed but, as described by lead singer Shirley Manson, a “siren song” about loss. It’s almost hypnotic but with a definite dark element to it. Presumably the band didn’t think it was dark enough though and so recruited trip-hop artist Tricky to lay down some sinister vocals onto the track. It’s the Tricky version (called The Wicked Mix) that was a hit in the UK but obviously we don’t see/hear that version in this TOTP appearance as it’s an exclusive performance from Atlanta where the band were presumably on tour. However, in other territories, the track was released without Tricky’s vocals (The Siren Mix) which didn’t go down well with the Bristolian rapper who complained to the press about the situation. As far as I can tell, the Tricky version did better chart wise than the pure Garbage release.

“Milk” was the last single to be taken from the album (the one with the pink cover) and that pedantic part of my brain is still impressed with how Shirley Manson has colour co-ordinated with it in her choice of outfit for this performance. I say ‘still’ as I liked it the first time she did it in an earlier TOTP appearance when there was a pink feather boa wrapped around her microphone stand. If I am being really pedantic though, does Shirley have some lipstick on her teeth in this performance?

I bet Jimmy Nail has been asked to be on I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! He’d have been a prime candidate wouldn’t he? I also bet he would have turned down flat any invitation as my perception is that he’s quite a private person and would have balked at the idea of laying himself bare in a reality TV show. Why do I think that? Well, in 2004, Nail successfully sued News Group Newspapers and Harper Collins Publishers over false allegations made in the News Of The World about him and Nailed, an unofficial biography which was the newspaper’s source of the claims. Jimmy described reading the article as one of the worst experiences of his life. Given all of that, I don’t think he would have been up for being filmed constantly in an artificial environment with people he didn’t know. Anyway, he’s on TOTP to promote his single “Country Boy”. The last time he was on the show, he and his band wore schoolboy outfits but this time, they are wearing black suits and ties which makes them look like they’ve just arrived from a funeral. This was possibly quite apt as this single would be his last ever hit in the UK so you could say this valedictory performance was almost a wake for his career as a pop star.

And so we arrive at the other link to I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! No, none of the members of the Fugees have ever been on the show – it’s far more tenuous than that but I’ll get to it in a minute. “No Woman, No Cry” was the fourth single taken from “The Score” album and it just missed out on giving the band a third consecutive No 1 after “Killing Me Softly” and “Ready Or Not” when it peaked one place lower – the Fugees really were a big deal in this year. Yet another classic song given the hip-hop treatment, Bob Marley’s original had peaked at No 22 in 1975 and at No 8 when rereleased in 1981 following his death. I say “given the hip hop treatment” but it’s actually a pretty straight version – host Nicky Campbell calls it “authentic” though I’m not sure that’s quite the right word.

Anyway, to that I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! connection. So this year’s runner up was Coleen Rooney. Now back in September 2010, Rooney’s then current club Manchester United were due to play his former team Everton at Goodison Park. Rooney’s switch from red to blue back in 2004 had never been forgiven by the fans who had once adored him and to whom he had sworn allegiance what with Everton being the team he grew up supporting. The abuse Rooney would receive every time he returned to Everton was horrific and unyielding. A month before this particular match, Rooney was the centre of claims that he’d paid two women for a threesome in a Manchester hotel whilst Colleen was five months pregnant with their first child Kai. The press was rife with stories that this would be the end of their marriage. If this was manna from heaven for the more salacious tabloids, it was also the stuff of inspiration for the Everton faithful who came up with a chant based around the story. Set to the tune of “No Woman, No Cry”, they would let rip with “No woman, no Kai”. Cruel absolutely but undeniably clever. In the end, United manager Sir Alex Ferguson didn’t select Rooney for the match day squad choosing instead to protect him from running the gauntlet of abuse he would inevitably have received. And that is my second and final connection between this episode of TOTP and I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! I thank you.

We have a new No 1 and thank heavens for that as the last incumbents were Robson & Jerome. Going straight to the top of the charts are The Prodigy and it’s their second No 1 of 1996 following “Firestarter” in the March. If anything, I liked “Breathe” even more than its predecessor even though it was cut from the same cloth pretty much. It was another barnstorming dance anthem that felt claustrophobic, dangerous and indeed dirty, a sensation only exaggerated by the downright grimy video. Cockroaches, centipedes and an alligator inhabit an apartment that made that house at the end of The Blair Witch Project look clean. Then there’s the performances of Keith Flint and Leeroy Thornhill who look absolutely crazed and depraved, almost daring the audience not to carry on listening. There’s also a slight nod to the Run DMC /Aerosmith video for “Walk This Way” with the two protagonists separated by a flimsy wall which is ultimately breached. This wasn’t doing anything to improve Flint’s public perception amongst the tabloids who were already on his case after his deranged appearance in the “Firestarter” promo.

“Breathe” would spend two weeks at No 1 whilst parent album “The Fat Of The Land” topped the charts for six and went five times platinum in the UK alone. The Prodigy were never bigger than in this year.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Ant & Dec	When I Fall In Love	As if
2	Shed Seven	Chasing Rainbows	Nah
3	Warren G and Adina Howard	What’s Love Got To Do With It	Never
4	Bryan Adams	Star	No thanks
5	Kula Shaker	Govinda	No but I had a promo copy of the album
6	Garbage	Milk	I did not
7	Jimmy Nail	Country Boy	Nope
8	Fugees	No Woman, No Cry	No but my wife had the album
9	The Prodigy	Breathe	No but I had it on one of those Best Album Ever compilations

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/m0025gms/top-of-the-pops-22111996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 27 SEP 1996

Posted on November 8, 2024 by 80stastic

If last week’s TOTP was all about the mainstream, this time the focus seems to be on repeat appearances. 60% of the songs in this show we have already seen/heard before, some as recently as the previous week. Some of this is down to those pesky ‘exclusive’ performances for singles that weren’t actually available to buy in the shops yet. Once released, they would then debut in the charts thus earning themselves another TOTP airing. Maybe that was fine back in the day but it doesn’t help this blogger 28 years later who has to find something else to write about a song that he’s only just reviewed!

One thing that is new is the host. Comedian Harry Hill is still very much a name in 2024 and part of the country’s psyche and comedy fabric but how well known was he back in 1996? Well, he’d won the Perrier Award for Best Newcomer at the Edinburgh Festival in 1992 but that’s not always a guarantee of a long career. He did have a Radio 4 show called Harry Hill’s Fruit Corner that ran for four series but in terms of being on TV, he was hardly omnipresent. A six episode conversion of his radio show to BBC2 ran from October to December in 1994 and he also appeared on the rebooted Friday Night Live (retitled Saturday Night Live) show in 1996 but as part of an ensemble of comedians. He didn’t get his own show until the following year so I’m guessing that, at the time of this TOTP, he was on his way up but had yet to fully arrive.

His first job is to introduce opening act Skunk Anansie with “All I Want” which is one of those ‘repeat’ performances I mentioned. Harry’s voice sounds a bit croaky after a toot on his bugle to start the show and it seems to be catching as Skin’s live vocal sounds a bit rough as well. She does get it together for most of the song though her yelping in the chorus does sound slightly demonic at times. At one point, she jumps into the studio audience but it all falls a bit flat as clearly a spot of crowd surfing would have breached BBC health and safety rules so she just jumps up and down instead next to a bloke in a cap who it seems now thinks that he is Skin’s best friend. I said the first time I reviewed this that it sounds like the band had just rewritten “Weak” but I’m actually quite liking getting reacquainted with “All I Want”.

I have to say that the 1996 version of Harry Hill doesn’t look any younger than he does today. Perhaps it might be more polite to say he doesn’t look any older than he did 18 years ago. Anyway, I like his segue into the next act which is “But now, I am Donna Lewis and here is the news…”. Excellent word play there that even Huey himself would have approved of (in fact, he’d have probably appreciated the publicity back in 1996).

As for Donna, “I Love You Always Forever” is up to No 9 on its way to a high of No 5 for two weeks before a protracted climb down the charts. As the 25 years anniversary of her hit approached, plans to celebrate it were put on hold when Donna was diagnosed with breast cancer and took time out for treatment and surgery. Having come out the other side, Donna’s most recent album “Rooms With A View” includes songs that tell the tale of her experience and she is now an ambassador for the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer charity. Sadly, the aforementioned Huey Lewis has also had his own health issues in later life announcing in 2018 that he has hearing loss as a result of Ménière’s disease.

It’s a hat-trick of songs that have been on before as The Bluetones are in the studio for the second consecutive week to perform “Marblehead Johnson”. My research tells me that there is a Britpop tribute band called Marblehead – the original and ultimate Britpop experience who are named after the Bluetones tune. Playing a repertoire of songs by the likes of Pulp, Blur, Oasis, Supergrass and, of course, The Bluetones, they have been the support act for Space, Icicle Works and indeed Bluetones singer Mark Morriss. Is it just me or does that sound ever so slightly like a case of overkill? Imagine this scenario. You’re going to see Morriss live who was keeping his career going by playing solo gigs and who no doubt will have performed some Bluetones songs as part of the set but before you get to him, you’ve already watched a band called Marblehead play some Britpop songs presumably including some by The Bluetones. I’ve used the word ‘Bluetones’ seven times alone in this paragraph which suggests a certain level of excess don’t you think?

Time now for the obligatory dance tune on the show and this week it’s from B.B.E. This lot were from France and were exponents of the short-lived dream trance boom that rose to prominence in the mid 90s off the back of its poster boy Robert Miles and his massive hit “Children”. I say short lived but it might be still a going concern for all I know but I’m guessing it isn’t. “7 Days And One Week” was their biggest hit of five but to me, and I’ve said this before, it just sounds like speeded up Jean Michel Jarre. I know I don’t know my Goa from my Balearics so I’m probably missing all sorts of nuances but my limited dance knowledge leaves me with only primitive ways of expressing my thoughts about it. Maybe that’s OK though as Wikipedia informs me that dance trance is considered to be the first and most primitive derivative of the progressive house movement. Presumably dance trance isn’t a thing anymore then. Oh well.

After the obligatory dance tune comes the obligatory satellite performance and this one, by coincidence, is from Barcelona. Why by coincidence? Well, in a recent post, I wrote about how I’d been to Barcelona back in early September 1996 and had really enjoyed it despite a case of Montezuma’s revenge making my flight back home uncomfortable. In his intro to Metallica, Harry Hill tells us how he went to Barcelona once but was chased around his room by a gibbon. It shouldn’t be a funny line but somehow it is mainly because the word ‘gibbon’ is inherently an amusing word – just the sound of it. Hill’s genius is that he knows this and so what should just be a completely random and nonsensical statement is loaded with humour. He follows that up by juxtaposing an old sit com phrase (“Mr Humphreys? Are you free?” – “I’m free!”) with the most unlikely and unconnected subject – in this case a hard rock band – to subvert their image and generate a laugh. Well, I thought it was funny anyway, even 28 years later and accepting the accusations of an outdated depiction of a gay man.

Enough of Harry though, what about the music? Well, Metallica aren’t exactly my first choice to ask Alexa to play but I actually quite enjoyed listening to “Hero Of The Day”. It was much more melodic than I was expecting but in a grandstanding, epic sort of way. So that’s two Metallica songs I could ask Alexa to play talking into account “Enter Sandman” as well.

The ‘flashback’ feature rewinds 10 years where we find The Communards at No 1 in the corresponding week in 1986 with “Don’t Leave Me This Way”. It was the best selling single of that year in the UK and spent four weeks at No 1.

As such, I spent a lot of time reviewing it in my 1980s blog so I don’t propose to go through it all again. If you want to read what I said about it, here’s a link to my first post to include it below:

TOTP 04 SEP 1986

I’ve said it many times before (possibly every time she’s featured in these reviews) but Dina Carroll had a peculiar pop star career. An early spark with Quartz and that Carol King cover followed by a slow burner of a solo career that suddenly burst into flames with her massive hits “Don’t Be A Stranger” and “The Perfect Year” before burning out over the next three years as ill health and record label problems delayed her releasing any new material. In 1996, the flame was relit in dramatic fashion as comeback single “Escaping” went to No 3. Only Tom Hanks rubbing two sticks together in Castaway is a bigger firestarter shock. And then, just as quickly as the fire was ablaze, a big bucket of water was thrown over it and it was out again never to be resuscitated. She remains one of pop’s biggest enigmas.

From 1996 to 1997, Ocean Colour Scene were riding their own personal crest of a wave. Seven hit singles (of which six went Top 10) and two platinum selling albums were achieved during those two years – the tide was definitely in for the Brummie lads who formed in 1989 from the flotsam and jetsam of two earlier bands The Boys and Fanatics breaking up. “The Circle” was the fourth and final hit to be taken from their “Moseley Shoals” album and would peak at No 6.

The single included a live cover version of “Day Tripper” by The Beatles as one of the extra tracks on the second CD single which was especially notable for it featuring Liam and Noel Gallagher who joined the band on stage at the time of recording. Could this have helped the single’s sales by convincing Oasis fans to purchase it for that extra track? I guess you could make the argument that Oasis fans might have bought it anyway given that Ocean Colour Scene were very much seen as part of the whole Britpop explosion anyway. The fact that Liam and Noel had been having numerous bust-ups at the time prompting Oasis split rumours maybe added to the clamour for anything that could be purchased that featured them.

I saw Ocean Colour Scene back in August this year and they played “Daytripper” as part of their set. I had either forgotten or didn’t know about it being on “The Circle” single and just thought “oh, they’re doing a Beatles cover” but a quick check of the setlist.fm website shows that they’ve been playing it live for years.

Wait…what?! There was a reunion of The Power Station?! When did this happen? Well, 1996 obviously but my point is that this must have totally passed me by back then despite my working in a record shop at the time as I have zero recall of any of it. Perhaps a more pertinent question would be “why did this happen?”. Over a decade since the band’s first album, why stage a comeback then? Apparently, it was a reconvening of the original line up of Robert Palmer, Tony Thompson, John Taylor and Andy Taylor although John had to withdraw from the project due to personal issues before any material was actually recorded and he was replaced by Chic’s Bernard Edwards.

Back in 1985, The Power Station had been a side project during a break in Duran Duran’s schedule that turned into a full blown band complete with a hit album and singles both sides of the pond. There was even a cameo for the band in an episode of Miami Vice but Palmer left before a tour of America that saw him replaced by Michael Des Barres who was the guy on vocals when The Power Station played Live Aid.

Despite Palmer’s departure leaving a sour taste in the mouth and led to accusations of unprofessionalism, it didn’t stop him returning for this second coming that produced a sophomore album called “Living In Fear” and this single “She Can Rock It”. However, the band’s second era was not successful with the album stiffing and the single peaking at No 63 in the UK. Perhaps it was always doomed without the support of Duran mania which was still in full flow back in 1985. Or maybe the album just wasn’t very good? I can only judge “She Can Rock It” as I’ve never heard the album but that track seems to be a very retro rock sound (even back then) with stolen guitar riffs and dumb ass lyrics like “What good’s a rock without a roll, it’s a sorry lookin’ donut if it doesn’t have a hole”. It’s all a bit sad really as I love Robert Palmer’s voice but this doesn’t do anything for his legacy which brings me to a second reason why the whole project is a bit sad although really the correct word is ‘melancholic’…the number of people attached to The Power Station who are no longer with us. Palmer and Tony Thompson died within weeks of each other in 2003 whilst Bernard Edwards left us in April of 1996 before this TOTP appearance. Talking of TOTP appearances, I wonder when Andy Taylor was last on the show before this?

P.S. Just as with Ocean Colour Scene, The Power Station story featured a Beatles cover as “Taxman” was the final track on “Living In Fear”.

Harry Hill is back with us to introduce the Top 10 countdown or as he calls it, “Who’s got the biggest feet?”. I do love Harry. The Fugees are still No 1 with “Ready Or Not” and this week we get a live performance of the track from Detroit. I have to say, it sounds a bit all over the place and, for me, doesn’t translate well to the stage. They’ll be back later in 1996 with their cover of Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry”.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Skunk Anansie	All I Want	It’s a no from me
2	Donna Lewis	I Love You Always Forever	Didn’t happen
3	The Bluetones	Marblehead Johnson	No
4	B.B.E.	7 Days And One Week	Never
5	Metallica	Hero Of The Day	Nah
6	The Communards	Don’t Leave Me This Way	Don’t think I did
7	Dina Carroll	Escaping	Negative
8	Ocean Colour Scene	The Circle	Nope
9	The Power Station	She Can Rock It	I did not
10	Fugees	Ready Or Not	No but my wife had the album

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0024hp8/top-of-the-pops-27091996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 20 SEP 1996

Posted on November 6, 2024 by 80stastic

We’re nearly three quarters of the way through these BBC4 TOTP repeats from 1996 and I have to say this is one of the most mainstream episodes yet. When I say ‘mainstream’, I am of course, referring to the music. Despite its pre-watershed time slot, the show hadn’t shied away from showcasing some of the more niche hits of the day even when the staging of said hits (take your pick from the many dance sub-genres of the day) was problematic. Hell, they’d even had the Sex Pistols on the other week, the very scourge of the mainstream back in the day. However, whether by fault or design, this week saw a more conventional roster of acts on the show. I’ll leave it to you to decide if this week’s host – Tony Mortimer of East 17 – was mainstream or not.

We kick off with Belinda Carlisle – a mainstream stalwart if ever there was. The success of “Heaven Is A Place On Earth” that catapulted her to solo stardom was already eight years in the past by this point and the hits had long since dried up for her in the US. Over here though, she retained a loyal following and had continued to maintain a chart presence throughout those years even if her numbers weren’t always as high as in those early days. Indeed, before 1996, she hadn’t had a Top 10 hit in this country since 1990 when “(We Want) The Same Thing” made No 6. Since then, it had generally been a case of diminishing returns for both her singles and albums. Only 1992’s Best Of collection had really produced massive sales.

However, the release of the “A Woman & A Man” album had generated two consecutive Top 10 hits for her. Following “In Too Deep” in July of this year came “Always Breaking My Heart” which peaked at No 8. The album didn’t sell significantly more copies than any of her other 90s studio albums so maybe the success of its singles was just down to a change in the way singles were being released and promoted by record companies by this point in the decade. I’m pretty sure first week of release discounting was a standard practice by now which would account for why singles were debuting in the charts at their peak position before sliding away. This was true of many a hit, not just Belinda’s. The fact that “Always Breaking My Heart” was a bit of a duffer only adds substance to this theory. Despite being written by Per Gessle of Roxette (was there a more mainstream band ever?) who certainly knew his way around a catchy pop hit, it’s a pretty weak effort. Is it just me or does Belinda’s outfit here make her look like a high powered business person rather than a pop/rock star?

Mainstream or Indie Theme? Definitely the former

Next is surely one of the most mainstream songs of this or any year and as is the way with many a mainstream hit, loads of people bought it at the time but its legacy is one of disownment. “Breakfast At Tiffany’s” by Deep Blue Something will be at No 1 soon enough but try finding someone who admits to having bought it. Talking of disowning, there seems to be a concerted belief by some people online that the song was originally recorded by US indie rockers Gin Blossoms and that the Deep Blue Something version is, in fact, a cover. Quite where or why this rumour started I don’t know but there doesn’t seem to be any truth in it whatsoever. So widespread is its reach though that the band put on their Myspace page back in the day for readers not to request “Breakfast At Tiffany’s” as it’s not their song.

The film of the same title was, of course, based on a book by Truman Capote who once featured on the cover of a single by The Smiths – “The Boy With A Thorn In His Side” – which, incidentally, could be how Deep Blue Something feel about their hit. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I might be allowing myself to believe that they were behind the rumour trying to rid themselves of the albatross around their necks such is the bad rap their hit gets.

Mainstream or Indie Theme? Despite the Gin Blossoms fake connection, it’s undeniably mainstream

If I thought the first two artists on this show were mainstream, I might need to create a whole new category for the Lighthouse Family – ‘super mainstream’ or ‘mainstream extreme’ maybe? “Goodbye Heartbreak” was the duo’s third consecutive hit after the reactivated tracks “Lifted” and “Ocean Drive” finally did the business for them and it was very much in the same mould as its predecessors. Some might even say “exactly the same as…”. I’ve not given this lot much grief in previous posts for fear of accusations of musical snobbery but was their whole album like this? I’ve never heard it in its entirety – I might as well have asked my Our Price colleagues of the day to play the audiobook of Hitler’s Mein Kampf as the Lighthouse Family on the shop stereo – so I’m not really qualified to judge. However, if it is, I’m not sure I would have made it through to the end. Change the record! No, literally change the record.

Mainstream or Indie Theme? Mainstream extreme

Unlike Belinda Carlisle earlier, the next artist looks every inch the pop/rock star in this satellite performance. Sheryl Crow’s future career as such though was by no means guaranteed at this point. Sure, she’d had a massive hit in 1994 on both sides of the ocean with “All I Wanna Do” and her debut album “Tuesday Night Music Club” had won three Grammys in 1995 but it had been written with a collective of other musicians (the titular Tuesday Music Club) prompting accusations that Crow was just the attractive face of the group, the image but not the talent. As such, she was desperate to prove her musical credentials with her follow up, eponymous album. Lead single “If It Makes You Happy” was a huge step in that direction straight off the bat. I’ve said before that the mark of a good song is if it can be performed in a variety of different styles and still sound convincing in each of them. Well, apparently Sheryl tried a number of different genres for this track including country, punk, funk and even as a David Lynch style soundtrack piece. However, it worked best as the growling, prowling, rasping rock track it turned out to be. It would go Top 10 in both the US and the UK but interestingly, the only country it topped the charts was Canada which may explain why this performance came from Vancouver. Perhaps, Sheryl was on promotional duties over there at the time? Its chart success was Crow’s biggest since the aforementioned “All I Wanna Do” and would provide the platform for her career to carry on its upward trajectory, paving the way for her sophomore album to go three times platinum in the UK alone.

Mainstream or Indie Theme? Hmm. Difficult one this. If huge sales make you mainstream then Sheryl Crow undoubtedly was. However, she always seemed a little more gritty than that to me

A quick word on Tony Mortimer before we proceed – he seems more lacking in energy and charm than I would have imagined. Quite dull actually. Liven up a bit Tony! Maybe the only straight up dance tune on the show tonight will get him going? Ah, not this one though. Apparently, “Oh What A Night” by Clock attracted a fair amount of derision even back in 1996 presumably for being an atrocious take on The Four Seasons mid 70s classic. Singer Lorna Saunders is now a legal secretary and was once on Never Mind The Buzzcocks as part of the identity parade feature. I don’t know if either team managed to spot her but she was once mistaken by Jamiroquai’s Jay Kay for 2 Unlimited’s Anita Doth! Doh!

Mainstream or Indie Theme? The most horrible and tacky form of mainstream

The ‘flashback’ feature is still with us and this week we are treated to “Prince Charming” by Adam And The Ants. I’m not sure that Adam is given the credit and respect that he deserves sometimes. He managed to combine originality (yes, I know there was a definite Malcolm McLaren influence at some point but still) with massive sales and a memorable image – that’s quite some plate spinning going on there. I think even his most commercial numbers like this one still stand up. The second and final No 1 for Adam And The Ants before the main man went solo, it retains the power to take me right back to the early 80s over 40 years hence every time I hear it. The natural successor to the dandy highwayman of “Stand And Deliver”, it’s actually quite basic in its nature with a few lyrics repeated over and over but the style and panache of the visuals of the video make it into something quite outlandishly striking. Ah yes, that video with the cameo of Diana Dors as the fairy godmother is a once seen never forgotten experience.

In the last blog post, I asked the question of whether you could actually dance to ABBA’s “Dancing Queen”. In the case of “Prince Charming”, Adam’s right hand man Marco Pirroni actually admits that it was a track that was difficult to dance to and so the arm-crossing choreography featured in the video was devised in order that it would be able to be played in clubs and discos. The whole package remains quite stunning. Adam And The Ants were almost untouchable for two years at the start of the decade but it couldn’t last and despite a No 1 straight out of the traps as a solo artist with “Goody Two Shoes”, by the end of 1982, Adam was already starting to show signs of decline when his third solo single “Desperate But Not Serious” stalled at No 33. “Puss ‘n Boots” saw a brief rally the following year but his time as the country’s No 1 pop star was almost at an end. Despite turning 70 literally the other day, Adam is still touring though he had to cancel his Autumn 2024 dates due to ill health.

Mainstream or Indie Theme? Huge popularity aside, Adam was always outside of the mainstream for me from his punk roots to his unique and enduring style

After a very subdued intro from Tony Mortimer we get The Bluetones and “Marblehead Johnson”. This was their third hit of 1996 and was a standalone single that presumably was intended to keep the band’s momentum going following the success of their No 1 album “Expecting To Fly” and No 2 single “Slight Return”. I’ve got to be honest, it’s not as good as I remembered it. In fact, it’s a bit dull. It sounds like it’s always on the cusp of kicking into life and then just meanders off somewhere for a bit of noodling.

Its title reminds me of the Warren Zevon song “Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner” which I once played by mistake in the Our Price I was working in as it came on after “Werewolves Of London” which was the track I’d originally chosen. It was quickly taken off by the manager as its subject matter of a Norwegian mercenary fighting in the Nigerian Civil War and having his head blown off was deemed inappropriate. Mine’s not a great story I admit but then listening to “Marblehead Johnson” is hardly a scintillating experience.

Mainstream or Indie Theme? My initial reaction is the latter but then in 1996, had Britpop become the mainstream?

And so we arrive at the ultimate in mainstream music, the arch purveyor of prosaic pop, patron saint of the unremarkable, Mr Middle of the Road himself…it’s Phil Collins.

Poor old Phil. We really have had it in for him for quite some time. Does he deserve it? Depends which side of the fence you stand I guess. Some people must like his music given the amount of records he’s sold and yet he’s become a byword for naff. It’s not just his music that can offend though, it’s also…well…him. Accusations of smugness, ubiquity, tax avoidance and of ending his marriage by fax (the last one has always been strenuously denied by Collins and it is generally accepted to not be true) abounded. Maybe it all affected him as his 90s output was nowhere near as commercially successful as that of his 80s heyday. That’s not to say they didn’t sell at all – 1993’s “Both Sides” went double platinum but that didn’t match any of his 80s albums sales and indeed was nowhere near the twelve times platinum status of 1989’s “…But Seriously”. By 1996, the malaise seemed to have set in permanently. “Dance Into The Light” the album would only sell 100,000 copies (gold status) in the UK with its title track lead single peaking at No 9. Let’s be honest, even if you were a mega Phil fan, this comeback track must have been a disappointment. Some cod-reggae groove, Caribbean horn section and some truly shonky lyrics about South Africa coming out of apartheid (?). It’s a bit of a stinker and surely one of his least remembered hits.

Phil embarked on a phase of writing for Disney soundtracks after the “Dance Into The Light” project before returning in 2002 with seventh studio album “Testify” which only reached No 15 in the charts. The last album to do anywhere near the numbers of his glory years was, of course, a Best Of collection in 1998, – the first official one of his career – called “…Hits” which topped the charts and went six times platinum in the UK alone.

Mainstream or Indie Theme? Do you really have to ask?

The Fugees are the UK No 1 with “Ready Or Not”, their second song to top our charts in 1996 following “Killing Me Softly”. I don’t think you could really label the trio as mainstream despite those huge sales figures evidencing their commercial crossover, not when you consider their legacy which lasted much longer than their career. Sure, there are many accolades that talk about them bringing hip-hop into the mainstream but that didn’t make them mainstream artists – I don’t think that’s what they wanted to be either. They were innovators whose creativity struck a commercial seam of gold. Sometimes the right people get lucky I guess.

Mainstream or Indie Theme? Indie definitely

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Belinda Carlisle	Always Breaking My Heart	Nah
2	Deep Blue Something	Breakfast At Tiffany’s	Nope
3	Lighthouse Family	Goodbye Heartbreak	Negative
4	Sheryl Crow	If It Make You Happy	No but I had her Best Of with it on
5	Clock	Oh What A Night	Never
6	Adam And The Ants	Prince Charming	No but I think my younger sister had the album
7	The Bluetones	Marblehead Johnson	I did not
8	Phil Collins	Dance Into The Light	What do you think?
9	Fugees	Ready Or Not	Not

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/m002497z/top-of-the-pops-20091996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 13 SEP 1996

Posted on November 1, 2024 by 80stastic

I’ve been waiting for this one to come up. Anyone for Pennis? Yes, it’s the episode hosted by fictional character Dennis Pennis aka comedian and actor Paul Kaye. You must remember this guy. He came to prominence on BBC2’s The Sunday Show* in which his Pennis creation had a regular slot posing as a reporter and attending celebrity events such as film premieres and asking them baffling questions.

*Bizarrely, the show was also a launch pad for another comedian with a very similar name – Peter Kay. What were the chances?!

Armed with an image meant to make him stand out from the crowd – red hair, loud clothes, thick glasses and an American accent – he was a comedy anarchist, a construct presumably informed by Kaye’s own punk background. As the popularity of his character grew, he was afforded his own two part special called Very Important Pennis filmed on location at film festivals in Cannes, Hollywood and Venice which had aired only a month or so before this TOTP. Consequently, his profile was very high and presumably why he was booked for the gig of hosting the BBC’s flagship music show. I really liked him though he riled the other authentic showbiz reporters who were trying to do their job but it couldn’t last as he became too well known and his intended ‘victims’ too aware of him. The character was killed off in 1997 in a video only release called Dennis Pennis RIP: Too Rude To Live though Kaye did resurrect him to introduce The Prodigy on stage at Glastonbury the same year. I’m hoping for a lot from him in this TOTP. Let’s hope he doesn’t disappoint…

We start with a band and a song that I only finished writing about yesterday in my last post – it’s Rocket From The Crypt with rocket “On A Rope”. The first thing I’m noticing is that they’ve stuck with those horrible glittery shirts again for this second performance. Was it their trademark like ABC and gold lamé suits back in 1982? Not many can pull off such an item of clothing and pull them off they should have though I’m not sure I would have been prepared for what was underneath especially in the case of the sideburns wearing lead singer. Was their version of ‘Bez’ with them last time? His main purpose seems to be to jump about the stage like he’s sat on an ants nest. Get in the shower mate for some quick relief – don’t forget your soap…on a rope. Ahem.

Pennis Putdown: “This band came straight in this week at 12. Unfortunately the building didn’t open until 5 so they’ve been hanging around the car park for hours” – Not bad 6/10

If it’s the mid 90s, then you can’t get through an episode of TOTP without having to endure yet another dance tune by some faceless DJ types fronted by a female singer in a PVC outfit. This week was no exception so here comes Stretch & Vern present “Maddog” with “I’m Alive”. Wikipedia tells me that this lot were Stretch Silvester and Jules Vern (real names Stuart Collins and Julian Peake) who were on the FFRR label whose A&R was run by one Pete Tong. Quite who “Maddog” was I haven’t been able to ascertain. The sample their tune was based around didn’t need any research to identify though with it being instantly recognisable as “Boogie Wonderland” by Earth, Wind & Fire. It’s all very frenetic with the speeded up vocal adding to the intensity and that proved to be attractive to UK record buyers as it topped the dance chart and made No 6 in the national Top 40. It sounds very early 90s to me listening back to it now but then what do I know about dance music. Apparently, one of the PVC clad women is actress Jaime Murray who is best known for starring in BBC crime drama Hustle. I didn’t know that before either.

Pennis Putdown: “Coming up on the show we’ve got exclusives from Skunk Anansie and Deep Blue Something plus a brand new No 1 from Peter Andrex with a song that goes on and on and on” – Clever enough pun though clearly couldn’t come up with anything for Stretch & Vern Present “Maddog” 5/10

What is it with this post and people called Kay? After name checking Peter Kay and Paul Kaye we now have Jay Kay of Jamiroquai although Dennis Pennis just refers to him as if his name is Jamiroquai (that was the band of course) in his intro. Despite having already peaked at its debut chart position of No 3 and started descending the charts, they are granted another outing to the show as “Virtual Insanity” is holding for a second week at No 5 so not technically breaking any TOTP appearance rules. This exposure wouldn’t stop it slipping again in the following chart but did afford it one final week in the Top 10.

Pennis Putdown: “Jamiroquai? Love him or hate him, you gotta love him! Or HATE him! He takes environmental issues seriously. He makes music by recycling classic funk records. This song is no exception. Take it away. AWAY!” – Wickedly barbed 7/10

How do you follow up a hit that would prove to be the biggest selling of the year in the UK? Well, if you’re the Fugees then you come up with another No 1 record that was also a million seller* and would forge your reputation as the new creative light of East Coast rap.

*It couldn’t quite replicate the sales of “Killing Me Softly” which sold 1.8 million copies in the UK. “Ready Or Not” would shift 1.2 million units and be our 24th best selling single of 1996.

“Ready Or Not” has come to be regarded as a defining moment in hip-hop for its blending of rap with soulful singing and inspired use of samples (albeit said samples hadn’t been copyright cleared at the time leading to threatened litigation and an out of court settlement). The vision of Lauryn Hill to see how a song by ambient, new age superstar Enya could be used as the basis for a Fugees track was…well…visionary. She wasn’t finished there though using a song by 70s Philly soul group The Delfonics to create that hypnotic chorus. Even that wasn’t the end of the band displaying their influences. They also manage to sneak in a reference to the Nas hit “If I Ruled The World (Imagine That)” which Hill had featured on and which itself borrowed heavily from the Kurtis Blow tune of the same name AND a lyric from Bob Marley’s “Buffalo Soldier”. There’s a lot going on in this song!

And yet, there was even more going on in the video which cost a reputed $1.3 million to produce making it one of the most expensive promos ever filmed at the time with only the likes of those by Guns N’ Roses and Michael Jackson above it. Even 28 years later, it is still the 32nd most expensive video ever made. The reason for its high costs was presumably all the helicopters, explosions, sharks, chase scenes and a submarine that it features. It really was quite epic, especially given the period it was made in.

The purpose of the song was to be a shot across the bows at gangsta rap and its attendant culture helping to make “Ready Or Not” be named by The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as one of the Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll in 2018. Former US President Barack Obama has named it as his favourite song ever. Given all of this, I really thought it must have gone straight in at No 1 here but its inevitable ascent to the top was ludicrously delayed for a week by a jumped up, muscle man from Australia with a washboard stomach peddling some wishy washy R&B crud. Come on Pennis – give him both barrels when the time comes!

Pennis Putdown: “What a video, man. More like a Fugee film really” – Even Pennis couldn’t find fault with the Fugees 0/10

Skunk Anansie are one of those bands who I was aware of during the 90s and had a decent idea of the type of music they played but I can still to this day only name one of their songs – that being “Weak”. One of the reasons for this state of affairs might be that their albums seemed to always come with Parental Advisory stickers on them meaning we couldn’t play them in the Our Price I worked in. That was certainly the case with their second album “Stoosh” and I recall having to tell at least one member of staff to take it off the shop stereo. In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have worried so much and not been so draconian about it but as Assistant Manager, it was potentially me in the firing line if we got complaints.

The lead single from “Stoosh” was “All I Want” which sounds as if the band just rewrote “Weak” if I’m honest. That’s not a bad thing as I really liked “Weak” but just an observation. Lead singer Skin does her usual intimidating performance, looking threateningly down the camera and leaping about all over the stage including standing erect on the drum kit at one point. She really did have quite the striking image – a bit like Grace Jones in that you’re not sure that she isn’t really an alien descended to Earth in human form. “All I Want” would peak at No 14, the band’s then highest chart position and the third highest of their career in total.

Pennis Putdown: “Now, some bands are very appropriately named. Skunk Anansie are a classic example. They’re black, they’re white and their music really stinks” – Bit obvious but very well executed 7/10

It’s that dastardly ‘flashback’ feature now that has extended the show’s length by four minutes or so which presumably explains why it was now starting at 7.25pm rather than 7.30pm during this particular era of the show’s history. Having had its day and time of broadcast changed and its channel switched from BBC 1 to BBC2, the show was in a state of flux from which it would ultimately never recover. Being reminded of its past glories in the form of this ‘new’ slot maybe wasn’t the wisest idea on reflection. Tonight its spotlight shines on ABBA and perhaps their most famous song “Dancing Queen”. Indeed it is widely considered to be one of the best pop songs by anyone ever thanks to its catchy hooks and feelings of euphoria it promotes.

However, can you actually dance to “Dancing Queen”? I don’t mean the choreographed routine in the Mama Mia! film but rather just if it was played at a wedding disco or such like? Aren’t its bpm not quite right for cutting some rug? Look at Agnetha and Anni-Frid in the video – they’re just sort of swaying about or doing the nerd shuffle. Sacrilege? Possibly. Its accolades include being ranked No 2 in Billboard’s 2023 list of The 500 Best Pop Songs and was the inspiration* for Elvis Costello’s “Oliver’s Army” and Blondie’s “Dreaming” and similar to Barack Obama and “Ready Or Not”, is the favourite song ever of Republican Party party nominee for the 2008 US Presidential Election where he was beaten by…yep…Barack Obama.

*”SOS” was the inspiration behind “Pretty Vacant” by the Sex Pistols but that’s another story altogether.

Pennis Putdown: “Like most good Swedish video footage I’ve seen, the men have beards and the women are clean shaven” – Lowers the tone a bit but what did I expect from Dennis Pennis? 6/10

Way Out West – both a Laurel and Hardy film and a 90s purveyor of dance music – I know which one I prefer and it’s not option two. This lot were Jody Wisternoff and Nick Warren who met in a Bristol record shop and teamed up to do remixes for other people before signing to Deconstruction Records as an artist in their own right. “The Gift” was by far their biggest hit peaking at No 15 on the national chart and No 2 on the specialist dance chart. It featured the vocals of Joanna Law who’d had a minor hit in 1990 with a version of Roberta Flack’s most well known hit “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”. Said version was sampled for “The Gift” though I don’t personally think it’s that obvious. As with Stretch & Vern earlier, it all sounds a bit early 90s and fairly dull with the same lyric repeated over and over. It probably made more sense on a dance floor if you were under the influence of something rather than on TOTP. Probably.

Pennis Putdown: “Now Way Out West featuring Joanna Law – classic yuppie hangover music. It’s called “The Gift” – appropriate cos no-one’s likely to buy it” – First line is better than the second so 6/10

After her last appearance on the show, Donna Lewis seemed to divide opinion among those watching the BBC4 repeat. I wrote in my post reviewing that show that her hit “I Love You Always Forever” had a timeless quality and was light and joyful and seemed to bring hope to a world that so often seemed dark. On reflection that seems slightly over the top – I should maybe have gone with something along the lines of it being a fluffy, soothing punctuation mark in the long narrative of the day. However, other people went online to say how much they hated it and that it was a whole lot of nothing. It’s a game of opinions as they say and anyway, we’re all just pissing in the wind – as Frank Zappa once said, writing about music is like dancing about architecture.

Pennis Putdown: “They say Donna Lewis is gonna be a one hit wonder. Sounds optimistic to me.” – Cutting and personal; a solid insult 7/10

Here’s another song that split opinion but I think it may have been a case of musical snobbery causing the division as the music press hated it but the UK record buying public loved it enough to send it to No 1. Deep Blue Something were a bunch of good ol’ boys from Texas (well, they were pretty young actually) whose members included brothers Todd and Toby Pipes who sound like they should be a firm of plumbers in Trumpton. Their song “Breakfast At Tiffany’s” clearly stole its title from the Audrey Hepburn film of the same name though apparently the inspiration for it came from another of her films – Roman Holiday. It was the tale of a couple on the verge of breaking up due to no longer having anything in common only to realise that they both sort of liked the film Breakfast At Tiffany’s and so maybe they should stay together. As the foundation for a full blown romantic relationship, it’s pretty unstable you’d have to say. And random. Imagine you’re in the scenario of tying to salvage your relationship and when trying to think of a reason to stay together, you delve into the darkness and come up with the title of a film you both quite liked. Not that you share the same values, have a similar sense of humour, enjoy each other’s company…no, you both have a fondness for a specific Audrey Hepburn film. Never mind it being a flimsy foundation for a relationship, it’s a pretty ludicrous basis for a song.

And yet…and yet it was as catchy as hell with some nifty guitar work and a memorable chorus. It was also very daytime radio friendly which must have helped. Even so, its rise to the top did seem unlikely and I was surprised at its level of success. The band weren’t the prettiest of boys either. I recall a friend said at the time that their six year old daughter liked it but he mistakenly believed it was a new song by Lloyd Cole And The Commotions. I’m not sure that I can hear their sound in “Breakfast At Tiffany’s”. However, it does kind of make me think of “I’ll Be There For You” by The Rembrandts who’d been in the charts recently and I can imagine it being the theme tune for a Friends type show. Deep Blue Something would annoyingly have one further minor hit (“Josey” made No 27) thus spoiling their status as perfect one hit wonders – one chart topper and then nothing.

Pennis Putdown: “When most people think of the title “Breakfast At Tiffany’s”, they think of an Audrey Hepburn film. This song is unlikely to change that unfortunately” – Nice line but it’s his facial expression at the end that is the real kicker. So dismissive 8/10

This a joke right?! How the hell did we give Peter Andre a No 1 record and such a terrible one to boot. Any hopes that he might just disappear after his god awful hit “Mysterious Girl” disintegrated when he returned with “Flava”. This wasn’t so much a follow up as a follow through, a honking stinker of a song. Well, I say song but it was more of an identikit exercise in putting together all the bits of previously successful hits and seeing if you could just recycle them. It’s built around that awful parping riff used by the likes of Montell Jordan, MN8 and the Backstreet Boys and then proceeds to name check artists such as Dr. Dre and Bobby Brown who presumably would have thought Andre was a joke. And he was/is. Just to absolutely hammer home his lack of creativity, he even throws in a lyric about the Mack being back, like we hadn’t heard that line enough in 1996 already.

Despite all the fuss and promotion of Andre’s pecs and six pack, he keeps them hidden most of the time under a huge leather jacket which must have stank under those hot studio lights. The occasional glimpses of his body that he allowed the studio audience are met with predictable screams. Weren’t we better than this?

Pennis Putdown: “Peter Andrex is finding it virtually impossible these days to sell records in Europe due to the ban on British beef but in the UK, the kids are mad for it and its my pleasure to announce that Peter Andrex is top for the poops!” – It was topical (the EU had imposed a worldwide ban on exports of British beef in 1996) but the last line is weak 5/10

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Rocket From The Crypt	On A Rope	Never happened
2	Stretch & Vern present “Maddog”	I’m Alive	No
3	Jamiroquai	Virtual Insanity	It’s a no from me
4	Fugees	Ready Or Not	No but my wife had the album
5	Skunk Anansie	All I Want	Negative
6	ABBA	Dancing Queen	No but we all have a copy of ABBA Gold don’t we?
7	Way Out West	The Gift	I did not
8	Donna Lewis	I Love You Always Forever	Nah
9	Deep Blue Something	Breakfast At Tiffany’s	Nope
10	Peter Andre	Flava	NOOOOOOO!!!!

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/m002497x/top-of-the-pops-13091996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 28 JUN 1996

Posted on September 30, 2024 by 80stastic

It’s another of those episodes where the climax of the show isn’t the No 1 but an exclusive appearance by a featured artist doing a two strong song performance. After Paul Weller the other week, it’s the turn of the Sex Pistols this time around who have reformed for the Filthy Lucre tour. As for the rest of the line up, there’s only six other chart hits on the show of which we’ve seen three previously. I have to say I’m not liking this new format that’s been adopted since the move to Friday nights. Thankfully, this is the last of these I understand. Maybe audience reaction to them wasn’t great? By the way, our host tonight is Gina G who is as famous as she’ll ever be at this point after her Eurovision entry “Ooh Aah…Just A Little Bit” topped the UK charts just a few weeks back.

We start though not with Gina but with David Howe from Chingford in Essex. Don’t ask “Who he?” – he literally tells you in his direct to camera message that he’s the first winner of the TOTP meet and greet competition and his prize was a trip to Madrid to hang out with Shampoo. I pondered in my last post what David would have thought of that and he looks rather underwhelmed despite the gloriously sunny backdrop behind him. The Shampoo girls Jacqui and Carrie look miserable with the whole situation. Maybe David was star struck whilst Shampoo were cultivating their abrasive ‘riot grrrl’ image?

It’s one of those ‘new’ songs to kick off the show from Everything But The Girl and “Wrong”. Despite being their most commercially successful period with three consecutive Top 10 hits as opposed to just three Top 40 singles in their entire career previously, I was having serious trouble getting on board with this new direction that they’d taken. I could appreciate that Todd Terry remix which had single handedly rejuvenated their career but I was missing their old stuff like the deserts miss the rain as the song went*.

*It was also the title of a 2002 Best Of album that tellingly didn’t include “Wrong”.

The gorgeous “Baby, The Stars Shine Bright” album was a particular favourite but all this electronica dance stuff was becoming a big turn off for me. Would it be wrong of me to suggest that this latest hit was basically just a retread of “Missing”? They’d even got Todd Terry back in to remix it! Tracey’s voice was as affecting as ever but the track didn’t stand up to repeated plays for me. “Wrong” would effectively draw a line under this era of the band being their last ever single to visit the Top 10 and ushering in a return to more conservative chart positions before Tracey and Ben took a quarter of a century off from Everything But The Girl only returning in 2023 with the “Fuse” album which went Top 3.

By 1996, Britpop had totally embedded itself in UK culture and its musical landscape. The movement’s swagger was hard to avoid but there were signs that a different type of genre was emerging as an antidote to all that Britpop brashness. From small pockets, intelligent, wrily observed, quirky pop music was sprouting. We’d already seen Space in the charts recently with a single that featured a glockenspiel and now came The Divine Comedy. Channeling the spirit of 60s baroque pop, this outfit from Northern Ireland was mainly just a vehicle for the creative genius of Neil Hannon. Having formed in 1989, they’d already released three albums into the pop void before Radio 1’s Chris Evans championed “Something For The Weekend”, the lead single from fourth studio album “Casanova”. With that backing, a first ever Top 40 hit was achieved when it debuted and peaked at No 14. Hannon’s distinctive, almost spoken vocal delivery style might have almost put the song into the novelty bracket à la The Mike Flowers Pops but there was something more substantial to it. Maybe it was the storytelling in the song which relates the tale of a suitor’s unwanted advances to a young woman who tricks him into looking in the woodshed only for her friends to knock him unconscious and steal his car and money. You don’t get songs detailing that kind of stuff everyday of the week. The line “There ain’t nothing in the woodshed…except maybe some wood” was typical of the humour Hannon would bring to his idiosyncratic songwriting. He even looked unconventional for a pop star but that was also part of his appeal I think. I have a friend who adores him and when she met him and got him to sign something for her, he included the famous woodshed line alongside his signature.

“Something For The Weekend” would usher in a run of chart hits that would last the entire 90s and into the middle of the next decade. Perhaps their best known tune is “National Express” with its lyric about having an arse the size of a small country which made the Top 10 in 1999. That same year, the marvellous Best Of album “A Secret History” was released achieving gold status sales and peaking at No 3. It’s a great starting point for anyone wanting to investigate the band’s catalogue. In a bizarre turn of events, psychedelic Welsh rock band Super Furry Animals would have a hit with a track also called “Something For The Weekend” just a couple of weeks after The Divine Comedy had done so though they changed the title to “Something 4 The Weekend” for the single release.

I saw The Divine Comedy live back in 2017 when they supported Paul Heaton and Jacqui Abbott at Craven Park, home of rugby team Hull Kingston Rovers. As good as Hannon was, I wish it had been in a smaller setting rather than a stadium gig. Maybe something like that woodshed if they cleared out all the wood.

It can’t be time for Celine Dion again already can it?! I think this is the third time she’s been on with “Because You Loved Me” and to add insult to injury, it’s that concert performance once more that the TOTP producers tried to convince us was a live satellite link up when it obviously wasn’t. I hadn’t noticed before but the camera picks out members of the audience some of whom are visibly touched by what they are witnessing. One woman had clearly been crying. Now, I’m not going to go down the musical snobbery route – people like what they like and may have a strong emotional attachment to a song based on some event from their own private lives – but it did take me by surprise. Haven’t seen tears on TOTP like that since that teenage girl was highlighted sobbing on the Duran Duran video for “The Reflex”.

Right, it’s time for that exclusive performance from Madrid by Shampoo now that was the mystery prize for the meet and greet competition won by Dave from Chingford. Presumably he was watching from the sidelines off camera. Shampoo were one of a number of female duos that were successful in the 90s including Shakespears Sister, Scarlet and Alisha’s Attic. Jacqui and Carrie though were a curious outfit. A handful of moderately sized hit singles in the UK and yet they sold a million copies of their debut album “We Are Shampoo” in Japan and Asia. There’s probably some deep connection at play there which warrants some detailed cultural analysis but I haven’t got time to go into all that now. All I will say is that their sound and image didn’t seem to be anything particularly new. Hadn’t we seen something similar from the likes of Transvision Vamp and Fuzzbox previously?

Anyway, it’s time to address the elephant in the room which is the title of this their last ever hit. Literally in the week that the phenomenon that would become the Spice Girls released their debut single “Wannabe”, Shampoo were in the charts with a song called “Girl Power”. Yes, the slogan that Sporty, Posh, Baby, Scary and Ginger used to promote themselves around the world was already out there in the cultural vernacular. Now, I’m not suggesting some act of dishonest appropriation not least because Shampoo didn’t invent the phrase themselves. The origins of ‘girl power’ are recognised as belonging to US punk band Bikini Kill who used it as the subtitle to their second feminist zine in 1990. However, it is quite the coincidence don’t you think? Could the Spice Girls management have been influenced by the Shampoo single or is that just me forcing an event that never happened to create my own narrative? Surely the marketing strategy for the Spice Girls had been months in the formulating and hadn’t just adopted something as pivotal as the ‘girl power’ mantra on the hoof? Well, apparently it was. The Spice Girls did just nick it off Shampoo! Here’s @TOTPFacts with the story:

"Girl Power" charted a week before The Spice Girls' "Wannabe". In a 2016 interview, Geri Halliwell said she got the phrase from Shampoo. “I saw them and I thought, 'Oh my God, that is so good.'” #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) September 20, 2024

"Girl Power" was previously the title of a 1991 zine by US riot grrrl band Bikini Kill, which is presumably where Shampoo saw it. Mel C: "It was very much in existence already. It was then Geri who shouted it during an early television interview and it stuck." #TOTP pic.twitter.com/GvXkqjixWX
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) September 20, 2024

Ha! Well, I guess Shampoo themselves must have nicked it off Bikini Kill then. After all, it was sometimes spelt ‘grrrl power’ after the ‘riot grrrl’ movement they aligned themselves with in their early days. What’s undeniable is that the fortunes of Shampoo and the Spice Girls went in wildly different directions from this point on. The latter would conquer the world in less than six months while the former never returned to the charts and whose last single release was a desperate cover version of a song by Christmas playlist perennials The Waitresses. Rubbing salt in the wound, whilst Jacqui and Carrie were having to entertain Dave from Chingford in Madrid, they were missing out on being in the TOTP studio at the same time as their heroes the Sex Pistols. For what it’s worth, I preferred Shampoo’s brand of “Girl Power” to anything the Spice Girls released under that banner.

Right, what’s wrong with this picture with said picture being Black Grape performing “England’s Irie” with their mates Keith Allen and Joe Strummer? Well, two days before this went out, the England football team lost their Euros 96 semi final with Germany in heartbreaking fashion on penalties. Thus, the timing of this exultant performance of a song about them seems slightly off. Surely they should have released it a few weeks earlier when “Three Lions” came out? By the time it was finally in the charts, all the expectation, excitement and general sense of positivity that had engulfed the nation had completely dissipated. I did mention recently that the release schedule for Black Grape’s singles had been too tight when “Fat Neck” came out the month before “England’s Irie”. Maybe someone at the label messed up? Or maybe they’d banked on England making the final which would have given the record a whole weekend’s trading before the game on the Sunday evening to rack up some monster sales? Either way, this performance was rendered a bit after-the-Lord Mayor’s-show by the events of the Wednesday evening.

Talking of which, who can forget Gareth Southgate’s tortured face after being the only person to miss his penalty? I recall that the next morning, the aforementioned Chris Evans conducting a debrief of the match on his breakfast show (he always was a bandwagon jumper and being a footy fan was now seen not just as acceptable but the done thing in the era of ‘lad culture’). He pronounced that Southgate was a “top man” and played “Walkaway” by Cast as a tribute to him and the team whilst the nation cried into our cornflakes. As for Black Grape, they would only trouble the Top 40 compilers once more after their second album “Stupid Stupid Stupid” was poorly received though they are still releasing new material to this day with latest album “Orange Head” having come out earlier this year.

The Fugees reign supreme still at the top of the charts with “Killing Me Softly”. Yet again we have the same studio performance we’ve always had, presumably as it was the only time they were in the country. They could have mixed it up a bit and showed the official promo video for it at least once. After all, it did win an MTV Video Music Award for Best R&B Video. Interestingly, the TOTP producers let the ending credits roll over the top of it even though we still have the Sex Pistols to come creating a false ending effect. There are no further credits when the Pistols finish.

Lauryn Hill had a small acting career that briefly ran in tandem with her singing one. Most notably she starred in Sister Act 2: Back In The Habit. I think this is my favourite scene from the film:

Somebody remarked on Twitter that Gina G must be really tall as she seems to be stooping in every link that she does and they’re right. It’s like she’s a mime artist performing being trapped in a cube. Most odd. Not as odd though as the ‘punk’ outfit she has on to introduce the Sex Pistols. What’s with the feather headdress? That look is more Hiawatha than high priestess of punk.

Anyway, the Sex Pistols are finally here to perform for us. I was just too young when they were at the height of their fame/infamy in 1976/77 to be caught up in the punk phenomenon though I was aware of the band’s name (which seemed very dangerous to the then eight year old me) and that two of the band were called Sid Vicious and Johnny Rotten. I couldn’t have named any of their songs or told you what they sounded like though. My next encounter with the band came a few years later in a music lesson at Grammar school (I’d passed my 11 plus exam) when the hardest kid in class Paul Dukes convinced the recently qualified and wet behind the ears teacher that “Friggin’ In The Riggin’” from “The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle” album was a suitable song for composition appreciation. Inevitably, the needle was abruptly removed from the record long before the song’s end. As I got older and more into music, I expanded my knowledge of rock history which included getting to know the band’s story and music though mainly the holy trinity that is “Anarchy In The UK”, “God Save The Queen” and “Pretty Vacant”. I eventually bought the “Never Mind The Bollocks” album as well.

There had been a mini Pistols revival in 1992 when Virgin raided the band’s rather limited back catalogue to release the “Kiss This” compilation that achieved gold status and made the Top 10 on the charts. Four years later, a full on reunion including original bass player Glen Matlock was put into effect for the six month long Filthy Lucre tour. One of the dates was at Finsbury Park on the 23td June, the day after England had defeated Spain in a quarterfinal of the Euros on penalties. Yes, the one with that Stuart Pearce celebration…

Pearce and Gareth Southgate somehow found themselves at Finsbury Park introducing the Sex Pistols on stage the following day. No, really look:

Stuart Pearce and Gareth Southgate introducing the Sex Pistols on stage at Finsbury Park – the day after England beat Spain on penalties at Euro ‘96. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🎸#Euro96Relived pic.twitter.com/CjmnQQEE0b
— Stu’s Football Flashbacks (@stusfootyflash) May 12, 2020

Also there that day was my manager at the Our Price where I was working, the late, great Pete Garner original bassist with the Stone Roses. I had to cover his Sunday shift in the shop so he could go. I only know this as it’s all in my recently found diary that handily covers the whole of 1996. It also tells me that I listened to the Sex Pistols gig live on the radio that evening. Back to this TOTP performance though and inevitably the band do one of the ‘holy trinity’ tracks. “Pretty Vacant” made No 6 in the charts when released in the Summer of 1977 and would usher in the band’s first ever appearance on TOTP so I guess there’s some history and symmetry at play in the band choosing to perform it here. It was the follow up to the press baiting and BBC banned single “God Save The Queen” released at the height of Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee celebrations. That ban clearly had zero effect on the band’s sense of daring as they then released a song that included John Lydon’s surely deliberate annunciation of the word ‘vacant’ as ‘vay-c**t’. Twenty-six years later, The Darkness tried a similar linguistic trick on their festive hit “Christmas Time (Don’t Let The Bells End)”. Bells End? Bellend? We all caught up? Good.

For the second track, the band went for a less obvious choice in “New York”, a song generally perceived to be about US glam rockers New York Dolls whom, of course, Malcolm McLaren used to manage before switching his attention to the Pistols. Clearly the passage of time had softened the band’s edges as they presumably relented to BBC demands about the song’s lyrics with the word ‘shit’ sung by Lydon as ‘it’ and ‘faggot’ as ‘maggot’. Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Everything But The Girl	Wrong	I did not
2	The Divine Comedy	Something For The Weekend	No but I had that Best Of album
3	Celine Dion	Because You Loved Me	No
4	Shampoo	Girl Power	Nah
5	Black Grape / Joe Strummer / Keith Allen	England’s Irie	Nope
6	The Fugees	Killing Me Softly	No but my wife had the album
7	Sex Pistols	Pretty Vacant	I have the Never Mind The Bollocks album
8	Sex Pistols	New York	See 7 above

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/m00233z0/top-of-the-pops-28061996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 21 JUN 1996

Posted on September 25, 2024 by 80stastic

Here’s a blast from the past. Anyone remember Julia Carling? I have to admit I’d forgotten all about her but here she is presenting TOTP in 1996. OK, the show was maybe not commanding the same profile as in its 70s and 80s heyday but it was still the BBC’s flagship music programme. So who was/is Julia Carling and how did she get this gig? Well, she was a TV presenter (obviously) who’d started as a VJ on VH-1 and guested on Channel 4’s Big Breakfast before her spot here. She was also the wife of England rugby player Will Carling though Wikipedia informs me that the couple divorced in this year. Will was rumoured in the tabloids to be romantically linked with Diana Princess of Wales something that must have passed me by at the time. As for Julia, she spent some time on This Morning before disappearing from our screens to concentrate on a career in journalism and writing a book.

Before we get to Julia though there’s the return of the direct to camera message from a featured artist that was curiously replaced by a highlights montage the other week. Not sure what all that was about but there’s no ignoring its reappearance as we get Black Grape in the slot this week but it’s Keith Allen not Shaun Ryder taking centre stage as he’s joined them for their Euro 96 single “England’s Irie”. Unfortunately, Allen is there as his alter-ego, the never-not-annoying Keithski banging on about the football so let’s move on quickly to opening act Longpigs. Although more often than not categorised as Britpop, they never seem to get talked about as much as some of the movement’s other luminaries. In fact, the most frequent comment about the band always see seems to be that their guitarist was Richard Hawley who, of course, went on to forge a career as a solo artist in the new millennium. Longpigs had some decent tunes though of which this one – “She Said” – is probably my favourite. Despite sounded like the band are performing it under duress, it also has a power and menace of its own. Part of that menace comes from the repeated lyric “you better hit her”. I’m not quite sure what songwriter and singer Crispin Hunt was getting at when he wrote it but, certainly taken in isolation, the line is dubious. That apart, I do think the track stands up with that piano scale leading into the chorus simple yet very effective. Back to Crispin though and his name must be up there as the most posh boy moniker in all of Britpop. What? How about Crispian Mills of Kula Shaker? Oh hush!

Gabrielle’s career is a curious mixture of massive hits and middling, blink-and-you’ll-miss-‘em chart entries. For every “Dreams”, “Rise” and “Out Of Reach”, there was a “Because Of You”, “I Wish” or this one – “Forget About The World”. The second single from her eponymous sophomore album, it would peak at No 23 whilst spending just three weeks on the Top 40. As such, I don’t recall this one at all but *whisper it* it’s actually quite good. A nice tune, perfect for Summer with a polished but not ostentatious production, I much prefer it to some of those aforementioned bigger hits. One thing that does let it down though, and this applies to nearly all of Gabrielle’s work, is her lack of diction. I had to have subtitles permanently on to be able to understand what she was singing about. Annunciate Gabrielle annunciate! Never mind forget about the world, she forgot about the words!

Another female solo artist now as we get the latest single from Mariah Carey who, after a slowish start to her UK chart career, was on a hot streak of Top 10 hits by the mid 90s. “Always Be My Baby” was the eleventh in a row to achieve such a chart peak over here. Of course, in the US, it had always been huge smash after huge smash right from the start with eight of her first ten hits going to No 1.

This track was the fourth and final to be lifted from her “Daydream” album and would go straight in at No 3 (it was a chart topper in America obvs). It would stay within the Top 40 for eight weeks, quite the feat of endurance in a chart era of singles debuting high then falling away rapidly. Contrast that with the stats for Gabrielle’s single – two comparable hits with wildly fluctuating chart performances. Why was that exactly? I’ve been writing this blog long enough to know that question is largely unanswerable. I even wrote a dissertation on it as a student and couldn’t get to the bottom of it. If I had to guess, I’d say that maybe Mariah had more airplay behind it than Gabrielle? Could be as I thought I didn’t know “Always Be My Baby” but the “doo-doo-doo, doo-doo-doo-dum” hook sounded very familiar. Maybe though I was thinking of this 1992 hit from Betty Boo…

If it looks, sounds and has the whiff of an act of desperation, then it surely is an act of desperation. It had been two years since Let Loose had a huge hit single with “Crazy For You” that had transformed them briefly into contenders for the next teenage heartthrob band. By 1996 though, despite having a clutch of medium sized hits to their name, nothing had replicated the success of their breakthrough song and their album had sold moderately. Enough to warrant a follow up but a chart high of No 20 wasn’t going to give Boyzone sleepless nights.

The alarm bells must have truly started ringing though when the lead single from their second album – “Everybody Say, Everybody Do” – could only scramble to No 29 in the charts at the back end of 1995. Seven months would pass before the band reappeared. Presumably, in that time, the decision was made to break the pop music emergency glass and execute the standard, fall back contingency plan which was – altogether everyone – RELEASE A COVER VERSION! Yes, of course. When in need of a career reviving hit, that was the obvious move. In the case of Let Loose, their safe word song was the old Bread hit “Make It With You”. Now OK, it’s a nice ballad and it certainly did the job (albeit a stop gap one) when it returned the band to the Top 10 but that particular track had already been used for a similar purpose by The Pasadenas* only four years previously when their version peaked at No 20. Stealing ideas from the “Tribute (Right On)” hit makers was surely a low. Despite the cover’s chart success, the band still ended up going down the pan when second album “Rollercoaster” hit the skids and then disappeared without trace taking Let Loose with it. Ah, the ups and downs of life as a 90s boy band.

*The Pasadenas had done a whole album of covers in an attempt to rebuild their career.

And so to a band who had just announced that they were splitting up according to Julia Carling and she was right as Crowded House (initially) called it a day in 1996 after having been around for about a decade. Was she right about it being their last time on TOTP though? Having done a little research, I think she might have been. 1-0 to Julia. Anyway, Crowded House were going out with a bang in that they released their first Greatest Hits album called “Recurring Dream” which would go on to sell over a million copies in the UK twice as many as their previous bestselling studio album “Woodface”. It included three new songs of which “Instinct” was one. Taking of things recurring, thus was yet another track that I thought I didn’t remember until I listened to it and it was hidden deep in my memory banks, presumably buried behind a heap of recollections of drunken nights out or the name of that kid from school that I can never recall. Anyway, it’s a very Crowded House tune which seems a lazy but accurate way to describe it. Another way would be that it was a typical example of their thoughtful, well crafted melodic rock/pop which I’ve always been a sucker for. In fact, perhaps one of my favourite gigs ever was seeing them play The Academy in Manchester around 1991 when bassist Nick Seymour did his infamous ‘chocolate cake’ party trick. Is “Instinct” one of the band’s best tunes? No, I wouldn’t say so but it’s a decent tune and at least they used the correct word for its title and didn’t make one up just so it scanned better. Yes, I’m talking about you Gary Kemp!

A second new track called “Not The Girl You Think You Are” was released as a follow up which I do remember as it sounded so much like The Beatles which was apparently deliberate as Neil Finn has described it as an homage to the Fab Four. It would help propel “Recurring Dream” to the top of the charts. It was also assisted in achieving that chart feat by an advertising campaign that featured a tag line that went something like “you know more Crowded House songs than you think you do” which I remember thinking was quite clever at the time. Its sales performance felt similar to that of The Beautiful South’s “Carry On Up The Charts” Best Of from a couple of years prior. Not shed loads of massive hits but enough familiar songs that it felt like a soundtrack to your life and therefore something you would need to own to represent it.

Crowded House would reconvene in 2007 and release the “Time On Earth” album though without founding member and drummer Paul Hester who tragically committed suicide in 2005 after battling with depression. The band’s latest album “Gravity Stairs” was released just four months ago in May of this year.

Oh shite! It’s that dreadful Simply Red song that was appropriated as the official Euro 96 anthem. “We’re In This Together” should have been made available on the NHS for insomniacs – talk about soporific! I mentioned the last time this tripe was on that my reaction to it was in line with a Joe Pasquale heckler who threw his crutches away whilst shouting “I’d rather fall over than listen to this shit!” on the way down. Following on from that, I’ve remembered another extreme reaction that was in response to actually hearing a Simply Red track. When at polytechnic, a friend was in the student bar and not in a particularly good mood. Whatever was troubling him was not helped by Hucknall and co coming on the bar jukebox. His response to this was to set fire to his hair! Talk about “A New Flame”!

By this point in his career, Maxi Priest had been having chart hits for a decade beginning with “Strollin’ On” in 1986. Although there were a many a single that missed the Top 40 along the way, there were also plenty of major successes. Look at his 1990 hit “Close To You” which combined New Jack Swing and soul so well that it went to No 1 in America making him one of only two reggae artists (alongside UB40) to ever achieve a US chart topper.

However, to some uneducated ears (and I include my own in that description), it might seem that Maxi has become an enduring figure predominantly off the back of doing some reggae covers of already well known songs like “Some Guys Have All The Luck” and “Wide World” but that perhaps doesn’t tell the whole story. Maxi established himself by being able to adapt his natural reggae tendencies to align with the predominant musical trends of the day. His Wikipedia page lists his own musical genres as being Roots Reggae, R&B, Lovers Rock, Dancehall and Reggae Fusion. He’s worked with artists as diverse as Jazzie B, Roberta Flack, Lee Ritenour and Apache Indian. His choice of collaborator hasn’t always been spot on though. His willingness to follow the zeitgeist meant teaming up with two of the three S’s* of 1993’s ragga phenomenon. “Housecall” saw him join forces with the despicable Shabba Ranks before this track – “That Girl” – had him in partnership with the laughable Shaggy. Sampling “Green Onions” by Booker T. & the M.G.’s, I’m convinced that this would be so much better if Shaggy had not been involved. He’s turned up and done his usual nonsense in that low growl of his so we get random interjections like “Gangsta kinda lover”, “Fancy kinda lover” and, inevitably, “Sexy kinda lover” before he just resorts to making grunt noises. Come on Maxi! You were better than that!

*A Maxi Priest / Snow duet has yet to happen thankfully

It’s time for this week’s ’exclusive’ performance from Black Grape with their contribution to the “Beautiful Game” compilation album (which also featured “Three Lions”) entitled “England’s Irie”. I never really got this one perhaps because, like Simply Red’s awful “We’re In this Together”, it doesn’t seem to have that much to do with football. Sure, there’s a few stock phrases in there like “Cross into the box”, “A perfect pass” and “It’s a football thing” that clearly anchor it as a football song but some of the lyrics are tenuous at best. “Dribble around my socks”? “Check my shirt and drink my shots”? “Squeeze me in box”? I suppose that last one could relate to the infamous photo of Vinnie Jones grabbing Gazza by his nuts but still. Maybe Shaun Ryder’s lack of a connection to football might explain it. Here’s @TOTPFacts:

Shaun Ryder on “England’s Irie”: “I know fuck all about football. I was born at the back of Old Trafford and I’m a red by birth, but I don’t do football. It means absolutely nothing to me.” #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) September 20, 2024

Hmm. Shaun was aided in this track by Keith Allen and Joe Strummer who, as Julia Carling states in her intro vowed never to appear on TOTP with The Clash (2-0 to Julia). The fact that he broke that vow to perform on this track, well…I think this sums it up:

Of all the songs Strummer could have performed on TOTP THIS is the one 😠😫
— Simon Davies (@dinodonkey83) September 21, 2024

Keith Allen, of course, was carving out a nice little side career for himself with football songs. As well as this one, there’s “World In Motion” with New Order and he would go on to release three further football ‘songs’ under the Fat Les banner. Cheers for that Keith. Apart from the lyrics, there are other things about “England’s Irie” that confuse me. For a start, what has the word ‘Irie’ got to do with the England football team? Here’s @TOTPFacts again:

(Explaining to a judge) “Irie” is Jamaican slang that originated in the Rastafari movement. Anything that makes you feel “alright” – that’s cool, enjoyable, or positive – can be described as irie. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) September 20, 2024

Secondly, apart from Strummer, nobody seems to be wearing an England football shirt. Shaun’s looks more like an England rugby top, Keith Allen is wearing orange as if he’s Dutch but also a kilt as if he’s Scottish. The drummer’s wearing an Argentina shirt for Chrissakes! It’s all a bit of a mess but then this is Black Grape we’re talking about so…

Before the No 1 record, Julia announces the first winner of the TOTP meet and greet competition and it’s David Howe from Chingford in Essex! I wonder what David thought of his prize – a chance to hang out with Shampoo as they shoot an ‘exclusive’ performance for the show in Madrid. A trip to the Spanish capital would have been nice but Shampoo? They were hardly the biggest of names were they? At least it wasn’t Peter Andre though!

The Fugees are No 1 for a third week with “Killing Me Softly”. This was one of those singles that flew off the shelves. There were a few of them in the 90s where anticipation for a song’s release created phenomenal demand. “Mmm Bop” by Hanson (no really!) was another along with “Don’t Speak” by No Doubt and “…Baby One More Time” by Britney Spears. Nothing though can touch the clamour for Elton John’s “Candle In The Wind 1997” after Princess Diana died but that’s a whole other story for a future post.

The play out track is “Where It’s At” by Beck. This was a track taken from his “Odelay” album (the one with the shaggy dog jumping over a hurdle on the cover) and was only his second UK hit when it peaked at No 35. Everyone I ever worked with at Our Price seemed to love Beck as he was perceived as being super hip. My view? Yeah, I quite liked him though not as much as my wife who bought “Odelay”. “Where It’s At” was typically edgy and alternative with samples a plenty and a whiff of 60s psychedelica. It would win Beck a Grammy for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance though, for me, it wasn’t as memorable as follow up “Devil’s Haircut”. Still, what did I know.

P.S. In a link more tenuous than an “England’s Irie” lyric, there’s a connection between Julia Carling and Beck…Jeff Beck the rock guitarist with whom she lived for six years from the age of 18.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Longpigs	She Said	No but I had their album I think
2	Gabrielle	Forget About The World	No
3	Mariah Carey	Always Be My Baby	Nope
4	Let Loose	Make It With You	As if
5	Crowded House	Instinct	No but I had the Best Of album with it on
6	Simply Red	We’re In This Together	Never!
7	Maxi Priest / Shaggy	That Girl	Nope
8	Black Grape / Keith Allen / Joe Strummer	England’s Irie	Nah
9	Fugees	Killing Me Softly	No but my wife had the album
10	Beck	Where It’s At	See 9 above

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/m00233yy/top-of-the-pops-21061996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 14 JUN 1996

Posted on September 19, 2024 by 80stastic

It’s mid June 1996 and the TV schedules are full of football as the Euros tournament is in full swing. England have started with a disappointing draw against Switzerland so there’s a lot riding on the next game against Scotland the day after this TOTP aired. As flagged by Nicky Campbell last week, the show has moved to Friday night for the duration of the football but it would never return to that hallowed Thursday night slot. In retrospect, it could be argued that this was the beginning of the end for TOTP with the subsequent decision to change its time of broadcast from 7.00 to 7.30pm an act of wanton self destruction, pitting it against Coronation Street as it did.

Before any of that though came an act of physical destruction that would put football and audience figures for a pop music show into a terrible and shocking perspective. The day after this episode of TOTP was broadcast, the Manchester bombing happened when the IRA detonated a 3,300 lb bomb on Corporation Street in the centre of the city. I was living in Manchester at the time (but working in the Our Price store in Stockport) and had booked the Saturday off to watch the England game. I wasn’t in the centre that morning though my wife had been as she’d gone to pick up her Mum from Piccadilly train station as she was visiting us for the day. Fortunately, they were in and out before the bomb was detonated at 11.17am. Thanks to the efforts of the emergency services (and the fact that an IRA code-worded warning had been made an hour and a half prior to the detonation), there were no fatalities that day though 212 people were injured. The explosion caused a 300m high mushroom cloud to rise above the city and could be heard up to 15 miles away. I was out walking at the time (can’t remember why) and, like everyone else in the vicinity, heard the bomb go off. My immediate thought was that a waste incinerator had exploded rather than a terrorist attack. Sadly, I was wrong. The devastation to the area would prompt the regeneration of Manchester City centre at a cost of £1 billion in today’s money that was paid out by insurers. 400 businesses in a half mile radius of the blast were affected 40 percent of which never recovered. There is a narrative that the bomb was the best thing to ever happen to Manchester City centre though the counter argument is try telling that to people and businesses that were caught up in it. Also, there were already regeneration schemes in place following the city’s ultimately unsuccessful bid to host the 2000 Olympic Games. Whichever side of the argument you came down on, the IRA bomb of 1996 will never be forgotten.

On that sombre note, I’ll try and shift subject to the rather more trivial subject of pop music and there was no greater example of its sometimes redundant nature than Peter Andre. Now the last time I reviewed “Mysterious Girl”, I forgot to mention the contribution of rapper Bubbler Ranx who was brought in as Andre, it turned out, was as hopeless at rapping as Gazza* was when he tried out for the John Barnes role on “World In Motion”. Congratulations then Bubbler for your part in “Mysterious Girl”. Who can forget your cry of “Baby girl” that opens the song and your superb control of language and beautiful phrasing on lines such as “Body weh you have a make de man dem a bawl”. Yes, your legacy to pop music is that you made this dreadful track even shittier than it already was. Well done sir. Reports suggest that Ranx has retired from rapping and is now a preacher. Lord have mercy!

*Thankfully he was much better at football as his iconic goal in that England v Scotland game proved.

A couple of pieces of housekeeping to mention at this point. Firstly, tonight’s host is Mark Owen who is still a few months away from launching his solo career with the “Child” single and “Green Man” album so he seems to have been spending his time since the dissolution of Take That cultivating a look that resembles 1970s TV series Catweazle or at last an extra in a Robin Hood movie. What was going on there Mark? His look isn’t much better these days with someone I work with recently telling me that she thinks Owen looks like a tramp!

Secondly, there’s been a change to the show’s opening with the direct to camera message by a featured artist having been replaced by a montage of clips of the acts to come on tonight’s show. I’m not sure I have an opinion either way on which one I prefer. Thirdly, Owen reminds us of a competition that the show is running in which you can win the opportunity to meet and hang out with a mystery pop star. I don’t remember this at all but what are the chances that said pop star was Peter Andre?!

Back to the music and we now get “Don’t Stop Movin’” by Livin’ Joy. Nothing to do with the chart topper by S Club from 2001, this was the follow up to the act’s somewhat surprising No 1 from the previous year “Dreamer”. This was a case of some things change, some things stay the same as the band had a new singer in the extravagantly named Tameko Star replacing original vocalist Janice Robinson but their sound on this new song was exactly the same as previously. Robinson herself had superseded Penny Ford as the vocalist with Snap! as the Eurodance /Italo House merry-go-round twirled throughout the 90s. She would continue a career in music post Livin’ Joy supporting the likes of Tina Turner on tour before eventually ending up as a contestant on X Factor in 2018. No, really. Look…

Anyway, Janice’s departure didn’t stop the flow of hits as “Don’t Stop Movin’” went Top 5 and was followed by another three UK chart entries. As I hadn’t liked “Dreamer” much, it will surprise nobody (including myself) that its follow up did little for me either. It was all a bit too frantic and energetic and listening to it now, it reminds me of “Don’t Give Me Your Life” by Alex Party but guess what? The two Italian brothers in Livin’ Joy were also members of Alex Party! Clearly, the notion of having two creative ideas as opposed to one they kept recycling was beyond these people!

It’s the theme tune to the biggest movie of the year according to Mark Owen now as “Theme From Mission: Impossible“ by Larry Mullen and Adam Clayton is up to No 7. So, was it the biggest movie of 1996? Well, depends on what you mean by ‘biggest’ I guess. Seeing as the film hadn’t even been released in the UK by this point, Owen was either referring to its reception in the US where it opened in the May or the hype that was surrounding it. Going by gross box office receipts though, no it wasn’t the biggest film of the year – that was Independence Day. It wasn’t even second in that list as it trailed in third after disaster movie Twister. Maybe it got the best reviews then? Probably not. Reviews ranged from mixed to positive with aggregator Rotten Tomatoes giving it an average of 6/10. Indeed, the cast of the original 60s TV series were also unimpressed with one actor leaving the cinema before the film ended. It did, however, open in a then record 3,012 theatres in America becoming the first film to break the 3,000 mark. It also broke the record for the biggest receipts for a film opening on a Wednesday with $11.8 million.

The soundtrack was also a success selling half a million copies in the US. Looking at the track listing for the album, it’s not a bad collection at all featuring contributions from The Cranberries, Massive Attack, Pulp, Skunk Anansie, Longpigs, Cast and of course the reworked theme tune. However, only the Clayton and Mullen treatment and The Cranberries from those names above actually feature in the film.

To get us in the mood for the much heralded Paul Weller double live performance later in the show, here are mod revivalists Ocean Colour Scene as his warm up act. Too harsh? Probably. Were/are they a ‘mod’ band? I don’t think so really but having turned around their initially failing career thanks to a leg up from Weller whom invited them to tour with him in 1993, the lazy labels coming their way from the music press were inevitable. That connection continued when guitarist Steve Craddock and singer Simon Fowler were invited to contribute to Weller’s “Wildwood” album when the whole ‘Modfather’ tag started to appear. Having seen Ocean Colour Scene live just last month, I couldn’t detect much of a ‘mod’ vibe coming from them or their music though there were plenty of Weller style haircuts on middle aged men in the audience.

As for being Weller’s warm up act here, that’s also unfair as the band were becoming firmly established in their own right by this point. This track, “The Day We Caught The Train” – was their third consecutive hit single (and joint biggest of their career) when it debuted on the chart at No 4. My accusation is also undermined by the presence of Weller himself self on piano in this performance so he would have effectively been supporting himself which doesn’t quite work*. As we shall see with Weller later, the vocals here are live. In fact was the whole show meant to be live performances? Tameko Star could have been for Livin’ Joy earlier. Peter Andre? Surely not?

*Having said that, I once saw Haircut 100 at Cadogan Hall and Nick Heyward was his own support act.

As for “The Day We Caught The Train”, this is probably my favourite OCS tune (did people really refer to them in abbreviated form like OMD?) but why didn’t they do the “We’ve got the whole wide world” line as the song comes out of the middle eight? Maybe because it has a definite sound effect over it on the recorded version and they were doing this live? What was the song about? It seems to have been inspired by the 1979 film Quadrophenia with lyrics like “riding the coast” referring to Mods riding their Lambretta scooters down to Brighton whilst the song’s protagonist Jimmy surely refers to the film’s lead character Jimmy Cooper played by Phil Daniels. There’s even a picture of a scooter in the cover of the single. So they were mods after all!

Right, is anyone having it that this was a live satellite link up with Celine Dion? It reeks of being pre-recorded to me. The fact that there’s no actual conversation between her and Mark Owen suggests that the whole thing is staged. A quick search of the internet shows me that Celine did indeed play Quebec for two nights in June 1996 but on the 7th and 8th of that month. Given that this TOTP was broadcast on the 14th, even allowing for the fact that it might have been recorded the day before, there’s no way that link up was live. Celine didn’t play a live concert on the 14th and she was in Sydney not Quebec on the 13th. Pure hokum. Fair play though to Celine for playing along with it and doing a little intro as if she was talking to Owen. Not good enough though – just like your song “Because You Loved Me”.

Right, what’s this nonsense? A horrible, hackneyed dance tune based around the chorus of Blur’s “Girls & Boys”? Oh brilliant! Just what we all needed and wanted I’m sure. Pianoman was actually Bradford producer James Sammon who worked with the likes of Ian Brown, Craig David and…erm…Donna Air whilst still finding the time to be a pirate radio DJ and run a record shop. His only hit under the moniker of Pianoman (he had others, didn’t they all?) was “Blurred”. Confusingly, the TOTP caption says it was originally a hit in March 1994 but I’m guessing that refers to the Blur track itself as I can’t find any record of an official release for “Blurred” other than this one in 1996 though Wikipedia tells me it was a hit in Ibiza in 1995 – a ‘hit’ presumably means it went down a storm on the dance floors of nightclubs.

Even back in the mid 90s this must have sounded dated – the production feels very start of the decade to me albeit the track is based around a song that didn’t even exist then. Why did they need a rapper on it to shout the inane, generic phrase “Move to the groove” or that computerised voice that says “One, two, three” and “Breakdown”?! The guy on keyboards in the red Adidas T-shirt looks like the geekier, younger brother of Graham Coxon (if indeed it is possible to look geekier than the Blur guitarist). The whole thing is just nasty but enough people bought it to send it to No 6 in the charts. Sammon tried to repeat the trick by sampling Belinda Carlisle’s “Live Your Life Be Free” for the follow up but thankfully the British public didn’t fall for this nonsense a second time.

After the Top 10 rundown, as ever, we get to the No 1 but it isn’t the usual climax of the show. No. We still have those two live performances by Paul Weller to come so it’s a bit of a false ending and I’m not sure it worked. From its very beginnings, TOTP always ended with the No 1 record; it was the natural apex of a chart based show; it made sense. What didn’t make sense was having two more songs after the chart topper one of which had already been a hit a year before, live version or not. If this was a new direction for the show, it didn’t feel properly thought through.

Anyway, let’s deal with that No 1 which is the Fugees for a second week with “Killing Me Softly”. With sales of over 350,000 copies in just two weeks, it was always going to stay at No 1 but nobody surely foresaw the phenomenon it would become, not even the band’s record company Sony who would have to actively withdraw it from sale when it was still at No 2 into August to allow follow up single “Ready Or Not” to be released unimpeded.

The song was a No 1 US hit for Roberta Flack in 1973 and was originally recorded by Lori Lieberman in 1972 after she collaborated on the lyrics with Norman Gimbel. Then came the all conquering take on it by Fugees but there exists out there another version which is both dreadful and entertaining at the same time…

There’s one more piece of housekeeping to be discharged before the Weller double bill and it’s the details of that chance to meet and hang out with a mystery pop star that may involve foreign travel. Ooooh! I love the fact that the BBC felt the need to put the ‘Lines are now closed’ caption up for a competition that happened 28 years ago! Also, the price of the phone call to enter was 20p!

Finally Paul Weller is on stage and he kicks off with “The Changingman”, the second single from his 1995 album “Stanley Road”. Quite why I’m not sure. It seems an incongruous choice for a music show that is based around the current chart. Presumably I’ll have reviewed this when it was initially a hit. I wonder what I said about it. If you’re wondering too, well, here’s the link to the relevant post:

TOTP 04 MAY 1995

Here’s the answer to that competition question which Weller helpfully announces. “Peacock Suit” was the lead single to his fourth studio album “Heavy Soul” but it didn’t actually get released until the 5th August, nearly two months after this performance. “Heavy Soul” itself wouldn’t appear until June 1997! Why the long gap? I’ve no idea – all I know is that it pissed off both Weller fans and record shop employees when the former would try and buy the record only to be told by the latter that it wasn’t out yet. Cue lots of “It must be, it was on Top of the Pops last night” type comments. Listening to “The Changingman” and “Peacock Suit” back to back, I’m struck by how similar they sound. That’s not a criticism – they’re both decent enough tunes – but an observation. In the case of the latter, just as Ocean Colour Scene were similarly inspired earlier, it’s surely about those pesky, preening mods again isn’t it? The single would debut and peak at No 5 when it was finally released making it not only Weller’s highest charting solo hit ever but also his biggest since “You’re The Best Thing” achieved the same position as part of the “Groovin’” EP in 1984.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Peter Andre featuring Bubbler Ranx	Mysterious Girl	Never
2	Livin’ Joy	Don’t Stop Movin’	Nah
3	Larry Mullen and Adam Clayton	Theme From Mission: Impossible	Nope
4	Ocean Colour Scene	The Day We Caught The Train	No but maybe should have
5	Celine Dion	Because You Loved Me	As if
6	Pianoman	Blurred	No chance
7	Fugees	Killing Me Softly	No but my wife had The Score album it was from
8	Paul Weller	The Changingman	No but I had the Stanley Road album it was from
9	Paul Weller	Peacock Suit	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/m0022v3w/top-of-the-pops-14061996?seriesId=unsliced