We’re in mid January 1999 and Christmas is long gone and well behind us. The release schedules have woken up and been reactivated so there are some ‘new’ songs on tonight alongside some of the older hits that are still knocking about the charts which executive producer Chris Cowey doesn’t seem able to let go of. To that end, two of the first artists on tonight both featured in the last show. Indeed, they were the first two songs in that episode from seven days prior. As Men At Work once sang – “it’s just overkill”. Anyway, Kate Thornton is our host and we start with “End Of The Line” by the Honeyz. This was its third appearance on the show and this performance was just a repeat showing of the previous week’s. Having said that, it was a very hardy hit spending five weeks inside the Top 10 including the busy festive period when singles can get swept away in the Christmas rush. With nothing much else to say about this one, I looked to the internet for inspiration and found a piece online that talked about the purple outfits the group are wearing here which they also donned in the video. The article says:

“…the purple overcoats, which were low-key iconic in that they never permeated popular culture but remain a recognisable visual reference point within the Honeyz’ narrative.”

Paul Begaud – cantstopthepop.com – Dec 2020

Look, I’m no expert on the Honeyz so I should defer to Paul but, on the other hand, really?! Iconic?! They were purple overcoats not Geri Halliwell’s Union Jack dress!

The mid to late 90s fascination with the disco era of the Bee Gees was quite a thing. Seriously though, look at all of these hits that were either cover versions or featured samples of the Gibb brothers’ work around that period:

• “How Deep Is Your Love” – Take That – 1996
• “Words” – Boyzone – 1996
• “Stayin’ Alive” – N-Trance – 1995
• “We Trying To Stay Alive” – Wyvlef Jean – 1997
• “Night Fever” – Adam Garcia – 1998
• “More Than A Woman” – 911 – 1998
• “Tragedy” – Steps – 1998

The trend continued apace in early 1999 with the highest chart entry of the week – “You Should Be…” by Blockster. This was a vehicle for DJ, producer and remixer Brandon Block whose career had seen him play all the ‘super clubs’ such as Up Yer Ronson, Ministry Of Sound and Republica. In 1999, he became a chart star with this reworking of the Bee Gees classic “You Should Be Dancing”. Given the glut of Bee Gees hits at the time, it doesn’t seem a very inventive concept but I guess he executed it pretty well. He’s the guy on the turntables (obviously) who looks a bit like The Apprentice reject, Strictly Come Dancing loser and JD Vance hanger on Thomas “Bosh” Skinner. However, for some of us non-dance heads, he is best known for this incident at the BRITS 2000…

Supposedly he was off his face and was convinced by the friends he was with that he had won an award and that he should go and collect it on stage. Ah, we’ve all been there. For instance, I was once on holiday in New York and found myself in a bar called The Slaughtered Lamb, a horror-themed bar in Greenwich Village. It had props like caged skeletons and werewolves. I’d had a few (OK, a lot!) and my friend Robin convinced me that the werewolf figure had blood dripping down its face and that I should report it to the bar staff. So I did. The woman behind the bar dismissed me like the fool I was whilst Robin and the rest of our group guffawed.

Anyway, Brandon Block seemed to learn from his public embarrassment and in 2009 agreed to take part in an anti-drugs campaign for the government. He followed that up by working with Blenheim the London drug and alcohol treatment service as a project worker and has also been employed by the NHS, working with people who have multiple complex needs. He currently works as a Stress Management and Goal Mapping Coach with people suffering from mental health issues.

Here’s that other hit that was on just last week from Bryan Adams and Melanie C. I’ve got nothing left to say about “When You’re Gone” so I’m going to shamelessly pinch a story from a podcast I’ve discovered called the Eighties Archive Podcast. It’s basically two fellas talking about 80s music but not the obvious stuff. They interview people from back then who may or may not have had hit records and it’s actually very engaging mainly because of their enthusiasm for the period. So you might get say, Leigh Gorman from Bow Wow Wow who was brilliant or Richard Jobson of The Skids and The Armoury Show (again brilliant) or some bloke who used to be in Roman Holliday (not so brilliant). Anyway, in their latest show, one of the presenters told a tale of how he was working in the Our Price store in the Lakeside shopping centre in 1991 at Christmas when all the punters seemed to want to buy was “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen (rereleased after Freddie Mercury’s death and that year’s festive No 1) and “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You” by Bryan Adams. So fed up was the presenter with this situation that, fuelled by the bravado of youth (him and his mates thought they owned the shop), he started shouting at people that they didn’t have any more Bryan Adams singles. One customer took offence and said “You’re meant to be a record shop” to which the presenter replied “And you’re meant to have taste!” and flicked him the V’s! Scandalous behaviour that was witnessed by an Area Manager on a store visit which led to the presenter being sacked and quite right too. The moral of the story? Don’t disrespect Bryan Adams…nor flick the V’s at a customer when working in a shop.

A classic case of a record label indulging in careful release scheduling now. Ultra had bounded into the charts the previous year with their debut hit “Say You Do” landing at No 11. However, subsequent hits had seen diminishing returns at play so another big hit was required. The best way to do that? Release a single – “Rescue Me” – when it doesn’t take as many sales to get you up the higher end of the charts of course – early to mid January. Then you double down by copying the sound of somebody else’s recent huge hit – in this case Savage Garden – and bingo! Your boy band has a Top 10 single. Beware though. The effects of a reviving January hit will wear off fairly quickly and you’ll be left with that underlying cause of discomfort which is the absolute knowledge that your charges are, in fact, worthless crud and you’ll have to accept the truth that they are going nowhere. Which is exactly what happened to Ultra who were never seen nor hear from again after this hit. Hurray!

Oh this is just taking the piss now! Why is Chris Cowey showing a performance from four months ago of “Millennium” by Robbie Williams? I suggested in a recent post that the reason behind a repeat showing of him doing “No Regrets” was because he’s Robbie Williams and I stand by that given the decision to re-show this. Just as Jamie Theakston had eulogised about him in his intro the other week, so Kate Thornton bangs on about how everyone loves Robbie including her and her Mum! Cowey justifies the clip’s inclusion in the show by tying it to the fact that his second album “I’ve Been Expecting You” is at No 1 (which was true) but it does rather feel like it was shoe-horning it into the show. Anyway, I’m not about to comment on this one again so here’s what I wrote about it in the 18 Sep 1998 show:

TOTP 18 SEP 1998

And the 28 Aug show:

TOTP 28 AUG 1998

What the Hell is this? Why was Cowey encouraging presenter Kate Thornton to engage with the artists ‘backstage’ in some horribly cringeworthy interactions (they don’t qualify as interviews) that weren’t funny, entertaining nor worthwhile. There have been numerous attempts to spice up the format over the years by conversing with the artists or sometimes just celebrity guests and I can’t think of one that has ever worked. Moving on…

And yet another 70s disco era song revived in the late 90s. At least this one wasn’t a Bee Gees tune. After Blockster earlier comes Da Click, a UK garage group on the FFRR label, who took Chic’s anthem “Good Times”, added a load of rapping all over it, interpolated the vocals from Luther Vandross’ “Never Too Much”, called it “Good Rhymes” and had a No 14 hit with it. The words ‘Yankee Doodle’, ‘feather’ and ‘macaroni’ come to mind. It’s not big and it’s not clever. It also wasn’t any good. I always got this lot confused with Da Hool who is a German DJ and producer. I think my confusion is understandable which is more than I can say about Da Click’s decision to record this rubbish. It gets worse. Two years later, one of Da Click’s number – DJ Pied Piper – was responsible for one of the worst No 1 records ever – the execrable 2-step garage ‘anthem’ “Do You Really Like It?”.

There have been a few very famous Justins in the world of music. Justin Timberlake, Justin Bieber, Justin Hawkins of The Darkness but before all of them came simply Justin. Only 15 years old here, this kid became a name after appearing in a BBC TV show called The Fame Game which followed the hopes and aspirations of young people wanting to be stars. Off the back of it, Justin (Osuji) would have a small Top 40 hit with a cover of “This Boy” by The Beatles. The follow up was “Over You”, a nothing ballad with the most ridiculous opening lines ever given to a 15 year old boy to sing who sounds like his voice hasn’t broken yet…

“I′ve had many many setbacks, misendeavours in my life

But it’s never gotten to me, all that trouble and my strife”

Writer(s): Cody Miller, Justin Stokes, Laurel Tessa Mahoney, Miranda Leigh Berdahl, James Colter Schaffner, Zach Inmon Walker

“Many, many setbacks”? By the age of 15? Now, of course, some kids have had terrible lives by that point and witnessed some awful things but in the context of trying to sell a love song to a TV audience, it just doesn’t seem authentic. Thankfully I don’t remember “Over You” at all. The only one of his that springs to mind is a cover of “Let It Be Me” by The Everly Brothers in early 2000 which would be Justin’s last Top 40 hit. Although his original pop career would end there, Justin would reinvent himself as Sonny J Mason working as a singer-songwriter and producer, collaborating with the likes of Craig David, Sugababes and So Solid Crew whilst also releasing his own solo recordings.

Yes! Finally! A great track gets its just deserts! Although it maybe felt unexpected that Fat Boy Slim was at No 1, it probably shouldn’t have done. After all, “Praise You” wasn’t the first chart topper he’d been involved with. As part of The Housemartins, he’d just missed out on being the Christmas No 1 by a week in 1986 with “Caravan Of Love” and at the very start of the 90s, his Beats International vehicle rose to the summit with “Dub Be Good To Me”. Then, of course, his Fat Boy Slim persona had already delivered him two big hits in 1998 with “The Rockefeller Skank” and “Gangster Trippin” so the writing had been on the wall for us all to read. And yet I do recall being slightly taken aback that he’d done it again in 1999 despite the quality of the track.

I’m not going to list all the source material that Norman Cook sampled to create “Praise You” – all that information is available via a quick search of the internet and in any case, I don’t know any of the originals at all so I can’t see the point in referencing them. What I do know is that he created an almost perfect dance track that had that curious, undefinable quality of being able to cross over into the mainstream. How did he do it? Musical genius? Pure luck? Cosmic forces at work causing the stars to align? If the answer was that obvious we’d all be raiding our record collections and looking to put together a patchwork of sounds that shouldn’t go together but somehow do. Something else that shouldn’t have worked but did was the promo video. Yes, that one. Directed by and starring Spike Jonze, it had the effect upon first viewing of making the audience exclaim “What the f**k was that?” so amateurish and so bizarre looking was it. Its protagonists, the fictional Torrance Community Dance Group, essentially invented the ‘flash mob’ phenomenon when filming the chaotic dance routines unannounced at the Fox Bruin Theater in Los Angeles. Indeed so low were its production values (the whole thing only cost $800 to make) that MTV refuses to air it initially until Cook advised them that it was supposed to look like that. It would go on to win three MTV Video Music Awards making their initial stance look ludicrous.

A small gripe though, why did we only get to see it once? Yes, it only had a solitary week at the top of the charts but that didn’t stop Chris Cowey from allowing multiple repeats of previous No 1s which were now descending the charts. Was he worried about the quality of the video as well?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Honeyz	End Of The Line	Nah
2	Blockster	You Should Be…	Negative
3	Bryan Adams / Melanie C	When You’re Gone	No
4	Ultra	Rescue Me	No thanks
5	Robbie Williams	Millennium	Nope
6	Da Click	Good Rhymes	I did not
7	Justin	Over You	Never happening
8	Fatboy Slim	Praise You	No but I 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/m002p23c/top-of-the-pops-15011999