Juliet Roberts

TOTP 30 JAN 1998

It’s late January 1998 and Bill Clinton, the President of the United States of America, isn’t having a good week. Four days before this TOTP aired, he’d made his infamous “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” denial on TV to the world in the hope of quelling rumours of a sex scandal involving himself and White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

It would turn out that Bill’s definition of ‘sexual relations’ was different to the rest of the planet’s when he was impeached by the House of Representatives on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. Despite admitting months later that he had engaged in an “improper physical relationship” with Lewinsky, Clinton’s insisted that he had not given misleading evidence because he understood the definition of ‘sexual relations’ as given by the Independent Counsel’s Office to include giving oral sex but not receiving oral sex and therefore he had not engaged in sexual relations. Talk about splitting (pubic) hairs!* Somehow he got off the charges of impeachment and stayed in office but he did receive a fine for giving misleading testimony.

*Sorry!

Given that there is now a convicted felon in the White House (for the second time) who seems to be intent on declaring himself ‘King of America’, Clinton-Lewinsky-gate may have loss some of its scandalous reputation when seen through 2025 eyes but I guess that just shows how far the acceptable behaviour bar has been lowered by Trump. None of this has anything to do with good old, wholesome TOTP of course…or does it? I wonder if I can find some incredibly tenuous links…

Our host is Jayne Middlemiss and we start with…oh my God…not again! It can’t be “Never Ever” by All Saints again surely?! This is their eighth appearance on the show (including the Christmas Day episode) and they still have one more to go! Their first performance of “Never Ever” came on the 21 November 1997 and the last will be on 20 February 1998. That’s a time span of almost exactly three months. Three months! If that sounds ludicrous then there does seem to be an explanation which is that their hit spent 15 weeks inside the Top 10 of which only six were occasions when the record went down the chart. It was, in short, an absolute monster! Did it never occur to their record label London to delete the single so as to clear the way for their next release à la Dinah Carroll’s “Don’t Be A Stranger” or just so we could all move on with the rest of our lives as happened with Wet Wet Wet’s “Love Is All Around”? As it turned out, London and All Saints had their cake and ate it as follow up single “Under The Bridge/ Lady Marmalade” went to No 1 (on two separate occasions) anyway.

Clinton-Lewinsky connection: He “never, ever” had sexual relations with that woman (except he did)

Talking of follow ups to huge hit singles that hung around the charts for ages, here’s Chumbawamba trying to consolidate on the unexpected runaway success of “Tubthumping” with their next release “Amnesia”. I couldn’t have told you how this one went before re-hearing it but as soon as that “Do you suffer from long term memory loss?” line appeared in the hook, the sinker dropped and it all came flooding back. No amnesia for me! Although featuring another catchy chorus (delivered this time by Alice Nutter), it didn’t have the same immediate impact as its predecessor. It just didn’t have the same explosive energy – in fact, the verses were quite pedestrian. It was still commercial enough though to score the band a No 10 hit which was still quite remarkable for an anarcho-punk band formed in 1982.

“Amnesia” was written in response to the disparity between the promises of politicians and their actions once voted into power and the repeated lack of discernment of the electorate who put them there with particular inspiration coming from the band’s reaction to Tony Blair’s New Labour. Ten days after this TOTP was broadcast, there was a very visible and infamous rejection of New Labour when the band’s Danbert Nobacon poured a bucket of iced water over then Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott at the BRIT Awards show. Ah, 1998 when the BRITS were still worth watching.

Clinton-Lewinsky connection: Oh brilliant! Check this out from the band’s Boff Whalley about “Amnesia”:

“People forget that what Bill Clinton before he gets elected is not what Bill Clinton will do when he’s in office and that’s not just about Bill Clinton, that’s about all politicians”

“Chumbawamba Talks About Political “Amnesia””. MTV. Viacom.

Still with those hits that had legs comes “Angels” by Robbie Williams which was in its eight week inside the Top 10 four of which had been spent at No 7 where it found itself again this week. Despite all that time in the chart and subsequent TOTP appearances, I don’t think I’ve yet addressed the issue of authorship surrounding this one. Now, we all know that Robbie’s early material was co-written with Guy Chambers who was originally in the criminally underrated and overlooked band The Lemon Trees before meeting Williams and, indeed, “Angels” is one of the songs that they wrote together – theirs are the names that are listed in the credits on the single and parent album. However, enter Irish singer-songwriter Ray Heffernan whom Robbie met in a short visit to Dublin in 1996 before the launch of his solo career. At the time, both men were heavy drinkers and, after a session in a bar, recorded a rough and incomplete version of a song Heffernan had played to Williams called “Angels Instead”.

On returning home, Robbie would take up with Guy Chambers and presented what he had of the early version of “Angels” and they worked it up into the song we know today. Heffernan took legal representation out to protect his claims on the track (whatever they actually were) and in the end settled for a one off payment of £7,500 to basically go away. Forever. “Angels” would become a modern day standard and earn millions in royalties and an Ivor Novello award. You may think this would have destroyed Heffernan and he was certainly angry for a while but on reflection is glad not to have earned all those royalties as he believes it would have only enabled his destructive drug use of the time. All he really wants is proper recognition of his input into the song from Williams. Having watched the video below chronicling the story as to whether Robbie is right or wrong, I think I’m believing Ray instead.

Clinton-Lewinsky connection: I did not have musical relations with that man

Right, it’s all songs we haven’t seen before in these BBC4 repeats from here on in starting with the first appearance on the show for Catatonia. For a while back in the late 90s, this lot were big news. Arriving as part of the ‘cool Cymru’ movement alongside Manic Street Preachers, Super Furry Animals, Stereophonics and Feeder – “Mulder And Scully” was the track to catapult them to superstardom. Obviously influenced by the main characters from hit sci-fi TV show The X–Files, it also allowed singer Cerys Matthews a platform for her distinctive voice or as host Jayne Middlemiss commented, her regional accent. Such vocal stylings were not unique – The Proclaimers were infamous for singing in their Scottish brogue and Chas & Dave made a career out of recording using their cockney dialect – but it wasn’t as simple as that with Cerys. There was also the over pronunciation of words such as “Scull-eee” and the rolling ‘R’s in follow up hit “Road Rage”. Even this wasn’t entirely new though – Liam Gallagher’s extraordinary extended articulation of the word “shine” as “she-iiiiiiine” for example. And yet, you couldn’t ignore Matthews. She was a force of nature with many a tale of legendary drinking escapades to her name. Because of her presence in the line up, it would be easy to lump them in with all those other bands of the period who were fronted by a charismatic female singer like Elastica, Sleeper, Echobelly and Skunk Anansie but all those bands had their own sound and that included Catatonia.

I think I’d first come across them when their single “I Am The Mob” lightly scraped the Top 40 in the Autumn of 1997 though they’d been around for a lot longer than that. Having formed in 1992 and been though various line up changes and independent releases, they’d finally came to market via a major label with 1996’s “Way Beyond Blue” album which I somehow managed to miss completely despite working in a record shop. When “Mulder And Scully” debuted at No 3 though, we all had to take notice. Had it been a deliberate ploy to write a song that referenced an incredibly successful current TV show or was it just that Cerys was plugging into the popular culture zeitgeist? I choose to believe the latter as it’s not really a song about The X–Files as such but rather a metaphor. Having said that, I did find the use of the show’s protagonists’ names in the chorus slightly jarring. Reading all that back, I seem to be rather conflicted about Catatonia don’t I? What I am sure about is that they continued to have hits to the end of the 90s and into the new millennium. Sophomore album “International Velvet” went three times platinum but by the time of their fourth, the band seemed to be an anachronism and they split in 2001.

Cerys Matthews would go on to be an award winning author and broadcaster with shows on BBC Radios 2 and 4 and 6 Music and founded The Good Life Experience festival. In 2007, she appeared on I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here causing a stir in the tabloids when she began a relationship with fellow camp mate and EastEnders actor Marc Bannerman. What I remember most about her post Catatonia career though is that she used to write a column in The Guardian under the pseudonym of Dr Crotchety who was an agony aunt for music fans giving people who wrote in suggestions to liven up their listening habits which I found patronising in the extreme. She gave the impression of loving every single type of musical genre which I just couldn’t get on board with.

Clinton-Lewinsky connection: Well, this is fortunate. Cerys Matthews serenaded Bill Clinton at the Haye-On-Wye Literature Festival in 2001 even laying her head on his chest!

After something so memorable comes a totally forgettable hit which guess what?…I’d forgotten about it. “So Good” by Juliet Roberts anyone? She’d had a medium sized hit in 1994 with a remix of “Caught In The Middle” but sure enough, I don’t recall that either despite the fact that I must have reviewed it in this blog. This one was a double A-side with another remix of a previous hit “Free Love”. She was big on rereleases and remixes was Juliet. She also was fond of a collaboration. As far back as 1983, she was the vocalist for the Funk Masters on their Top 10 hit “It’s Over” and in 2001 had a US Dance chart No 1 with big shot DJ, producer and remixer David Morales on the track “Needin U II”.

Clinton-Lewinsky connection: Nothing for Juliet Roberts. Julia Roberts on the other hand appeared on the final week of The David Letterman Show alongside Bill Clinton and also appeared in a Broadway fund raiser in support of Hilary Clinton in 2016.

A case now of when one of a band’s most well known songs divides their fan base*. Green Day had made their name playing fast, power chord-heavy pop-punk tunes but here they were in reflective mood with an acoustic ballad. The track “Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)” had actually been around for years before it was recorded for the band’s “Nimrod” album, having been considered unsuitable for inclusion on their previous two major label releases.

*See also “More Than Words” by Extreme

It’s a deceptive song – on the one hand very simple – even a basic strummer like me can manage the chord sequence – and yet it has a depth to it. Just look at its title for a start; it’s almost paradoxical but allows the listener to take their preferred meaning away from it. For example, it has become a staple of DJ set lists at US Prom dances as a symbol of celebration for surviving High School. Conversely, when a senior manager left one of my previous workplaces and the staff were asked to contribute a song to a playlist they created for him, I chose “Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)” for the first two words of the title. Ah but what were those two words? Well, ‘good’ and ‘riddance’ obviously except…in some territories it was released as “Time Of Your (Good Riddance)”! What was that all about? To make it more easily identifiable to the casual listener as opposed to a Green Day devotee? Maybe it’s an American thing – the exact same scenario happened with the Icicle Works single “Birds Fly (Whisper To A Scream)” which was released in the US as “Whisper To A Scream (Birds Fly)”.

Anyway, this new direction for Green Day seemed to confuse some of their fanbase and even in some cases left them feeling betrayed. This wasn’t the band they’d grown up loving. They couldn’t…gulp…be looking for a more mainstream audience could they? Thankfully, the band hadn’t sold their soul for a hit and would release perhaps their defining album in 2004 – the punk concept album “American Idiot”. As for “Good Riddance”, it has become accepted as a Green Day standard and is usually played as the last song by the band at their gigs.

Clinton-Lewinsky connection: The band’s song “Holiday” from the aforementioned “American Idiot” album includes the lyrics “I declare I don’t care about the president” and “I don’t care about the latest scandal” which are reportedly about Clinton-Lewinsky-gate.

There are some songs that just won’t be left alone. “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” is one of them. Originally a hit for Sylvester in 1978, it was reactivated in 1990 by Jimmy Somerville who took it into the Top 5. Just eight years later, here was Byron Stingily making it a hat trick of chart appearances for the track. Having first experienced success as part of Ten City in 1989 with “That’s The Way Love Is”, Byron’s solo career finally kicked off in 1997 with the US Dance Chart No 1 hit “Get Up (Everybody)” which also made No 14 in the UK. He followed that up with this curiously hollow and empty sounding version of a disco classic. It really adds nothing to the original and is inferior to the Jimmy Somerville cover to my ears. Stingily would only have one more hit which saw him return to past glories with his solo treatment of that Ten City single. As for “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)”, it’s also been covered by Adam Lambert, Lewis Taylor and Sandra Bernhard.

Clinton-Lewinsky connection: This is unbelievable! Stingily’s version of Sylvester’s best known song was featured on a Spanish dance compilation album called “Ahora ‘98” the front cover of which was a parody of Bill and Hilary Clinton with actors pretending to be them at a desk in the Oval Office with a pair of legs protruding underneath it meant to be Monica Lewinsky who is…well…in a compromising position to say the least!

There’s a new No 1 from someone who would become a global superstar though the only connection he would make with me is that his name is my current job title. Usher has gone on to be known as the ‘King of R&B’ with a multi platinum selling back catalogue including nine No 1 US singles. Curiously though, this track – “You Make Me Wanna…” wasn’t one of them despite topping our charts when it peaked at No 2 over the pond. With its acoustic guitar hook, it crossed over into the mainstream big time winning a host of awards as it went and yet I hardly remember it at all. I guess I’m just not an R&B kinda guy.

Clinton-Lewinsky connection: This post has written itself! In 2010, Usher hosted a Senate fundraiser for candidate Michelle Nunn with Bill Clinton as the guest of honour. A year later, Usher performed at the ‘Decade of Difference’ concert celebrating the 10 year anniversary of the William J. Clinton foundation and also Bill Clinton’s 65th birthday. During Usher’s performance, this happened…

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	All Saints	Never Ever	Nope
2	Chumbawamba	Amnesia	I did not
3	Robbie Williams	Angels	No but I had a promo of his album
4	Catatonia	Mulder And Scully	It’s a no from me
5	Juliet Roberts	So Good	No, it wasn’t
6	Green Day	Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)	Great song but it seems I didn’t
7	Byron Stingily	You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)	Nah
8	Usher	You Make Me Wanna…	Not my bag

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/m002dt20/top-of-the-pops-30011998?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 30 JUN 1994

Posted on April 19, 2023 by 80stastic

Despite my recent outrage at the omnipresence of Eurodance in the UK charts in the mid 90s (and therefore also on TOTP), I’m sure if I did some proper statistical analysis of the musical genres represented on the show, it would tell me that the mix of categories was eclectic. No, not eclectic but mad, bonkers, all over the place. Tonight’s show is a prime example. Yes, there are plenty of dance tunes (of varying quality) but there’s also some out and out pop, an exponent of the New Wave of New Wave (whatever that was), the debut of a rock ‘n’ roll band (definitely not indie…erm…maybe) who would dominate the 90s, a mega selling cover of an old 60s tune and hell, even a memorable No 1 from 1979! What a basket case of a show! The host is Bruno Brookes who I have to say I have warmed to since his return to the programme after the ‘year zero’ revamp era. I couldn’t be doing with him during his 80s pomp but compared to Simon ‘Smug’ Mayo, I’m finding his matey presenting style a bit more acceptable.

First up is a tune that I reviewed as part of the TOTP that was broadcast on 29 July 1993. Back then, “Caught In The Middle” by Juliet Roberts was a Breaker but as that section doesn’t exist anymore, she’s opening this show with a performance in the studio. In that first review, I drew some comparisons with Shara Nelson who was also on that day but there’s no Shara this time round so I’ll have to think of something else to say. Well, back in 1993, the single made No 24 and was produced by Danny D (of D-Mob fame) and remixed by Roger Sanchez. However, a David Morales remix that lit up the dance floors of clubs in 1994 demanded a release of its own and so it was that it was put out again, this time peaking at No 14. What are the differences between the two versions? I’m afraid my lack of dance music knowledge embarrasses me here but the Morales remix does seem to have a faster bpm which requires some controlled breathing and singing techniques from Juliet to get through it. This would prove to be Juliet’s biggest ever hit and she has not released any material since 2002 though she remains in demand as a backing singer.

That pure pop record next as Let Loose are finally given free rein to showcase themselves to the UK at large. I say ‘finally’ as they’d actually been around Take That style for over a year before this appearance and their single – “Crazy” – had originally been released back in April of 1993. It had just missed the Top 40 then but their record label Mercury obviously believed in the song and so it was re-released with a big promotional push and a chart entry at No 24 was achieved. There then followed a climb that was becoming most atypical within the UK Top 40 around this time whereby the single rose in small increments five weeks on the trot to get a foothold on the No 4 position. The story didn’t end there though. It stayed within the Top 10 for a further six weeks including two at No 2 when only the extraordinary sales of Wet Wet Wet kept it off the top spot. In total, it spent sixteen weeks inside the Top 40 and nine inside the Top 10. Perhaps most remarkable of all was that it would become the UK’s eighth best selling single of 1994, shifting more copies than D:Ream’s “Things Can Only Get Better” which spent four weeks at No 1 at the start of the year.

How can all this be explained? Well, it was supremely radio friendly becoming a staple of daytime playlists to the point that the band’s lead singer himself – Richie Wermerling – had this to say of the song (courtesy of @TOTPFacts):

Let Loose lead singer Richie Wermerling wrote "Crazy For You": "It was around for months and even I had to turn off the radio after a while. It used to come on everywhere I was – sometimes I'd have to hide behind counters in supermarkets." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) April 7, 2023

The single’s success led to the re-release of another early single (“Seventeen”) which though nowhere near the sales phenomenon of its predecessor made a respectable No 11. Despite being pin up material and playing catchy pop music, Let Loose were never going to seriously worry Take That as the nation’s favourite boy band. The position of contender for that role would be filled by Boyzone come the end of the year. However, they did notch up seven Top 40 hits over two years before disbanding.

And here it is. The inevitable appearance of some nasty dance music in the form of Reel 2 Real featuring The Mad Stuntman. After the gravity defying chart run of “I Like To Move It” that remained aloft in the Top 40 for seventeen weeks, there were no surprises for guessing how main man Erick Morillo would follow it up. Just chuck out something that sounds exactly the same! What to call it? Something with the word ‘move’ in the title will do again. No need to overthink it. Just shameless. The ‘lyrics’ to “Go On Move” bang on about women shaking their bodies and then there’s some nonsensical scatting at the start. Look at this:

Bibidy, bom bi bom, mek, house go mad
Bibidy, bom bi bom, mek, jazz go mad
Bibidy, bom bi bom, mek, house go mad
Bibidy, bom bi bom, mek, jazz go mad
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Erick A. Morillo / Mark H. Quashie / Peter Tulloch
Go on Move lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Warner Chappell Music, Inc

The use of the word ‘Bibidy’ isn’t inspired by the “Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo” song from Disney’s Cinderella animation but, according to my research, a Jamaican term for men’s underwear. Nice. In trade publication Music Week, reviewer James Hamilton described it as:

“Gruff ragga ‘g’wan move’ shouting and ‘blippily bebop’ scatting drily percussive ‘I Like To Move It’ type bogie shuffler”
Hamilton, James (June 25, 1994). “Dj directory” (PDF). Music Week, in Record Mirror (Dance Update Supplemental Insert). p. 5. Retrieved April 18, 2021.

That just about sums up this whole shoddy affair. Somehow, the good old British public bought enough copies to send it to No 7. Thanks for that.

It’s that No 1 from 1979 next. Surely one of the most memorable chart toppers ever, “I Don’t Like Mondays” was the second consecutive No 1 single for The Boomtown Rats after “Rat Trap” the year before. They were the biggest band in the UK. I was only 11 at the time and not exactly in tune with current chart trends but even I knew this song and The Boomtown Rats. The elder brother of a kid I knew up the street was a big fan. Not that I knew it at the time but so was my wife who asked her parents for their “Tonic For The Troops” album for Christmas ‘78 (they bought her “Nightflight To Venus” by Boney M instead).

By 1981 though, the hits had started to dry up. The New Romantics movement was in ascendancy with blousy young heroes like Spandau Ballet and Duran Duran capturing the nation’s imagination and The Rats were seen as old hat. By 1984 they were completely washed up. And then came that news report from Ethiopia that Bob Geldof couldn’t ignore leading to the Band Aid record and the Live Aid concert and that moment when he sings the line “And the lesson today is how to die”…

Go to 3:08 for that moment

The origins of the lyrics of the whole song are well documented of course. The school shooting in San Diego by 16 year old Brenda Spencer who fired at children in a school playground because, by her own words, “I don’t like Mondays. This livens the day up” is pretty bleak source material. Geldof couldn’t have known that just a few years later it would provide an iconic moment in rock history as part of an effort to use the power of music for the good of humanity.

* For my full review of Live Aid, follow the link below:

https://80spop.wordpress.com/2018/04/04/live-aid-13-jul-1985/(opens in a new tab)

None of the above explains why “I Don’t Like Mondays” was back in the charts in 1994 though. It was a pretty obvious reason in truth. A Boomtown Rats / Bob Geldof retrospective Best Of album entitled “Loudmouth” had been released and the track was re-released to promote it. The album made the Top 10 though the single only made No 38 so I’m a little surprised that it warranted a whole slot to itself. It would have been a Breaker under the old regime no doubt.

The moment has finally arrived. It wouldn’t be 1994 – the year Britpop took off according to many – without them. Stand by (me) for the time has arrived for the TOTP debut of Oasis! Working in a record shop in the centre of Manchester at the time, it was kind of hard to avoid Liam, Noel and co but I have to say I’d not got on board immediately. Whilst some of my work colleagues were all over debut single “Supersonic”, I was picking fault in their rhyming of Elsa with Alka-Seltzer in the lyrics. Second single “Shakermaker” didn’t quite do it for me either but by the time third release “Live Forever” came along, I could resist no longer and was all in. I’m pretty sure that I could tell that something big was brewing and I didn’t want to miss out. Record breaking debut album “Definitely Maybe” was duly purchased and eighteen months later I was at the second of their first outdoor headline gigs at Maine Road.

Back in the Summer of 1994 though, why wasn’t I immediately swept up in the Oasis tsunami? Admittedly, I had some previous when it came to ignoring huge Manchester bands just as they were breaking. The Smiths? No thanks, not poppy enough for me. The Stone Roses? Erm no. I rather like the look of Scottish rockers Gun instead. And so to Oasis. Why didn’t I watch this TOTP performance and think “Sign me up. I’m totally here for this”? Was I put off by the Genesis apeing practice of having drummer Tony McCarroll centre stage? It’s interesting to note that the focal point of the group Liam and Noel are furthest away from the stage here. Presumably that was deliberate but it seems out of character. Rather more predictably, poor old Bonehead and Guigsy hardly get a look in.

“Shakermaker” would peak at No 11, considerably higher than “Supersonic” (No 31) so we should have all been on alert at this point to the rise of the band. Although it would continue to sell throughout the next few years along with the band’s other singles (we were still regularly ordering copies of all of them for years), it remains the band’s only single released from their first two albums not to be certified gold.

Another dance tune now but I didn’t expect this one to sound like it does. Crystal Waters burst into the charts in 1991 with the hypnotic house sound of “Gypsy Woman” (“La da dee, la dee da”) but this single “Ghetto Day” (a double A- side with “What I Need”) sounds like something off Betty Boo’s second album. Seriously, it sounds like “Let Me Take You There” doesn’t it? She even seems to have changed her hair to a Boo style bob. It turned out though that the record buying public weren’t too keen on the Betty Boo version of Crystal Waters and, despite this appearance, the single got no higher than this week’s chart position of No 40. To be fair, the record buying public hadn’t been too keen on this Betty Boo version of Betty Boo so Crystal had no chance.

The New Wave of New Wave was a terrible name for a musical movement but then so was Britpop I guess. Unlike the latter, it didn’t live long in the memory either. So what was it and who was in it? Well, it pretty much did what it said on the tin. Bands that played guitar driven rock music that had post punk and new wave influences. And its exponents? Well, one of the main bands of the movement were These Animal Men whose name I remember but whose sound I do not. I’m guessing though that it was similar to S*M*A*S*H who were the first band of that sub genre to appear on TOTP the other week. Initially, there were other names associated with the New Wave of New Wave but as that scene petered out and Britpop became the dominant force, it was the latter that they became known for. I’m talking about Sleeper, Echobellly, Shed Seven and Elastica amongst others.

The only thing I can recall of These Animal Men was that they released an EP called “Taxi For These Animal Men”. So was a taxi required? Let’s have a listen to “Speeed King” then…

As I thought, they sound like S*M*A*S*H with maybe a bit of Menswear thrown in though I think they had a bit more to them than this These Animal Men who seemed to peddle a very specific (dare I say one trick pony) style of music. Host Bruno Brookes introduces them as being the ‘TOTP showcase’ which seems to have been another way of saying “this lot don’t have any hits but we’ve shoved them on the show to prove how hip we are”. “Speeed King” got no higher than No 95 and These Animal Men were done and dusted by 1998 when they split.

The Grid again? Is this the third outing for “Swamp Thing”? Despite this being a brand new performance, it’s basically exactly the same as they did the last time they were on including the rather odd set up for the banjo player. This single was one of a number that just sold and sold that Summer alongside Let Loose, Aswad and of course Wet Wet Wet. I must have sold hundreds of copies of those titles to the punters in the Manchester Piccadilly Our Price store where I was working at the time. One day I served a guy who asked if he could have discount on what he was buying. As there was no valid reason for his request I replied in the negative. He then came back with “I’m asking you politely for discount” to which I again replied “No”. My customer then advised me that he knew people who would come and kneecap me if I didn’t do as he wanted. It was that kind of place. A swamp thing? More like a cesspit of humanity. For the record, I still didn’t give him any discount and nobody did turn up to kneecap me.

https://youtu.be/wQ5Y0QKo2gA

Wet Wet Wet remain steadfastly secure in the No 1 spot with “Love Is All Around”. To try and mix things up a bit, TOTP have got hold of a piece of footage from a concert the band did at Wembley that week and show that instead of another studio performance or the video.

In the clip, Marti Pellow has a curious affectation where he twirls around making a welcoming gesture which put me in mind of Stephen Rea’s turn in Interview With A Vampire:

I’d have to say that Marti has a better smile than a vampire though.

The play out song is “Living In The Sunshine” by Clubhouse. The follow up to “Light My Fire”, ah…really though…who cares? Certainly not me.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Juliet Roberts	Caught In The Middle	Nope
2	Let Loose	Crazy	No but I think my wife succumbed to its charms
3	Reel 2 Real featuring The Mad Stuntman	Go On Move	Never!
4	The Boomtown Rats	I Don’t Like Mondays	No but I must have it on something surely?
5	Oasis	Shakermaker	Not the single but I bought there album. Didn’t we all?
6	Crystal Waters	Ghetto Day / What I Need	Nah
7	These Animal Men	Speeed King	No
8	The Grid	Swamp Thing	I did not
9	Wet Wet Wet	Love Is All Around	And no
10	Clubhouse	Living In The Sunshine	As if

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/m001krcc/top-of-the-pops-30061994

TOTP 04 NOV 1993

Posted on November 13, 2022 by 80stastic

Finally it’s that time of the year. No, not bonfire night that was upon us in 1993 but that cherished but fleeting period that us synchronists look forward to – when the BBC4 TOTP repeats and the present day month match. November 1993 meet November 2022. We can watch these old shows safe in the knowledge that the tunes featured were from almost exactly 29 years ago. Indeed, when the second TOTP was aired on the Friday just gone they synchronised to the very day – 11th November. Perfect! I’m getting ahead of myself though. Let’s trawl through the 4th November show to see what fireworks and bangers await…

We start with the first of two Scottish electronic dance bands featured tonight (what were the chances eh?). I speculated in a previous post about why The Time Frequency felt the need to include the definite article in their name. Reading up on them some more, it seems founding band member Jon Campbell was in an 70s synth band called Thru The Fire and when they broke up, he kept the initials of the name as a template for his next project. Well, that’s what Wikipedia tells me but it seems a bit of a lame reason to me. Anyway, after scoring a Top 20 hit earlier in the year with “The Power Zone EP”, the decision was taken to rerelease their debut single “Real Love” which had missed the charts the previous year. A remix was made of it and it was shoved back out into the market under the title of “Real Love ‘93” – there was very little imagination around in record label offices when it came to naming rereleases it seems. Lacking in imagination they may have been but their business case was sound and the rerelease became the band’s biggest ever hit when it peaked at No 8. To me though, it sounded like the poor relation to “Insanity” by Oceanic.

https://youtu.be/2LFM8cZWvCQ

The performance here with the two dancers dressed in full metal robot outfits brought back memories of a rather cheesy but somehow endearing chart hit from 1985…

https://youtu.be/Xfoxz6aBNsI

Next a song that I would have thought was a much bigger hit than it was. However, its chart peak of No 7 doesn’t tell the whole story. I’m talking about “Hero” by Mariah Carey which was the second single taken from her “Music Box” album. We sold loads of this over Christmas ‘93 when I was working in the Our Price in Altrincham, Cheshire and if you check out the single’s chart run, it backs up my claim. It just wouldn’t go away. Yes, it only had three weeks inside the Top 10 but it had another seven where it ricocheted around the Top 20 between positions 18 and 11. It actually stood solid for three consecutive weeks at No 18 before going back up the charts. It reversed its decline in sales another time during its chart life to move back into the Top 10 having fallen out of it the previous week. These were not normal chart manoeuvres. It eventually fell out of the Top 40 around mid January ‘94. Why was it so durable? It could be that ballad at Christmas time always being a winner theory in action again. Maybe it was to do with the lyrics about self-belief, inner courage and finding the hero within oneself that struck a chord with record buyers.

Its durability would lead to longevity. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks of 2001, Mariah re-recorded the track as a medley with a song from her “Glitter” album called “Never Too Far” and released it as a charity single. In 2008, the X Factor finalists covered the song to raise funds for the Help For Heroes and Royal British Legion charities. It would become a sales phenomenon selling 100,000 copies in its first day of release and becoming the best selling single of that year. They performed the track with Mariah in one of the live shows.

Proper rock legends next though their list of UK chart hit singles up to this point belied that status. Not counting their collaboration with Run-D.M.C. on 1986’s “Walk This Way”, “Cryin’” was only the fifth ever Top 40 hit for Aerosmith up to that point in time. It was, however, their third hit on the bounce (all from the “Get A Grip”) album). “Livin’ On The Edge” (like ex-Home Secretary Priti Patel, the band had a habit of dropping their ‘g’s at the end of words) had made No 19 and “Eat The Rich” No 34 earlier in the year. “Cryin’” would be the biggest of all three when it peaked at No 17 over here though it was more successful in the rest of Europe going Top 10 just about everywhere and even topping the charts in Norway.

This was the band in proper power ballad mode but with that bit of Aerosmith cheek thrown in for good measure. Or as Steven Tyler described it:

“It was country – we just Aerosmith’d it.”
“The 20 Songs That Can Represent The Career Of Aerosmith”. Society of Rock. Retrieved May 23, 2022.

I have a distinct memory of a young Zoë Ball, early in her TV career, interviewing Tyler on some music programme about how to be a rock music fan (or something) and her finishing the piece by wandering off camera singing “Cryin’” whilst performing the Chuck Berry duck walk though her version of it made her just look like she was constipated.

Though the TOTP producers have pulled off a coup here by having the band in the studio, it means we don’t get to see the award winning video that promoted the single. Featuring a sixteen years old Alicia Silverstone plus pre fame Stephen Dorff (Backbeat) and Josh Holloway (Sawyer from Lost), it won three MTV video awards in 1994.

As host Tony Dortie says, 1993 saw loads of solo female artists break through with the likes of Dina Carroll, Gabrielle and Michelle Gayle all having big chart hits. Add to that list Pauline Henry. Late of The Chimes parish but now striking out on her own, her cover of Bad Company’s “Feel Like Making Love” (note the ‘g’ in making Aerosmith and Priti Patel!) was her second and biggest hit when it peaked at No 12. Just about as far removed from The Chimes’ soulful take on U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” as it could be, Pauline really belted out this raucous rock standard. Fair play to her by the way for daring to take on the mighty vocals of Paul Rodgers – if it was a football match, it would certainly go to extra time.

Sadly for Pauline, her single success didn’t translate into album sales and her debut LP staggered to a high of No 45. A second album of more cover versions resulted in two minor hit singles before Pauline decided on a change of career and studied for a Bachelor of Law degree and a masters in Intellectual Law Property.

After dicking about with the Breakers feature for a couple of weeks, the section is now firmly re-established by the TOTP producers with five acts in it this week. We start with a collaboration between Faith No More and Boo–Yaa T.R.I.B.E. (that’s the second time I’ve had to type a rap act’s name in that format this post!). “Another Body Murdered” was a track from the soundtrack to the film Judgement Night, a crime thriller starring Emilio Estevez, Cuba Gooding Jnr and (joy oh joy for us synchronists again!) Stephen Dorff. The soundtrack followed an idea by Cypress Hill manager Happy Walters that each track should pair a rock artist with a rap act. Alongside the Faith No More Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E. (third time!) meet up, there was Teenage Fan Club and De La Soul and Living Color and Run-D.M.C. (fourth time!!) to name but two. Critical reaction to the premise has been mixed. Some saw it as laying the groundwork for bands such as Korn and Limp Bizkit to thrive (was that a good thing?) whilst others saw it as jumping on the Anthrax/Public Enemy collaboration “Bring The Noise” bandwagon. I have to say judging by the twenty-five seconds of “Another Body Murdered” we get here, I’m unlikely to search out the soundtrack album though that meeting of Teenage Fan Club / De La Soul does sound interesting.

Just to prove Tony Dortie’s point about UK female solo artists in 1993, here’s another one and like Pauline Henry before her, she had a solid CV behind her already. Juliet Roberts first came to chart prominence ten years prior with Funk Masters’ Top 10 hit “Its Over” before she became the vocalist for Smooth jazzers Working Week. Critical acclaim but little commercial success led her to move on finding work as a session singer for the likes of Cathy Dennis and rather improbably Breathe before taking the plunge on her own. Having breached the Top 30 with her hit “Caught In The Middle” earlier in the year, she was back with another tilt at it with “Free Love”. It would attain a similar chart peak of No 25.

Sadly for Juliet, also like Pauline Henry, a collection of middling hit singles didn’t convert into a hit album and her debut effort “Natural Thing” could only manage a high of No 65. Her last chart entry came as vocalist on David Morales’s “Needin U II” in 2001, a title that makes Aerosmith and Priti Patel look like linguistic experts.

By late 1993, Soul II Soul had reached the point in their career where diminishing returns were starting to set in. “Club Classics Vol. One” and the track “Back To Life” especially had made the band global superstars but four and a half years on their commercial fortunes, though by no means flatlining, were not what they were as the 80s ended and the 90s began. The remedy? A Best Of album of course and so it was that “Volume IV The Classic Singles 88-93” was put together and released for the Christmas market. I actually liked the fact that they continued with the ‘Volume’ theme even though this wasn’t a studio album and included tracks that had already been part of the previous volumes. Except this one. “Wish” was a brand new track recorded to promote the collection as was the established trend (see also contemporary chart peer “Please Forgive Me” by Bryan Adams). The album sold well enough going to No 10 in the charts but subsequent releases failed to reverse the sales drift.

As for “Wish” itself, I’m no Soul II Soul expert but it seemed to me to promise a lot but deliver little or as a rather posh sounding woman I heard on Radio 4 recently delightfully put it whilst describing Liz Truss, it was ‘all fart and no shit’.

Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston on the same show?! One year on from the sales phenomenon that was her cover of “I Will Always Love You” comes the final single released by her from The Bodyguard soundtrack. “Queen Of The Night” was the fifth track taken from it recorded by Whitney (though seventh including other artists) and it stood alone from the other four in its sound. With three of those four being big ballads and the other a cover of Chaka Khan’s “I’m Every Woman”, there was space for something different and “Queen Of The Night” was. Or was it? A few critics at the time cited its similarities to En Vogue’s “Free Your Mind” and Janet Jackson’s “Black Cat” with its hard rock guitars and Whitney’s growly vocals though personally I think it just about stands up on its own legs.

The video is pretty much the performance of the song in the actual film – the scene where Whitney’s character has to be rescued by Kevin Costner when the security arrangements at her gig are shown to be lacking and a riot breaks out. The Bodyguard film generally gets slated as being substandard with Costner especially being highlighted for a wooden performance but I always quite liked it and thought Whitney gives a decent and convincing turn but then if she couldn’t play a pop star diva then what character could she play?

“Queen Of The Night” peaked at No 14. We wouldn’t see Whitney in the charts again for two years when she would return with songs from another soundtrack for a film in which she starred, Waiting To Exhale.

The final Breaker comes from Culture Beat who are straight into the Top 10 with “Got To Get It”. I’ve shared this anecdote before but I’m going to use it again – well, if Culture Beat can recycle their No 1 single “Mr Vain” and just blatantly release it as the official follow up as if it’s a brand new song then I’m certainly allowed to use a story twice! I was in the last days of working at the Our Price in Stockport when this single came out. On the day of release, a young girl came up to the counter and asked for the single by Culture Beat. As “Mr Vain” had still been selling and had only just dropped out of the Top 40 the other week, I thought I’d better check which one she meant and so asked her “Got To Get It?”. Her reply? “I just really like it”. Lovely stuff.

It’s time for the second of those two Scottish electronic bands now as The Shamen are in the studio with “The SOS EP (Comin’ On)”. This was the sixth single released from their “Boss Drum” album that had been out for nearly fourteen months by this point. Those singles attained the following chart peaks:

6 – 1 – 4 – 5 – 18 – 14

Not too shabby you’d have to say. This was peak era Shamen. They were never as big again with only four more Top 40 hits throughout the entire decade none of which got higher than No 15. I have to say I don’t remember “Comin’ On” (they must have attended that Aerosmith songwriting class) but it sounds better than I was expecting. Sort of starts out a bit like The Prodigy and then spins into an infectious dance anthem but with a pop song structure. By the way, what had happened to Colin Angus’s hair. Were those long tresses real or extensions?

A conversation between Soul II Soul’s Jazzie B and Wet Wet Wet’s Marti Pellow* sometime in early Autumn 1993:

*with massive apologies to anyone reading this who is Scottish

JB: Marty my man! How’s it hanging?

MP: Jazzie! Och, aye, no bad ye ken. How urr ye?

JB: You know me man. A happy face, a thumpin’ bass, for a lovin’ race!

MP: Aye.

JB: Marti man. You look down. What gives fella?

MP: We hae nae got a record oot for Yule. Oor label ur nipping us tae sort it oot.

JB: No worries man. Put a Best Of album out.

MP: Crakin’ yin! Och hing oan, whit aboot a single tae promote it?

JB: Just knock a new track out one afternoon. That’s what we did. Any old shite will do.

MP: Aye Jimmy!

It could have happened like that! Anyway, the Wets Best Of was called “End Of Part One: Their Greatest Hits” and was a big seller over Christmas ‘93 originally peaking at No 4. The following year, the band did a Bryan Adams and were at No 1 for fifteen weeks with “Love Is All Around”. To cash in, their label Mercury added it to the album and rereleased it at which point it returned to the charts straight to No 1. As for that new track, “Shed A Tear” was duly shoved out to promote it. I have zero recall of it but it sounds like it possibly was recorded in an afternoon with band’s collective thumbs up their bums and minds in neutral. It peaked at No 22.

Watching the performance here, the front three Wets (including Marti) all have ponytails whilst the keyboard player looks like he’s trying to grow his hair to catch up but his naturally curly locks are hampering his endeavour. Drummer Tommy Cunningham looked the same as he ever did and continues to do so to this day. Maybe it’s a drummer thing – Blur’s Dave Rowntree has similarly always maintained the same look.

Meatloaf still bestrides the charts like a colossus with the epic rock ballad “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)”. As with my Culture Beat anecdote, I’ve told this story before but the big guy’s at No 1 for weeks yet so I’m having to resort to recycling. My mate Robin has a friend who is a musician who has toured with the likes of Westlife. His own band was booked to play at the wedding of one John Hartson, the ex-professional footballer and now pundit. His best man was one of my footballing heroes, ex-Chelsea striker Kerry Dixon. Apparently the drinks flowed and everybody over indulged…including the groom. So pissed was Hartson that when Robin’s friend’s band finished their set, Hartson asked them to play one more song, especially for his new wife. The song Hartson chose to dedicate to her was Meatloaf’s “Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad” the lyrics of which include:

I want you, I need you, there ain’t no way I’m ever gonna love you

Now don’t be sad, ‘cause two out of three ain’t bad
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Jim Steinman
Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad lyrics © Carlin America Inc, Warner Chappell Music, Inc

Oh…my…God.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	The Time Frequency	Real Love ’93	Never happening
2	Mariah Carey	Hero	Nah
3	Aerosmith	Cryin’	Nope
4	Pauline Henry	Feel Like Making Love	I did not
5	Faith No More / Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E.	Another Body Murdered	No
6	Juliet Roberts	Free Love	Negative
7	Soul II Soul	Wish	Definitely not
8	Whitney Houston	Queen Of The Night	It’s a no
9	Culture Beat	Got To Get It	I didn’t unlike that young girl I served
10	The Shamen	The SOS EP (Comin’ On)	Like it, didn’t buy it
11	Wert Wet Wet	Shed A Tear	No. not a patch on their earlier work
12	Meatloaf	I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)	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/m001dzyf/top-of-the-pops-04111993

TOTP 05 AUG 1993

Posted on September 28, 2022 by 80stastic

I started the previous post talking about the poor state of the BBC’s musical output in 1993 and the landscape altering changes that were coming to both Radio 1 and TOTP. Well, one of them has just happened ahead of schedule. Radio 1 DJ and pretty much the embodiment of the comedy characters Smashie and Nicey Dave Lee Travis resigned on air three days after this TOTP aired. Apparently he was due to leave the station in ten weeks time anyway when his contract ran out but so irate was the ‘Hairy Cornflake’ about what was going on in the corridors of power at the station that he chose to have his own little private or rather very public moment of venting.

“…and I really want to put the record straight at this point and I thought you ought to know – changes are being made here which go against my principles and I just cannot agree with them”
“Profile: Dave Lee Travis”. Aircheck Tracker. Archived from the original on 22 October 2009. Retrieved 13 November 2008.

DLT was referring to the changes being ushered in by new controller in waiting Matthew Bannister that would lead to a massive overhaul of the station and its presenters. Simon Bates, Gary Davies, Alan Freeman, Bob Harris and Paul Gambaccini would follow him out of the door soon after. Eventually even Steve Wright whom Bannister had put on the breakfast show slot would resign* ushering in the era of the self styled saviour of Radio 1 Chris Evans. Heaven help us.

*Writing this coincidentally on the day of Steve Wright’s last ever afternoon show on Radio 2

TOTP would undergo its own major transformation a few months on from the comings and goings at Radio 1 but for the moment it was business as usual. Let’s see who was doing the rounds this week…

Well, there’s Juliet Roberts opening the show with her single “Caught In The Middle” for starters. Long before this hit, Juliet had a gig on a TV show called Rockschool. Nothing to do with Jack Black, it was a BBC programme that ran for four years and showed viewers techniques for making rock and pop music using guitar, keyboards, bass, drums etc.

I don’t remember this at all but by the comments against some of the clips on YouTube, the 80s kids loved it. It did have some pretty big names appear on the show such as Gary Moore, Vince Clarke, The Communards and Midge Ure. The presenters were pretty wooden but they were good musicians. Guitarist Deirdre Cartwright in the thumbnail below had been in a band called Painted Lady who would go on to become Girlschool. Play the opening song in the clip below. It sounds like prog-poppers It Bites who knew their way around a tune or two…

The clip below features Juliet (1:56) talking about singing styles. She also co-hosted a Channel 4 show called Solid Soul that was basically a retooling of America’s Soul Train.

All that work in front of the camera should have made her TOTP appearance here a doddle. She looks pretty confident for sure and nice to see an almost totally female backing band behind her (I think the drummer is a bloke). The 1993 trend of the tall hat started by Linda Perry of 4 Non Blondes carries on with Juliet’s choice of headgear. Top (hat) stuff.

What on earth is going on here?! Daniel O’Donnell on TOTP?! At a time when Matthew Bannister was lurking the corridors of Radio 1 on a dinosaur hunt to turn the station back to its original raison d’être of being for ‘young listeners’, what was the natural successor to Val Doonican doing on the BBC’s prime time pop music show?! Bizarre doesn’t begin to cover it. Even host Mark Franklin sounds surprised when he introduces him.

Look, I know Daniel O’Donnell has a massively loyal fan base who swear by him and he wasn’t doing any harm by giving them what they wanted to hear but in terms of the symbiosis between the BBC’s two main musical arms, it seemed like an outlier at best. To put it into context, it wouldn’t be long before Radio 1 Head of Production Trevor Dann would ban Status Quo records from being played on the station.

“Whatever Happened To Old Fashioned Love” was only O’Donnell’s fourth single release and he would only ever release eighteen in a fourteen year period fifteen of which would make the UK Top 40. Albums were a different matter altogether. Check out these numbers:

Studio albums: 38
Compilation albums: 13
Live albums: 4

Wow! That’s a lot of Daniel O’Donnell! Big props by the way to the floor managers for this show for getting the studio audience to scream at Daniel as if he was a member of Take That.

The Madonna video for “Rain” again?! This is the third time in four weeks! And it was a non-mover this week (albeit within the Top 10)! Overkill much? It would get no higher despite all this exposure. I said in a recent post that you only had to look at the fact that all five singles from the “Erotica” album made the Top 10 in the UK as evidence that she was still current, popular and relevant at this time. However, what I didn’t say was that four of them (the four consecutive releases after the title track) failed to make the Top 5, the first time that had ever happened. She wouldn’t have another No 1 record until “Frozen” five years later.

One place higher than Madonna we find Urban Cookie Collective with “The Key The Secret” and unlike her Madgesty, they are on the up. Their ride up the charts so far has been as follows:

40 – 29 – 20 – 11 – 6

They would rise to No 2 the following week where they would stay for two weeks kept off the top spot by Freddie Mercury. It would then spend the next three weeks inside the Top 10 and a further three inside the Top 40 before finally dropping out.

The other day the tweet below appeared on my timeline:

Mental note to oneself – when in office don’t randomly pipe up ‘I’ve got the secret’ when someone says, ‘I’ve got the key.’ It leads to confused looks and questions about what secret you know. Not everyone has song lyrics from 1993 still playing in their head.
— Lucy Mitchell (@LucyMitchAuth) September 27, 2022

The replies to Lucy’s tweet showed that there were loads of us with similar lines from songs that we pull out automatically given the correct prompt. Mine and my wife’s include “(Hey You) The Rock Steady Crew” by Rock Steady Crew and “Fresh” by Kool And The Gang. Within the replies to Lucy’s tweet, someone managed to get in another 1993 reference:

At a wedding once and a bridesmaid stands to do a reading entitled ‘What is Love?’ To which my husband whispers ‘baby don’t hurt me’ I don’t think our row heard any of the reading
— Bronagh (@BristowBronagh) September 28, 2022

The well worn tale of soap star to pop idol has another chapter. How many had already made that transformation by August 1993? Well, off the top of my head there’s Kylie and Jason obviously, Kylie’s sister Dannii, Craig McLachlan, Stefan Dennis (!) and that’s just from Neighbours. If we look closer to home, we find perhaps where this whole phenomenon began with another resident of the aforementioned Albert Square. Seven years prior to this, Anita Dobson took “Anyone Can Fall In Love” into the Top 5 starting a flurry of EastEnders chancing their arms as pop sensations. Nick Berry, Letitia Dean and Paul Medford, Sophie Lawrence all had hits of varying size whilst there were also some feeble failures from the likes of Tom Watt and Peter Dean. None of them though seemed to have the credibility that Michelle Gayle had.

She’d been on our screens as Hattie Tavernier for over three years by this point but left Albert Square to pursue a pop career full time. Her debut single was “Looking Up” and it was no crappy cover version designed to deliver a one-off hit. I could imagine someone like Dina Carroll, Kim Appleby or even Louise post Eternal performing it. An uplifting, catchy chorus aligned with a well placed one word sample (‘Rejoice!’), it sounded current and relevant and well…on the money for 1993. Michelle herself displays no signs of imposter syndrome in her confident TOTP turn but then this wasn’t her debut musical performance…

https://youtu.be/e1e9mDIar0I

Go to 18:25

Fresh ‘n’ Fly there wrekkin’ the mike (PSYCHE!). “Looking Up” made No 11 (not quite the Top 3 that host Mark Franklin predicted then) and its success was enough to convince Michelle and her label RCA that she should quit EastEnders to be a full time pop star. She would go on to have seven Top 40 hits (including her most well known tune “Sweetness”) and recorded two albums before leaving RCA to sign with EMI where she was the victim of an artist rostering reshuffle and never released any recordings with them. She has returned to music periodically with a second place finish in 2003’s Reborn In The USA retro music contest and even had a go at Eurovision in 2008.

They’ve dropped the number of Breakers from five to four this week (thank god!) and we start with a collaboration between two artists at either end of the alphabet. Aswad and Yazz were at school together Mark Franklin tells us and they looked each other up again to record a cover of Ace’s 1975 hit “How Long”. We’ve seen the cover version as career revitaliser strategy countless times before but both Aswad and Yazz’s fortunes certainly needed a tonic in 1993. Neither had managed a hit in three years and in the case of Yazz especiall, her career was a mess. After the huge success of “The Only Way Is Up” and the “Wanted” album at the end of the 80s, she’d record two albums for two different labels neither of which was released. “How Long” was the lead single from her third LP attempt that did see the light of day but “One On One” disappeared without trace leaving only that Ace cover to remind us of Yazz’s name. It would be her final chart hit when it peaked at No 31. Aswad though would score a Top 5 hit with “Shine” the following year. They were in the news for tragic reasons recently when founding member Drummie Zeb died aged just 62.

Next a huge dance hit from The Goodmen or is it The Good Men or is it Chocolate Puma or even Zki & Dobre? Confused? Well, these were just a few of the names that Dutch DJ and production duo René ter Horst and Gaston Steenkist went by. Not names that roll off the tongue naturally – that may explain the aliases. If their real names aren’t familiar then their tune “Give It Up” surely is to anybody frequenting the club scene around this time as it was huge. An African rhythm combined with that regimented drum sound was ubiquitous and led to it being a global hit especially in the US where it topped the dance chart. So massive was it that it crossed over into the mainstream and became a No 5 hit on the UK Top 40. Given its success, it’s rather surprising that it was never shown on TOTP again. Maybe they didn’t know what to do with it. Its impact led to it being sampled two years later by Simply Red for their No 1 hit “Fairground” but let’s not go there eh?

https://youtu.be/s3YGonwsQuI

Talking of No 1 records, here comes a future one courtesy of Culture Beat and “Mr Vain”. This lot were yet more Eurodance chart botherers and as they will be chart toppers shortly, I’ll keep my comments about them in this brief Breakers appearance…well…brief. Here’s a nice little bit of pop trivia for now though. “Mr Vain” was the first record to got o No 1 in the UK that wasn’t released on 7’’ vinyl.

Bon Jovi complete this week’s Breakers with the fourth single from their “Keep The Faith” album. Was “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” just a rewrite of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”? Bit harsh but then the band have incorporated the Stones song into their composition when performing it live so there must be some similarities structure wise. The black and white promo video features a number of scenes clearly meant as a tribute to / stolen directly from A Hard Day’s Night and also Jim Morrison’s grave in Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris. I went there once and there are some incredible figures from history buried within it. Chopin, Edith Piaf, Marcel Proust, Oscar Wilde…and yet all anybody seemed interested in was the singer of The Doors. I saw many hand made signs saying ‘This way to Jim’ and at his actual grave, someone had laid not flowers but a nicely rolled joint. It’s what he would have wanted.

“I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” peaked at No 17.

This week’s live by satellite performance is by UB40 and comes from the Garden State Arts Centre, New Jersey. It’s another pointless exercise as the only camera angle we get is of the band performing “Higher Ground” on a two level stage. Completely dull. Also completely dull was their song which was the second single from the “Promises And Lies” album.

This was a very commercially successful time for UB40. As Mark Franklin says, they’d just had a No 1 single in “(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With You” and the album was also a chart topper. By my reckoning, this was also the last really successful era of the band. There had been a few during their career – the heady days of their politically powerful first hits like “One In Ten”, their covers period of “Labour Of Love” and “Red Red Wine”, the chart topping collaboration with Chrissie Hynde on “I’ve Got You Babe” and then this 1993 spell. “Higher Ground” was a bit of a stinker though.

This episode of TOTP became ‘The UB40 Show’ by be end of it with Ali Campbell introducing the next act who was actually one of their mates. Bitty McLean was a tape operator at the band’s recording studio originally – the reggae Rick Astley then – before being promoted to co-producer and engineer for them. He even provided backing vocals for some of the “Promises And Lies” album. His debut single was a cover of a 1961 Fats Domino tune “It Keeps Rainin” which he retitled “It Keeps Rainin’ (Tears From My Eyes)” presumably much to the annoyance of the TOTP graphics team.

I hated this as it was just more evidence to me of what a terrible year for music 1993 was turning out to be. Plastic reggae with a ragga style shout out at the start of it just to jump on that bandwagon. Horrible. As always, I was in the minority and the record soared to No 2 in the charts. Bitty would have a total of seven UK Top 40 hits.

A fourth and final week at the top of the heap for Take That with “Pray”. They needn’t have worried though as it was the first of eight No 1 singles in the first part of their career. They will be back in a few weeks with “Relight My Fire” accompanied by the dreadful Lulu.

dsfghjk

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Juliet Roberts	Caught In The Middle	Nope
2	Daniel O’Donnell	Whatever Happened To Old Fashioned Love	As if
3	Madonna	Rain	No
4	Urban Cookie Collective	The Key The Secret	I did not
5	Michelle Gayle	Looking Up	Negative
6	Aswad and Yazz	How Long	Nah
7	The Goodmen	Give It Up	No thanks
8	Culture Beat	Mr Vain	Never happening
9	Bon Jovi	I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead	No but I had a promo copy of the Keep The Faith album
10	UB40	Higher Ground	I did not
11	Bitty McLean	It Keeps Rainin’ (Tears From My Eyes)	Just awful – no
12	Take That	Pray	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/m001c94b/top-of-the-pops-05081993

TOTP 29 JUL 1993

Posted on September 24, 2022 by 80stastic

It’s late July 1993 and the BBC’s musical output has gone stale. The seismic changes of the TOTP ‘year zero’ revamp happened twenty-two months ago and many are no longer with us most obviously the majority of the slew of new presenters that were introduced. In fact, the only two remaining are Mark Franklin and Tony Dortie who have been presenting solo on alternate weeks since October 1992. The show’s audience has plateaued at a level of 6.5 million which was less than it was attracting pre the revamp.

Meanwhile, over at Radio 1, whilst it seems like the ‘Smashie And Nicey’ image propagated by the likes of Simon Bates, Dave Lee Travis and Gary Davies will carry on forever, change is a-comin’. The era of Matthew Bannister as controller of Radio 1 is nearly upon us and he will action a root and branch transformation that will strip away the old, rotting wood. The culture of change would prove to be contagious. Within months, TOTP would also change head producer and the incoming Ric Blaxill would reverse most of the ‘year zero’ changes. For now though, it was the calm before the storm. Let’s see who was afloat before the sea of change appeared over the horizon…

We start with an act that was having some success under the current regime but who would flourish under the new. “Unforgiven” was D:Ream’s third of four consecutive Top 40 hits in 1993 though none would get any higher than No 19. Solid but not spectacular. Come early 1994 though they would go off like a rocket with the re-release of “Things Can Only Get Better” soaring to No 1.

Like most people I’m guessing, I don’t remember “Unforgiven” but on listening back to it, I was pleasantly surprised. It’s OK. A bit more grit to it than their most famous tune, the most impressive part of it is the bridge into the chorus which Peter Cunnah almost growls – quite the feat in a dance record. Linda Perry from 4 Non Blondes seems to have started a trend for tall hat wearing given the millinery of one of the backing singers. Where will it all end? Well, I’ll tell you where it won’t end – with me making the almost obligatory reference to Professor Brian Cox on keyboards…oh shit.

“Unforgiven” peaked at No 29.

“Show Me Love” by Robin S was not just one of the biggest dance tunes of 1993 but of the whole decade and beyond. How do you follow a hit line that? Easy! Just release virtually the same song again but change its title. “Luv 4 Luv” is “Show Me Love”, not just sonically but linguistically with the same three syllable title and chorus but with a slight change of spelling. Money for old rope? This was, to reference the film maker Stanley Kubrick, money for pieces of string too short to be useful*. Even Tony Dortie can’t resist a jibe by stating tongue-in-cheek that it’s “nothing like her first single”.

*Kubrick was a massive hoarder and when his family were sorting through his estate after his death, they found a box labelled ‘pieces of string too short to be useful’. His archives now reside at the London College of Communication .

Amazingly, enough people bought the single to send it to No 11 in the UK charts. I don’t get this. Presumably if a punter liked it enough to buy “Luv 4 Luv” then said punter must have felt the same about “Show Me Love” and also bought that so essentially you have the same record twice. Surely there can’t have been people who only bought “Luv 4 Luv”?! “I wasn’t bothered about “Show Me Love” but this new one by Robin S is great and I must have it”…said no-one ever.

When Freddie Mercury died in November 1991, Queen’s most iconic song “Bohemian Rhapsody” was rereleased and almost inevitably became that year’s Xmas No 1. Four months later, The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert for AIDS Awareness took place at Wembley Stadium with the remaining members of Queen all involved. Such was Freddie’s popularity though, there was still a clamour for his recordings and so the band’s label raided his back catalogue as a solo artist. For a name as big as Freddie’s, there wasn’t actually that much solo work to raid. He only recorded two studio albums (and one of those was the “Barcelona” collaboration with Montserrat Caballé) plus the standalone single “The Great Pretender”, a couple of tracks for the Dave Clark musical Time and “Love Kills” from Giorgio Moroder’s restoration of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. That didn’t stop Parlophone coming up with the unimaginatively titled “The Freddie Mercury Album” compilation in 1992 which included elements of all those recording projects. That album had already seen the release of “In My Defence” from Time and a rerelease for the aforementioned “The Great Pretender” which had both charted.

What came next though, nearly two years after Freddie’s death, was a surprise. A posthumous No1 record with a single that had stumbled to a peak of No 50 when originally released eight years prior? How did that happen? Well, it was all down to a team of remixers called The No More Brothers who took the track “Living On My Own” which had been on Freddie’s 1985 solo debut album “Mr Bad Guy” and that 1992 compilation and turned it into a dance hit. A chart topper all over Europe including the UK, it was a sales sensation. Me though, I didn’t get it. I hadn’t been aware of the 1985 original but this 1993 version didn’t make me want to seek it out. It just sounded so bland and I hated the lines ‘Dee do de de, Dee do de de, I don’t have no time for no monkey business”. What?! Written down, the first part looks like a script for a Harry Enfield’s The Scousers sketch whilst the monkey business bit was just hackneyed. How was this a No 1 record? The video is the same one used for the 1985 release and uses footage of Freddie’s 39th birthday party in Munich where he recorded the “Mr Bad Guy” album.

The general perception amongst the fanbase of Manic Street Preachers is that their second album “Gold Against The Soul” is also their worst. There is also an agreed opinion that the one stand out track on it is “La Tristesse Durera” which was released as its second single. I disagree on both counts. I love this album and though “La Tristesse Durera” is a fabulous track, it’s not my favourite from it. That honour switches between “Roses In The Hospital” and “Life Becoming A Landslide” on a regular basis.

Actually, I need to correct myself here and give the song its full title which is “La Tristesse Durera (Scream To A Sigh)”. No brackets, no points. I make this clarification not just for the sake of accuracy nor to be a pedant but to highlight a peculiar oddity about the track that has a tie in with another song I love that has brackets in the title. For some reason, when released in the US, the the song’s title was changed to “Scream To Sigh (La Tristesse Durera)”. Why? I have no idea but nearly a decade earlier, The Icicle Works’ single “Birds Fly (Whisper To A Scream)” had its title changed to “Whisper To A Scream (Birds Fly)” for the US market. What was it about US record labels and brackets and the word ‘scream’?

As for the performance here, would there have been outrage at Nicky Wire wearing a dress? There shouldn’t have been. It’s not as if we hadn’t seen it before. There was Bowie on the cover of his “The Man Who Sold The World” album and that bloke from Mud who wore one on the actual show.

“La Tristesse Durera (Whisper To A Scream)” peaked at No 22.

“Live from the Dominion Theatre in London’s West End…” Don’t get too excited it’s just Craig McLachlan in a revival of Grease the Musical and I have to say that, based on this short clip of “You’re The One That I Want” he doesn’t seem too convincing as Danny Zuko. Maybe it’s his curly hair, or his average singing voice or maybe it’s just that he’s not John Travolta which is not his fault of course. Debbie Gibson on the other hand belts it out and wears that iconic leather outfit well.

As Tony Dortie says, the cast included Shane Richie who played the role of Kenickie but as for him being “very funny” – if he performed anything like he did when on 3–2–1 in 1987…Perhaps he should have changed his name to Shame Richie…

Five Breakers again this week (bastards!) starting with Juliet Roberts and “Caught In The Middle”. I had no idea at the time but this wasn’t Juliet’s first Top 40 record – she was the vocalist on “It’s Over” by Funk Masters way back in 1983. She then joined smooth jazzers Working Week whose single “I Thought I’d Never See You Again” I quite liked though nobody else seemed to much when it peaked at No 80. Fast forward eight years and Juliet finally had a hit in her own right.

There’s a couple of parallels between Juliet and Shara Nelson who was on the show the other week. Both were having success under their own names after supplying the vocals for other artists (Shara sang on Massive Attack’s “Unfinished Sympathy”) and both were on the Cooltempo label. Also like Shara, Juliet’s solo career seemed to peter out rather. “Caught In The Middle” made No 24 though a David Morales remix the following year peaked ten places higher. A couple more Top 20 singles followed before the decade was out but that didn’t translate into album sales with her debut long player “Natural Thing” only making No 65. She continues to be in demand as a backing singer though.

The first of two huge stars now who are experiencing a drop off in singles sales as their latest offerings fail to tempt UK record buyers. After her last single “That’s The Way Love Goes” went to No 2 over here, Janet Jackson might have expected the follow up to perform similarly. It didn’t. “If” was the second single from her “Janet” album which I thought was meant to be a more smooth, sensual sounding soul record but this single could have been on the more strident previous album “Rhythm Nation 1814” with its hard beats and rock guitar riff. Yes, the lyrics aligned with the album’s sexual theme touching on fantasy and voyeurism but sonically it was nothing like the previous single.

The video plays on the voyeurism subject with scenes involving touch screen monitors and web cams, seemingly jumping on the bandwagon of Sliver, the erotic thriller starring Sharon Stone that was popular at the time. Maybe the racy video worked against the single’s commercial potential – was it too racy for anything other than a short Breaker spot on TOTP? Whatever the reason, “If” only made it to No 14 in the UK.

Oh crap! It’s “River Of Dreams” by Billy Joel. Now I like Billy and some of his back catalogue (especially the earlier stuff) is great. Even his last album prior to this (“Storm Front”) had some good singles on it. This track though rivalled “Uptown Girl” for sheer, undiluted awfulness. The title track off his only studio album of the 90s and the last to be comprised of pop songs*, it was and remains shockingly bad.

*His 2001 set “Fantasies & Delusions” contained only classical compositions.

Not everyone agreed with my assessment though. It was a huge global hit and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Record of the Year for 1994 losing out to, by coincidence, the next artist to feature on the Breakers. Why couldn’t I stand it? It was just so twee and I hated that harmonised intro that goes “In the middle of the…I go walking in the…”. I think ultimately though it reminds me of a time when I wasn’t that happy at work but that’s for a post in the near future.

Long after I’d finished working in record shops and stopped listening to Radio 1, I found myself at the radio home for the newly middle aged and listening to Terry Wogan’s breakfast show and he used to play this constantly. It nearly broke me.

“River Of Dreams” peaked at No 3.

Now to that second artist (alongside Janet Jackson) suffering an unexpected downturn in sales of their latest single and also the winner of that 1994 Grammy for Record of the Year. “Run To You” was the fourth single released by Whitney Houston from The Bodyguard soundtrack and was basically a retread of the third single “I Have Nothing” in that they were both towering ballads executed with precision by Whitney over a shiny production. So similar were they that Natalie Cole performed a medley of them at the 1993 Academy Awards (I’m guessing Whitney was indisposed).

Presumably due to the fact that the so many people already had the song due to buying the soundtrack album, “Run To You” failed to work itself into a sprint up the charts peaking at No 15 in the UK and No 31 in the US.

The video looks a bit crap by today’s high CGI standards with Whitney running against a backdrop of clouds although maybe it was a homage to the film of the aforementioned Grease when Danny and Sandy’s car takes off into the sky and they fly off into the clouds?

Neither “Run To You” nor Janet Jackson’s “If” were shown in full on TOTP which you maybe wouldn’t have expected for two such huge names.

Another huge name who had already had her video shown in full on the show is the final Breaker this week. Madonna is up to No 7 with “Rain” from her “Erotica” album. The tickets Tony Dortie refers to are for the two concert dates in September that Madonna played at Wembley Stadium as part of her The Girlie Show world tour.

“Rain” ended the first act of the show and was interspersed with “Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me)” by The Temptations and “Singin’ In The Rain”. Want to hear it? Here you go but having sat through the whole thing myself, I must warn you that you won’t get these 9 minutes and 48 seconds of your life back…

Back in the studio we find Dannii Minogue performing her rendition of Melba Moore’s “This Is It”. You know I said earlier about Juliet Roberts being an in demand backing singer after her solo career ended? Well, she must have been moonlighting back in 1993 as she provided backing vocals on Dannii’s previous single to “This Is It” which was called “Love’s On Every Corner”.

Twenty years after she had a hit with “This Is It”, the track supplied the title for a Best Of Dannii album which included a duet with sister Kylie of the ABBA standard “The Winner Takes It All” – I wonder which of the two of them that was then?

“This Is It” peaked at No 10.

https://youtu.be/2BkYJ5g8kE4

There’s only one Bee Gees song I remember from 1993 and it ain’t this one. “For Whom The Bell Tolls” was a surprise Top 5 hit over Xmas that year that just seemed to keep on selling even when you thought it must have run out of steam. “Paying The Price Of Love” though? Nah, I’ve got nothing. Their previous hit to this had been the shameless rewrite of “Chain Reaction” that was “Secret Love” in 1991. Did this one sound like any of their other songs? A slight hint of “You Win Again” maybe? Maybe not.

Barry Gibbs’ falsetto here is quite remarkable. That’s not a compliment though – a better descriptor would be ridiculous. I know it works somehow on most of their back catalogue especially their disco era peak but taken in isolation it’s quite mad. If he turned up on a talent show like The Voice for example and did that, would the judges turn around or would they look at each other and break out into a fit of uncontrollable giggling? What if they did turn around and then saw his mane of hair?! I can only really think of Barry Gibb and Queen’s Brian May that have always maintained the same hairstyle throughout their careers. Honourable mentions should also go to Rod Stewart and Paul Weller for sustaining comedy haircuts but they have tweaked them down the years.

“Paying The Price Of Love” peaked at No 23.

You can’t really argue with Tony Dortie’s assessment that Take That were “simply the biggest pop band in the UK” at this time as “Pray” notches up a third week at No 1. The boys are back in the studio this week and what I’m noticing from this performance is the clear division of hairstyles between them (and yes, I know I seem to be obsessed with pop star barnets yet again this week). Mark, Howard and Robbie all have that classic mid 90s long at the the sides curtains style while Jason and Gary have a more classic crew cut. I think I know which has aged the better.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	D:Ream	Unforgiven	Nope
2	Robin S	Luv 4 Luv	Never
3	Freddie Mercury	Living On My Own	I did not
4	Manic Street Preachers	La Tristesse Durera (Scream To A Sigh)	Not the single but I had the album
5	Craig McLachlan and Debbie Gibson	You’re The One That I Want	No
6	Juliet Roberts	Caught In the Middle	Negative
7	Janet Jackson	If	Nah
8	Billy Joel	River Of Dreams	Hell no!
9	Whitney Houston	Run To You	No thanks
10	Madonna	Rain	It’s a no
11	Dannii Minogue	This Is It	No it isn’t
12	Bee Gees	Paying The Price Of Love	I didn’t pay the price
13	Take That	Pray	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/m001c948/top-of-the-pops-29071993

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