Mark Morrison

TOTP 19 SEP 1997

I haven’t done this for a while but I should probably check in with what I was doing back in 1997. I know, I know but I’ve spent loads of posts banging on about TOTP and the changes under Chris Cowey and then the whole Princess Diana funeral (which won’t be going away anytime soon thanks to the Elton John single) so I’m giving myself some time off to talk about what I know best – myself. This year was turning out to be pretty eventful – I’d been to China, my beloved Chelsea had finally won something and there were big changes at work. Our manager, the legendary Pete Garner, had left and, as assistant manager, I’d been left in temporary charge of the Our Price store in Stockport. Not only that but I had to oversee its conversion to a ‘live’ stock inventory system and it had all started to take a toll on me. I’d applied for the manager’s position because the staff wanted me to but I was glad not to have got it in the end as I was feeling pretty stressed anyway. The person who got the job was a lovely woman called Lisa who wound have been in post by now. I got on great with Lisa but she only stayed for one Christmas before moving on and then things really went downhill but that’s all for another time. For now, things were starting to stabilise after a few rocky months so let’s see what songs I would have been selling to the punters back then. *SPOILER ALERT* – it was mainly just one specific song!

It’s from ‘rocky’ to ‘Ricky’ as we get our first glimpse of the Puerto Rican hip swiveller Ricky Martin. Now, most of us (me at least) just know him for his No 1 song “Livin’ La Vida Loca” but that wasn’t his only hit. No, before that came “(Un Dos Tres) Maria”. I don’t remember this at all but then I hadn’t been holidaying in the Balearic Islands that Summer and so hadn’t heard it being played constantly in the clubs and bars there. Conforming to the tradition of British holidaymakers wanting to buy that song* that had soundtracked their time away, the British public duly sent it to No 6 in the UK charts.

*A tradition which stretched back as far as 1974 and “Y Viva Espana” and took in Ryan Paris, Baltimora, Sabrina and the execrable MC Miker and DJ Sven.

The track is widely recognised as igniting the whole Latin / dance crossover craze of the 90s (personally, I thought it was Gloria Estefan who did that…or was it the “Macarena”?) it seems to consist of a lot of counting to three in Spanish and that backbeat that was popularised by The Goodmen’s hit “Give It Up” and pinched by Simply Red for “Fairground”. Despite its success – it topped the chart in most South American countries as well as Australia and much of Europe – his record company weren’t keen on it initially as he’d made his name recording ballads. It would become the biggest selling Latin pop song of all time when it was remixed by the aforementioned Gloria Estefan producer Pablo Flores. Didn’t those record company executives know that any song called “Maria” was a guaranteed winner? Just ask Blondie, P. J. Proby, Santana, Tony Christie….

After witnessing her little sister Dannii return to the charts recently after a gap of three years, big sister Kylie Minogue was ready to make her own comeback. In truth, she’d been chomping at the bit for a while. Her own three years absence had only been punctuated by her unlikely murder ballad hit with Nick Cave (my own guitar class version of “Where The Wild Roses Grow” remains pretty special!) so by 1997 she was set to deliver her new sound to the world. Sadly for Kylie, there were a number of impediments stopping her from doing that. Firstly, her record label Deconstruction postponed her album’s planned release from the January to May. It was postponed again with a new date of September scheduled. With the death of Princess Diana in late August, the album’s proposed title of “Impossible Princess” caused Deconstruction to panic that it might be seen as in bad taste and so it was delayed for a further three months. Kylie herself agreed for it to be retitled eponymously to enable its release in Europe eventually in March 1998. Once finally out, it divided fans and press alike. Whilst some appreciated her attempt to reinvent herself with an album of diverse musical styles ranging from electronica to trip hop to rock, others weren’t able to accept Kylie as musical chameleon and even accused her of being a fraud. Seemingly, this was the preserve of the likes of David Bowie.

As host Jayne Middlemiss states, lead single “Some Kind Of Bliss” was written with James Dean Bradfield and Sean Moore of the Manic Street Preachers which led the music press to dub this latest incarnation of her career ‘Indie Kylie’. It was a lazy term given the disparate nature of the album but it stuck which fed the belief that Kylie was jumping (albeit belatedly) on the Britpop bandwagon – well, it had worked (sort of) for Robbie Williams after all. As for me, I liked it, certainly more than her SAW produced bubblegum pop hits of the late 80s. However, it didn’t cut much ice nor indeed through with the record buying public with its chart peak of No 22 meaning it was the first time she’d missed making the UK Top 20. There were mitigating circumstances though. It was released at the same time as Elton John’s “Candle In The Wind ‘97” which accounted for 75% of all sales that week so it was hard for any new release to make an impression. Retrospectively, this era of Kylie and its associated album has been more favourably recognised and is a favourite for a niche part of her fanbase despite its poor commercial performance. She would storm back to the top of the charts come the new millennium with No 1 hit “Spinning Around” and those hot pants but back in 1997, her future was more pants than hot.

The No 1 that never was next. In any other week in pop history, “You Have Been Loved” by George Michael would surely have topped the charts but the events in Paris on 31st August and the subsequent outpouring of grief by the nation and the release of the aforementioned Elton John single meant it was never to be. Don’t take my word for it, even Jayne Middlemiss says so in her intro. This week’s chart would break all sorts of sales records but it also provided an unusual chart quirk with the top two positions occupied in week one of sales by two artists who had also duetted on a No 1 record of their own – 1991’s “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me”.

Now this is quite strange. A band making their debut TOTP appearance nine years after they formed and seven since their debut album went Top 5. Like Garbage and Skunk Anansie, I should really know more about The Sundays and make an effort to explore their back catalogue further. I know some people who swear by them (including comedian David Baddiel who is best friends with guitarist David Gavurin) but somehow, once again, I didn’t get the memo. Formed in 1988 after Gavurin met vocalist Harriet Wheeler at Bristol University, the couple initially started writing songs for their own enjoyment rather than as a route to a career in music. However, augmented by bassist Paul Brindley and drummer Patrick Hannan, they sent out some demo tapes and became the subject of a record label bidding war, finally signing to Rough Trade. Their debut single “Can’t Be Sure” topped the indie charts and, in direct contrast to the title of their single, were assured acclaim from the music press inkies. The album “Reading, Writing And Arithmetic” followed in 1990 peaking at an impressive No 4. However, no other singles were released from it due to the collapse of Rough Trade though “Here’s Where The Story Ends” topped the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart in America. Tin Tin Out would take a dance cover of it to No 7 in 1998. The album’s jangly guitar pop sound and Wheeler’s distinctive, quirky vocals and the fact that it was unavailable following Rough Trade’s demise for years helped create a myth around the band. That and their devotion to musical perfection and a low public profile. They eventually reappeared in 1992 with sophomore album “Blind” (having signed to Parlophone Records) and were rewarded with a No 15 chart peak and more sold out shows though it wasn’t received as well as their debut in the music press. Yet again, singles weren’t forthcoming – only minor hit “Goodbye” appeared in the UK. I’m beginning to understand why they’d never been on TOTP before now.

Gavurin and Wheeler stepped back from music following “Blind” to start a family before resurfacing in 1997 with their third and so far final album “Static & Silence”. It would continue their run of success by going Top 10. I had a promo copy of it but I’m not sure I ever played it (call myself a music fan?!). The album supplied “Summertime”, their highest ever charting single which finally secured them a place on the running order of the BBC’s prime time music show. The perfect soundtrack to the last moments of Summer and the beginning of Autumn, it was written about Gavurin and Wheeler’s perception of some of their friends joining dating services. I’m not sure that something like today’s Tinder could inspire such a whimsical piece of music.

The band have been on hiatus for nigh on 30 years since though apparently they have continued to write songs throughout though whether anyone will ever get to hear them is anybody’s guess. Still, I’ve got at least three albums to check out in the meantime. Now, where’s that promo copy of “Static & Silence”?

All I knew of Sly & Robbie before this point was their reputation as reggae and dub producers and their 1987 hit single “Boops (Here To Go)”. Of their collaborators here Simply Red, I (regretfully) knew much more. Finally, despite a discography of nearly 80 studio albums, I pretty much was only familiar with one Gregory Isaacs song, that being this one, “Night Nurse”. Supposedly, this was an updated take on the reggae classic but I can’t understand why you wouldn’t just seek out the original. However, back in 1997, that wouldn’t have been an easy ask. You couldn’t just say “Alexa, play “Night Nurse” by Gregory Isaacs” – no, you’d have had to do some research and possibly order a whole album from your local record store just to get that one song so maybe it was easier just to buy the single that was available. Indeed, maybe some punters weren’t aware of the original and its creator – I barely knew Gregory Isaacs and I worked in a record shop! Whatever the truth behind its success, this version of “Night Nurse” made No 13 on the UK charts.

Boyz II Men had 12 UK Top 40 hits according to officialcharts.com but could anyone name more than three? A superfan maybe? Or their Mums perhaps? I thought I was doing well with two – “End Of The Road” and “I’ll Make Love To You” (though they’re basically the same song so is that only one really?). “4 Seasons Of Loneliness” was their tenth and guess what? It was a ballad. Or was it? It sounds more like a voice exercise than a song. Their sweet harmonies prowess is all very well but you still need a proper tune to wrap them around. I work in a theatre these days and often witness the actors in pre-show mode and I can honestly say I’ve heard vocal warmups that are more tuneful than “4 Seasons Of Loneliness”. I’m also willing to bet that there was a floor manager out of shot holding up ‘scream now’ signs to the studio audience when each of the four band members gets to their solo parts. Not many people seemed to agree with my assessment though – it went to No 10 over here and No 1 in America.

Oh gawd! Guess who’s back? Yes, it’s Mark Morrison and, rather predictably, he’s still going on about the bloody ‘Mack’! His recent three month spell at Her Majesty’s pleasure for attempting to take a firearm on a plane (daringly hinted at in her intro by Jayne Middlemiss) doesn’t seem to have made him reflect on his life choices much. He’s just reliving the past glories of his previous hits and most obviously “Return Of The Mack” by calling this track “Who’s The Mack!”. Morrison clearly didn’t take any educational programmes in prison otherwise he would have known to put a question mark and not an exclamation mark at the end of that song title. His track is more of the same nonsense as before so I was more interested in the staging of the performance and the backdrop of words behind him which resembled the set of Have I Got News For You. Were they the song’s lyrics? I don’t know but apparently a few people wanted to know about this ‘Mack’ bloke – there are at least two other songs called “Who’s The Mack” by Ralph Tresvant and Ice Cube.

And so we’re finally at the chart moment not just of the year but of all time – maybe. Depending on how you want to look at it, “Candle In The Wind 1997” is either the best selling or the second best selling single worldwide of all time. What?! Yes, it’s a sentence that needs explanation. The only other contender for that title is “White Christmas” by Bing Crosby but it was released in 1942 before the advent of formalised UK and US charts so it’s harder to confirm its sales. In 2007, Guinness World Records adjudged that “White Christmas” had sold 50 million copies whereas “Candle In The Wind 1997” had shifted 33 million making the former the biggest seller. However, in 2009, a further clarification said that Elton’s single was the best-selling single since UK and US singles charts began in the 1950s. What’s not in doubt is that the tribute to Princess Diana is the fastest selling single of all time in the UK with 650,000 copies snapped up within 24 hours. At its peak, it sold six copies per second. Needless to say, it was No 1 in just about every country in the world.

In my ten years of working in record shops, the only other event that came anywhere near to the profile (though not sales) that “Candle In The Wind 1997” held was the Oasis v Blur chart battle in 1995. The difference was that I enjoyed being a part of that, literally on the shop floor. I felt almost privileged to be working within the record industry when that happened. Its a clumsy and perhaps even insensitive comparison but with the Elton John phenomenon, it felt like record shop staff were somehow aid workers trying to support the public through their outpouring of grief by supplying the medication of that single. The difference I guess is that we hadn’t volunteered for the role, we were just caught up in the frenzy. I have definite memories of punters grabbing the single out of our hands as we tried to refill the shelves. For some people, conventions of social niceties went out of the front door as fast as the single. I know it was our job but it really felt like hard work at that time. If this all sounds like offensive hyperbole then I apologise – I’m just trying to describe the unique nature of what happened back then as I experienced it. I’m sure everyone has their own story to tell /perspective on this moment in time.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Ricky Martin	(Un Dos Tres) Maria	No
2	Kylie Minogue	Some Kind Of Bliss	Liked it, didn’t buy it
3	George Michael	You Have Been Loved	Nah
4	The Sundays	Summertime	No but I had that promo copy of the album
5	Sly & Robbie / Simply Red	Night Nurse	Negative
6	Boyz II Men	4 Seasons Of Loneliness	Nope
7	Mark Morrison	Who’s The Mack!	Never
8	Elton John	Candle In The Wind 1997	No, I was not part of the madness

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/m0029lyr/top-of-the-pops-19091997?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 1996 – the epilogue

Posted on January 8 by 80stastic

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

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

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

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

Best-selling singles

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

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

Hits That Never Were

Whipping Boy – “When We Were Young”

Released: Feb ’96

Chart Peak: No 46

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

Crush – “Jellyhead”

Released: Feb ’96

Chart Peak: No 50

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

Kenickie – “Punka”

Released: Sep ’96

Chart Peak: No 43

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

*Yes, Sunderland is a city

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

Billy Bragg – “Upfield”

Released: Aug ’96

Chart Peak: No 46

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

Hits We Missed

Nick Heyward – “Rollerblade”

Released: Jan ’97

Chart Peak: No 37

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

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

The Wannadies – “You & Me Song”

Released: Apr ’96

Chart Peak: No 18

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

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

Gene – “Fighting Fit”

Released: Nov ’96

Chart Peak: No 22

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

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

Mansun – “Stripper Vicar”

Released: Sep ’96

Chart Peak: No 19

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

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

Super Furry Animals – “Something 4 The Weekend”

Released: Jul ’96

Chart Peak: No 18

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

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

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

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

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

Released: Aug ’96

Chart Peak: No 32

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

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

Their Season In The Sun

Fugees

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

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

Upside Down

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

Babylon Zoo

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

Alanis Morissette

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

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

Last Words

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

TOTP 18 OCT 1996

Posted on November 20, 2024 by 80stastic

You don’t hear much about him these days but for a while there as the 80s turned into the 90s, Nigel Kennedy was quite the big deal. Tearing up the classical music manual with his appearance, style and attitude, he challenged the predominant perception of what that art form was and who it was for and found himself catapulted into the mainstream by the success of his “Vivaldi: The Four Seasons” album which topped the classical music chart for over a year selling three million copies in the process. What with Kennedy and the extraordinary popularity of The Three Tenors off the back of Italia ‘90, classical music was suddenly accessible to the masses. Our Nige wasn’t to everyone’s taste though. In 1991, he was denounced by the then Controller of BBC Radio 3 John Drummond as being “a Liberace for the nineties”* who went on to criticise his “ludicrous”* clothes and mocked his accent as being “self invented”*. Kennedy responded calling Drummond “pompous”* and of “encouraging exclusivity”* within classical music.

*All quotes taken from Paul Kelso article: Kennedy hits back at arts elitism, The Guardian, Wed 30 August 2000

Whichever side of the argument you find yourself on, none of it explains what Kennedy was doing on our screens in 1996 presenting TOTP does it? Was his profile still so high a good five years on from his “Four Seasons” heyday? His Wikipedia page says that in 1992, he’d announced that he was leaving classical music and he made an album with the marvellous Stephen Duffy called “Music In Colours” which was interesting though I found Nigel’s bits fairly unlistenable. However, by the middle of the decade he’d returned to the work of international classical concerts and just a few months after this TOTP appearance, he received an award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music at the BRITS so maybe he was in the ascendancy again? Anyway, let’s see how he does in the role of presenter…

Straight off the bat, Kennedy (who just introduces himself as ‘Nigel’) weirds us all out with his hair. What. The. F**k.? He has an enormous, towering Mohican fin protruding from the top of his head! Is it real?! If it is, how much product did it take to get it to stand on end like that?! Back in my youth in the 80s, I had ‘big’ hair (didn’t we all?) and would get through cans of Cossack hairspray in the pursuit of trying to get my bonce to look like Morten Harket’s coiffured locks but this was next level stuff. Pure madness and that’s also a phrase that could describe what was happening with the opening act The Boo Radleys at this time. Having broken through to the mainstream with hit single “Wake Up Boo!” and No 1 album “Wake Up!”, the band allegedly decided that all this pop star stuff wasn’t really for them and so made a follow up album that would alienate all those Johnny-come-lately fans (of whom I was one) in the form of “C’mon Kids”. At least, that’s how the story goes but it’s been denied by lead singer Sice that the band deliberately recorded new material designed to kill their previous pop vibe.

I’d bought and been a big fan of the “Wake Up” album but somehow my interest in The Boo Radleys had waned by the time “C’mon Kids” came out and the only songs from it I know are the singles “What’s In The Box (See Whatcha Got)” and the title track. Those who had listened to it included the music press and they were mainly lukewarm in their reaction, with the main takeaway being that the band had committed commercial suicide. Certainly it didn’t sell any where near as much as its predecessor peaking at No 20 but I quite like the singles from it so maybe I should give it a chance nearly 30 years on from its release. After all, it does have some fans within the music industry – Nicky Wire of the Manic Street Preachers said he listened to little else for a year whilst Tom White of The Electric Soft Parade names it as his favourite album ever. Perhaps its greatest accolade though is that supposedly Radiohead went back to the drawing board after hearing it during the “OK Computer” sessions.

“C’mon Kids” the song is nothing like their most well known tune being much more of a harder sound with fuzzy, squalling guitars and an almost shouted vocal from Sice. Jangly, bouncing pop it wasn’t but then why should the band have been expected to come up with “Wale Up Boo! (Part II)”?! They would stay together for another album before the 90s were up before disbanding though some of the members reformed in 2020 and have released two albums of new material since.

I’ve got to comment on a Montell Jordan song that isn’t “This Is How We Do It”? Who knew he even had any other hits? Well, he did and this one is called “I Like” and was the third of five he had in the UK. Watching this back, I’m struck by how lacking in substance it is. There’s hardly anything to it at all which is not helping me in my struggle to find something to say about it. I guess I could mention the lyrics that are so hackneyed that Montell might as well have just called the song ‘Black Cab’ and be done with it. Hackneyed? Hackney? Hackney carriage? Oh please yourselves! Anyway, the lyrics are terrible – ‘lips’ are rhymed with ‘hips’ , ‘walk’ with ‘talk’ and Montell even says “You’re so sexy” at one point. Couldn’t he have just been happy with having the one hit that sustained? After all, “This Is How We Do It” has endured to the point that it’s currently being used to soundtrack a Deliveroo advert.

Kennedy fluffs his lines a bit next as he plugs TOTP2 by saying “By the way, you’ve got to check out this amazing unforeseen…unseen footage of the Stones on Top of the Pops 2”. Probably hard to check out something unforeseen but I’m being harsh on poor Nige, he was just nervous no doubt. And so he should have been, so we all should have been for Mark Morrison has returned with his third hit of the year “Trippin’” and if The Mack is back then that means only one thing – he’ll have his handcuffs with him! I could never understand the appeal of this guy – neither his music nor his image and judging by all his run ins with the law, he was hardly a stand up guy. In the lyrics to “Trippin’”, he starts referring to himself in the third person and there is no bigger indicator of being a massive prick than that! He would crank out another hit before the end of the calendar year called “Horny” and follow it up in 1997 with one called “Moan & Groan”. Delightful.

There follows a really strange segue where immediately after Mark Morrison finishes we just get the voice of Nigel Kennedy (he’s not seen at all) saying “And here is Celine…*big pause*…Dion” before the screen fades and the video for “It’s All Coming Back To Me Now” starts playing. Why wasn’t he in shot and why the large pause? Maybe the camera couldn’t accommodate his huge Mohican hairstyle. Anyway, it is Celine Dion and unlike the other week when we got six minutes worth of the promo, mercifully we only get half that amount this time around. In an interview with the director Nigel Dick, he effused about what a hard worker Celine is and mentioned that he made her run across gravel barefoot for a scene five times until he was happy with the shot. Celine didn’t complain but came to the shoot the next day with her feet in bandages. Fair play to her though I would do the same just to never have to watch this video again.

Nigel is back with us visually now and asking the question why we’ve never seen the next artist on TV before despite them having sold 20 million records. Who is he talking about? It’s Bally Sagoo who I must admit to not being aware of despite this hit “Dil Cheez (My Heart…)” and despite working in a record shop at the time it was in the charts. Having read up on him, my embarrassment of not knowing who he is has multiplied as he really is a big deal. In his early days he was a DJ in Birmingham but he wasn’t spinning the latest chart sounds. No, he was creating his own mixtapes fusing together elements of Western music and hip hop with Indian music. He signed with local record label Oriental Star Agencies as an in house producer collaborating with the likes of Qawwali superstar Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan before signing to Sony Records in his own right. His reworking of an Asha Bhosle song would be played on Radio 1 making him the first Indian artist to achieve national mainstream radio airplay. He then released the album “Rising From The East” which would spend a week in the UK album chart and furnish two Top 40 singles including “Dil Cheez (My Heart)”. Having broken through the glass ceiling, he went stratospheric in terms of exposure by supporting Michael Jackson on the HIStory World Tour. From there he launched his own record label showcasing both his material and other new artists and in 2003 was honoured at the UK Asian Awards with the inaugural trophy for outstanding achievement (presented to him by the Spice Girls no less). His music can be found in films like Bend It Like Beckham and Monsoon Wedding and he has diversified into areas such as film production, artist promotion and management, fashion and technology. Like I said, he’s quite the mover and shaker.

Back to Nigel’s original question about why we’d never seen Bally Sagoo on TV before, I guess it was because there had traditionally been so few UK hit singles that had an Asian influence and sound to them and if they weren’t chart hits the they wouldn’t have been on TOTP. There’s a few exceptions like “Ever So Lonely” by Monsoon in 1982 and are we counting “Im Nin’alu” by Israeli singer Ofra Haza from 1988? By the 90s things were starting to change with the likes of Apache Indian bringing Bhangramuffin to the Top 40 and in 1998, Cornershop took “Brimful Of Asha” to No 1. In these TOTP repeats, we’re not far off from Kula Shaker having a hit with a song sung entirely in Sanskrit in “Govinda”. More recently, there has been the rise of K-pop (which I know barely anything about) and of course the global phenomenon that was “Gangnam Style” by Psy. From the world of film, “Jai Ho” won an Oscar for Best Original Song after soundtracking that memorable dance sequence in Slumdog Millionaire. Finally, in 2023, Diljit Dosanjh became the first Punjabi artist to perform at the Coachella music festival. And I haven’t even mentioned Bollywood…

Nigel’s Mohican is starting to wilt under those studio lights and has flopped on one side. Also suffering a malfunction is the show’s running order as we don’t get to see the advertised ‘Flashback’ feature which was John Travolta and Olivia Newton John doing “Summer Nights” from Grease. Presumably it was cut for reasons of timing to fit in with BBC4’s Friday night schedule. So do I have to review this or not? Look, we all know this song and the film it comes from. I don’t need to make anymore comment on it do I? No I don’t.

Next up is a song that I definitely know but I may have struggled to name the artist behind it. Without looking it up or watching this TOTP repeat, I might have come up with Another Level but I think I would have been confusing “Freak Me” with this song which is “No Diggity” by Blackstreet. Oh, hang on. The album it was taken from was called “Another Level”? Ah well, then my mistake is perhaps forgivable. Perhaps not though as this track was an American No 1 and was the single that knocked “Macarena” off the top of the charts after it had been there for nine weeks. It’s yet another R&B number on this particular show following Montell Jordan and Mark Morrison earlier and also features Dr.Dre (nearly forgot about him) and Queen Pen. It’s come to be recognised as perhaps the definitive New Jack Swing song thanks to the creative input of Blackstreet founder member and lead vocalist Teddy Riley, the man credited with creating the genre. Did I like it? Not really though its title and hook have remained with me all these years. Apparently ‘no diggity’ means ‘no doubt’ but sadly for Nigel Kennedy, he fluffs his lines again and repeats the word ‘diggity’ for no reason and is left with ‘no dignity’.

After the huge success of “Three Lions” with Baddiel and Skinner over the Summer of football, it was back to the day job for Ian Broudie and the Lightning Seeds with another knockabout bit of pop fluff to promote. It may have seemed like an age ago but their last non-football related single had been “Ready Or Not” which had been released way back in February. It was the lead track from the “Dizzy Heights” album but that would not appear until the November after the recording of it was delayed to allow Broudie to concentrate on the “Three Lions” project so effectively “What If” became the lead single.

I have to say it’s not one of their strongest songs (despite being co-written by the wonderful and much missed Terry Hall) and the performance of it here demonstrates that Broudie is not the owner of the most powerful voice in pop. It actually reminds me of something else which I think is this by Sean Maguire and that’s not a good thing by the way…

By strange pop coincidence, there was actually a Lightning Seeds song in the Top 40 in this very week which went under the radar. The cover of “All I Want” from their first album by Susanna Hoffs is actually rather lovely and was at No 32 in the UK Top 40 at the time of this Lightning Seeds performance.

Having not heard it in ages, I’d forgotten what a good song “6 Underground” by Sneaker Pimps is. Pigeonholed in the music press as a cross between Portishead and Garbage, they looked to have the world at their feet but they never seems to be able to go beyond that first flush of success with their debut album “Becoming X”. Maybe it was all the remixes that the band had done of “6 Underground” that seemed to keep them anchored in those initial recordings (there was even an official remix album released called “Becoming Remixed” as a companion piece to their debut). Or maybe it was that the track “6 Underground” wouldn’t go away. After its 1996 chart run, it was rereleased the following year off the back of being included on the soundtrack to The Saint film and peaked at No 9, six places higher then its first foray into the Top 40. That second strata of success and that of follow up “Spin Spin Sugar” was enough evidence for a rerelease of the album which included new artwork and the inclusion of what many saw as the definitive version of “6 Underground” by Nellee Hooper. Then there was the two years of touring in support of the album when they opened for Blur and Neneh Cherry and played with Tricky and Lamb securing the perception of them as a trip hop band. All of this delayed the release of second album “Splinter” until 1999 when musical tastes had moved on and momentum was lost.

However, the biggest event that determined the band’s path was surely when lead singer Kelli Ali was told by fellow band members Chris Corner and Liam Howe that her vocals would not suit their new direction and she was fired from the line up before the recording of “Splinter”. This led to them being dropped by their label Virgin and they would never recapture the level of those early glories. They would go on a decade long hiatus before rebooting the band in 2016 and last released an album in 2021.

After the demise of Take That earlier in the year, the positioning of Boyzone as the UK’s next premier boyband was a foregone conclusion. They’d already spent two years coming up on the rails with a collection of hits that had peaked at Nos 2, 3 and 4 but their first chart topper had proved elusive. With those cheeky Manc scamps out of the way, there was no stopping them. Add to that the fact that they’d returned to the trusted strategy of releasing a cover version and the deal was not so much as sealed as cemented shut. “Words” by the Bee Gees was the song to do it for them and I recall it selling and selling and then selling some more in the Our Price store where I worked. We may have even come perilously close to selling out of it (an unspeakable crime for a record shop). When they released the follow up “A Different Beat”, I was determined not to be in that situation again so ordered in a load of the single. Despite also going to No 1, it failed to sell in anywhere near the quantities of “Words” and we were left with massive overstock. The fickle gods of pop music had farted in my face once again.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	The Boo Radleys	C’Mon Kids	Negative
2	Montell Jordan	I Like	I disliked
3	Mark Morrison	Trippin’	Nah
4	Celine Dion	It’s All Coming Back To Me Now	As if
5	Bally Sagoo	Dil Cheez (My Heart…)	Nope
6	John Travolta and Olivia Newton John	Summer Nights	No
7	Blackstreet	No Diggity	I did not
8	Lightning Seeds	What If	Nah
9	Sneaker Pimps	6 Underground	Liked it, didn’t buy it
10	Boyzone	Words	Never

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/m0024s0d/top-of-the-pops-18101996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 26 JUL 1996

Posted on October 8, 2024 by 80stastic

It’s the Summer of 1996 and the Olympic Games are being held in Atlanta, Georgia. For Team GB though, it was a games to forget as we endured our worst performance since 1952 with just one gold and only 15 in total. Lack of sufficient funding was identified as a major issue – cyclist Chris Boardman had to resort to practicing in his bathroom with the shower turned on in an attempt to create the humidity conditions of Atlanta for acclimatisation training. In a rare moment of celebration, the day after this TOTP aired, that single gold medal was won by rowers Matthew Pinsent and Steve Redgrave in the Men’s Coxless Pair. Meanwhile, in this week’s show, there seemed to be no shortage of cocks but sadly, like Team GB, hardly any gold standard performers. Where were Shed Seven and Gene when you needed them?*

*See what I did there? “Going For Gold”? “Olympian”? No? Oh well, it’s the taking part that’s important not winning so they say.

Bit of admin before we get going. Tonight’s host is Lisa I’Anson and we start with another to camera piece featuring the latest winner of the meet and greet competition who is in Hollywood with New Edition. The first act in the studio though is Pato Banton & The Reggae Revolution. What the guy who had a No 1 with his version of “Baby Come Back” in 1994? That guy was still having hits two years later using the same formula of reggae-fying old pop hits?! That guy?! The very same but his take on the 1967 hit “Groovin’” would be his last UK chart entry. He never got close to repeating his chart topping feat with this one peaking at No 14. He did like a collab as the kids say though – two with Sting (who seems to have a weakness for this type of artist seeing as he’s also teamed up with Shaggy), one with Ranking Roger and now this one with The Reggae Revolution. Who were they? I can’t find out much about them though I did note one of their members is called David Forskins. Stop sniggering at the back – he’s a drummer. Skins? Drum skins? Geddit? What? It was me that mentioned members? Oh, you young rascals!

Next up is Mark Morrison and for once he’s not singing “Return Of The Mack”. No, he’s finally got round to releasing a follow up single or should I say rereleasing as “Crazy” had been out before, making No 19 in 1995. Morrison doesn’t tamper with the formula much with it basically being “Return Of The Mack II”. I did notice though that the lyrics have Morrison claiming “I went to Number One (like a bomb)” presumably referring to his recent chart topper so my question is, were those the lyrics when “Crazy” was originally released before ROTM went to No 1 or did Morrison rewrite them after the event? If it’s the former, he was either very lucky or very arrogant. Either way, he then bangs on about girls “trippin’” on him since he got famous which apparently means acting crazy and is a word he seems very keen on as it was also the title of his next single. The two after that were called “Horny” and “Moan & Groan” – he was a classy fella our Mark.

He’s got a rapper in to help with the flow on this one and his name is Daddy Wattsie. When I was at polytechnic back in the 80s, I knew someone with the surname Watts who insisted on people calling him ‘Wattsie’. He was a bit of a knob and I’m not sure about Daddy Wattsie either. Had I not had the subtitles on iPlayer, I wouldn’t have had a clue what he was going on about (which is some nonsense about hip-hop ragamuffin DJs or something). Meanwhile, Morrison is singing about “doggin’” (that got past the censor) and then blatantly pinches Bobby Brown’s shtick by harping on about his prerogative. It’s all rather unpleasant and Morrison tops it off when he whips out his trademark handcuffs. Well, he had to keep up his ‘king of the cuffs’ moniker that Lisa I’Anson gave him in her intro I suppose. It’s hardly the same as being known as an Olympic champion though is it?

This next track should come with a health warning – it used to come close to giving me panic attacks. There was something about “Higher State Of Consciousness” by Josh Wink that would scratch at my nerve ends. It made me feel claustrophobic and like I just needed to escape from its sonic reach every time I heard it. Was it something to do with its frequency, its bpm, all its little bleeps, breaks and bass (to quote the title of an old dance compilation series)? Or was it that it sounded to me like a car alarm going off? Whatever it was about it that disturbed me so, what was even worse was that I foolishly let my record shop colleagues know about its effect upon me and they would mercilessly play it when I was on the shop floor.

Not content with giving me the jitters for five weeks in Autumn 1995 (the length it spent inside the Top 40), Josh Wink – a DJ, producer and remixer from Philadelphia (real name Joshua Winkelman) – decided to double down on my uneasiness by rereleasing it less than a year later under the shortened name of Wink. I mean, why? It had already been massive in the clubs of Europe and a No 8 hit in the UK on first release so why put it out again? Ah, well – it was all about the remixes wasn’t it? “Higher State Of Consciousness 96 Remixes” included a version by Dex and Jonesey (whoever they were) which deemed it worthy of another push at the charts. It succeeded as well peaking one place higher than its 1995 predecessor. Pass the paracetamol!

The first of two songs on this show that I will always associate with each other. Not for any musical reasons but purely because they formed an end panel display in the Our Price store where I was working at the time. In fairness, they were also both comeback singles of a sort. The first one is from Suede who released their first new material for nearly two years with “Trash” , the lead single from their third studio album “Coming Up”. It was also the first new material written without Bernard Butler who had left the band after the “Dog Man Star” album so there was a lot riding on this song. Would the absence of Butler prove to be insurmountable for the band? Or would his replacement Richard Oakes prove to be a just as gifted songwriter? History shows us that it was the latter scenario that played out. “Coming Up” would become Suede’s biggest selling album going platinum in the process. It generated five Top 10 singles with “Trash” itself the biggest of those and Suede’s joint highest charting hit ever when it peaked at No 3. You could hear why. It was a great tune displaying a much bigger pop sensibility than anything on “Dog Man Star”. Apparently, it was a deliberate choice by Brett Anderson to go down that route after the downturn in sales experienced by their 1994 album. Although, defiantly more ebullient, “Trash” also retained the band’s edge. This was angular pop with Brett singing about being “litter on the breeze”. It worked and it worked well.

Obviously the band toured the album and I caught them in Blackburn with my mate Steve in February of 1997. They were supported by Mansun who would release their excellent debut album “Attack Of The Grey Lantern” two days later but that’s all for a future post. For now, Suede were back and how. They’d survived the fallout from Bernard Butler’s departure and added to their ranks in the aforementioned Richard Oakes and keyboard player Neil Codling (who Lisa I’Anson rather fawned over in her intro). Britpop may have seemed to have washed them away but they had surfaced from the depths and were riding their own wave and not the zeitgeist.

Although mostly overshadowed by her 60s career and subsequent rise from the ashes in the 80s, Tina Turner was remarkably consistent in the 90s. I’m not talking gold medal standard here (most of it wouldn’t even make the medal podium) but she was certainly a qualifier for the final. She achieved 18 Top 40 hits in the UK during the decade albeit that most of them were distinctly medium sized with only four making the Top 10. The fifteenth of those hits was her cover of the soft rock classic “Missing You”. The third single to be lifted from her “Wildest Dreams” album, this was a stinker from start to finish. The 1984 John Waite original had always been a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine but Tina’s rendition is simply the worst. It just doesn’t suit her growly vocal and overblown delivery. Whoever made the decision for Tina to record should have been disqualified. I was surprised to learn that Trevor Horn produced it because the backing sounds all tinny and hollow. There’s even a sound in there that is reminiscent of that ‘boing’ effect you get from a mouth harp. Just horrible. Let’s move on quickly…

I’m still not convinced by this meet and greet competition. I mean, the locations are great – so far we’ve had the likes of Madrid and now Hollywood – but the pop stars involved don’t strike me as stellar. After Shampoo the other week, this time we’ve got New Edition. That’s New Edition of “Candy Girl” fame from 1983. That’s 1983! Since then, despite continued success in the US, they’d scored just one more hit single in the UK with “Mr. Telephone Man” from 1985. Sure, after the group split in 1988, all the members went on to solo success (or trio success in the case of Bell Biv DeVoe) especially Bobby Brown but when they reformed in 1996, would they have been seen as a huge name? I guess what I’m saying is would the competition winner have been blown away by meeting them? I’m not so sure. Had TOTP been an American TV show, maybe the chance to hangout with New Edition would have been a huge deal – after all the 1996 version of the group scored a huge hit in comeback album “Home Again” which sold two million copies in the US and went to No 1. It wasn’t the same level of success over here though. The album stalled at No 22 whilst it’s lead single “Hit Me Off” peaked at No 20 (it was an R&B chart topper and No 3 hit on the Billboard chart over the pond). I suppose we just weren’t as invested in the group here – we didn’t have that level of connection with them.

Anyway, the performance here is from the Jurassic Park ride at Universal Studios, Hollywood which explains why there is a huge crash of water behind them every now and again as the log flume ride splashes down. By the way, if you’re thinking that there seem to be more members of New Edition than you remember, don’t worry. You’re not losing it. There were five in the original line up but there are six here as both Bobby Brown and the guy who replaced him – Johnny Gill – are both featured. As for their song, it sounds like every other R&B song from this era with them singing about spending “an hour in the shower when it’s nice and wet”. If only they had misjudged the staging of this performance even slightly then maybe that log flume ride would have made their desire to be soaking come true.

Who remembers Joyrider? Not me for one. As Lisa I’Anson tells us in her intro, they were from Portadown, Northern Ireland and this was their big moment. One solitary week in the UK Top 40 and a TOTP appearance. They can’t gave thought this would be it for them surely but it pretty much was. Their single fell out of the charts despite this exposure and the follow up peaked at No 54. They did release an album but initial pressings didn’t include their only hit – a rock cover of Jane Wiedlin’s “Rush Hour” – which seems like a massive oversight though I believe it was reissued with it as included at a later date.

Listening back to this frenetic, high speed run through of one of the finest pop records of the 80s, the first question that comes to mind is ‘Why?’. Maybe their label desperately needed them to have a hit and we all know which position to assume in that scenario and, after all, such a tactic had worked for Gun a couple of years earlier when they gave Cameo’s “Word Up” the rock guitar treatment. Then there’s California rockers Redd Kross who did a brilliant job on “Yesterday Once More” for a Carpenters tribute album offering more proof that songs from one music genre could work in that of another given the right choice and treatments but something about Joyrider’s example of this just didn’t click for me. I think it’s that the pop brilliance of the original just can’t be beaten so any attempt at doing something different with it was doomed to failure if indeed you can call a No 22 peaking single a failure. What I can say with some certainty is that we won’t be seeing Joyrider on TOTP ever again.

And so to that other single that was on the end panel in Our Price alongside Suede that week. Just as Gary Barlow was toppled by the Spice Girls, here came another chart adversary but this one was much closer to home and with a much deadlier rivalry. Since leaving Take That in 1995, – labelling Barlow a “clueless wanker” as his parting shot across the bows as he went – the only time we’d seen anything of Robbie Williams was in the tabloids being out of it on another bender. His much hinted at solo career seemed to be taking an age to appear*

*I assume there were some record company legalities to be sorted before he could officially extricate himself from Take That’s label RCA and therefore release anything? His choice of song to cover for his debut single certainly suggested so and indeed, he signed to Chrysalis Records ultimately.

Finally, there was something with his name on it that you could buy in the shops when “Freedom” came out. His version of George Michael’s “Freedom 90” though seemed fairly redundant to me. It was a pure copy of the original with only Robbie’s trademark gurning vocals any sort of differential. What I found really revealing though was that the extra tracks on the CD singles were just remixes of “Freedom” and an interview with Williams in two parts. I recall saying to an Our Price colleague how pathetic this seemed and asking where his songs were. I was convinced at this point that he was doomed to fail as a solo artist. Within a year, Williams would meet Guy Chambers (ex of the wonderful Lemon Trees) who would answer my question about where his songs were and after a couple of false starts, Robbie would become a superstar. I watched a documentary about him on Netflix recently and although I had anticipated it portraying him as all self indulgent and woe is me, he was actually brutally honest about what a f**k up he was/is. In July ‘96 though, I for one thought I had him all figured out and had proclaimed sentence on him. I was wrong. Very wrong.

The Spice Girls have gone to No 1 with “Wannabe” and in so doing, become the first all female group to top the UK charts since The Bangles in 1989 with “Eternal Flame”. Perhaps more significantly, they were the first UK all female group to do so ever. This really did feel like a changing of the guard moment with the deposed former No 1 artist having been a member of the recently defunct biggest boy band in the UK. The Spice Girls were here to wash all them and all the pretty boys that followed in their wake away – it was time for ‘girl power’.

Like last week, the group are still in Japan but this time we get to see them at night in an oriental garden. Interestingly, they subvert the usual model of performance by running across bridges whilst miming before eventually lining up together to knock out some loosely choreographed dance moves. Obviously, we also get Sporty Spice doing her back flips. In another life she was surely an Olympic gymnast*.

*She has completed the London Triathlon twice.

The play out video is “Mysterious Girl” by Peter Andre which is still in and around the top end of the charts. Thankfully we only get a few seconds of the repugnant Andre and his cartoonish six pack. Apparently, his 16 years old son Junior wants to follow in his Dad’s footsteps and become a pop star – he is already signed to Columbia Records. As if there aren’t enough problems in the world along comes a dynasty of Andres making music. There really should be a law against it.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Pato Banton & The Reggae Revolution	Groovin’	Nah
2	Mark Morrison	Crazy	No
3	Wink	Higher State Of Consciousness 96 Remixes	Hell no!
4	Suede	Trash	No but I had their Coming Up album
5	Tina Turner	Missing You	Never
6	New Edition	Hit Me Off	Nope
7	Joyrider	Rush Hour	I did not
8	Robbie Williams	Freedom	Negative
9	Spice Girls	Wannabe	Not likely
10	Peter Andre	Mysterious Girl	Are you crazy?!

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/p00fsvcm/top-of-the-pops-26071996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 09 MAY 1996

Posted on August 8, 2024 by 80stastic

There’s ten hits on this episode of TOTP but we’ve seen four of them before and one of the new ones is a football song (no, not that one; not yet). We’ve also seen the presenter before and not that long ago – it’s that Beertje Van Beers woman again. I’m not sure she was any more famous than she had been the first time she hosted the show a few weeks before (despite the exposure afforded her by that appearance) so why was she back again? Was it all about how she looked? In the era of Britpop and lads mags then I suppose that was a distinct possibility.

Beertje’s first job is to introduce one of those hits we’ve seen before – it’s Suggs featuring Louchie Lou and Michie One with “Cecilia”. The last time they were on led to an infamous incident when lisping boxer Chris Eubank had to contend with a bit of a tongue twister when doing the Top 10 countdown. As A-ha’s Morten Harket once sang on “I’ve Been Losing You”, he was hissing his ‘S’s’ like a snake. Poor Chris and poor the watching British public as this was a honking cover version. I’ve said this before but Suggs’s solo career has always been completely at odds to his Madness one for me. I like Madness and have even seen them live but Suggs on his own just doesn’t compute. For some reason in the mid 90s though, his awful Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel covers won the approval of UK record buyers giving him two Top 10 hits. Parent album “The Lone Ranger” achieved silver sales status and provided Suggs with a further three smaller chart hits but by the time of his second solo album “The Three Pyramids Club” (which sounds like the title of a Richard Osman novel), this brief infatuation was over and it sank without trace. Suggs never really returned to his solo career although he did have a hit with “Blue Day” in 1997 which was the FA Cup final song for my (and his) beloved Chelsea FC (more about cup final songs later). However, just last year, he teamed up with Paul Weller for the Slade-esque spelt single “Ooh Do U Fink U R”.

I’m always very cautious when it comes to commenting on rap artists purely because I don’t know enough about their music and its culture. I’m a white man who grew up in Worcester as a pop kid. If I tried to do any kind of analysis, it would be totally inauthentic. I guess I’m still allowed an opinion on what I’m watching and hearing on these TOTP repeats though right? I can’t just skip over a rap artist appearing on the show can I? The completist in me won’t let me just swerve this so here I go. I know the name Busta Rhymes – of course I do. I spent the 90s working in record shops. Could I name any of his tracks unprompted? Not a one. Would I recognise any if I were to check out his discography? Let’s see…

*checks Busta Rhymes discography*

Oh yeah. He did “Hit ‘Em High (The Monsters Anthem)” from the Space Jam soundtrack with B-Real, Coolio, LL Cool J and Method Man. And therein lies the problem. The only Busta Rhymes hit I know is from a movie about basketball starring Bugs Bunny. I don’t have any depth of knowledge nor relevance to the world of rap. OK, I’ll have to just go for the most superficial of reviews. “Woo-Hah!! Got You All In Check” was the debut single for Busta Rhymes and would peak at No 8 in both the US and the UK. I initially thought that the BBC censor was sleeping again to have let the lines “let’s get high” and “roll some weed” get through but then I checked led out the full, explicit lyrics. Dearie me! There’s no way any of that was getting through the BBC bad language filter. Mary Whitehouse would have self combusted.

Now this is an interesting link from Beertje even though she possibly only used it for its play on words. “In Holland we have three types of people; soccer players, cheeseheads and Klubbheads” she informs us. OK, so let’s break this down. Soccer players? Well, of course the Dutch have a rich history of producing fantastic footballers. One of my mates could talk for hours about Johan Cruyff and ‘total football’. Cheeseheads? I had to do some research on this I have to admit. It’s not a term to refer to enthusiasts of Dutch cheese though that would seem legitimate. No, apparently its usage dates back to the 19th century when Holland was occupied by Napoleon’s army and Dutch cheese producers got fed up with French soldiers stealing their beloved Gouda cheese. As a form of protection when confronting said soldiers, the Dutch wore helmets made out of cheese barrels hence ‘cheeseheads’. The term actually became an insult used by the French and Belgians when referring to Dutch people. Hmm. So by making sure she shoehorned in a play on words to introduce a Dutch dance act, Beertje actually insulted her own country? Oh well.

Said dance act are a team of Dutch dance producers with more than 40 aliases for their recordings including Hi_Tack, Da Klubb Kings and my personal favourite Drunkenmunky. For this their biggest hit “Klubbhopping” however, they went by the moniker of Klubbheads. I’m not going to lie, listening back to this is just making me feel nauseous, like somebody’s taken a club to my head. Klubbheads indeed.

Finally something approaching a decent tune. Having made it big with their last single “Slight Return”, The Bluetones weren’t about to rock the boat by messing with that hit formula and so they didn’t with its follow up “Cut Some Rug” which was certainly cut from the same cloth as its predecessor. Jangly guitars, a shuffling backbeat and some acerbic lyrics (“And all the time you remind me of blitzkreig and the doodle bug, salt upon a bubbling slug”) all allied with a hummable chorus. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it was the gameplan here alright.

Having gone off on a tangent earlier when discussing the origins of the phrase ‘Cheeseheads’, let’s continue that theme with an exploration into backstory of an expression that I’ve certainly used in this blog before- ‘cut some rug’. Apparently, it dates back to the 1930s and 40s when the ‘jitterbug’ dance was popular. Owing to its high energy moves, its protagonists would leave lots of marks on the dance floor that looked like cuts in a carpet or rug. I’m not sure that ‘The Bluetones shuffle’ as demonstrated by Beerjte in her intro would inflict such damage. By the way, I might make this cultural references thing an occasional series you know! Or maybe not.

One of those nearly one hit wonders now when an artist who is only known for one big hit single but whose discography shows that they actually had a further but minor chart entry. Yeah, one of them. The Tony Rich Project was, unsurprisingly, the project of one Tony Rich (real name Antonio Jeffries), a songwriter for LaFace Records who penned compositions for the likes of Toni Braxton, Boyz II Men and TLC. He made the leap into the sphere of artist in his own right with debut single “Nobody Knows”, a tender, soulful ballad that hit big both in the US and over here. Follow up single “Like A Woman” made it to No 27 in our charts then nothing. Well, not nothing as Tony continued to record and release new material well into the new century with his last album appearing in 2017 but he would never have any other major chart success. There is no truth in the rumour that Tony’s artist name inspired the title of 1999’s supernatural horror film phenomenon The Blair Witch Project. That particular movie’s name was influenced, of course, by British soft rockers The Alan Parsons Project.

“Let’s get rocked!” as the next band once sang. Def Leppard (for it is they) hadn’t released a studio album since 1992’s “Adrenalize” filling that gap with a greatest hit and B-sides collection. When the new album finally arrived, it wasn’t quite the Def Leppard of old. There were a few reasons why, not least that the band had seen which way the wind was blowing in the arena of rock music and had understood that post grunge, the sound that had served the so well in their late 80s pomp wasn’t going to cut it in the mid 90s. Added to that was the realisation that they’d been, as described by guitarist Vivian Campbell, living in a state of arrested development singing songs about putting out the trash and that they should write more mature songs that reflected their adult experience. And there was plenty of source material – founding member Steve Clark had died in 1991, guitarist Phil Collen had got divorced, bassist Rick Savage was battling facial paralysis condition Bell’s palsy and the death of his father whilst drummer Rick Allen and lead singer Joe Elliott had been arrested for spousal abuse and assault respectively. Given all that dark and heavy material, the album’s title track and lead single “Slang” seems remarkably jaunty. I can’t say that I’ve ever listened to the rest of the album but supposedly it does see the band operating outside of their comfort zone with more industrial and electronic sounds incorporated. It garnered mixed reviews ranging from a confused mess of an album to plaudits for trying to do something new. Back to the single though and it doesn’t really go anywhere for me and sounds like a poor man’s version of “Slam” by Dan Reed Network.

The one thing that did stand out for me was Joe Elliott’s super straightened new hairdo. It put me in mind of – and this is very niche – a particular style of grooming that some owners of the Maltese breed of dog go in for. We have a Maltese dog and we make sure he has a regular trim at the dog groomers but I’ve seen owners displaying their dogs at Crufts with the fur all grown out and straight as a curtain. Poodle rock indeed.

The next three hits we have seen before on the show starting with an ex-No 1! Yes, it’s that curious TOTP phenomenon of a record having gone down the charts and either going back up or putting the blocks on its descent to such an extent of being afforded a place on the show’s running order. We saw it in an earlier 1996 show when Oasis’s “Wonderwall” got a repeat airing when it re-entered the Top 5 having dropped out of the Top 10 a few weeks earlier. Now it’s the turn of Mark Morrison whose “Return Of The Mack” is still holding at No 2 despite having been on the charts for two months. The last time Beerjte was hosting, she introduced Morrison as that week’s No 1 and he celebrated by picking her up and carrying her off at the end of the song. Thankfully, she’s put enough physical distance between them this time to ensure that doesn’t happen again. In her intro, there’s a moment where she throws a look in the direction of Morrison on the stage behind her and I’m sure you can detect something in it that says “don’t think of trying it again mister”. I hope so anyway.

I would never describe Damon Albarn as a “Charmless Man” but by his own confession, this period of Blur’s career saw him potentially as a clueless one. If that sounds harsh, look at this from Damon himself:

The following year, Damon Albarn described “Charmless Man” as “The work of someone who was severely fucked up,” adding, “Where is it coming from? It's got nothing to do with anything.” #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) July 5, 2024

See? I think I said in my last post when Blur were on the show performing this track in the ‘exclusive’ slot that it was a decidedly decent song and I stand by that though it’s clearly not one of their most high profile despite its chart peak of No 5. I’m sure Liam Gallagher would have dismissed it as “chimney sweep music” though. I’m not sure what drummer Dave Rowntree’s over sized drumsticks nor Graham Coxon’s shrunken guitar in this appearance were all about – presumably some band in joke. Graham’s ‘Freedom For Tooting!’ t-shirt was obviously a reference to the 70s sitcom Citizen Smith starring Robert Lindsay as hapless revolutionary Wolfie Smith. I recently listened to an interview with Lindsay and he recounted that the fame that the role brought him had its downsides including being harassed by both admiring women and jealous boyfriends on a night out and, in one extreme case, being blamed for an outbreak of football hooliganism when attending a match played by his hometown team of Ilkeston as the perpetrators had come dressed as Wolfie for the day. I’m pretty sure that Graham Coxon would never have done anything so charmless.

George Michael stays at No 1 with “Fastlove” for a second of three weeks. This track would prove to be his last hit in America, a territory that he dominated in his “Faith” era. That album provided George with six huge hit singles including four consecutive No 1s between ‘87 and ‘88. Quite phenomenal. Things started to tail off a bit with 1990’s “Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1” albeit that lead single “Praying For Time” did furnish another chart topper. By the time of the “Older” album nearly a decade after his late 80s pomp, although sizeable hits, “Jesus To A Child” and “Fastlove” would peak at Nos 7 and 8 respectively whereas both hit the top spot in the UK. This was very much a role reversal of those “Faith” chart positions – of those four American No 1s, in the UK the corresponding peaks were:

2 – 11 – 8 – 13.

Although his US numbers were down, George continued to stack ‘em high over here throughout the rest of the decade. These were the chart positions of his seven single releases after “Fastlove” until the end of ‘99:

2 – 3 – 2 – 10 – 2 – 2 – 4

There may have even been cultural differences in terms of chart compilation and release strategies that explains the contrasts highlighted above but I thought they were…well…worth highlighting.

We play out with another football song but, as I said at the top of the post, it’s still not that one. This TOTP aired two days before the 1996 FA Cup final between Liverpool and Manchester United and it tuned out to be a complete damp squib of a game that was decided by a solitary goal by Eric Cantona (himself the subject of yet another football song in the Top 40 that will feature on the following TOTP repeat). Already in the charts was the cup final song by United called “Move Move Move (The Red Tribe)” which would peak at No 6. Released a week later was this effort from their ultimately defeated opponents under the name of Liverpool FC & The Boot Room Boyz. Despite losing the cup final (cream suits and all), this pile of shite actually won the chart battle when it entered the chart at No 4. With a similar title to United’s hit – “Pass & Move (It’s The Liverpool Groove)” – it also tried to capture the predominant dance sound of the time much as their rivals had. Both failed dismally. Liverpool should have just updated 1988’s “Anfield Rap” – now that was a football record with a groove.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Suggs featuring Louchie Lou and Michie One	Cecilia	Never
2	Busta Rhymes	Woo-Hah!! Got You All In Check	No
3	Klubbheads	Klubbhopping	Not likely
4	The Bluetones	Cut Some Rug	I did not
5	The Tony Rich Project	Nobody Knows	Nah
6	Def Leppard	Slang	Negative
7	Mark Morrison	Return Of The Mack	Nope
8	Blur	Charmless Man	No but I had their Great Escape album
9	George Michael	Fastlove	Another no
10	Liverpool FC & The Boot Room Boyz	Pass & Move (It’s The Liverpool Groove)	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.

TOTP 25 APR 1996

Posted on July 12, 2024 by 80stastic

We have arrived at one of the most infamous episodes of TOTP certainly of the 90s, maybe ever. It’s that show with Chris Eubank. Why was he presenting the nation’s favourite music programme? Well, he’d retired from boxing in the September of 1995 having failed to regain his super-middleweight title from Steve Collins. However, he would return to the fight game later in 1996. For now though, he was seen by executive producer Ric Blaxill as a suitable choice for the ‘golden mic’ slot. As far as I can tell he was one of only three sporting celebrities to host TOTP with the others being footballer Ian Wright and jockey Frankie Dettori. All three you could argue have a personality that transcended their sporting fame – Wright is exuberant and Tigger-ish, Dettori is cheeky and likeable and Eubank…well, he’s eccentric if not downright odd. I’m actually quite intrigued to see what he says in his links to camera. Ding! Ding! Round one!

Eubank starts by introducing himself (as if he needed to) by giving us his full nomenclature including his middle name Livingstone. It’s pretty impressive as middle names go but nobody will ever top ex-footballer Emile William Ivanhoe Heskey. He then says something about the forthcoming “goodies” on the show and that he’s feeling “effervescent”. It’s a nervous, stumbling start – he needs to get a few punchy lines in to settle him down. The act he introduces are Babylon Zoo and their second hit of the year “Animal Army”. I said of this song when the video was shown the other week that it had traces of both Oasis and the Stone Roses about it and listening to it again here, I’m even more convinced of that assertion. Try closing your eyes and just listening to this performance – see what I mean? Anyway, Jas Mann has grown a spattering of facial hair and is wielding a guitar for this performance which we never saw during the “Spaceman” weeks. I presume he was trying to establish some musicianship credentials on the hunt for credibility points but I’m not sure he really wins that fight. Following what would turn out to be the third biggest selling single of the year in the UK was always going to be a bout too far but its peak of No 17 was probably a little on the harsh side on reflection. Babylon Zoo would stagger on for one final round before being KO’d when third single “The Boy With The X-Ray Eyes” peaked at No 32.

Eubank looks like he’s on the ropes already, appearing dazed and confused and uttering barely remembered lines instructing us to “enjoy the show”. He needs to rally and quickly. Whilst he takes a break between rounds and gets some encouragement from his corner man, we get a performance of the latest dance hit to cross over from the clubs to the charts. “Keep On Jumpin’” was originally recorded by US disco act Musique in 1978 but didn’t trouble our charts until it was revived by The Lisa Marie Experience who took a version of it to No 7 in the UK Top 40 and to the top of our Dance Chart. Despite their name, this lot were actually two male house DJs Neil Hinde and Dean Marriott (aka D. Ramirez). They would go on to remix tracks for the likes of Sash, Eternal, Robin S and Inner City. “(Keep On) Jumpin’” (no brackets, no points) would be their only chart hit as The Lisa Marie Experience though. I’m assuming that their name was inspired by Lisa Marie Presley, daughter of Elvis and Priscilla, who, at this time, was in the process of divorcing perhaps the most famous person on the planet Michael Jackson. I’m guessing they were hoping to trade subliminally on the news headlines that the couple would have been generating? Is that a known marketing strategy?

As for their hit, they couldn’t get clearance to use a sample of the original track so had to record their own version of the chorus which they do pretty faithfully with convincing disco strings to the fore. Having not been a UK hit in the 70s, the song found itself in the Top 10 twice in the space of a few weeks in 1996 when a much more housed-up version by Todd Terry featuring Martha Wash and Jocelyn Brown peaked at No 8.

Eubank throws a cryptic curveball with his next link, setting the mathematicians in the watching audience a brain teaser – “how long does it take a lady to make that step?”. What was he on about? I can only assume he was referring to the first video of the night for “The Box” by Orbital. In it, actor Tilda Swinton plays an alien-like character who observes Earth and its inhabitants in stop-motion giving the impression that she is operating outside of temporal constructs before disappearing whence she came. It’s all very The Man Who Fell To Earth which apparently was the inspiration for the promo according to its co-director Jes Benstock. Was its stop-motion effect what Eubank was being obscure about in his intro? Another question I have is how famous was Tilda Swinton at this point? I’m thinking not that well known beyond the art house crowd as most of her credits up to this point were for a clutch of Derek Jarman films. This was well before her roles in The Beach, Vanilla Sky and The Chronicles Of Narnia franchise. If my guess is true, then her smaller profile would only have added to her portrayal of the mysterious protagonist of the video.

As for the track itself, “The Box” would become one of Orbital’s bigger hits peaking at No 11. It sounds like the soundtrack to a 60s spy thriller but with a few dance beats thrown in. Maybe the duo of brothers Phil and Paul Hartnoll were in training with their eye on the prize of an actual film soundtrack which they achieved the following year with their reworking of the theme to the 1997 remake of The Saint which gave them their second consecutive No 3 hit following the rather disturbing “Satan Live”. In 2000, they would continue with the soundtrack work when they contributed a track (with Angelo Badalamenti) to the aforementioned The Beach movie.

Eubank’s landing some blows now (or at least he thinks he is) with some more enigmatic words. This time, he says “We live in a country where the minds of the people are manipulated by the press. Think about it”. I mean, he’s not wrong and nearly 30 years later that is still the case but why was he prompted to say that at this time? Was he having a particularly bad time with the tabloids? In his early pugilist career, he hadn’t enjoyed a good relationship with the press who depicted him as arrogant and with ideas above his station with his flamboyant sartorial style and posturing or as his Wikipedia entry puts it ‘the man you love to hate’. After he’d lost his boxing title and was supposedly retired from the fight game, would he have still attracted so much attention? I guess by presenting TOTP he was hardly shying away from the public counting his money in his expensive mansion was he?

Definitely on the covers of the music press would have been Ash who were onto their third (and ultimately biggest) hit in “Goldfinger”. I guess this would have been a breakthrough moment for the band – their first time inside the Top 10 and it came with a single that was released a good six months after their last hit. Momentum could easily have been lost. “Goldfinger” not only consolidated that previous success but went beyond it. To do that, the band had to come up with a bloody good tune and they did that. I used my words carefully there – it’s a good tune but not a great one to my ears in the respect that I think they’ve got better songs. Still better than most of the garbage in the charts though. Watching this performance back, I’m struck by how much Tim Wheeler looks like Vernon Kay? Odd(job).

Eubank is finding his feet now and getting a combination together. He’s not stumbling over his words so much and is addressing the audience in a more direct way informing us that he’s got something next to get us “absolutely freaking” before describing it as a modern day version of “Knees Up Mother Brown”. Who can he be talking about? It’s Technohead of course and their latest hit “Happy Birthday”. Yes, the people who brought us “I Wanna Be A Hippy” thought we could do with another dose of their dumbo brand of high speed, happy hardcore nonsense and duly delivered unto us a second hit. It’s a carbon copy of its infuriating predecessor but that didn’t stop UK punters from buying it in enough numbers to send it to No 18 – just bonkers. That’s also the word I would use for this performance which is a riot of idiots jumping around maniacally for the duration of the ‘song’. And what was the recreation of the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party all about? Ever wondered why the hatter was mad? Well, apparently it was an actual condition arising from the use of mercury in the Victorian era to cure pelts in the hat making process. When the mercury got into the systems of the hat makers, it gave rise to mental health problems including dementia hence the phrase. In terms of Lewis Carroll’s character in Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, some analysis suggests he was written this way to highlight some of the most irritating and unpleasant traits of human nature. ‘Irritating’ and ‘unpleasant’? Well, that explains it then as “Happy Birthday” by Technohead was nothing if not irritating and unpleasant.

P.S. The Emily who Eubank says happy birthday to in his intro is presumably his daughter Emily whose 2nd birthday it had been six days before this TOTP aired.

Oh dear. Eubank makes a misstep in his next intro although in 1996, I’m not sure his choice of words would necessarily have tripped him up. Would we have winced at him describing Louise Werner of Sleeper as “an absolute tottie” back then? I like to think I would have but I can’t be sure. Also, would Eubank’s Nicholas Parsons reference have hit home with the TV audience in 1996? The game show that Parsons presented that shared its name with Sleeper’s single ran from 1971 to 1983 so had been off our screens for 13 years by this point. I think that particular punch line might have failed to hit its intended target.

Just like Ash earlier, Sleeper were at a pivotal moment in their career with the release of their first Top 10 single “Sale Of The Century”. Also just like Ash, it came six months after their last hit so it was an important moment momentum wise. In terms of the song itself, it was arguably just more of the same Sleeper sound that previous hits “Inbetweener” and “What Do I Did Now?” had established. That shouldn’t be seen as a criticism though. They had a successful formula and were giving the people what they wanted. What’s that? Couldn’t the same argument be applied to Technohead? Erm…no. Why not? Well…I didn’t like them did I? That’s fair enough isn’t it? I think it is. Interestingly, Louise Werner doesn’t have her guitar with her for this performance and she seems a bit lost without it. Not knowing quite what to do with herself, she resorts to a few skip and jump movements. She should have floated around the stage Muhammad Ali style, throwing a few jabs, ducking and weaving. I’m sure Chris Eubank would have been even more enamoured with her than he already was.

It’s round seven and Eubank rallies with an intro that sits well with the esoteric, faux-existential quotes he specialises in. It also shows that he knew something of the band he was introducing. “Now here’s a group to make you philosophise and think” he pronounces before the Manic Street Preachers fill our screens. There’s no doubting that the Welsh rockers have a canon of work that displays a certain intellectual rigour with their influences ranging from Nietzsche to Camus to Chomsky and much wider. Was it possible that Eubank was a Manics fan or just that he’d done his research? Whatever Eubank’s truth, the band were telling us that theirs was that they were definitely still a going concern despite the disappearance of Richey Edwards via the success of “A Design For Life”. Ironically, the song’s best known lyric – “We don’t talk about love, we only wanna get drunk” – in which the band highlight the working class’s right to do so, would be sung back to them by crowds of middle class festival goers. Think about that as Chris Eubank might have said.

OK, we nearly at the KO moment for Eubank. The moment when Chris is dealt a blow he can’t recover from. When the BBC4 audience, with our prior knowledge of what’s coming, look on with a building sense of schadenfreude until suddenly it’s here…and Chris Eubank has to introduce Suggs singing “Cecilia”. Why was this a big deal? Because of our host’s lisp of course – it’s not a great look is it? Taking the piss out of a speech impediment. Six years on from this, Gareth Gates would win the hearts of the public on Pop Idol with his singing and looks but also because of his determination to not let his stammer prove too big an obstacle in his pursuit of becoming a pop star and recording artist. I guess Eubank’s perceived arrogance and eccentric demeanour meant he was never going to be afforded the same reaction.

His intro for the actual performance by Suggs and Louchie Lou and Michie One of “Cecilia” has him on the ropes but the knockout blow comes during the Top 10 countdown when he has to say “At six, Cecilia by Suggs”. That moment was used in an episode of Never Mind The Buzzcocks in the a round called Freeze Frame which was basically a What Happened Next? section…

Go to 3:40 in for the “At thickth, Thethilia by Thughth” moment

Mark Morrison is still in pole position at the top of the charts and he’s still got his rather creepy handcuffs with him. The recurrent line “you lied to me” combined with Morrison’s style of delivery has made me ponder that “Return Of The Mack” is what you get if you combined “Ain’t No Doubt” by Jimmy Nail (“she’s lying”) with “It Wasn’t Me” by Shaggy. What a thought!

After the Suggs KO, the defeated Chrissy boy gives a reflective speech about being true to yourself before signing off with a cheery “Good bloody show”. To paraphrase Chumbawamba, you can knock Eubank down but he’ll always get up again. The play out song is something of an oddity called “That’s Nice” by Minty. If you don’t remember it (as I don’t), it’s probably because it never charted as far as I can tell. Yes, it’s another of those left field Ric Blaxill choices where he championed a track that would not actually become a Top 40 hit.

Minty was a vehicle for Australian performance artist, club promoter, fashion designer and friend of Boy George, Leigh Bowery. Wikipedia tell me that Minty were part of the Romo movement which I’d never heard of but which was short for Romantic Modernism and was characterised by a hotchpotch of musical genres including disco, glam rock and the New Romantics with its base camp being the club night Club Skinny in Camden. This track was a posthumous release as Bowery died from an AIDS related illness on New Year’s Eve 1994 though the project continued under the leadership of his long term female partner Nicola Bateman. I’m guessing now but was Leigh Bowery the inspiration for the character of Vulva from Spaced?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Babylon Zoo	Animal Army	Not for me but for a friend. Honest!
2	The Lisa Marie Experience	(Keep On) Jumpin’	No
3	Orbital	The Box	Not for me thanks
4	Ash	Goldfinger	No but I have it on their Intergalactic Sonic 7″s compilation album
5	Technohead	Happy Birthday	As if
6	Sleeper	Sale Of The Century	Liked it, didn’t buy it
7	Manic Street Preachers	A Design For Life	No but I had the Everything Must Go album
8	Suggs featuring Louchie Lou and Michie One	Cecilia	Nah
9	Mark Morrison	Return Of The Mack	Nope
10	Minty	That’s Nice	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/m0020ldh/top-of-the-pops-25041996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 18 APR 1996

Posted on July 5, 2024 by 80stastic

Who the heck is / was Beertje Van Beers? Why? Because she’s hosting this TOTP and I, for one, haven’t a clue as to why. Hang on, she’s not the singer with Technohead of “I Wanna Be A Hippy” fame is she?

*checks internet*

No, I don’t think so. I’ll have to do some more research.

*checks internet again*

Well, it seems I wasn’t the only person confused but inevitably someone had the answer…

Here's why. pic.twitter.com/99IkVj3W6V
— Andrew ✈ (@ker_fuffle) June 21, 2024

Right so basically she was Bis in presenter form? Anyway, the first artist tonight are The Wildhearts who were a favourite of TOTP executive producer Ric Blaxill according to the tweet above which seems to accuse him of employing some favouritism when it came to the running order. Is that fair? Well, let’s look at the evidence. The Wildhearts were no strangers to the charts having had five UK Top 40 hits to this point though only one had made it into the Top 20. This single – “Sick Of Drugs” – would become their biggest when it peaked at No 14 so they were on an upwards trajectory which would add weight to the claim that a place on TOTP was justified. The counter argument would be that those chart positions were inflated by the band being shoe horned onto the show and benefiting from the exposure. Where lies the truth? I think I’ll leave (literally) the final word on this to the band’s lead singer Ginger who says at the end of the performance “If you wanna hear the rest of the song go and buy the single”. The full track clocks in at 4:43 in length but this TOTP performance is about 2:30 long. I think Ginger’s frustration at being cut short suggests the band were not in receipt of preferential treatment from Ric Blaxill.

Now to another artist who wasn’t revelling in huge hit singles. However, she was positively ripping it up when it came to albums sales. Alanis Morissette’s “Jagged Little Pill” had been in UK charts since August of 1995. However, it didn’t make it into the Top 10 until January of the following year. That slow burn was possibly due to the fact that it hadn’t furnished any massive hits with the three singles taken from it up to that point having peaked at Nos 22, 24 and 26. Respectable but not the kind of numbers to propel an album into the stratosphere. However, playing the long game would prove to be a much more successful strategy ultimately. Word of mouth promotion and an organic growth of the album would see it spend 41 consecutive weeks inside the Top 10 once it had got there with 11 of them at No 1. This was quite the phenomenon. Compare that to say Babylon Zoo’s album which crashed into the chart at No 6 off the back of the enormous “Spaceman” single but which was out of the Top 40 within a month, never to be seen again. With sales of “Jagged Little Pill” showing no signs of tailing off, a fourth single was released from it and this one would not only be the second highest charting of the six ultimately take from it but also the most infamous of them.

“Ironic” is a great tune based around a simple yet effective narrative but unfortunately for Alanis, her choice of title for the song didn’t match what she was singing about. Much cultural analysis has gone into dissecting the lyrics of “Ironic” and pointing out that the scenarios depicted in the song are not examples of irony but rather just bad luck. Such criticism opened the song up to parody, the king of which, “Weird Al” Yankovic, was always going to join in the pile on which he duly did with his song “Word Crimes”. Perhaps the most famous take down of it though came courtesy of Irish comedian Ed Byrne:

Ed made a career for himself out of that skit! Had we all noticed the irony of a lack of irony in a song about irony back in 1996 though? If we did, I don’t remember it. That Ed Byrne clip came from a Channel 4 show broadcast in 1999. In fairness to Alanis, she took it all on the chin and even extracted the piss out of herself in this updated performance of the song on The Late Late Show With James Corden in 2015:

Time to check in on how Bertje Van Beers doing as host? Well, she’s enthusiastic, I’ll give her that. Perhaps ever so slightly the wrong side of annoying? Maybe. Her next link is for a live by satellite performance by Presidents Of The United States Of America and their biggest hit “Peaches”. This is a great left field song which, like “Ironic” before it, created a bit of discussion about its lyrics. Unlike “Ironic”, said discussion was of a much baser nature. Now I just thought this was a quirky song about a guy who liked to eat peaches. However, there is a school of thought that it’s actually about eating something altogether different. I’ll say no more than that.

Lead singer Chris Ballew though says it was inspired by overhearing a homeless man walk past him muttering “I’m moving to the country, I’m gonna eat a lot of peaches” over and over. Apparently that line could have been inspired by a song by John Prine called “Spanish Pipedream”…

Blow up your TV, throw away your paper

Go to the country, build you a home

Plant a little garden, eat a lot of peaches

Try an’ find Jesus on your own

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Jeffrey Bradford Kent / John Prine
Spanish Pipedream lyrics © Walden Music, Inc.

So there’s that but there’s also a second part to the inspiration for the song also from Ballew who recounts going to the house of a girl he fancied whilst under the influence of recreational drugs, finding her not at home and so waiting for her sat under a peach tree, having an hallucinogenic experience whilst crushing fallen peaches in his hands. I think I’ll choose to go with Ballew’s story as to what the song’s about. Not everyone agrees though. Here’s Captain D from Cincinnati on the Songfacts.com website:

I’m a pervert so I thought it was sexual too

Well, I guess the Captain is honest at least. The Presidents Of The USA would have two more UK hits before disbanding in 1997. “Peaches” remains their signature hit though. Such was its renown that it even permeated our culture to the point that the character of Hank from King Of The Hill knew it:

Everything But The Girl have finally moved on from “Missing” after it stayed in the charts for six months but they weren’t leaving their new direction behind them. “Walking Wounded” (both the single and album) saw the duo continue to embrace dance beats and in particular those of a drum and bass variety that were ripping up the nation’s dance floors and starting to enter the mainstream. Whilst their repositioning of themselves as a dance act no doubt won them some new admirers, I wasn’t one of them. I’d grown up with the Ben and Tracey era of “Each And Everyone” and the wonderful “Baby, The Stars Shine Bright” album, not this electronica, trip-hop material. I just couldn’t get into it. Sure, I could appreciate “Missing” for its musicality that could see it be effective as both an acoustic ballad and dance anthem but did I want to hear an Everything But The Girl album that went further than that? No thanks. The record buying public disagreed with me of course sending the album to No 4 and a platinum certification selling three times as many copies as predecessor “Amplified Heart”. However, it could be argued that this new direction only brought short term gains. Follow up album “Temperamental” continued the dance experiment but received a lukewarm reception and sales. Appearing in 1999, it would be the last Everything But The Girl album for nearly a quarter of a decade with the band’s output becoming mired in a haze of Best Of compilations and collections. Their legacy deserved better.

After a terrible decade so far in terms of his legal battle with Sony over the fairness of his recording contract, 1996 was turning out to be a splendid year for George Michael. Sure, he’d had two No 1s (a duet with Elton John and his version of “Somebody To Love” from The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert) but he lost that litigation with the court wholly rejecting his claims of restraint of trade. However, when Sony sold his contract to Virgin in 1995, he was able to resume his career and he did so in some style. “Jesus To A Child” gave him his first truly solo UK No 1 since 1986’s “A Different Corner” and he followed it with a second chart topper in “Fastlove”. Based around an interpolation of Patrice Rushen’s 1982 hit “Forget Me Nots”, it was a stark contrast from the haunting balladry of its predecessor, a funk-based number celebrating one night stands over committed relationships. The track had a very sophisticated, highly polished production sound to it with the saxophone part played by Andy Hamilton who was responsible for the memorable saxophone break in Duran Duran’s “Rio”. Somehow, the BBC censors missed George singing the line “all that bullshit conversation” at the start of the song.

The B-side was a funked up but slowed down version of “I’m Your Man” showing that George hadn’t totally turned his back on his rich pop past. Although it’s hard to beat the effervescence of the Wham! original, the ‘96 remake is definitely worth a listen:

The song’s futuristic video gave George the opportunity to have a dig at Sony re: the aforementioned court case with one of the promo’s dancers wearing a set of headphones displaying the word ‘FONY’ in the style of the Sony corporate logo. That didn’t stop it from being nominated for three MTV Music Video Awards winning the one for International Viewer’ Choice. Watching it back now, it seems to draw inspiration from the film Logan’s Run, in particular the scene where Logan meets Jessica on ‘the circuit’, the tinder of 2274:

As with a few artists, I kind of lost touch with The Cranberries after a while. I’d enjoyed their early hits and had been to see them live in October of 1994 I think but by 1996, they’d definitely slipped off my radar. “Salvation” was the lead single from their third album “To The Faithful Departed” and was definitely more in the vein of “Zombie” than “Linger”. It would become their joint biggest hit when it peaked at No 13 which seems an awfully low bar for a band that turned out a few cracking hits. I guess they were more of an albums band?

Featuring Dolores O’Riordan stomping all over the track with a strident vocal and almost shouted chorus, “Salvation” was seen as an anti-drug song though Dolores herself described it more as anti anything that took control of you. Sadly for her, she was unable to live by the lyrics of her song and was found dead in 2018 in a hotel room in Mayfair, London with the inquest ruling that she had died by accidental drowning following sedation by alcoholic intoxication.

Here’s something unusual – a controversial Michael Jackson single. I jest of course. Jacko’s whole life (and death) was surrounded by controversy. However, “They Don’t Care About Us” was certainly up there for generating a storm of headlines. The fourth single taken from the “HIStory: Past, Present And Future, Book 1” album, it attracted unwanted (by Jackson) attention both for its lyrics and video. The former were accused of being anti-Semitic with its use of the phrases “Jew me” and “Kike me” which Jackson strenuously denied and, indeed, agreed to re-record the track for subsequent copies of the album with the offending phrases replaced with “sue me” and “strike me”. In the end though, they were just covered up with some abstract noises – you can hear said sounds in the video shown on this TOTP.

The video was filmed in a favela or ghetto in Rio de Janeiro and caused concern for their Secretary of State for Industry, Commerce and Tourism who was worried showing the poverty in the area would adversely affect tourism and Rio’s bid to host the 2004 Olympics. A judge banned the filming of the video but a counter injunction saw it go ahead. Some supported Jackson’s claim of highlighting the poverty in the area whilst others criticised his production team for negotiating with local drug dealers for permission to film in the favela. It’s interesting to note that we only get about 2:20 of the video shown here where in the past TOTP have devoted huge sections of their half hour to showcasing a Jacko exclusive. Could they have been put off by the negative press? As for the song itself, its samba beat and chant like chorus actually make it stand out for me within Jackson’s catalogue – was the “hooo-aaargh” shout halfway through the song and attempted by Beerjte Van Beers in her intro the impetus for Leigh Francis to choose Jackson for one of his outlandish Bo’ Selecta! characters?

The caption accompanying this performance by The Cure says that they haven’t been on TOTP since April 1990. That can’t be right can it? They’d had five Top 40 hits since then. Didn’t any of those justify an appearance on the show? Anyway, “The 13th” was the lead single from the “Wild Mood Swings” album and well, I’m sorry but it’s awful. The Cure do Mariachi? No thanks.

The album was not well received by fans or the music press and it was the band’s poorest selling for 12 years. Even Robert Smith himself has said that he was disappointed with it – maybe he should have taken more heed of the lyric he sang in “The 13th” of “I just know this is a big mistake”. I recall that we didn’t sell many at all in the Our Price where I was working at the time. Though they would never regain their commercial edge, the band are still together and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2019 which gave us this marvellous Robert Smith moment…

Mark Morrison has completed his slow slither up to the No 1 position with “Return Of The Mack”. It’s taken six weeks to get there which was an eternity in 1996 when we were used to singles debuting in the top spot in week one. True to his dubious character, he sidles up to Beertje Van Beers at the end of his performance and drags her away with him as the credits roll. Maybe this was cooked up between the pair of them pre-show but even if it was, it looks terrible especially through 2024 eyes.

For the first time in a while, we have a play out video of a current chart hit rather than a clip from the archives to promote TOTP2. In this case, we get a football song but not that one. Yes, in 1996 if your single about the beautiful game wasn’t called “Three Lions” then it was destined to be forgotten. Who remembers “Move Move Move (The Red Tribe)” by The 1996 Manchester United FA Cup Squad? Well, you might if you’re a United fan I guess but when it’s not as memorable as the odious “Come On You Reds” from 1994, then you know the game is up. For the record, it was a horrible Reel 2 Real facsimile which is never a good thing.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	The Wildhearts	Sick Of Drugs	Negative
2	Alanis Morissette	Ironic	No but I had the Jagged Little Pill album
3	Presidents Of The United States Of America	Peaches	No but I had it on one of those Best Album Ever compilations
4	Everything But The Girl	Walking Wounded	Didn’t happen
5	George Michael	Fastlove	Nope
6	The Cranberries	Salvation	It’s a no from me
7	Michael Jackson	They Don’t Care About Us	I did not
8	The Cure	The 13th	Nah
9	Mark Morrison	Return Of The Mack	No
10	The 1996 Manchester United FA Cup Squad	Move Move Move (The Red Tribe)	Never

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/m0020crt/top-of-the-pops-18041996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 04 APR 1996

Posted on June 28, 2024 by 80stastic

Four days before this TOTP aired, my beloved Chelsea lost an FA Cup semi-final to Manchester United who were on their way to the ‘double double’. I was crushed. After waiting my whole life to see them play in a proper cup final, they’d got humped 4-0 by United two years before. In 1996 though, I was sure that we would get revenge and turn the reds over to reach the final again. We nearly did. Leading 1-0 at half time we looked good until an early second half equaliser and a catastrophic misplaced back pass to set up a young David Beckham for the winner meant that we fell to defeat. I had no idea at the time but a year later, my anguish would be fully cleansed by our cathartic victory over Middlesbrough in next season’s final under Ruud Gullit and his ‘sexy football’. There are no football songs on this edition of TOTP but maybe there are some sexy ones? Let’s see…

Well this guy clearly thinks he’s sexy but…As with last week’s show, we start with a dance tune by an act that’s probably just the pseudonym for a DJ or producer or both. Kadoc were from Spain according to tonight’s host Dale Winton and that’s all there is to say about them or at least that I can be bothered to find out about them. I did try but there wasn’t much coming up other than I recognised the generic design on the cover of the single that was the mark of the Positiva record label who must have licensed it in the UK.

As for their track “Night Train”, it sounds to me like another one of those tracks that owes a lot to “French Kiss” by Lil Louis. A repetitive beat based around a one line lyric – it might have made sense on a sweaty dance floor down your nightclub of choice but it all looks a bit silly in the TOTP studio despite throwing a trio of backing dancers at it to try and raise the temperature of the performance. Look, if you’re going to do a song called “Night Train” on TOTP, let the late, great Steve Strange and co show you how. Backing singers missing their cues, jerky, unrehearsed dance moves from Steve and all cloaked in enough dry ice that wouldn’t be out of place in John Carpenter’s horror classic The Fog. Lovely stuff.

I’m not sure if Ocean Colour Scene have ever been described as ‘sexy’ (maybe they have by the strong devoted in their fan base) but it’s not the first word you would use to describe them is it? That’s not a criticism – they always seemed like a band that were more about their art than air brushed photo shoots anyway. Having scored their first Top 40 hit with previous single “Riverboat Song”, they followed it with an even bigger one in “You’ve Got It Bad”. This is yet another single that I haven’t retained in my memory banks. I could have bet money that the magnificent “The Day We Caught The Train” was the follow up to “Riverboat Song” but yet again these TOTP repeats delight in revealing to me how my memory is failing me. In my defence, “You’ve Got It Bad” isn’t one of the band’s better tunes – I think I would describe it as ‘competent’ which isn’t really how you would want your craft to be categorised.

Dale Winton mentions in his intro that the band’s next live gig is supporting Oasis. Would that be the Maine Road gigs at the end of the month? I think it might be. As I confessed in a previous post, I was at the Saturday concert with some friends but missed seeing Ocean Colour Scene as we were still imbibing some pre-gig drinks when they were on stage. In August this year I will be rectifying that wrong when I will see the band along with Embrace and Cast at an outdoor gig in Hull. Incidentally, Cast were also meant to be in that Oasis bill but had to pull out as their drummer had broken his arm. Couldn’t they have borrowed a replacement from someone like when The Beatles subbed in Jimmie Nicol for a tonsillitis struck Ringo for some gigs on their 1964 world tour? Maybe Oasis could have given them Tony McCarroll’s number whom they’d recently sacked? By the way, it’s taken a while but I’ve finally worked out who lead singer Simon Fowler reminds me of here…

Now, I’m not sure that Dave Grohl is the sexiest man in rock but he has been described as the nicest and that’s got to count for something. His band Foo Fighters were in the charts this week with the fourth and final single taken from their eponymous debut album called “Big Me”. It’s a very radio friendly song definitely at the poppier end of their range and to reflect that, they made a video to promote it that parodied the well known (in America) series of adverts for Mentos Mints. It was based around a narrative that people could solve day-to-day problems by outside-the-box thinking if they ate a Mento Mint to inspire their creativity. The actors in these ads performed in mannered and exaggerated ways (camping it up some might say) against an insanely catchy jingle. The Foo Fighters video apes some of the scenarios in the Mentos adverts scene for scene (the boxed in car for example) with the band also lampooning the acting style. It works pretty well if you know those adverts which of course we didn’t in the UK so we might have appreciated that it was an attempt at being light hearted but the parody element surely escaped us.

So back to Dave Grohl and whether he’s sexy or not. I’m not sure he did himself any favours by styling his long hair into bunches in parts of the video. It gave me real Bill Bailey vibes from that episode of Black Books where they drink the guy’s really expensive wine cellar dry.

Now, was this next hit a blatant and deliberate attempt to cash in on a TV sensation or something that grew organically from the clubs before finally getting an official release? The truth is out there (yes I’m using that tag line again!) but I’m not sure where it is. Apparently, some club DJs had been playing the X Files theme as a chill out track for ravers to come down to after a hard night on the dance floor and all that entailed (ahem) but had then also used it as a basis for making unlicensed dance remixes causing Warners to release the official single by Mark Snow in an attempt to kill off the practice. However, it didn’t prevent a retaliatory official release of “X-Files” by DJ Dado whose version had been one of the most popular in the clubs. Dado was an Italian DJ and producer (weren’t they all?) who took the dream trance sound of Robert Miles’ “Children” and combined it with the haunting melody of the TV show theme to come up with this hit that would spend time residing alongside Snow’s original in the Top 10. It would turn out to be DJ Dado’s only UK hit.

If innuendo is all about sex then “Ooh Aah…(Just A Little Bit)” is indeed a sexy song. Gina G’s Eurovision entry has crashed into the charts at No 6, instantly topping the chart high of the previous year’s contestant Love City Groove. Whether this was a portent that it could sweep all before it and take the Eurovision crown for the UK for the first time in 15 years was debatable but it was indisputable evidence that it was going to be a major hit on our chart. Not since Bardo (remember them) in 1982 had a UK entrant been so high up the Top 40 and this is as with the actual contest still being six weeks away when, whatever its fate, the song would surely get another sales boost due to the promotion and coverage of the event. As it turned out, “Ooh Aah…(Just A Little Bit)” would enjoy a spectacular chart run spending a solid ten weeks inside the Top 10.

This particular TOTP has gone backing dancer mad with Gina’s gals being the third set to feature after those behind Kadoc and DJ Dado. Despite a bit of over enthusiastic thrusting of chests, their moves are playful rather than suggestive I would…erm…suggest whilst Gina gives a winning Kylie-esque smile throughout. I have my own personal story about this song but I’ll keep it warming the bench for now as guess what? Gina is the opening act on the next show!

Hmm. Despite his large collection of ballads and love songs in his back catalogue, I’m not sure that the words Lionel Richie and sexy belong together in the same sentence. He’s here anyway to promote his latest single “Don’t Wanna Lose You” but judging by the fade away segue, it’s just a repeat of his studio appearance from the other week. Truly, it’s not a very good song and surely can’t be talked about in the same breath as some of his classic hits. In Lionel’s defence, he’s definitely trying out his best approximation of Lenny Henry’s Theophilius P. Wildebeeste’s character (he’s even cultivated a carefully coiffured beard) and looks longingly straight down the camera but you can’t really get away for the fact that he is, despite everything he’s trying, still Lionel Richie.

Next to a guy who may have been an unlikely sex symbol but his picture was surely on more teenagers walls than Lionel Richie’s. Jarvis Cocker’s national treasure status was never bigger than at this point. Not only had his band Pulp completely crossed over into the mainstream following the success of their “Different Class” album but he’d become front page news after his protest against Michael Jackson at the BRIT Awards a few weeks before this TOTP aired. “Something Changed” was the fourth single lifted from that album and I recall thinking that the band were pushing it releasing a single from an album that had already been out for six months by this point. However, it’s such a good song it deserved its own moment in the spotlight. An observation on the randomness of life and how monumental events in people’s lives occur. Cleverly, it doesn’t eulogise the concept of fate as so many songs do but rather tries to examine the ‘sliding doors’ notion of how your life would have gone in a completely different direction if you’d literally arrived somewhere one minute earlier or later. That idea really intrigues me and I’m sure we can all think of our own personal ‘sliding doors’ moments. I hadn’t realised until now how old the song was in that the band had played around with it as early as 1984 but returned to it for the “Different Class” sessions and worked it into the track we know today. Maybe if they’d persevered with it originally then fame and fortune might have come to the band much earlier than it did. A ‘sliding doors’ moment indeed.

It’s the return of Mark Morrison now as he continues his protracted journey to the No 1 spot with his hit “Return Of The Mack”. He’s up to No 4 this week after spending three consecutive weeks at No 6. Him topping the chart after that run must have seemed unlikely but the two place move upwards was followed by a week at No 3 before he finally got to the summit in week six of release. Whilst we were seeing a new No 1 record going straight to the top virtually every week around this time, it’s worth remembering that there were still some songs that climbed steadily like in the good old days of the 80s. As well as Morrison, there was the aforementioned Gina G who took eight weeks to get to No 1 plus, of course, there was the outlier that was “Think Twice” by Celine Dion that took an incredible sixteen weeks to rise to the top. Totally predictably, Morrison adds to the backing dancer count for this TOTP with a further four in this performance. There was clearly a trend for showing your bra during this period!

The Prodigy remain at No 1 with “Firestarter”. I talked about the video for this one in the last post so now it’s time to focus on the song itself. Well, it couldn’t be more in your face – the musical equivalent of the face hugger from the Alien franchise. A blistering assault on your aural senses. I guess you can’t underestimate the input of Keith Flint to it in what was unbelievably his first vocal contribution to a Prodigy track. It would be like Bez doing lead vocals on a Happy Mondays single and it going to No 1. A remarkable achievement. Sure, Flint didn’t have a technically good voice but what he did do, he did brilliantly. As for the musical composition of the song, there are a few samples in there that I’ve never picked up on before. I’m going to pardon myself for not spotting The Breeders and “Devotion” by Ten City but how on earth did I miss the ‘hey’ chant from Art Of Noise’s “Close (To The Edit)”?! It’s metaphorically been under my nose and literally in my ears for 28 years!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Kadoc	Night Train	Never
2	Ocean Colour Scene	You’ve Got It Bad	No
3	Foo Fighters	Big Me	I didn’t
4	DJ Dado	X-Files	Of course not
5	Gina G	Ooh Aah…(Just A Little Bit)	Nope
6	Lionel Richie	Don’t Wanna Lose You	Nah
7	Pulp	Something Changed	No but I had the Different Class album with it on
8	Mark Morrison	Return Of The Mack	Negative
9	The Prodigy	Firestarter	Should have but didn’t

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/m0020540/top-of-the-pops-04041996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 14 MAR 1996

Posted on June 18, 2024 by 80stastic

Sometimes, things can take a while before they come to fruition, a substantial gestation period before conditions are right for optimum blossoming. In the world of entertainment, we might call it a sleeper hit. In the UK singles chart of 1996, such things were becoming a rarity with singles careering in and out of the Top 40 within a couple of weeks, usually debuting at their peak position before falling away quickly. Songs going straight in at No 1, a complete rarity in the 80s, was becoming a weekly event. In the television industry however, sleeper hits were still a thing. Stretching back to the 70s, Happy Days only became a huge success once the programme makers decided to centre the show around the character of Fonzie. In the 80s, the first series of Blackadder was not a ratings winner until they changed eras and the personality of the title character in Series 2. A similar thing happened with Men Behaving Badly with its popularity soaring once Harry Enfield’s character was replaced by Tony played by Neil Morrissey.

So it was in 1996 with This Life which first aired four days after this TOTP was broadcast. An ensemble piece about a group of 20 something law graduates as they began their careers, it gained little attention when first broadcast. However, with a second series secured, the first was repeated early in 1997 so that it would segue into the second and it started to gain traction both critically and ratings wise. I’m pretty sure that would have been when I started watching it. The show’s success would make stars of the young, mainly unknown cast, none more so than Andrew Lincoln who would eventually become the lead in The Walking Dead phenomenon. This Life featured plenty of contemporary music in it chosen by a pre-fame Ricky Gervais (credited as ‘Music Advisor’) with a heavy Britpop bent. Artists such as Oasis, Pulp, Blur, Suede and Supergrass would all have their songs used. None of those acts are on this episode of TOTP sadly but let’s see who are.

Oh come on! After I’d spent the intro making the case that unlike TV, the Top 40 wasn’t home to any sleeper hits by 1996, the very first song on tonight’s show is just that. “Return Of The Mack” by Mark Morrison would take six whole weeks to get to No 1, the making it the first record to actually climb to the top spot since Michael Jackson’s “You Are Not Alone” the previous September. Not only that, it also took its own sweet time descending the charts. Look at these positions in a solid twelve week stay inside the Top 10.

6 – 6 – 6 – 4 – 3 – 1 – 1 – 2 – 2 – 3 – 3 – 10

In short, it was a monster shifting 1.8 million copies in the UK alone, being our fifth best selling single of the year and also going to No 2 in the US Billboard Hot 100. So what was it about it the track that got under people’s skin so? Well, it was damned catchy with a singalong chorus that anyone could do but especially if your surname began with ‘Mc’ or ‘Mac’. Plus, it was a very smooth sound, almost effortlessly so. Much of that came from its sampling of “Genius Of Love” by Tom Tom Club which also featured heavily in Mariah Carey’s hit “Fantasy” from a few months earlier so maybe that triggered some brain muscle memory that appealed?

As for Morrison himself, he was not a pleasant individual and would never win any Citizen of the Year awards. I knew he’d been in trouble with the police but it wasn’t until I read up on him for this post that I understood the full extent of his law breaking. Perhaps the most famous incident was when he was sentenced to 12 months in Wormwood Scrubs for paying a lookalike to do 108 of his 150 hours of community service following his conviction for affray in a brawl in which there was one fatality. In an act of premonition, Morrison foretells his fate by wearing a set of handcuffs on his left hand in this performance.

Continuing the police presence in this show, here’s Gabrielle who wasn’t in trouble with the law herself at this time but she did have to help them with their enquiries. This was a case involving her ex-partner and father of her child who murdered his stepfather. Obviously, once the press got hold of the story and made the connection with Gabrielle, it was her name that hit the headlines not his but there was never any suggestion of the singer being involved in the murder. It wasn’t the greatest profile with which to relaunch her career though. However, “Give Me A Little More Time” was too appealing a song for any bad press to derail it and it became a Top 5 hit.

I should say, by the way, that tonight’s hosts (plural) are MN8 who are making the most of their brief time in the spotlight. I can’t say I approve of their banter so far especially the feeble joke about a band trying to be like Oasis called, The Ants…The Spiders…no The Beatles. Come on guys, that’s awful! Anyway, “Real Love” was the second single to come out of The Anthology project following the massively disappointing “Free As A Bird”. Based around another unfinished John Lennon demo, at least this one doesn’t sound like an ELO B-side despite the involvement once again of Jeff Lynne in a producer role. The video is the predictable montage of archive clips of the band integrated with some new footage of Paul, George and Ringo recording their contributions to that original demo. It doesn’t seem to have such a defined narrative as the promo for “Free As A Bird” which was meant to be from the perspective of a bird in flight. It also doesn’t have that grainy animation effect which its predecessor did but, personally, I think it’s all the better for that.

I don’t recall this but apparently Radio 1 refused to play “Real Love” on the basis that they were a contemporary music station and the latest release from The Beatles wasn’t what their listeners wanted to hear. Oh dear. Whilst falling short of calling it a ban, Radio 1’s stance caused a reaction from Paul McCartney (the return of the Mc?) who wrote an 800 word article in the Daily Mirror expressing his disappointment and that he could hear the influence of The Beatles in a lot of the then contemporary music. He had a point when it came to Oasis at least. In an act of contrition, station controller Matthew Bannister agreed for a ‘Golden Hour’ of Beatles music and that of those artists influenced by them to be broadcast.

The sixth take of the “Real Love” demo is the first track on the soundtrack to the 1988 documentary Imagine: John Lennon which I owned at one point. The official 1996 release of it would be the last new Beatles song released in the lifetime of George Harrison who died in 2001. In 2023, the final ever Beatles single “Now And Then” was released but thankfully I won’t have to review that.

OK, I quite liked the MN8 intro for this next one. One of them says “There’s Motörhead, Radiohead, Beavis and Butthead now there’s Technohead” while his pal keeps interrupting him saying he wants to be a hippy. “Go away and be a hippy then” the first one exclaims in exasperation finally. Look, it’s hardly Derek and Clive or Morecambe and Wise but it amused my tiny brain OK?! Talking of which, the brainless “I Wanna Be A Hippy” was purely for the feeble minded. The TOTP producers couldn’t get enough of it though it seems. Despite having fallen down the charts twice (and gone back up once), staying at No 9 (after peaking at No 6) for two weeks was considered enough chart traction for another (a third?) TOTP appearance. It would hang around the Top 40 for a further five weeks before departing by which point their follow up single was out and straight into the Top 20. Oh joy!

Wait…what?! Peter Andre had a hit in this country before “Mysterious Girl”?! I wouldn’t have believed it but here’s the evidence literally in front of my eyes. “Only One” was already at its peak of No 16. The aforementioned “Mysterious Girl” would be his subsequent single release and it would be that song that really broke him when it went to No 2. He followed that up with two consecutive No 1s before 1996 was over meaning he had four hits in that calendar year. Who would have thought that 28 years later, this perma-tanned, baby oiled berk would still be appearing on our TV screens long after his pop career was over?! What is his enduring appeal? I just don’t get it.

If I had to say something about “Only One” it would be that it’s not as bad as “Mysterious Girl” but that’s like saying Rishi Sunak isn’t as bad as Liz Truss. Both are horribly useless but one couldn’t outlast a wilting lettuce. Sadly Peter Andre’s career could.

Next up is Robert Miles who is up to No 2 with “Children”. In my mind, for no discernible reasons other than they’re both instrumentals and they were both in the charts at the same time, this record is always linked to the theme tune to The X Files by Mark Snow which we’ll see on the show in a couple of episodes time. As for this show, if you look closely in the Top 10 rundown, you can see there’s some editing gone on. The graphics for Robert Miles does not include the title of the song. Here’s @TOTPFacts with the reason why:

Following the Dunblane massacre on 13 March 1996, #TOTP did not refer to the song's title during the chart rundown on this, and the next, edition – although the on-screen caption at the beginning of this performance was left in.
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 7, 2024

Whether this was the right decision or not, it was kind of undermined by what’s reported in the second half of the tweet above.

By 1996, and this might well upset some people, is it fair to say, in terms of the charts, that Gary Numan was becoming a one trick pony? Hear me out. He’s here on the show to perform his only* solo No 1 hit “Cars” – retitled as “Cars (Premier Mix)” – due to its use in an ad campaign for Carling Premier beer.

*”Are Friends Electric?” was released under the Tubeway Army banner

The last time he was in the TOTP studio? 1987. And what song was he performing then? Yes, another remix of “Cars” (this time restyled as the ‘E’ reg model mix). In total, the song has been released four times as a single if you count the original 1979 issue and a further rerelease in 1993 when it peaked at No 53. The 1996 version would get to No 17 and would be backed by a Best Of compilation called “The Premier Hits”. Money for old rope? Almost certainly.

Now, that’s not to say that Numan wasn’t busy recording in all the intervening years. He was – he’s released 22 studio albums and 51 singles so far in his career but would you have noticed unless you were a die hard fan? Ah yes, those fans, the so-called ‘Numanoids’. I’ve said before that I never enjoyed a good relationship with that particular fan base. Why? Because they were a massive pain in the arse when I worked in record shops that’s why! Endlessly ringing up to ask about release dates for their hero and then disputing the information I gave them. Always just a synth riff away from starting an argument. I’ve never been that keen on Numan himself either – all that endorsing of Margaret Thatcher (which he has publicly regretted since) and then marrying a member of his fan club. Then there’s his industrial rock sound that has dominated his later work. Not for me thanks though I can appreciate his pioneering part in the synth pop movement and his influence on subsequent artists. I’ve not got a totally closed outlook you know. I’m pretty open-minded and in touch with my caring side. You could say I’m a new man (ahem).

We arrive at one of the more notorious TOTP appearances, not because of the quality of the performance nor what the band were wearing but because of a much more…well, legal matter. As announced by hosts MN8, for the first time on the show was a totally unsigned act. Yes, it’s time for the curious footnote of pop music history that was/is Bis. Having formed at school in Woodfarm, East Renfrewshire this trio found themselves on the UK’s premier music show on prime time TV despite being unknown to the vast majority of the watching millions. How did this happen? It seems to be down to just one man who was a fan. Handily for Bis, that man was TOTP Executive Producer Ric Blaxill. What are the chances?! Now, as for that “unsigned” claim, it turns out that unknown doesn’t mean unsigned as they were actually on the indie label Chemikal Underground which was started by Scottish band The Delgados to release their first single. Other artists on the label’s roster included Arab Strap and Mogwai though their only UK Top 40 single came courtesy of Bis. The song performed here – “Kandy Pop” – was taken from their “The Secret Vampire Soundtrack” EP and would make No 25 in the charts.

Listening back to it now, I do wonder what all the fuss was about as it’s the sound of some over excited teenagers let loose in a recording studio and thinking that they’re the future of pop music. All very underwhelming. Maybe I felt different about it at the time – I can’t recall. Amazingly, this wasn’t their only UK Top 40 hit as in November 1998, “Eurodisco” went to No 38 (they were on the Wiiija label by this point). Bis split in 2003 but reconvened in 2009 and are still a going concern today and have toured with the likes of Foo Fighters, Garbage and…wait…Gary Numan?! That must surely have come about after they both appeared on this TOTP?! Maybe they got along well in the Green Room post show?

Take That remain at No 1 with their (sort of) valedictory single “How Deep Is Your Love”. In the last post, I said that I hadn’t realised how many units they’d shifted of their albums, seeing them as purely a singles band (in their first incarnation). However, their (first) Greatest Hits album released at this time would easily outsell two of those three studio albums with only “Everything Changes” marginally out performing it. Maybe they were a singles artist after all?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Mark Morrison	Return Of The Mack	Negative
2	Gabrielle	Give Me A Little More Time	Nah
3	The Beatles	Real Love	No but I had a version of the demo on that Imagine: John Lennon soundtrack
4	Technohead	I Wanna Be A Hippy	Never
5	Peter Andre	Only One	As if
6	Robert Miles	Children	I did not
7	Gary Numan	Cars (Premier Mix)	No
8	Bis	Kandy Pop	Nope
9	Take That	How Deep Is Your Love	No but my wife had their Greatest Hits CD

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/m001zyvf/top-of-the-pops-14031996?seriesId=unsliced