We’ve arrived in May of 1995 here at TOTP Rewind and we know what happens in May – finals. The day before this TOTP aired, Arsenal lost the European Cup Winners Cup Final to Real Zaragoza when Nayim famously lobbed Seaman (ahem) from the halfway line and a week later Everton would upset the odds to triumph over Manchester United in the FA Cup final (more of that later). And then there was the annual music final. This year’s Eurovision Song Contest took place on the Saturday following this TOTP (more of that later). Before any of that though, I bring bad news – tonight’s host is Simon ‘Smug’ Mayo. Expect a procession of oblique and unfunny references to news stories of the time that Simon thinks make him sound clever but which in fact make him look like a prick.

We begin with Supergrass and their second UK Top 40 hit “Lenny”. One of the names that always comes up when Britpop is mentioned, Gaz, Mick and Danny also suffered from being associated with one song in particular despite achieving fourteen Top 40 hits including six inside the Top 10 and two No 2s. That song is, of course, “Alright” which will be along in a few weeks on these TOTP repeats. So damaged were they by its notoriety that when I saw them live in York in 2003, they didn’t include it in the set list which seemed a bit churlish if I’m honest. For now though, they were just trying to follow up their Top 20 hit “Mansize Rooster” from the year before and did so ably with “Lenny” which made it to No 10. A muscular, driving guitar heavy track with a galloping drum backing, it’s a thrilling if short ride – we get just over two minutes worth in this performance.

Visually, I was struck by the band’s three person guitar/bass/drums set up which immediately put me in mind of that other famous UK trio The Jam. Paul Weller would never have sported Gaz Coombes’ lamb chop sideburns though. He went in for those carefully shaped side strands of hair grown from the head rather than the face that curled into a point. Very modish and a look my Weller obsessed brother would sport for years. Anyway, as I said, Supergrass will be back soon enough smoking a fag and putting it out whilst keeping their teeth nice and clean whether they like it or not.

The first Simon Mayo ‘gag’ is here – something about Rugby Union administrators. I can’t be bothered to research what he was blathering on about but fortunately here’s @TOTPFacts so I don’t have to:

Hysterical work from Mayo there. The second act tonight is Montell Jordan who is the latest (or perhaps he was the original?) to use that nah-ner-ner-nah-nah-ner-ner- nah-nah hook that also featured in MN8’s recent hit “I’ve Got A Little Something For You” and would pop up again on Peter Andre’s “Flava” a year later. “This Is How We Do It” was the first R&B release on the legendary Def Jam label and was No 1 in the US for seven weeks. It didn’t do quite as well over here peaking at No 11.

Instead of being a basketball player (he really was 6’8”), Montell chose a career in music and rather cannily came up with a tune that he himself describes as a “universal idea”. Said idea was that the chorus could apply to doing an unspecified activity by an unspecified group in an unspecified location thereby meaning the song could be adopted by anyone for any project or endeavour. As such, “This Is How We Do It” has been used in numerous films and TV shows such as Glee, The Nutty Professor, 8 Mile, Pitch Perfect 2 and Sonic The Hedgehog 2. Montell would have further hits both here and in the US though none as big as his debut hit albeit that “Let’s Ride”, his collaboration with Master P and Slikk The Shocker (no idea) made it to No 2 over the pond.

And so to the first ‘final’ reference of the night. The 1995 FA Cup final was contested by Manchester United and massive underdogs Everton. The previous year they had completed the league and cup double by beating my beloved Chelsea 4-0 in a rain soaked day at Wembley. This season though hadn’t quite gone to plan. Unfashionable Blackburn Rovers would pip them to the league title and they would lose the cup final 1-0 to Everton to finish the season trophy less for the first time in six years. I watched the cup final in a pub in Chester as a group of us were having a Poly reunion there. It was an unpleasant experience as the pub seemed to be full of horrible racist Everton fans spoiling for a fight and going around asking people who they supported. When one of them approached my mate Robin he defused the situation by replying “Carlisle United”* which totally wrong footed the thug. Just as well he wasn’t as well versed about Carlisle as Eric Morecambe:

*Robin does actually support Carlisle United by the way

Anyway, as it was the cup final, back in the 90s that still meant cup final songs. United’s was officially credited to Manchester United 1995 Football Squad featuring Stryker and was called “We’re Gonna Do It Again”. Unlike last year’s execrable effort with Status Quo*, this time they went rap-tastic with this Stryker character. I’d never heard of him before and nobody else has heard from him since it seems. The fact that United lost the cup final meant that there would not only be no repeat of last season’s glory on the pitch but also the chance of another No 1 record was gone as well with “We’re Gonna Do It Again” peaking at No 6.

*Having said that, the bit that goes “again, again, again” does remind me of Quo’s “Down, Down”.

Next something that goes beyond even the realms of novelty offered up by the genre of the football song. How the hell did jazz scatting get into the charts?! Scatman John was John Larkin, a jazz pianist from LA who suffered from a stutter which had blighted his childhood but which he found didn’t hamper him from scat singing – the art of vocal improvisation to turn the voice into an instrument. Now I can’t really be doing with jazz of the freeform kind and don’t understand at all the appeal of an artist like Dame Cleo Laine so just adding some house beats and a bit of rapping to jazz scatting was never, ever going to win me over. What a racket!

I wasn’t alone in my opinion. My aforementioned friend Robin did a nice send up of Scatman John on that weekend in Chester I mentioned but then I was once on holiday in New York with him where there was nearly a jazz incident. We were over there for my wife’s 30th birthday with him and our friend Susan. On the Sunday afternoon, we’d walked for miles after doing a helicopter tour of the Manhattan skyline and were in need of sustenance and a rest for our feet. After deliberating for ages about which diner or bar to go in, we finally decided on one but as we entered the chosen establishment, Robin came to an abrupt halt and said “We can’t go in there! They’re playing live jazz!”. As a consequence, we all turned around and walked out again. Even allowing for my own mistrust of jazz, the other three of us were none too impressed by Robin’s musical proclivities that day. Another group of people who disagreed with him were the record buying public who took Scatman John (the scat Gareth Gates) and his tune “Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)” to their hearts and made it a No 3 hit, despite the fact that he looks like a Chuckle Brother at the ambassador’s reception in this performance.

Who are this lot? Blessid Union Of Souls? Nope, I’ve got nothing. Their only UK hit was “I Believe” which went Top 10 in America but only made No 29 over here. Listening to it, I’m surprised it wasn’t a bigger hit. A piano led ballad with a pleasant melody and some social conscience lyrics, it reminds me of “You” by Ten Sharp. Ah yes, those lyrics. Obviously the ‘N’ word is not sung during this performance by vocalist Eliot Sloan though it’s clear that’s what the word is. Sickeningly, that word was used by one of those Everton fans I mentioned earlier in that pub in Chester whilst he was shouting about Paul Ince. All very horrible. One of the few times in my life when it made me root for Manchester United.

The second band inextricably associated with Britpop on the show tonight are Shed Seven. Having broken into the charts in 1994 with three Top 40 singles and their gold selling album “Change Giver”, 1995 saw them release just one new song – “Where Have You Been Tonight?”. The first single off sophomore album “A Maximum High”, this was the sound of a band preparing to enter the peak period of their commercial success. I’d have to say though that this track in particular didn’t quite get them there. It’s not a poor song per se but compared to what came after it, well it was a bit underwhelming and in my mind, remains a somewhat forgotten Shed Seven single. The fact that the album didn’t come out for nearly another year perhaps adds to my perception. It almost feels like a stand-alone single.

By the time “A Maximum High” appeared, Britpop, lad culture and Euro 96 were happening and Shed Seven entered Shed Heaven hits wise – no artist had more Top 40 hits in 1996 than the five the York indie rockers racked up. The BBC’s Euro 96 coverage used two of them to soundtrack some England montage pieces as the national team progressed through the tournament. It was a heady mix and a case of being in the right place at the right time for the band. They might not now where they had been tonight but they had a good idea where they were going.

The second of the ‘final’ themed songs on the show tonight now with the inevitable appearance of the UK’s Eurovision Song Contest entry. With the competition final just two days away, there was no way that Love City Groove would not have been given one last promotional push via TOTP. Whilst this may have helped propel the song “Love City Groove” up the UK charts, it had no effect on the band’s appeal at Eurovision where they trailed in a disappointing tenth place. “The experiment has failed” Terry Wogan infamously quipped. Also failing was any prospect of a career post-Eurovision for the band. Subsequent single releases failed to break the UK Top 40 and even that fail safe plan of a cover version (Fatback Band’s “I Found Lovin’”) couldn’t reverse their fortunes and the group split for good in 1996. A small part of the UK’s Eurovision history will always belong to those people who sang (and rapped) about the the sun shining in the morning though.

Here comes Celine Dion who’s attempting to follow up a huge, big ballad with…yep…a huge, big ballad. “Think Twice” topped the UK charts for seven weeks having taken an eternity to get there and would end the year as the fifth best selling single in the UK. Following that was always going to be a big ask and “Only One Road” didn’t despite the decent showing of a No 8 peak. It’s all very formulaic and power-ballad-by- numbers which Celine can do in her sleep but which was always more likely to induce zzzzs than ££££s.

The staging of this one is slightly odd. It would appear that the TOTP floor managers have shepherded every studio audience member in grey or pastel coloured clothing to stand at the front of the circle around Celine thereby making her blood red top standout even more than it does naturally. The effect resembles that scene from Schindler’s List with the little girl in the red coat during the liquidation of the Kraków ghetto. Comparing the holocaust with a pop music TV show feels offensive but I guess it does serve to demonstrate the power of that scene and its sustained effect upon me given that it can be brought to mind by even the most banal of incidents.

And so to the No 1 and it’s a third consecutive single to debut at No 1 after Take That and Oasis in recent weeks. At the time, this was only the second occurrence of such a sequence but by the end of the decade, a record going in at No 1 had become a weekly event. Widespread first week discounting by the major labels whereby CD singles were £1.99 instead of £3.99 and the cassette version 99p rather than £2.29 was the major reason behind this with punters cottoning on pretty quick to the strategy and creating huge sales in the first seven days before tailing off immediately in subsequent weeks. Was this the point when that practice started? I can’t remember for sure. Nor can I recall the exact time when record companies started to allow new releases to be delivered to stores ahead of their official release date rather than on the day they came out but I think that was maybe also a factor in driving sales with new singles hitting the ground running from 9.00 am Monday morning.

Whether these factors were in play with making Livin’ Joy the No 1 artist with “Dreamer” or not we’ll never know but No 1 they are despite this single having already been a Top 20 hit the previous Summer. After trundling along the bottom reaches of the Top 100 at the end of 1994, it suddenly crashed back into the top spot when rereleased the following May. I was never a fan of Italo House so the track didn’t do much for me. Nor did I care much for “Show Me Love” by Robin S to which it was compared so it really was a personal non-starter but its legacy is substantiated by those Best Of polls where it regularly turns up in the 90s dance varieties.

The play out track is “Can’t Stand Losing You” by The Police and when I initially saw this on the running order, I assumed it was to plug sister show TOTP2. I was wrong for this was a legitimate chart record despite it having already been a No 2 hit in 1979. How? Because this was a live version. There had never been a live album by The Police though it had been mooted twice before; once in 1982 to plug the gap between “Ghost In The Machine” and “Synchronicity” and again in 1984 after the Synchronicity tour but it was shelved in place of the 1986 “Every Breath You Take: The Singles” Best Of album. A live album finally arrived in 1995 and it was called…”Live!”. Well, it did what it said on the tin I suppose. “Can’t Stand Losing You” was chosen to promote it and made No 27 on the charts – not bad for a ‘live’ single. The original is a classic Police track which I remember my brother having I think (or maybe he taped it off the radio). The lyrics about a teenager committing suicide after losing his girlfriend are entrenched in my brain. It was kept off the top spot by “I Don’t Like Mondays by Boomtown Rats, another song with some pretty dark lyrics.

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/m001s1j2/top-of-the-pops-11051995