New Kids On The Block

TOTP 12 DEC 1991

Posted on December 20, 2021 by 80stastic

Christmas is coming! Unlike in 2021 where the certainty of what our festive period will be like is now under threat again from the pandemic (or more accurately the government’s handling of it), 30 years ago, some of the most pressing issues we were facing included whether we had enough wrapping paper and remembering to buy a Radio Times to plan our TV watching (very important in the pre-digital age). If, like me, you were working in retail at this time, another consideration was when we could fit in any Christmas shopping of our own after facilitating everybody else’s by working behind a shop counter for hours on end. Oh, and what the Christmas No 1 would be… and please let it not be Cliff Richard again this year. Well, as it turned out, Cliff didn’t really get a look in but which records were in the charts back then? Let’s find out…

We start tonight’s TOTP with one of the year’s biggest breakout stars in Cathy Dennis who is in the studio to perform her fourth Top 40 hit of 1991 and her fifth overall. “Everybody Move” was the final single to be released from her gold selling No 3 album “Move To This” and was a return to the radio friendly dance material of her earlier hits after previous single “Too Many Walls” had seen her go down the slow ballad route.

In all honesty, “Everybody Move” should probably have remained an unreleased album track. It’s pretty lightweight stuff and certainly it doesn’t require a great leap of imagination from this to the kind of stuff that Cathy would end up writing for the likes of S Club 7 and Hear’say later in the decade. Accordingly, it only made it to No 25 in the UK Top 40.

Whilst the reaction on Twitter to this performance focussed on Cathy’s Joker-esque outfit, I was more drawn to her dance move which comes over like a half-hearted Mick Channon windmill celebration…

Now I know I quite often draw on football references for this blog and that I’ve just done it again immediately above but quite why presenter Tony Dortie decides to do the same in his intro to the Top 10 countdown remains a mystery. “It’s day 12 on the Advent calendar, Hearts and Leeds are currently topping things in the football world but let’s see which musical crackers are doing the business in the Top 10” he trills. Hmm. For completions sake, I should note that Leeds Utd would indeed go onto win the old Division 1 league title come May the following year however the 1991–92 Scottish Premier Division season was won by Rangers, nine points ahead of Hearts. Dortie messes up the countdown straight away when he announces that Nirvana are at No 10 with “Smells Like Teen”. What happened to your ‘spirit’ Tony?! Unlike Boris Johnson, at least Tony owns his mistakes…

And he failed miserably x
— DORTIE (@TonyDortie) November 19, 2021

There’s some more curious missing word action next as we get what would probably have been described as a ‘banging’ tune’ back then called “Running Out Of Time” by Digital according to co-host Claudia Simon. That wasn’t their full name though Claudia, was it? No, that was Digital Orgasm – ooh and indeed err missus! This wasn’t anything to do with presenter error by the way as the on screen artist and title graphics confirm that Claudia hadn’t just messed up her intro. This, it would seem, was a TOTP policy decision. Presumably, the use of the word orgasm would have been seen as far too offensive pre the 9 o’clock watershed and so was dropped.

As with all of these dance tunes from this era, I have zero recall of it despite working in a record shop while it was in the charts. Listening back to it now, it sounds like it’s been concocted in a rave laboratory with the basic tune of “Insanity” by Oceanic spliced together with snippets of “Charly” by The Prodigy. Both were huge hits so I guess if that really was the formula behind “Running Out Of Time” then it was a sound one.

As for the performance, it looks as if the TOTP producers have given a bit more thought to how to portray this seemingly endless conveyor belt of dance acts. There appear to be loads more camera cuts and in quick rotation meaning we get lots of different angles of the performers which I’m guessing was meant to try and replicate a more clubby experience. There’s also some slightly different distorted visual effect for the non vocal bits – they’ve lost the Doctor Who green which never worked for me anyway. The woman doing the singing looks almost otherworldly like one of Captain Kirk’s alien love interests which kind of helps things along as well.

“Running Out Of Time” peaked at No 16.

Oh no! It’s the dreaded Cliff Richard! Oh yes though as he’s not No 1! He’s nowhere near the top of the tree actually being at No 19 and there’s only two weeks until Christmas! Talking of trees, the show’s production team have pulled out all the stops for Cliff to make the stage look like his front room at Christmas. A fully decorated tree, a mock fireplace, cards and candles – were Health and Safety informed?! – and Cliff himself in an armchair dressed in a sparkly jacket. For some reason though, they haven’t bothered with the prop of a telephone for the faux phone call part at the beginning of the record leaving Cliff to mime speaking into an imaginary one and then putting it back in its cradle. It just looks weird. I was hoping that Cliff might go full Val Doonican and sing the whole song from that armchair but he’s up on his feet in no time to look sincerely into the camera at us and do some of those wavy arm moves of his.

Does anybody really remember “We Should Be Together”? It’s surely Cliff’s forgotten Christmas single after “Mistletoe And ~~Whine~~…sorry..Wine” and “Saviour’s Day”? You never hear it played on the radio come December despite some of the commercial stations like Magic having cleared all of their playlist schedules to play exclusively Christmas tunes. Somehow it did get to No 10 in the UK Top 40 though it was never a serious contender for the top spot.

We get the video for “Too Blind To See It” by Kym Sims next. It’s introduced by Claudia Simon who says Kym is “kickin’ up a flavour” (that’s probably ‘flava’ isn’t it?) whilst all the time a youth from the studio audience gurns away behind her looking remarkably like a young Mark Ronson.

It turns out that “Too Blind To See It” is a dance record that I do remember (finally)! I think it’s that shuffling back beat and the ‘no man in the world’ sample that must have lodged in my brain. It’s a pretty nifty tune I think and yet it was written and produced by my arch nemesis Steve “Silk” Hurley /aka the man who killed music with his “Jack Your Body” No 1 in 1987. Hmm. Anyway, on reflection it has a ring of “Finally” by Ce Ce Pension to it which is probably no surprise as Kym was the co-writer on her hit “Keep On Walkin'”.

Wikipedia tells me that “Too Blind To See It” was released on the East West Records label who were responsible for a string of dance hits around this time including “Peace” by Sabrina Johnston and “My Lovin’ (You’re Never Gonna Get It)” by En Vogue. They all had that simple yet distinctive, generic East West cover as I recall or was that only used if they’d run out of the official picture sleeve? Can’t remember now.

“Too Blind To See It” was Kym’s biggest hit peaking at No 5 in the UK although she would have two further and smaller Top 40 hits by the end of 1992.

“Salt n’ Pepa are in the house and rockin’ the mic!” says Tony Dortie as we move back to the studio for their performance of “You Showed Me”. They’ve all come dressed in what looks like black latex jackets while their three dancers have dungarees in the same material making them look like a kinky version of Rod, Jane and Freddy.

The staging of the performance has a feel of West Side Story to it but the choreographer hasn’t really worked out what to do with DJ Spinderella who seems redundant when the rapping kicks in and is left to wander off with her allocated dance partner and act out an argument between them. At the song’s finale she retreats to the back of the stage, goes up the stairs erected there and assumes a rather risqué position by wrapping her legs around his crotch area. I take it back about Rod, Jane and Freddy – they’d have never got up to such vulgar antics! Or would they?…..

Meanwhile over on the other stage we find Right Said Fred about to perform their next hit single “Don’t Talk Just Kiss”. Before we get to the Freds though, I noticed something that I don’t believe we’ve seen before in these TOTP repeats which was the studio audience actually running across the floor to be in place for the next performance. There’s literally about a dozen people behind Tony Dortie all in a rush, vying for a view of the next pop stars on the show. I always imagined that the studio audience was shepherded around the set, the flock to the floor manager’s sheep dog. However, they all seem like they have been let off the leash to roam (or run) wherever they wish. This year zero revamp has a lot to answer for!

Anyway, I must admit that I for one thought we had heard the last of Right Said Fred when “I’m Too Sexy” finally dipped out of the Top 40 and dismissed the whole thing as a one off novelty hit. How wrong I was. “Don’t Talk Just Kiss” was not only another smash for the trio but it was (SHOCK!) a decent tune to boot! How had this happened? Well, proving that they weren’t as daft as they looked, the Fairbrass brothers (and the other one) got soul diva Jocelyn Brown in to sing on the track. Jocelyn’s vocals had already been sampled for Snap!’s 1990 No 1 hit “The Power” whilst her own 1984 hit “Somebody Else’s Guy” would form the hook for George Michael’s 1992 Top 5 hit “Too Funky”. Here though, she was actually singing on the song rather than being sampled although she didn’t actually get any credits on the record. That seems a bit weird as she’s up there front and centre on stage alongside the band for this TOTP appearance so they obviously weren’t trying to play down her contribution.

“Don’t Talk Just Kiss” would prove to be another massive hit peaking at No 3 whilst their album “Up” (released in March of the following year) would top the charts and go double platinum. Over the pond though it was a different story and the band did indeed become the one hit wonder I had thought they were destined to be. “I’m Too Sexy” had been a US No 1 but “Don’t Talk Just Kiss” stalled at No 76. Supposedly radio stations were still playing that first hit when the follow up was released and there was little interest in any Right Said Fred material that wasn’t “I’m Too Sexy”. They would have no further hits Stateside.

The camera pans around to Claudia Simon up in the gantry for the next link and she advises us of four Breakers three of which are stone cold stinkers starting with Jason Donovan and the “Joseph Megamix”. After his surprise No 1 hit earlier in the year with “Any Dream Will Do” from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, it was always on the cards that some abomination like this medley would end up being churned out to cash in. With the Christmas party season upon us, it probably seemed like a decent bet that it would be a hit but can anyone say that they’ve ever been to a party where this was put on the turntable and if so, did they not leave immediately?!

“Joseph Megamix” peaked at No 13.

Another megamix! Are you kidding me?! What’s this one then? “The Bare Necessities Megamix” by UK Mixmasters?! Sorry? What? Pardon? And crucially, why? This was a Jungle Book medley that actually only featured two songs – “I Wanna Be Like You” and the titular “Bare Necessities”. You won’t be surprised to know that this heap of shit had Simon Cowell’s fingerprints all over it as it was released on his BMG subsidiary label IQ Records. UK Mixmasters was actually some bloke called Nigel Wright who was also responsible for the equally odious act Mirage who scored some hits in the late 80s doing medleys of house records under the umbrella title of “Jack Mix”. He also did that Saturday Night Fever medley earlier in 1991. What a talented guy!

Talking of talented guys, that’s all round entertainer Gary Wilmot up there promoting this garbage. However, when the track was performed in the TOTP studio the following week, another Gary (Martin) took over the vocalist role. I had to look this guy up but apparently he went onto make his name as an acclaimed voice over actor. We won’t get to see the TOTP with Martin as it’s one of those episodes hosted by Adrian Rose who didn’t give this consent for the repeat to be aired so we’ll miss it. So….just for you… here’s that performance below you lucky people!

Finally some proper music…even if it is U2! Only kidding I liked the “Achtung Baby” era of the band and “Mysterious Ways” was the second single to be released off that album. As a follow up to their No 1 song “The Fly” it was a strong if bold choice. There’s plenty going on in “Mysterious Ways” and most of it was maybe not what we would have expected from the band at the time. This was no po-faced, earnest rock anthem like “With Or Without You” but a groovy, exuberant tune that starts as it means to go on with that wah wah peddle guitar effect from The Edge setting the tone. It sounded so much better to me than “The Fly” and should have been a bigger hit than its No 13 placing although it did make the Top 10 in America. U2 would take this path towards dance experimentation again in 1997 with the electronic influenced No 1 single “Discothèque” but for me, “Mysterious Ways” trumps it by some considerable distance.

What?! New Kids On The Block were still in our charts in December 1991? Hadn’t that particular craze blown out long before this point? Well. yes it kind of had. This single “If You Go Away” was a final hurrah of the initial phase of their career before they briefly regrouped in 1994 for a less than glorious return. They would finally return as an entity in 2008 and are still touring to this day (I think).

“If You Go Away” is a soporific ballad that you can imagine Michael Bolton having rejected as too banal. It was included as the only new track on their first Best Of album called “H.I.T.S.” that was released for the Christmas market. I was the chart cassette buyer at the Our Price store I was working at then and have to admit to a gross over estimate of demand for that album. We hardly sold any and my over optimistic ordering left us with quite a few copies to go into the New Year sale when they again failed to sell. Ah well, yuh learn.

The black and white video is meant to make us perceive them as serious artists as opposed to the unobtainable desire of teenage girls. That and the fact that they had changed their name to NKOTB was a giveaway that they were looking for a new audience. For me though, they would always be more T’KNOB than NKOTB (over ordering of their album aside).

“If You Go Away” peaked at a surprisngly high No 9 in the UK Top 40.

Oh God! I’m in “Martika’s Kitchen”! Yes, it’s time for one of the stupidest song titles of the year courtesy of…well, Martika. On reflection, is it stupid or misunderstood? I don’t think I twigged it at the time but the general consensus on the internet is that “Martika’s Kitchen” is actually filthy! How did I not pick up on this back then?! Firstly, it’s written by Prince which should have been enough evidence of its salacious nature to close the case right there and then. Exhibit B (m’lud) comes in the form of the lyrics, for example:

The table is set, the oven is hot
Baby, when we get started, we won’t ever ever stop

and:

I don’t care I’ve got the chair, if you think your butt’ll fit it
You turn me all the way up, I admit it

In my defence, I think the fact that Martika has chosen to wear some very non-revealing clothes in this performance maybe misled me. As for the sound of the song, at the time it seemed very pop-orientated compared to previous single “Love… Thy Will Be Done” (also written by Prince) but which didn’t seem like it could possibly have been written by the same person. However, on reflection, “Martika’s Kitchen” has some definite Prince hallmarks attached to it although parts of it also remind me of Janet Jackson’s “Nasty”.

This was the second single from her album of the same name and although it sold reasonably in the UK, like T’KNOB before it, I’m pretty sure we had plenty of copies left over for the New Year sale. Perhaps I wasn’t that great at being chart cassette buyer!

George Michael and Elton John are still No 1 with “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me”. With two weeks to go, they must have been in the running for the festive chart topper but once “Bohemian Rhapsody” was re-released on the back of Freddie Mercury’s death, all bets were off. George would, of course, score a further No 1 with another cover version two years later, this time of Queen’s own “Somebody To Love” as part of the “Five Live EP” recorded at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert the year before. Elton meanwhile would return in 1992 with his “The One” album the title track of which really was a bit of a dirge.

As we’ve skipped the 19 December show, the next post will be the end of year review.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Cathy Dennis	Everybody Move	Nah
2	Digital Orgasm	Running Out Of Time	No chance
3	Cliff Richard	We Should Be Together	Never happening
4	Kym Sims	Too Blind To See It	Nope
5	Salt n’ Pepa	You Showed Me	No
6	Right Said Fred	Don’t Talk Just Kiss	Negative
7	Jason Donovan	Joseph Megamix	As if
8	UK Mixmasters	The Bare Necessities Megamix	Ditto
9	U2	Mysterious Ways	No but I bought the album
10	NKOTB	If You Go Away	I wish they would – No
11	Martika	Martika’s Kitchen	I did not
12	George Michael and Elton John	Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me	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/m0011myd/top-of-the-pops-12121991

TOTP 16 MAY 1991

Posted on August 4, 2021 by 80stastic

It’s mid May 1991 and I have been working in the Our Price store in Market Street, Manchester for about 8 months and life is OK. Except there’s one thing wrong. I haven’t yet had a Saturday off. Obviously as a Xmas temp (as I was when I started) I didn’t expect any whilst the Xmas rush was on but having secured permanent employment with the company, I have worked every Saturday since. Saturday 18 May would change all that though. How do I remember this date? Because I’d booked the Saturday off to watch the FA Cup final. Now as I have mentioned just a few times over the course of this blog, I have always been a Chelsea supporter (46 years and counting now) but I had never missed watching the Cup final regardless who was playing and 1991 wasn’t going to be any different. That year the finalists were Spurs and Nottingham Forest and I had invited some mates from out of town around to watch it. It was an eventful game but it would always be remembered as the Gazza final for all the wrong reasons…

Gazza, of course, had been a pop star less than 6 months earlier off the back of his tears at Italia ’90. His performance in the FA Cup final was more wretched even than either of his two hit singles though. Spurs and hit singles wasn’t a new phenomena restricted to just Gazza mind. The football club had released FA Cup final songs for the previous three occasions they had made the final back in the 80s, all of them with cockney rhyming slangers Chas ‘n’ Dave with the most memorable being the 1981 song “Ossie’s Dream” – ‘in the cup for Totting-ham’ and all that. 1991 was no different as “When the Year Ends in One” was released. Unlike its predecessors, it failed to make the Top 40…because it was shit. Anyway, I finally got my Saturday off to watch the game but before that was the small matter of Thursday night and TOTP. I wonder of host Bruno Brookes will mention the footy*?…

*SPOILER ALERT: He doesn’t.

What on earth is he wearing?! That clobber he’s got on makes him look like a member of a Formula 1 track side race team, ready to speed change a tyre when the driver pulls in for a pit stop. Just ludicrous! Stood next to him is a kid with floppy ‘Madchester’ hair wearing a Revenge T-shirt , Revenge being New Order’s Peter Hook’s side project band in the early 90s. The contrast is startling. Not sure that the kid’s enthusiastic clapping for acts on tonights’s show that include Danni Minogue, Jason Donovan and Cher is that sincere given his choice of T-shirt. I suspect opening act New Kids On The Block wouldn’t have been one of his faves either. Now don’t be fooled by any the studio audience whoops and hollering, by this point in their career, the band’s popularity was not at the heights it had scaled previously. In short, the wheels were coming off and they were heading down the dumper. To arrest this slide, Donnie Wahlberg convinced them to pursue a new musical direction that was more urban. “Call It What You Want” was the first offering of their new style and came from something called “No More Games: The Remix Album” which did what it said on the tin and featured hip-hop-upped versions of their previous hits. In the history of very bad ideas, this was surely in the Top 10. I get they were trying to grow and change with their pre-teen audience as they themselves grew older but surely those kids wanted grunge not dirge. The album sold moderately but didn’t really halt the band’s decline.

Apparently this was their one and only TOTP studio appearance. As such, they’ve decided to try and make it a bit special by performing the vocals live. Big mistake. Wahlberg raps adequately but Jordan Knight’s vocals, never that convincing, sound exposed and flat. Give them their due though, they could dance in sync very well.

“Call It What You Want” peaked at No 12.

One of the best known songs of the 80s making a comeback in the 90s now as we see “Tainted Love ’91” by Soft Cell re-released and back in the charts. Why? Well, there was a Best Of album released by record label Mercury called “Memorabilia – The Singles” and “Tainted Love” was back out to promote it. It was actually a re-recorded version of the song as were all but two of the eleven tracks on the album. There had already been a Soft Cell Best Of album released in 1986 simply entitled “The Singles” but it had got swallowed up in the Xmas rush and scraped to a lowly No 58 in the charts. Fast forward five years and it was deemed the right time for another compilation to boldly go where its predecessor hadn’t. Advertised as a Soft Cell / Marc Almond album, it only actually included two Almond solo originals plus his 1989 No 1 with Gene Pitney “Something’s Gotten Hold of My Heart” and his collaboration with Bronski Beat on 1985’s “I Feel Love (Medley)”. You can imagine a conversation at Mercury about the crucial need to include “Something’s Gotten Hold of My Heart” in the track listing but that would mean marketing it as a Soft Cell/ Marc Almond combined project. It worked though as the album went Top 10 and the single Top 5.

For many years, I couldn’t listen to “Tainted Love” due to the amount of times I had already heard it played on radio. It got hammered at the time and is regularly given a spin whenever anything vaguely to do with the 80s is broadcast. I had reached saturation point (see also “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen). I think I might just be coming out of that phase now though. I can’t hear that much difference between the original recording and this 1991 version – maybe a slight difference in the emphasis Marc puts on some of his phrasing and a slightly less lush production? Right until this very minute I had always believed that “Tainted Love” was the best selling single of 1981 but Wikipedia tells me that the Official Charts Company recalculated the data in 2021 giving the title to “Don’t You Want Me” by The Human League. What?! Why did they feel the need to do that 40 years on? One of the great chart swizzes ever surely?

The other week Simon Mayo was telling us how Cathy Dennis was going to be No 1 in the US with “Touch Me (All Night Long)” and now here’s Bruno Brookes saying that she is No1 in the US. Slightly disingenuous as she was actually No 2 in the Billboard Hot 100 chart (their equivalent of our Top 40) but she was No 1 in the US Dance Club Songs chart. I’m being pedantic of course. Suffice to say she was doing very well commercially.

Now, is that a catsuit she’s wearing in this performance? I do believe it is. I’ve told my woman in a catsuit story before haven’t I? OK, here it is again. In my early days at Our Price, there was a woman in our shop called Natalie who also did some modelling on the side I think. Anyway, one day she turned up for work in a catsuit and asked me if I thought it was a bit too much. Suffice to say I didn’t know where to look. One day Mick Hucknall rang the shop asking to speak to Natalie (I think she met him on a night out and he was quite enamoured). I answered the phone and when I asked who it was asking for Natalie he replied ‘Mick’. I knew it was Hucknall as Natalie had told us all that he was interested in her but she wasn’t sure what to do about it. As a claim to fame, it’s pretty poor I admit.

“Touch Me (All Night Long)” peaked at No 5 in the UK.

When I saw in the running order that Dannii Minogue was on this show, I assumed it was to perform her “Love And Kisses” single but it seems I’ve written so many of these reviews that I’ve lost tracks of the weeks. “Love And Kisses” has been and gone and we are now on to Dannii’s follow up single called “Success”. Wikipedia tells me it was also known as “$ucce$$” which was a really naff idea if true.

Like its predecessor, this was lifted from her debut album and was about the trappings of celebrity (probably). It’s got a bit more of a heavier beat to it than the much lighter “Love And Kisses” but it’s still pretty anonymous. Dannii clearly tries to deliver the song’s harder edge with a sassier performance as she takes off her jacket early doors to reveal a tattoo on her right arm which appears to be an elephant (?) and a dress with the straps dangling so perilously low as to run the risk of dropping altogether potentially causing a Janet Jackson style wardrobe malfunction. Even Bruno declared that he had been concerned (well it was pre-watershed I suppose). Also, whoever styled Dannii’s hair, what was the deal with the long straggly bit covering the left side of her face? It didn’t look practical at all. The whole thing looks like she’d just dashed out fo the back of a taxi at the last second before taking to the stage.

Talking of taxis, apparently when recording her album in Brooklyn, there has been some shootings near the studio meaning taxicab drivers were reluctant to take Dannii’s fare for the journey there. She supposedly found the recording experience in New York City both “awesome” and “terrifying”. Also potentially terrifying was the prospect of Dannii repeating that TOTP performance, droopy shoulder straps and all, before the Queen at the The Royal Variety Show that year. Thankfully, I can report that although there was a fair amount of flesh on display (especially from her backing dancers), Dannii kept her modesty intact at all times (unlike when she did those nude calendars back in the mid 90s).

“Success” did a good job of consolidating the success of “Love And Kisses” by peaking at No 11 where it stayed for three weeks.

More breakneck speed Breakers again this week as we get four songs crammed into in 1 min and 20 seconds. I’m sure the TOTP producers were beginning to worry about the competition from ITV’s The Chart Show with its video only show format and were trying to redress the balance. We start with “Shiny Happy People” by REM who Bruno reckons have got a ‘massive cult following’ in the UK. I think they may have surpassed that particular status by this point with the release of the “Out Of Time” album but the arrival of this single certainly left any remnants of being a cult way behind them. Very much the band’s marmite moment, it surely can’t be denied that “Shiny Happy People” brought them to the attention of people that had never heard of them before. We sold copy after copy after copy of the album in the Our Price store I worked in off the back of this song.

Apparently written ironically with the title and chorus being based on a Chinese propaganda poster, Michael Stipe however disputes this theory. Here’s @TOTPFacts:

"Shiny Happy People" is "not meant to be ironic at all", Michael Stipe says. "We wrote it because we were challenging ourselves. I grew up a child of the '60s listening to The Monkees and the Archies and The Banana Splits…" #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) July 30, 2021

"… The guys threw me the stupidest song that sounded so buoyant and weird and I was like, 'Okay, I accept the challenge.' So it was bubblegum music made for kids." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) July 30, 2021

Of course, you can’t mention “Shiny Happy People” without referring to Kate Pierson from the B-52s whose vocals on this really did add something to it. Kate’s band were enjoying a commercial renaissance themselves after the success of 1990’s “Cosmic Thing” album so that, allied with the fact that both band’s were from Athens, Georgia made the fit between them kind of inevitable.

Not convinced that this was the song that made mainstream superstars of REM? How about this evidence then. “Shiny Happy People” was used as the theme song to the unaired pilot for the sitcom Friends, known at that time as Friends Like Us.

Still not having it? Well how about this then? REM singing a version of it called “Happy Furry Monsters” on Sesame Street. Come on. Is there a safer TV show in the history of television?

“Shiny Happy People” peaked at No 6 in the UK, easily their biggest hit at the time and still their joint third highest charting UK single to this day.

“A new name to us all” next (according to Bruno Brookes) as Flowered Up breach the Top 40 for the first time. So were they a new name? Well, they had formed two years earlier and had released two singles in 1990 which made Nos 54 and 75 so not totally unknown I would wager Bruno. In fairness to Brookes, had I heard of them before “Take It” was a hit? I really can’t remember but I do recall talk of them being ‘the next Happy Mondays’ at the time. That may have been less due to their sound and more to do with them having a Bez like dancer figure in their ranks, the brilliantly named Barry Mooncult who actually looked more like Peter Gabriel (in his Genesis days) on stage with his flower petal costume.

Their chart breakthrough coincided with a move from indie label Heavenly Records to major London Records so that may explain why it happened (major label promotion budget etc). Debut (and only) album “A Life With Brian” was released later in the year and the band had already appeared on the front covers of both Melody Maker and NME before then. I think they were quite well known in the end then Bruno. Flowered Up will perhaps forever be mostly associated with their biggest hit “Weekender”, the massively epic 12 minute long single that made the Top 20 in 1992 and which the band steadfastly refused to edit for airplay reasons. Hopefully we’ll get to see that in future TOTP repeats. In the meantime, “Take It” peaked at No 34.

Giving Dannii Minogue a run for her money in the strappy top stakes is Carol Decker of T’Pau who are back in the charts with “Whenever You Need Me“. No, really. Going against all known logic, 80s popsters T’Pau were somehow still having hits into the 90s. It really did rally against the status quo as when they returned two years after their last Top 40 hit, they sounded exactly the same. Now I’d had a soft spot for this lot back in their 80s heyday but even I couldn’t have cared less about them come 1991.

“Whenever You Need Me” was the lead single from their third album “The Promise”. I remember we had lots of it in stock in our store and hardly sold a copy. Somehow it made No 10 in the charts whilst the single made No 16 (although it was their last ever trip to the Top 40). Thinking back now, I wonder if there was some chart manipulation going on from the record label with lots of FOC stock being given to chart return stores in return for a few beeps of the album barcode on the Gallup scanner. That might well be a scandalous claim, it’s just that we really didn’t sell many at all. Whatever was going on, it didn’t really work as the band called it a day after “The Promise” (two further singles released from it did nothing at all chart-wise) although there have been reunions and sporadic gigging since then. I saw Carol Decker on the bottom of the bill on one of hose Here And Now tours about 20 tears ago and she still turns up on the music TV channels every now and again presenting things like Carol Deckers 40 Ultimate Rock Chicks or something.

After getting a little too overexcited about Dannii Minogue’s dress straps, Bruno Brookes now starts getting himself in bother over a “threesome of girls”. A threesome Bruno?! You couldn’t have just said ‘trio’?! Anyway, It’s Wilson Phillips that he’s referring to and the rest of his intro makes little sense either as he says they have had No 1 success in America and are now making it big in the UK. Whilst all of that is true – “You’re in Love” was their third single taken from their debut album to top the US charts – Bruno makes it sound as if they are only just starting to make waves in the UK. Actually, they had a Top 10 hit over here the previous year with “Hold On”. Had he forgotten that already? The UK had kind of lost interest in Wilson Phillips already though. “You’re in Love” peaked at No 29 this side of the pond and they would score just a further two hit singles on our shores, neither of which was especially big.

The highest new entry next and it’s a big one. A single going straight in at No 3 wasn’t something that happened every week back in the early 90s (especially by a new, unknown act) so there must have been a big buzz around Crystal Waters and her song “Gypsy Woman (La Da Dee)”. So unusual was it that, at the time, it meant that she was the highest debuting female artist ever*.

*She was subsequently relieved of that title by Gabrielle in 1993 when “Dreams” debuted at No 2 who was in turn usurped by Whigfield a year later when “Saturday Night” went straight in at No 1. Crystal Waters didn’t quite top the charts as Bruno suggested she might, peaking instead at No 2.

The song is actually about homelessness (it was released as “Gypsy Woman (She’s Homeless)” in some territories) but for me, it almost bordered on novelty status with that incessant and extremely annoying ‘La-da-dee/la-dee-da’ hook. Apparently though, it was very much seen as a house music classic and, more than that, it was a trailblazer of the genre in that it combined social conscience with beats. It routinely appears in music polls as one of the greatest dance tunes of the 90s! I had no idea! Maybe I should have guessed at its house music reputation judging by the dance moves Crystal gives in this performance – she performs the song as if she’s busting some moves in a club rather than in front of an audience of millions on the UK’s premier pop music show. The track is of course nothing to do with the country singer Don Williams’ song “I Recall a Gypsy Woman” which my Dad does a pretty good version of.

Talking of novelties, here was something you didn’t see that often – a contemporary Christian music (CCM) artist breaking through to have a monster hit in the mainstream charts. Amy Grant is known as ‘The Queen of Christian Pop’ but here she was back in 1991 with yet another song that had been a US No 1. How many has that been just on this TOTP? Three? If you include Cathy Dennis’s dance chart topper? “Baby Baby” was one of those radio friendly, feel-good pop songs that you found yourself humming along to even though you didn’t particularly like it. Now my wife really did like this one to be fair and even today she can sometimes be heard humming it absent-mindedly.

The heart-warmingly sweet / nausea inducing (delete as appropriate) video received a nomination for Best Female Video at the 1991 MTV Video Music Awards. Totally lacking in special effects but just portraying Amy and her on screen love interest doing luv’d up things seemed to appeal to a simpler sense of what life should all be about. Love, friendship, fun…and rolling oranges back and forth to each other apparently. I’m trying to think of any other Christian Music artists that I know of. Stryper? Were they a CCM artist?

*checks Wikipedia*

Yes! They are Christian Rock band! Two things here. How did I dredge that up from my memory banks and what the Hell is Christian Rock?!

“Baby Baby” peaked at No 2 in the UK.

When I think of Jason Donovan and 1991, only one thing comes immediately to mind – Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and his No 1 record “Any Dream Will Do”. Despite Bruno advising us that the show starring Donovan is opening in June, Jase isn’t here with that song. No, it’s a little ditty called “RSVP”, a single that’s so forgettable, nobody ever did reply to him. Apparently it was a ‘not released before’ track from his forthcoming Greatest Hits album but top points to anyone who remembered this bilge. In line with his recent chart track record, it wasn’t a major hit peaking at No 17. Not even Jason’s guitar playing and some leather trousers could save this one.

Cher is still at the top of the pile with “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss)”. Now as its the third week of its reign at the top and I have nothing else to say about it, I dug about for some tenuous links between Cher and other artists on this TOTP and I found one! “Baby Baby” wasn’t Amy Grant’s first US No 1. That came in 1986 when her duet with Peter Cetera “The Next Time I Fall” hit the top. And who has had a massive hit duetting with the ex-Chicago man? Yes, Cher of course whose “After All” went Top 10 in the US in 1989. Small world and all that.

To finish off, we have a forthcoming No 1 record by perhaps one of the most useless bands in the whole of the decade (in my humble opinion). Color Me Badd were an R’n’B four piece who briefly threatened global dominance after their “I Wanna Sex You Up” single became a hit all around the world. The group described their style as ‘hip-hop doo-wop’ although I seem to recall a lot of talk of them being part of this new jack swing movement but maybe that was purely because of the song’s inclusion on the soundtrack to the film New Jack City. For the record, I described Color Me Badd as atrocious shit and yet the UK seemed unable to resist their …erm…charms and sent it to No 1. Was it just that it had the word sex in the title and chorus? I can just imagine loads of beered up young men sidling up to women on the dance floor in clubs up and down the country crooning “I Wanna Sex You Up” to them. Ugh!

As for Color Me Badd themselves, I have to say that the word sex wasn’t what came to mind when looking at them. If you were trying to put a hip hop boy band together, I don’t think I’d have included a Kenny G lookalike and someone trying (and failing) to look like “Faith” era George Michael but with a long bob haircut in their ranks.

Order of Appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	New Kids On The Block	Call It What You Want	Ok, I will. It was shit
2	Soft Cell / Marc Almond	Tainted Love ’91	Nope
3	Cathy Dennis	Touch Me (All Night Long)	Nah
4	Danny Minogue	Success	Failure – no
5	REM	Shiny Happy People	I didn’t
6	Flowered Up	Take It	No
7	T’Pau	Whenever You Need Me	Negative
8	Wilson Phillips	You’re In Love	But not with this song – no
9	Crystal Waters	Gypsy Woman (La Da Dee)	I’d have rather listened to Crystal Tips and Alistair sing
10	Amy Grant	Baby Baby	I didn’t. Not sure if my wife did or not
11	Jason Donovan	RSVP	Dear Jason, this is a shit song – no
12	Cher	The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss)	Yes but it was all a genuine mistake
13	Color Me Badd	I Wanna Sex You Up	Hell 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/m000y2fl/top-of-the-pops-16051991

TOTP 07 FEB 1991

Posted on June 15, 2021 by 80stastic

After last week’s car crash of a show and Anthea Turner’s Klu Klux Klan / WTF?! moment, the BBC have got Bruno Brookes on hosting responsibilities this time around. Now Bruno wasn’t immune from the odd gaff himself but he plays it pretty safe for the whole 30 minutes (yes we are back to the full running time again). I wonder if the need for a no controversy show had been impressed upon him by the TOTP producers?

We start with Kim Appleby who is on the follow up trail as she seeks to consolidate on the rather unexpected success of her No 2 hit “Don’t Worry”. Unexpected? Is that fair? Well, when Kim launched her solo career she hadn’t been in the UK charts since the last Mel & Kim hit “That’s The Way It Is” back in early ’88 – an eternity in the world of pop music. Would she have retained her original fan base? In addition, she’d achieved success as part of a duo with her sister, a brand and image that, backed by the dominance of SAW, had won over audiences pretty easily. That combination was now gone after the tragic early death of Mel Appleby – would music fans accept a solo Kim? Indeed, did they want a solo Kim? “Don’t Worry” had succeeded on the strength of it being a quality pop tune delivered by an endearingly enthusiastic yet self doubting Kim. Now the heat was on to prove she could do it again.

The route she and her record label took to replicate that success was to replicate “Don’t Worry” – second single “G.L.A.D” is very similar with one difference – the addition of a rap courtesy of Aswad’s Brinsley Forde. That’s not him top there on stage with Kim though, that’s…actually who is that? Opinion on Twitter is divided. Red Dwarf actor Danny John-Jules maybe? Or Manchester author and poet Lemn Sissay perhaps? Neither seems likely. If I had to guess, I would say Austin Howard from Ellis, Beggs and Howard of “Big Bubbles, No Troubles” fame – at least there’s a music connection there and the timing would be about right.

I thought “G.L.A.D” was pleasant but not as good as its predecessor but its No 10 final chart position was very…erm…respectable. Subsequent single releases though suffered from that dirty trick of diminishing returns and Kim would never return to the Top 10. Perhaps the success of “Don’t Worry” was too much too soon. Would she have been better off with “G.L.A.D” and its attendant level of success as her debut single and “Don’t Worry” as the follow up? We’ll never know I guess. What we do know is what “G.L.A.D” stood for – Good Lovin And Devotion – innit?

Another new song as we see the return of a singer who became a massive star in the second half of the 80s but who had herself been on the brink of tragedy. On 20 March 1990, Gloria Estefan‘s tour bus was rear ended by an 18 wheeler truck causing Gloria to break a vertebra in her back and leaving her close to death. “Coming Out Of The Dark” was the first song she released to the public after the accident and was inspired by that event. As such, it’s hard to be critical of it – how can you deny someone writing a song about their own horrible experience? Not only was it presumably cathartic to Gloria but no doubt it has also been taken to the hearts of many a person struggling to overcome whatever curveballs life had thrown at them. And it sounds so uplifting with that gospel choir raising the spirits. And yet, I have to say that it does sound very similar to all her previous huge ballads doesn’t it? “Can’t Stay Away From You”, “Anything For You”, “Don’t Wanna Lose You”, “Here We Are”…they all conform to a formula. OK, “Coming Out Of The Dark” is differentiated a bit by that gospel element – I’ll give it that. The single was yet another No 1 for Gloria in the US but it struggled to a peak of No 25 over here but parent album “Into The Light” was a platinum seller in the UK.

Bruno Brookes does reference Gloria’s accident in his segue but straining under the responsibility of not saying anything controversial he goes too far the other way and says this:

“Of course Gloria’s back now to perfect health… which is nice”

Which is nice?! Bruno channeling his inner Fast Show there…

An interesting choice of words in Bruno’s next intro as he references one Nigel Wright and describes him as the man responsible for the likes of Bombalurina and Yell. ‘Responsible for’ implies an element of blame here it seems to me and for once Bruno is right – Bombalurina and Yell were certainly not acts to be celebrated. Brookes goes on to say that this Wright bloke is also responsible for the next act which is The UK Mixmasters and a track called “Night Fever Megamix”. I don’t need to explain this one do I? It pretty much did what it said on the tin. Yes, having just had a Grease mega mix in the Top 5, what was the obvious move to cash in on this trend? A Saturday Night Fever medley of course! Was this John Travolta month or something? The single contained five Bee Gees disco anthems all featured in the film plus “Disco Inferno” by The Trammps. The whole thing was a…ahem…tragedy, just a horrible Jive Bunny style desperate cash grab. The video follows that template as well just being a montage of some vintage Harold Lloyd style clips and very early cartoon animations. Hell, even the act’s name is a direct rip off – surely they could have put some more imagination into it than just calling themselves The UK Mixmasters?

If you wanted to hear the Bee Gees at their disco-tastic. best, then you would just buy the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack no? Even the usually gullible UK record buying public rumbled this one and it would go no further in the charts than No 23.

What have they done to the chart run down?! They’re only name checking this records in the Top 40 that are going up or are new entries?! Why?! How much time can that have saved them to ignore singles going down the charts? Surely not enough to squeeze in another whole song? The completists on Twitter were in uproar about this change and whilst I’m hardly apoplectic with rage myself, I do think they have a point unlike this change which does seem to be pointless. Anyway, on we go and one of the lucky artists to be going up the charts is Oleta Adams with “Get Here”. We had, of course, been introduced to Oleta via her work with Tears For Fears on their “The Seeds Of Love” album and more specifically the “Woman In Chains” single. Roland Orzabal kept up the connection by producing third album “Circle Of One” from which “Get Here” came. I’m not sure how I became aware of this but I soon found out that the song was actually originally written and performed by Brenda Russell of “Piano in the Dark” fame. I dug out Brenda’s version at work one day and guess what, Oleta’s version sounds almost exactly the same!

OK, Oleta’s version has a less laid back feel to it and she’s gone a bit Whitney Houston on the vocals to make it sound more dramatic but even so.

After discussing some of the improbable songs blacklisted by the BBC in the wake of the Gulf War crisis, it turns out that “Get Here” would also become associated with the conflict but in a positive way as it was adopted as an anthem for US troops missing their families. There’s even a lyric in it which says “You can reach me by caravan Cross the desert like an Arab man”. I have to say that it does seem ludicrous that the BBC deemed “Boom Bang-a-Bang” by Lulu as unpalatable and banned it but “Get Here”, with its Gulf war links, was not seen as a problem.

Anyway, I can’t deny that it’s a sincerely nice song and I liked it enough at the time. It went Top 5 in both the US and the UK while Oleta’s “Circle Of One” album would soar to No 1 over here. For a time she looked like being the next big soul/pop singer but subsequent releases would never get her here again.

It’s The Simpsons next with “Do The Bartman”. This is the second time it’s been on the show already and it hasn’t even got to No 1 yet and it’ll spend 3 weeks at the top of the charts so we haven’t finished with this nonsense by a long chalk.

The parent album “The Simpsons Sing The Blues” understandably didn’t get much airplay on the shop stereo of the Our Price store I was working in so I’ve never understood until now that it featured The Simpsons voice actors actually doing versions of proper blues songs originally recorded by blues legends like Albert King and Billie Holiday! The album went Top 10 in the UK and Top 3 in the US. It would soon became the fastest-selling album to emerge from a TV show since the Miami Vice soundtrack in 1985. If it wasn’t mutant ninja turtles clogging up the charts it was this lot! Doh!

Next a man who I developed an irrational hatred of back in 1991 for no discernible reason and of which I am now perplexed and indeed embarrassed by. Quite why the amiable Kenny Thomas and his inoffensive mainstream soul singles promoted such indignation and contempt within the 22 year old me, I do not know. Let me watch his performance of his single “Outstanding” back and see if it rekindles anything. See you in 3 minutes or so….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pitcqjdzko

…no, no idea why I was so outraged at his commercial success. I mean, he has a decent enough voice and his lack of an image (plain dark suit over a black shirt) suggested that he wasn’t interested in being a pop star and was more about getting his music out there. Ah yes, the music. Well, “Outstanding” wasn’t actually his song although (as with The Simpsons earlier) I didn’t realise that until now. It was actually an old Gap Band song that had missed the charts back in ’82. Was it his sound that I objected so vehemently to? I can’t lie that I did find it fairly bland but it was hardly Jive Bunny grade crimes against music.

1991 would turn out to be Kenny’s annus mirabilis – “Outstanding” was a No 12 hit, his album “Voices” went Top 3 and follow up single “Thinking About Your Love” would make it to No 4. He continued to score smaller chart hits into the 90s but it had all pretty much run its course by the time Britpop came along. It turns out that Kenny is actually a completely stand up guy who has had to deal with his young daughter having a brain tumour (he has raised thousands of pounds for her ongoing treatment). He is currently the singer with 80s band Living In A Box replacing original vocalist Richard Derbyshire as the group continues to perform on the nostalgia circuit. In the unlikely event that Kenny is reading this, I apologise for my completely unwarranted dislike of you back in 1991…although I still think “Outstanding” is dull.

The TOTP producers are still committed to this best selling albums of the month feature so here’s the list for Jan 1991:

Madonna – The Immaculate Collection

2. Elton John – The Very Best Of Elton John

3. Enigma – MCMXC A.D.

4. Whitney Houston – I’m Your Baby Tonight

5. Phil Collins – Serious Hits Live

Alongside the changes to the singles chart run own, there is a small tweak to this section as well as curiously there is no voice over from the host. I don’t really see why this change was made apart from for the obvious benefit of shutting Bruno Brookes up for a couple of minutes.

Next up are New Kids On The Block who, contrary to my recall, were still having hits after 1990. I thought that the spell they had held over the world’s female teenagers had ended Cinderella-esque as soon as the clock struck 12 to usher in a new year but no. Here they were back in our charts with a single called “Games”. This was taken from their “No More Games: The Remix Album” which, fairly obviously, was a collection of remixes of their previous hits. It wasn’t just an exercise in squeezing as much out of the cash cow as possible though. The band were sensing that their popularity may be on the wane and saw this album as a chance to beef up their sound and update their image. To this end, they promoted it under the ‘NKOTB’ acronym, thereby dispensing with the word ‘kids’ from their name. Alongside the image change came the for new sound which was meant to demonstrate a harder edge to them and realign them with a more mature fanbase. “Games” was a rap heavy funk work out with the lyrics written to prove the the boys were the real deal…

‘Cause we’re five bad brothers from the bean town land
No sell out
So get the hell out
We do it our way
Who gives a damn about what critics say?

Well, quite. They go on to say that they’re kicking ass and calling non-believers out there suckers! Ooh! Get them! I think they believed that this made them sound hard like Public Enemy but they were more Vanilla Ice than LL Cool J. The single did OK peaking at No 14 over here but it was also their first to miss the Top 10 in the UK. By Xmas they would be releasing a proper Best Of album called “H.I.T.S.” that would stall at No 50 in the charts. Roll on the end of the year.

From rap (sort of) to crap. There really is very little to commend “Wiggle It” by 2 In A Room for. A terrible, repetitive record promoted by a video which is basically some gratuitous arse shots of various women ‘wiggling it’ on a beach. Its legacy, if you can describe the following as such, was that it was covered by Alvin and the Chipmunks for their album “The Chipmunks Rock The House” and that it has featured on various compilation albums including one entitled “Strip Jointz: Hot Songs For Sexy Dancers” and one called simply “Monster Booty”. Their Mums must have been very proud.

“Wiggle It” peaked at No 3.

The last week at the top for The KLF with “3 a.m. Eternal”. After the infamous Anthea incident of last week, the clip the TOTP producers have chosen to show is from an earlier appearance and not the KKK / KLF one. Should we read anything into that? Did the BBC receive complaints? Or were they just trying to convince us all that it had never really happened in the first place by expunging it from the show’s history?

Whatever the truth, the BBC were definitely going to tread carefully in future. When the band released a limited edition mail order only single in January ’92 containing a new version of the song featuring heavy metal hardcore punk band Extreme Noise Terror called the “Christmas Top of the Pops 1991” version as they had hoped to perform it on the festive year retrospective, the Beeb declined. Undeterred, the band would create huge controversy when they performed it at the BRIT Awards ceremony in February 1992. Yep, it’s this one with the machine guns…

Quite extraordinary and quite the WTF?! moment. Although the declaration at the end of the performance by the band’s promoter Scott Piering that “The KLF have now left the music business”, it was treated as a prank at the time but 4 months later Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty confirmed that they had indeed retired from the music business and that their back catalogue would be deleted with immediate effect. Nearly 30 years would pass before the band would make versions of their music available to streaming services. Talk about courage of your convictions.

The play out video is a huge dance tune, one so big in fact that it has been a chart hit (in different mixes and for various artists) four separate times over the years. The Source were a songwriting team comprising Anthony B. Stephens, Arnecia Michelle Harris and John Bellamy and they collaborated with soul / disco legend Candi Staton to produce “You Got The Love” which floundered to a high of No 95 on its original release way back in 1986. Five years later and with a legendary house DJ and producer Frankie Knuckles adding some magic into the mix, it catapulted up the charts before resting at No 4. Six years later it went one better when a New Voyager mix brought it to a new generation of clubbers but it didn’t stop there as it even pulled in the sales into the new millennium when a Shapeshifters mix returned it to the Top 10. Got all that? Good because the story didn’t even end there as in 2009 it was covered by Florence and the Machine who scored a Top 5 hit with it. Phew!

It’s this 1991 version though that remains definitive for me. I remember covering downstairs on the singles floor one lunchtime and couldn’t believe the amount of 12″s of it that we were selling. Was it even released in a 7″ format? I can’t recall now. I was definitely not a dance head but even I could appreciate that this was a tune and it routinely appears in those Best Dance Singles of all time polls. How could it not?

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gOXdDc0UOs

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I Buy it?
1	Kim Appleby	G.L.A.D.	I did not
2	Gloria Estefan	Coming Out Of the Dark	Nope
3	The UK Mixmasters	Night Fever Megamix	Certainly not
4	Oleta Adams	Get Here	Liked it but not enough to buy it
5	The Simpsons	Do The Bartman	Excuse me? NO!
6	Kenny Thomas	Outstanding	I thought it was anything but back then – sorry Kenny!
7	NKOTB	Games	I would have been ashamed
8	2 In A Room	Wiggle It	Hell no!
9	The KLF	3 am Eternal	Thought I might have but it seems I didn’t
10	The Source featuring Candi Staton	You Got The Love	See 9 above

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000wn3k/top-of-the-pops-07021991

TOTP 06 DEC 1990

Posted on April 23, 2021 by 80stastic

We’ve finally hit December 1990 here at TOTP Rewind and that can only mean one thing, the Xmas rush is on and I don’t just mean that scramble to find presents for family and friends – there is also the race for the Xmas No 1 to consider. This was definitely still a thing back then before it was hijacked and devalued by X Factor winners and latterly some bloke going on about sausage rolls every Yuletide. As such, the Top 40 is awash with new songs frantically looking for those all important sales that could make them a festive chart topper. As host Mark Goodier says at the top of the show “Tonight we may well see the song which is the Xmas No 1 so stay tuned”. Eyes down then (or should that be prick up your ears) as we find out who’s in the running…

…well surely not this lot?! Twenty 4 Seven featuring Captain Hollywood had been Top 10 in our charts with their single “I Can’t Stand It” just a couple of months prior to this but their chances of being the Xmas No 1 with a song that was just some more Eurodance pap were slim to non existent. The performance of their single “Are You Dreaming” here is….excruciating frankly.

The three lads in the group bounce on stage and start jive talking about dreams of cars, money and girls until one of them adopts the moral high ground when he interjects with “Yo wait a minute man, you better think about the world”. WTF?! What’s that supposed to mean? The world is a pretty big subject really don’t you think? Care to narrow it down a bit? Are we talking the environment here? Or politics? World peace maybe? What?! The whole thing reminds me of this image on Twitter that went viral a few years ago…

The rest of the song seems to be a jumble of influences and steals. The ‘oaah oh oh oh’ chant in the chorus is very similar to “Montego Bay” by Bobby Bloom (and later covered by Amazulu) whilst the lyrics seem to have stolen from Kajagoogoo (‘Eye to eye from you to me …eye to eye from me to you”) and there is a zeitgeist moment when an obligatory Vanilla Ice theme emerges (“(yeah) dreams can be very nice (yeah) Sometimes hot sometimes ice cold (yeah)”). Just pants. Get off!

“Are You Dreaming” peaked at No 17 – miles away from the Xmas No 1 title.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c212wkz9ixk

Now this next song had a better chance of…ahem…pulling off a Xmas No 1 as it were (Fnarr! Fnarr!) although it would have been a controversial one. In its favour, it was by a genuine pop music heavyweight, a superstar of the genre in Madonna. Against its chances were its sexually provocative sound and lyrics. “Justify My Love” was one of two new songs released from Madge’s first ever Greatest Hits album “The Immaculate Collection” (the other was “Rescue Me” which I mentioned in the post for the previous week’s TOTP). Written with Lenny Kravitz and Ingrid Chavez, the lyrics didn’t hold back and Madonna’s almost total delivery of them as a spoken word whisper created an almost threatening vibe to the song:

I want to run naked in a rainstorm
Make love in a train cross-country
You put this in me
So now what, so now what?

I don’t want to be your mother
I don’t want to be your sister either
I just want to be your lover
I want to be your baby
Kiss me, that’s right, kiss me

OK, OK steady on. We haven’t even got to the video yet! Ah yes, that video. Clearly the promo film that TOTP uses was not the official video for the single which was deemed far to explicit for pre-watershed broadcast so instead we got a compilation of scenes from her previous hits. To be fair, there did seem to be some attempt to co-ordinate the scenes chosen with the music (Madonna cavorting about in the waves from “Cherish” for example) but it was nothing compared to the banned video. Shot entirely in black and white, it had a European, art house feel to it and included imagery of sadomasochism, voyeurism and bisexuality alongside some actual (albeit brief) nudity, all designed to push back the barriers of what a pop promo could /should be. All very deliberate and yet designed to be defensible as well as controversial – Madonna would argue that all the women characters in her videos are sexually in control.

The film would be released as a stand alone video single (imagine that all you kids brought up on YouTube with instant access to anything ever recorded) and would sell over one million copies world wide. I certainly recall the Our Price I was working in stocking it and it being quite a big deal as it had an 18 certificate.

In a 1991 interview with Q magazine, Lenny Kravitz had this to say about “Justify My Love” and working with Madonna:

“I think it’s a classic of its type, like an old Donna Summer song. And I like Madonna a lot. She’s the best; the queen of what she does. She’s very articulate, elegant, and she has taste up the ass. It’s unbelievable.”

‘Taste up the ass’?! Oh give it a rest Lenny!

“Justify My Love” would peak at No 2 – close but no cigar Madge.

Oh this is just a great song and one that will always remind me of this time of my life. The Farm were already bona fide chart stars by this time courtesy of their previous Top 10 single “Groovy Train” but “All Together Now” completely sealed the deal. But this was more than just a chart hit, more than just a catchy pop song. Written about the unofficial truce in 1914 during WWI when British and German troops came out of the trenches to play football with each other for Christmas, it also combines a piece of classical music in its structure via its use of ‘Pachelbel’s Canon’ by the German Baroque composer Johann Pachelbel. Once I realised this, Pachelbel would be my go to classical artist for those specialist music mornings that Our Price insisted upon during the week when I was first working there.

Going back to the lyrical subject matter, we were all now familiar with the truce story thanks to Paul McCartney’s “Pipes Of Peace” single but The Farm had actually beaten him to it in terms of writing a song about it when they recorded a very different version of the song (called “No Man’s Land”) for a Peel session back in 1983.

Fast forward 7 years and with Suggs of Madness as their producer, they returned to that Peel session track and turned it into “All Together Now”. It even had the brilliant fellow scouser Pete Wylie on backing vocals. What’s not to like?!

The song is very closely associated with football having been co-opted by many a team (including Everton FC) and to promote both the Euro 2004 and 2006 World Cup tournaments. Beyond that though, it has soundtracked charity work like Operation Shoebox which sends gifts in shoeboxes to soldiers serving in Afghanistan. When lead singer Peter Hooton returned to his former school in Bootle, Merseyside in later life, the children there sang his song and read out WWI poetry. Like I said, more than just a pop song.

At one point, it looked like “All Together Now” with its unity and anti-war themes might have a genuine tilt at being the Xmas No 1 but would eventually run out of steam peaking at No 4. Perhaps the ultimate Xmas No 1 that never was?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6q7RekP-mI

One of the biggest break out stars of the year next. Did MC Hammer have a serious shot at the Xmas No 1 spot? “Pray” was the third single to be lifted from his “Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt ‘Em” album and after pinching from Rick James for “U Can’t Touch This” and the Chi-Lites for “Have You Seen Her”, this time Hammer picks the pocket of Prince for a prominent sample of “When Doves Cry”. I say pickpockets but Prince did actually authorise the use of the sample, the first in fact of just a handful that he would allow.

This was very much in the mould of “U Can’t Touch This” but I found it all a bit dull and repetitive. Repetitive? Yes, check out this piece of trivia I found on Wikipedia:

The word ‘pray’ is mentioned 147 times during the song, setting the record for the number of times a song title is repeated in an American Top 40 hit.

I wasn’t alone in my thinking. Reviewed in Smash Hits by no less a musical authority than Timmy Mallett, the annoying little git described it as ‘awful’ and a ‘messy noise’. Of course he couldn’t resist the open goal that was MC Hammer’s name:

“I think he’s got a great name though. MC Mallett would be even better than MC Hammer but I’m MC Mallett”.

Timmy Mallett there, the dickhead’s dickhead.

“Pray” was never a serious Xmas No 1 contender peaking just inside the Top 10 at No 8 although it was a No 2 record in the US.

And just like that the game was up. After correctly predicting that The Farm would have a Top 5 hit with “All Together Now” earlier, Mark Goodier amazingly managed to be right twice in the space of a few minutes as *spoiler alert* we do get to hear the Xmas No 1 for 1990 on this very show. Of course, it had to be Cliff Richard didn’t it? This was peak Cliff wins Xmas time. After securing the festive chart topper just two years before with “Mistletoe And Wine”, here he was again with another mawkish, horrible effort in “Saviour’s Day”. In some ways it was a hat trick of Xmas No 1s as he’s appeared on the Band Aid II record in 1989. If pressed, I would have to say it was marginally less annoying than “Mistletoe And Wine” but again, it would be a case of splitting arse hairs.

He’s, of course, backed a by a choir of extras including that bloke from Modern Romance (again) and can’t resist doing that weird arm waving thing he always does. The gaelic whistle bit (which sounds like an attempt to mimic Simple Minds take on Irish folk song “She Moved Through the Fair” when they released “Belfast Child”) prompts Cliff to stand next to the whistle player and attempt to ‘play’ his microphone in the same way. Oh God, my eyes hurt. Also, what is he wearing? That silver jacket makes him resemble that Honey G woman who tried to convince us (and herself) that she was a rapper on X Factor a few years ago. This is just all kinds of wrong.

In the run up to the Xmas chart, a TV news crew (Granada?) visited our shop to talk to the people on the front line selling the records about who we thought would be the Xmas No 1. They interviewed the singles buyer who was Andy (another Our Price legend) who loved all the attention. He once just about pushed me out of the way to get to serve actress Barbara Knox who played Rita Fairclough in Coronation Street so he wasn’t going to miss out on this opportunity! Andy correctly predicted that Cliff would be the Xmas No 1 on account of the sales he would generate from appearing on The Des O’Connor Show. I so wish I could find the interview on line but despite extensive searching, I have turned up a blank.

TOTP were still sticking with the Top 5 albums feature that they had started in the Summer and so here are the best selling albums for November 1990:

Elton John – “The Very Best Of Elton John”

2. Phil Collins – “Serious Hits …Live!”

3. The Beautiful South – “Choke”

4. Paul Simon – “The Rhythm Of The Saints”

5. Madonna – “The Immaculate Collection”

A couple of things to note here. Madonna’s “The Immaculate Collection” was already starting to show its huge sales potential and sure enough, it would end up being the best selling album of the whole year in the UK despite having only been released on Nov 9th.

Secondly, can anyone make sense of Mark Goodier’s comment here?

“No 1 artist album in November, Elton John The Very Best Of Elton John …a sort of greatest hits collection”

Yes, thanks Mark. An album called ‘The Very Best Of…’ really didn’t require the qualifying statement ‘a sort of greatest hits collection’!!

RIght, where are we up to with the Snap! single release schedule of 1990? One of the most dominant charts acts of the year were onto their fourth hit with the release of “Mary Had A Little Boy”. This was the last single to be lifted from their “World Power” album and was based around the ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ nursery rhyme but now I’m wondering if this track was specifically chosen as Xmas approached with one eye on a “Mary’s Boy Child” Boney M vibe. Maybe not.

This didn’t do anything for me and after a Megamix single early the next year had been and gone, I would have bet money that would have been the last we would have seen of Snap! but I hadn’t reckoned on rhythm being a dancer two years later.

Much like MC Hammer earlier, their run of Top 10 singles was maintained when “Mary Had A Little Boy” made it to No 8 but it was never going to seriously trouble Cliff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9e43sm1xMA

Right, if it’s 1990 then there must be a New Kids On The Block record in the charts and indeed there is. “This One’s For The Children” was their eighth (!) Top 10 hit of the year and was clearly aimed at the Xmas market being a track from their “Merry, Merry Christmas” album and all. It is also possibly the most saccharine, schmaltzy dollop of shite it has ever been my misfortune to hear. It’s as if “We Are The World”(hardly a lyrical masterpiece itself) had been re-written by a six year old. Look at these lyrics:

There are some people living in this world
They have no food to eat, they have no place to go

or these…

Many people are happy and many people are sad
Some people have many things that others can only wish they had

For the love of God! Actually, God does get a name check later:

This one’s for the children
May God keep them in His throne

Just unbearable.

They must have thought they had a genuine chance of being the Xmas No 1 with this but even Cliff would have baulked at this sentimental crap. “This One’s For The Children” peaked at No 9 and would see out not just 1990 but also T’KNOB’s imperial phase. They would never be as popular again. Phew!

After Goodier does a spoonerism in his Top 10 countdown when he says “Kinky Boots” is up 5 at No 9 (it’s the other way round Mark, up 9 at No 5), we get to Vanilla Ice who is not only still at No 1 but also “rapping totally live” in the studio! Would this have been a big deal back in the day? I think it might have been you know. Ice does a good job of performing “Ice Ice Baby” as well alongside his trio of backing dancers plus a DJ. Pretty nifty moves and rhymes. Right, I can’t be seen to be endorsing Vanilla Ice so to even it up, here is his atrocious rhyming message for all the readers of Smash Hits back then :

“Yo, this is Vanilla Ice, Just chillin’ like Bob Dylan, And maxin’ like Michael Jackson on Smash Hits Baby!”

Oof!

Still, Vanilla Ice looked a good bet for staying at No 1 until Xmas and he would prove to be Cliff’s stiffest competition. The race for that coveted spot would go right to the wire.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptTkBtpUfbw

The play out video is “24 Hours” by Betty Boo and is surely the least remembered of her trio of hit singles in 1990. Nowhere near as good as either “Doin’ The Do” or “Where Are You Baby” it would stall at No 25. Betty’s profile didn’t take an immediate nose dive though as she was voted that year’s best British Breakthrough Act at the 1991 BRIT Awards. However, a lip-synching scandal whilst on tour in Australia combined with caring for her mother when she was diagnosed with cancer meant a pause would have to be inserted into her pop career, a pause from which she would never really recover as a recording artist.

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtinnFnd_Kk

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Twenty Four Seven featuring Captain Hollywood	Are You Dreaming	Not dreaming, having a nightmare more like – no
2	Madonna	Justify My Love	No but I have that Immaculate Collection CD it’s included on
3	The Farm	All Together Now	I was sure I had but the singles box says no
4	MC Hammer	Pray	Nah
5	Cliff Richard	Saviour’s Day	Hell no!
6	Snap!	Mary Had A Little Boy	Nope
7	New Kids On The Block	This One’s For The Children	See 5 above
8	Vanilla Ice	Ice Ice baby	No No baby
9	Betty Boo	24 Hours	No

Disclaimer

OK – here’s the thing – the TOTP episodes are only available on iPlayer for a limited amount of time so the link to the programme below only works for about another month so you’ll have to work fast if you want to catch the whole show.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000ty1q/top-of-the-pops-06121990

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.

Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 11 OCT 1990

Posted on March 19, 2021 by 80stastic

Hello and welcome back to 1990, the year when the charts were infested by cruddy Eurodance pop, the Bleep ‘n’ Bass phenomenon, old pop standards of yesteryear revitalised by their use in adverts and mega hits propelled to massive sales off the back of their inclusion on box office breaking film soundtracks. Oh, and ruddy New Kids On The Block and those pesky ninja turtle creatures. However, giving a massive pale (and possibly black nail varnished) middle finger to all of this are Goth gods The Sisters Of Mercy who stride back into the TOTP studio this week with their latest hit “More”. Yes, proving that Goth was still relevant, Andrew Eldritch and co released their first single since 1988’s ‘Lucretia My Reflection”. It’s actually the lead single off their album “Vision Thing” talking of which – get this. How many albums do you reckon The Sisters Of Mercy have released during their 40 odd years career? I mean proper, studio albums, not Best Ofs nor EPs. It’s three.THREE! And this one, “Vision Thing released in November 1990, is the most recent one! Not keen on hard work our Andrew is he? in November 2016 when interviewed by the TeamRock website, he said of his release slumber:

“I can tell you one thing – if Donald Trump actually does become President, that will be reason enough for me to release another album. I don’t think I could keep quiet if that happened.”

Well, Andrew, ‘The Donald’ has been and gone (thank God!) and still no new album from you laddie. They seem to have committed themselves to being a perennial touring band from what I can work out but if they never have any new material to play, have they made themselves a nostalgia circuit band by default?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NafWJoWk0MA

“More” must have passed me by at the time as I have no recollection of it at all but it has all their usual Sisters trademarks. Eldritch’s unearthly vocals, the dark, chugging guitar sound and the cauldron of shrieking vocals emanating from the almost Macbethian trio of backing singers. Apparently the track was co-written by Jim Steinman, he of Meatloaf fame. Want to hear The Loaf’s version of it? If you must…

Enough of all that! What we need now is something completely wholesome to counteract the creepy, gothic stuff and what could be more wholesome than Cliff Richard?! Cliff was still plundering tracks from his “From A Distance: The Event” live album and after “Silhouettes ” just the other week, came the title track. It was originally recorded by Nanci Griffith of course (though not actually written by her) on her “Lone Star State Of Mind” album. Listen to her restrained and pure rendition of it here on the Letterman show….

and then contrast it with the pig’s ear that Cliff makes of it below…

He’s ruined it with all that grandstanding and those lumbering drum fills and synth refrains – very similar to the desecration he inflicted on traditional Christmas carol “O Little Town of Bethlehem” when he did his own arrangement of it called “Little Town”. Nasty. And who are all those people up there on stage with him? It looks like the worst episode of Glee you’ve ever seen!

Cliff’s treatment of “From A Distance” made No 11 but it was topped by Bette Midler’s version a year later which peaked at No 6.

Ah. I wasn’t expecting The Chimes to be back on the show with “Heaven” after it was a Breaker last week. Consequently, I’ve very little left to say about it (and I didn’t have much in the first place). Singer Pauline Henry of course went on to have a string of hits in the mid 90s on her own, the biggest of which was a cover of Bad Company’s “Feel Like Making Love”. If you search for The Chimes on Amazon, as well as the original and Cherry Red deluxe edition of their album, you also get a result for something called “Heaven – Very Best Of Pauline Henry And The Chimes” which seems like a very cynical marketing trick to me. Surely both artists stood independently of each other without needing to mash them together. I recall A&M doing a similar thing with a Sting / The Police Best Of album. I’m trying to think of other examples now. Oh yes, there’s one for David Grant & Jaki Graham as well but I guess they did record two actual duets together at least. A tenner says that there must be a Best Of Kajagoogoo and Limahl in existence as well.

“Heaven ” peaked at No 24.

The year of New Kids On The Block still has some legs in it yet I’m afraid. This was their seventh hit of the year and after the 70s soul sound of The Chi-Lites returned to the UK Top 40 in 1990 courtesy of Paul Young and MC Hammer covers, now we had some Philly Soul with T’KNOB’s take on “Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time)” by The Delfonics.

This was actually a double A-side single with the other track being “Let’s Try It Again” which was taken from their “Step By Step” album. Presumably, the two songs were twinned together to help stimulate sales of two of the band’s albums as “Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time)” was from their 1986 self titled debut album. Those dastardly record companies at it again! Apparently, “Let’s Try It Again” (which I don’t think I’ve ever heard as all the airplay went to “Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time)”) was the beginning of the end for the band’s phenomenal appeal. It was their first single since 1986’s “Stop It Girl” that failed to peak within the US Top 40. Many put their decent down to over saturation – did the world really need the New Kids animated cartoon series that tonight’s host Bruno Brookes mentions? Talking of Bruno, he gets into a right muddle with his intro for them when he forgets to mention the song title and when he corrects this in his outro, he name checks the wrong A-side. Piss poor as ever Bruno.

“Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time)” / “Let’s Try It Again” peaked at No 8 in the UK.

The final six songs on this week’s broadcast have all been featured on the show before starting with The Beautiful South and “A Little Time”. They’re in the studio this week but where is Paul Heaton? Oh there he is! On the keyboards right at the back. We don’t really get to see him until at least a minute in. I like the fact that he steps into the shadows for this song and gives the spotlight rightfully to Brianna Corrigan and Dave Hemmingway. Both had underrated voices I think. Dave had a very pure, ballad vocal whilst Brianna had a most unusual tone that completely suited those bittersweet Heaton tunes. It was a great shame in many ways that she felt that she couldn’t stay in the band but then, without her departure, we wouldn’t have had Jacqui Abbott which in turn of course led to all those marvellous Heaton and Abbott songs.

I saw The Beautiful South live in 1997 (I think) at the Manchester Arena and have also seen Paul Heaton and Jacqui Abbott back in 2017 at the Hull KR stadium gig. I’ve even seen The South who were what the band morphed into when the original incarnation split in 2007. I think Hemmingway was still in the line up at that point (although he has since retired) alongside the final female vocalist Alison Wheeler who replaced Abbott in 2000. It seems I’m a bit of a fan. Maybe it’s the Hull connection.

“A Little time” will be at No 1 within a couple of weeks.

Another of last week’s Breakers now as Neneh Cherry returns to the TOTP studio for her version of “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”. The AIDS charity record “Red Hot + Blue” that this track was taken from would go on to sell over 1 million copies worldwide. Its success would lead to a number of releases by parent organisation the Red Hot Organization throughout the 90s including “Red Hot + Dance” (which would include the one-off George Michael single “Too Funky”) and “Red Hot + Country” which featured such heavyweights as Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton and the aforementioned Nanci Griffith. As for that original album “Red Hot + Blue”, my favourite track from it was definitely this one by David Byrne…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJV_MOwas7s

Neneh Cherry was still a massive name in 1990 off the back of the success of her platinum selling debut album ‘Raw Like Sushi”. However, it would take her three years to release the follow up (1992’s “Homebrew”) by which point grunge had happened and the musical landscape had shifted. The album performed poorly sales wise (peaking at No 27) whilst none of the singles from it made the Top 20. However, she would return in 1996 with the more popular “Man” album which included the huge worldwide hit “7 Seconds” with Youssou N’Dour.

Monie Love again? I think this is the third time that “It’s A Shame (My Sister)” has been on the show. Not bad for a single that didn’t even make the Top 10. In a Smash Hits article, Monie (real name Simone Johnson) described the art of writing raps thus:

“Er..well you just write it down. You just put what is exactly in your head down on paper. All it takes is being able to pronounce your words and if you’re a good English student then you could write a good rap.”

That’s it?! OK, well I’ve got an English ‘O’ level and I write a lot of words doing this blog so let’s give it a go…

*spends half an hour trying to write a good rap*

Nah, that’s bollocks Monie. I’m crap at writing rap lyrics it turns out. I followed your advice about putting exactly what is in my head down on paper and it came out like this…

My name is Dickie B, I’m looking at a tree

My cat wanted to pee, so he did it up against the tree

“It’s A Shame (My Sister)” peaked at No 12.

Talking of crap, here’s Status Quo with the “Anniversary Waltz Part 1”. Oh come on, even the most committed of Quo fans must have known this was a pile of shite and cringed in embarrassment when it was released. It’s horrible. Bruno Brookes introducing it by saying that the band celebrated their 25th anniversary with a massive party at Butlins in Minehead just about sums it up! Of all the venues in the country to book for such a celebration, that was the optimum one?! What? Minehead was where Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt met all those years ago? Oh. Well, I don’t care. The “Anniversary Waltz Part 1” was a terrible idea and remains the last time that the band were in the Top 10. Even a re-release of their ‘party tune’ that was “Marguerita Time” would surely have been a better idea?

Maria McKee is still at No 1 with “Show Me Heaven”. Although she never came anywhere near to repeating the commercial triumph of this single, Maria has continued to write and record material. She wrote two songs for the aforementioned Bette Midler on her 1995 “Bette Of Roses” album whilst The Chicks (previously known as Dixie Chicks) recorded her song “Am I the Only One (Who’s Ever Felt This Way)” for their “Wide Open Spaces” album. Of course, we all know that Feargal Sharkey took her song “A Good Heart” to No 1 in 1985 but he also recorded the McKee penned “To Miss Someone” on his “Songs from the Mardi Gras” album. She has also contributed to numerous tribute albums for the likes of Blind Willie Johnson and T-Rex.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj5G6_z7Ze8

“Show Me Heaven” wasn’t her only soundtrack album hit. After that song was recorded for Days Of Thunder, she also contributed “If Love Is a Red Dress (Hang Me in Rags)” for the Pulp Fiction soundtrack.

The play out video is “World In My Eyes” by Depeche Mode. This is supposedly Andy Fletcher of the band’s favourite song that they have ever recorded. Fletcher’s career is an unusual one in that opinion is divided as to what he actually does in the band. In the 1989 “101” documentary about the band, Fletcher himself had this to say on the subject:

“Martin’s the songwriter, Alan’s the good musician, Dave’s the vocalist, and I bum around.”

Whilst that may be tongue in cheek, it remains the case that Fletcher is the only member of the band (past and present) who has never received a songwriting credit. He is also the only member of Depeche Mode who does not sing although he does do something with synthesizers on stage during live gigs. Apparently he is very active in Depeche’s business affairs and has assumed the role of band spokesperson.

Are there any other examples of band members who don’t contribute much musically? Bez of course in Happy Mondays is an obvious one and isn’t there somebody in Coldpay who doesn’t do much (or is that all of them apart from *Chris Martin?). How about journalist Fiona Russell Powell (aka Eden) and photographer David Yarritu who joined the ranks of ABC for their “How To Be A Zillionaire” album?

“World In My Eyes” peaked at No 17.

*Sorry Coldplay fans!

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart rundown below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFioePLwD_k

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	The Sisters Of Mercy	More	Less actually – no
2	Cliff Richard	From A Distance	…is where I wish to remain from Cliff – no
3	The Chimes	Heaven	Negative
4	New Kids On The Block	Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time)	This was not a mind blowing cover – no
5	The Beautiful South	A Little Time	Not the single but I have it on their Best Of album
6	Neneh Cherry	I’ve Got You Under My Skin	It’s a no
7	Monie Love	It’s A Shame (My Sister)	Nope
8	Status Quo	The Anniversary Waltz (Part One)	Sod off
9	Maria McKee	Show Me Heaven	Nah
10	Depeche Mode	World In My Eyes	I did not

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000t134/top-of-the-pops-11101990

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.

Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 30 AUG 1990

Posted on February 26, 2021 by 80stastic

Right, I’m against the clock a bit for this post so it’s going to have to be a speedy run through and a low word count. Helpfully, six of the nine acts have already been on the show and therefore already commented on. So who’s up first? Aswad? No! They weren’t still having hits by this point were they? It feels like I am literally listening to “Next To You” for the very first time as I have zero memory of the track. Wikipedia tells me this was the lead single from an album called “Too Wicked” (terrible, terrible title) and its seems to be their usual bouncy, reggae infused summery tune (well they are ‘always the sound of sunshine’ according to host Mark Goodier) until there’s some sort of break down near the song’s end when they attempt a rap – it all sounds very incongruous. And talking of incongruous, three keytars?! Really?!

Last week I mentioned that Cliff Richard was in the charts with a live track recorded at his 1989 The Event concert held at Wembley Stadium. Now apparently, Aswad were part of the concert’s supporting cast (not sure why) and Cliff joined them on stage for a song called “Share A Dream”. Nothing especially interesting about this (unless you are a massive Aswad or Cliff fan I guess) except…what is Cliff wearing for his stage costume in this clip of them performing together? It looks like something his Mum might have crocheted for him. Just bizarre.

“Next To You” peaked at No 24 but they would return to the Top 5 four years later with surprise hit “Shine”.

“There’s a lady over there who always smiles when she’s performing. I’ve never ever seen her doing anything but smile…” says Mark Goodier in his intro for the next act. “… and she has a new hit called “End Of The World” he continues. Talk about an incongruous (it’s that word again) juxtaposition of themes! Still smiling even though it’s the end of the word is she Mark? The lady in question is of course Sonia who’s in the studio this week after being a Breaker video on the last show. She gives a very un-Sonia like performance though. I guess jumping around and doing those shoulder roll dance moves of hers wasn’t going to cut it for a song which is the musical equivalent of W.H. Auden’s ‘Funeral Blues’ poem (‘Stop all the clocks etc). Despite the attempts at solemn looks and moody pouts she does look like she is constantly struggling to suppress that beaming smile that Goodier talked of before declaring “Hiya chuck. It’s me Sonia! I’m dead made up to be in the charts again!”.

Sonia’s version of “End Of The World” peaked at No 18.

Goodier goes into full on cringe mode next. “Well, we’ve had some bright pop from Aswad and what a lovely ballad from Sonia, now let”s rave it up with The KLF, this is a massive record, it’s called “What Time Is Love”. Rave it up?! Dearie me. He compounds the embarrassment by referring to the track as “a seriously happening record” at the end of the performance. Am I being harsh on Goodier? Were we all saying things like ‘rave it up’ back then? Were records ‘happening’? It sounds so dated to me now but maybe it was perfectly acceptable in 1990 and nobody would have batted an eyelid?

What was hard to ignore was the power of The KLF’s sound – now that doesn’t sound dated to me even today. The performance is an oddity though. They appear to have half inched a couple of keytars from Aswad whilst there appears to be an Ood from Doctor Who on the mixing desk at the back in the It’s Grim Up North T-shirt. Meanwhile all the air punching for the ‘Mu Mu’ chanting reminds me of their performance of “Doctorin’ The Tardis” by their previous incarnation The Timelords.

About a year prior to “What Time Is Love” being a chart hit, a compilation album called “The “What Time Is Love?” Story” featuring six different mixes of the track was released, all supposedly by different artists. However, rumours abound that it was all the work, in fact, of The KLF themselves. You wouldn’t put it past them, would you?

“Now It doesn’t matter why this record is back in the charts, it’s good that it is…” announces Goodier in his next link. He is of course referring to “The Joker” by the Steve Miller Band. Sounds like Goodier’s protesting a bit too much to me. Anyway, we all know why it was back in the charts, it was because of this advert…

…yes it was all down to jeans again. Levi’s had been making golden oldie songs hits all over again via their clever advertising campaigns since the mid 80s, revitalising the chart careers for the likes of Marvin Gaye, Percy Sledge, Ben E.King, Eddie Cochran and now Steve Miller. Unlike his posthumous predecessors, Steve was still alive (as he is to this day) to experience his resurgence in popularity.

“The Joker’ would be a No 1 record (just!) but Levi’s weren’t prepared to quit at the top. The 90s would see their adverts send multiple songs to the top spot including The Clash, Stiltskin and (god forbid) Babylon Zoo!

Goodier boldly announces that the next act is about to be a big star in America. I have to admit I don’t know if she ever was.

*checks internet*

Well, I’m not sure that Betty Boo did fulfil Goodier’s prediction. As far as I can see, none of her albums did anything across the pond and the only Billboard Hot 100 hit she had (“Doin’ The Do”) peaked at No 90. Maybe Goodier was basing his forecast on the fact that she did score a US Dance chart No1 (“Doin’ The Do” again) or maybe he was just told to say that by Betty’s record label?

In fairness to Goodier, Betty was never as big commercially as she was at this very point. “Where Are You Baby” was her biggest ever hit whilst her debut album (“Boomania”) released eleven days after this broadcast went to No 4. Betty succumbed to second album syndrome after that though and her follow up “Grrr! It’s Betty Boo” stalled at No 62 despite including some insanely catchy singles.

Special mention must go to Betty’s backing band here – were they called The Boosters? – for some stirling ‘arm dancing’ that Jo and Susan Ann of The Human League would have been proud of.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2N7QJYKzcqs

Still with New Kids On The Block?! Look, I know 1990 was their annus mirabilis but even so! It feels like they’ve been on the show every week since January. “Tonight” is up to No 3 now with its Beatles sounding steals but it’s not the the Liverpool legends that I’m noticing as their influences this week. Did the previously seen Steve Miller Band also have an impact on the writing of “Tonight”. How so? Well, in “The Joker”, Miller references a few songs that he has recorded himself like “Space Cowboy” from his “Brave New World” album and “Enter Maurice” from “Recall The Beginning…A Journey From Eden”. So? OK, in “Tonight”, past NKOTB hits are name checked:

Remember when we said “Girl, please don’t go”
And how I’d be loving you forever
Taught you ’bout hanging tough
As long as you’ve got the right stuff

See? Oh suit yourselves.

I actually paid some attention to the video this time around and by far the most close ups went to Jordan Knight and Joey McIntyre. Presumably they sold the most T-shirts at their concerts. The rest of them didn’t get much of a look in. In fact, I’m not sure I even spotted Donnie Wahlberg at all! It reminded me of Duran Duran videos back in the day when it was easier to pinpoint Wally in the Where’s Wally series of puzzle books than to spot guitarist Andy Taylor.

After two acts at the peak of their popularity in Betty Boo and New Kids On The Block, we move to someone who is definitely on the slide. I don’t care what Mark Goodier says about his UK tour being sold out nor do I attach much significance to the screams coming from the TOTP studio audience (no doubt teased out of them by over enthusiastic floor staff), Jason Donovan‘s pop career had hit the skids. Only one of the singles released from his second album “Between The Lines” had gone Top 5; indeed his last hit had only just made the Top 20. Given his changing fortunes, a plan was needed to halt the downward trend. And that plan was….release a cover version of course. When in need of a hit, release a cover is something that is as irrefutable as death and taxes being the only sure things in life. “Rhythm Of The Rain” was originally a hit for The Cascades in 1963 and to be fair to Donovan’s record label PWL, it did arrest his plummeting chart fortunes by returning him to the Top 10 but it was a plaster to heal a gaping wound in truth.

Jase’s version is sugary and sickly sweet – really nasty actually but to be fair to him, the chords he mimes on the guitar in this performance appear to be legitimate. His bob haircut however is completely bogus.

As with Donovan’s 60s cover version, this week’s No 1 is also a cover of a song from that decade. “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini” was originally a hit for Brian Hyland in 1960. Thirty years later it was fiendishly brought back to life by the monstrous Timmy Mallett and Bombalurina although the real culprit was Andrew Lloyd Webber who had the original idea to re-record it.

The almost identical looking peroxide blonde dancers behind Mallett made the whole thing look like a comedy sketch parodying 1982 “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” hitmakers Tight Fit but unfortunately this wasn’t a joke but a genuine chart record. Those two dancers incidentally included Dawn Andrews who would go on to marry Take That’s Gary Barlow.

The play out video is “Now You’re Gone” by Whitesnake and as with Aswad at the top of the show, I don’t remember this at all. We hadn’t seen much of David Coverdale and co in the Top 40 since they peaked with “Is This Love” and “Here I Go Again” both going Top 10 back in 1987. In fact, they would only make the Top 40 once more after this when a re-issue of “Is This Love” to promote a Best Of album made No 25 in 1994. Can’t say I have missed them much.

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzlPq9o5BR4

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Aswad	Next To You	There was next to no chance of me buying this
2	Sonia	End Of The World	If this was the last record in the world, I wouldn’t have bought it
3	The KLF	What Time Is Love (Live At Trancentral”	Nope
4	Steve Miller Band	The Joker	It’s a no
5	Betty Boo	Where Are You Baby	No
6	New Kids On The Block	Tonight	No but I think my friend Rachel did
7	Jason Donovan	Rhythm Of The Rain	Certainly not
8	Bombalurina	Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini	How does f**k off sound as an answer?
9	Whitesnake	Now You’re Gone	Nah

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000scg0/top-of-the-pops-30081990

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.

Some bedtime reading?

https://michaelmouse1967.wixsite.com/smashhits-remembered/1990-issues

TOTP 16 AUG 1990

Posted on February 18, 2021 by 80stastic

Here we are once more at TOTP Rewind, still back in the hot Summer of 1990, with a load of UK Top 40 hits to review. Before we get to those though, a bit of context about what else was happening outside of the charts at this time. Four days after this TOTP aired, the final ever episode of Miami Vice was shown on BBC1. Yes, the cop show that popularised the now iconic 80s fashion of no socks, rolled up sleeves, Ray-Ban sunglasses and of course designer stubble was finally put out to pasture after a run of five years, five seasons and 112 episodes. I hadn’t watched the show in years but I do recall tuning in for this final episode (well the last 10 minutes or so anyway).

Back in 1985, it had been a complete phenomenon making stars of its two leads Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas but it was its cultural impact that was the show’s legacy. The Miami Vice ‘look’ of pastel coloured T-shirt under jacket, white linen trousers, slip-on sockless loafers accessorised with shades and stubble may be rolled out these days as a fancy dress costume for an 80s themed party but back in the mid 80s it was genuinely influential. Sales of Ray Bans sunglasses soared and Macy’s even opened a Miami Vice section in its young men’s department. Designers such as Gianni Versace and Hugo Boss were consulted on the show’s fashion choices.

Then of course there was the music used in the series. Not for this show was the usual made for TV incidental music; oh no, the rights to actual, original pop and rock songs were purchased so that bona fide artists were featured. The range of artists employed was diverse; from Devo to Dire Straits and from U2 to Underworld. In the case of some acts, their involvement in the show was not restricted to just the inclusion of their musical output; stars from James Brown to Phil Collins via Sheena Easton also had acting parts. The series spawned two hit singles for Jan Hammer and three volumes of soundtrack albums. However, by the end of the 80s, it was starting to look tired and ratings had dropped. It was time to bow out as the 90s dawned.

And talking of pop songs that have been used in TV and film, tonight’s opening act are best known in the US for just that practice. Go West had not been seen anywhere in the vicinity of the UK Top 40 in nigh on five years since their last visit there with “Don’t Look Down – The Sequel” in their breakthrough year of 1985. Their second album had come out in 1987 to a less than enthusiastic reaction from the record buying public (none of the singles taken from it were hits) and despite touring with Tina Turner, they had been officially listed as missing in action since. An elongated and legally messy changing of record label in the US hadn’t helped matters.

And then, out of nowhere and looking every inch the 80s throwback anachronism, they were back! “King Of Wishful Thinking” was taken from the Pretty Woman soundtrack which was proving to be a goldmine for any artist lucky enough to have found their way onto it. Go West joined Natalie Cole, David Bowie and of course Roxette as acts that had benefited from its all reaching pulling power. How a past their sell by date UK pop act came to be on that record seemed to be a case of luck of the label. EMI released it and as the band’s US label, their executives got to hear the song’s demo and asked for it to be included. It’s actually used quite prominently in the film in the opening scene and titles. Of course, it wasn’t the first time their music had been included on a hit film soundtrack. Back in late ’85 they had contributed a song called “One Way Street” to the Rocky IV soundtrack but it never got an official single release on account of it being as dull as a daily briefing hosted by George Eustace.

“King Of Wishful Thinking” though was a horse of a different colour altogether. With its jaunty rhythm bouncing along pleasantly and its upbeat chorus, it was perfect for daytime airplay. Added to this were Peter Cox’s soulful vocals (for all they were very much seen as disposable pop, Cox’s voice always stood out) and they are to the fore in this live performance. Not to be outdone, his band partner Richard Drummie has turned up not just with their trademark singlet on but also in a pair of cycling shorts! Cox looks a bit nervous to be back in the spotlight but Drummie whoops it up with handclaps (and armpits!) a plenty.

The single’s popularity (No 8 in the US and No 18 over here) would lead to a successful comeback album two years later with the appropriately entitled “Indian Summer”.

Right, it’s that Ben Liebrand remix of “Englishman In New York” by Sting next. Still not sure quite how this remix came about but it remains one of Mr Sumner’s most well known songs I’m guessing. Now, sticking with the pop music in film / TV theme, this track was actually used in a film but it must be one of the most obvious uses of a song in cinematic history. It features in the 2009 film An Englishman In New York which is chronicles the years gay English writer Quentin Crisp spent in New York City. Crisp of course, was the subject matter of the song in the first place. Sting has had a few songs that featured in movies that have become chart hits. Back in 1982 he scored with “Spread a Little Happiness” from Brimstone & Treacle before repeating the trick 10 years later with “It’s Probably Me” from Lethal Weapon 3. By this point he was getting a taste for the movie soundtrack hit and just 12 months later he went to No 2 with “All for Love” (alongside Bryan Adams and Rod Stewart) from The Three Musketeers.

Now I wasn’t aware of this until now but Sting wasn’t the first artist to come up with a song with this title. Godley & Creme recorded “An Englishman In New York” back in 1979 and if you thought Sting’s video was intriguing, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet….

Now then, 1990 just got a little bit more interesting. I haven’t got the space in this one post to do justice to the whole story of The KLF or to be more precise, Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty and there is loads more to their back story that predates this moment but for many (including me) “What Time Is Love? (Live at Trancentral)” was our starting point. I was aware that they were the guys behind The Timelords and their No 1 hit “Doctorin’ the Tardis” back in 1988 but my knowledge of their The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu (The JAMs) pseudonym was sketchy at best.

As presenter Anthea Turner notes in her intro, “What Time Is Love?” had been a dance floor hit previous Summer but it was a very different beast to the one we were about to hear in 1990. The original release even had a different name (sort of) – “What Time Is Love? (Pure Trance Original)” with the bracketed part of the title giving a clue to the very different sound that it had. Part of the Drummond and Cauty long term strategy though was the model of reworking tracks into different genres and so “What Time Is Love?” was re-shaped from a trance anthem to a more mainstream version that allowed the duo to the enter the nation’s consciousness. Vocal samples and a new bassline were added alongside a rap and house rhythm and the track became the first entry in the ‘Stadium House Trilogy’ that Drummond and Cauty had envisaged. “What Time Is Love? (Live at Trancentral)” would peak at No 5 and by the end of the year, The KLF were on their way to becoming a phenomenon, the like of which the UK charts hadn’t seen since Frankie Goes To Hollywood (probably).

You can be sure that we’ll be seeing plenty more of The KLF in these TOTP repeats over the next few months.

https://youtu.be/P_ws7Whr-vM?si=NfGJhIQoZ9XuX_4j

“Wow! They were raving!” exclaims Anthea at the end of The KLF’s performance which is possibly the most excruciating thing any one has ever said whilst presenting a popular music show. The next act on could be described as ‘excruciating’ for many a viewer back then but they were certainly ‘popular’. “Tonight” was the sixth of eight Top 10 hits that New Kids On The Block would have in 1990 alone. Such was their fame and appeal in this year that the likes of Smash Hits magazine could guarantee huge sales by merely planting them on the front cover whilst the story inside could be so insubstantial as to hardly warrant the title ‘feature’. The whole NKOTB phenomenon must have been manna from heaven for the pop press. Huge sales for very little journalistic effort.

As for their ‘music’, well… most of it was absolutely dire but then I wasn’t a teenage girl so I was not the target audience. Most you say? You mean some of it wasn’t utter crud? Surely not?! Look, at least “Tonight” had something a little bit different about it to their usual candy floss, lowest common denominator pop shit that they peddled. I mean, I hated it at the time but if I had to (like life depended on it scenario) pick one of their songs it would be this one. Please don’t judge me. “Tonight” peaked at No 3.

Right, what’s Anthea on about now? The Blackburn rave organisation? Who? What’s that to do with “Hardcore Uproar” by Together? Well, it appears that she was on the money with this one. Here’s @TOTPFacts:

Suddi Raval: "'Hardcore Uproar' was named after the Blackburn raves and features the sound of the crowds at the rave…" "Just after we finished recording, police raided it and started beating people." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) February 12, 2021

Yes, it seems Anthea was well prepped for this link. According to Suddi Raval in an interview with http://www.theransomnote.com, he was against “Hardcore Uproar” as a title and was pushing for it to be called “Can You Feel The Beat” which sounds so lame in comparison. The track got its biggest promotion when Paul Oakenfold agreed to play it as part of his set as the warm up at the legendary Stone Roses Spike Island gig when a crowd of 30,000 people (including my elder brother) got to hear it.

As for me, it sounds like “Ebeneezer Goode” by The Shamen performed by Utah Saints. Maybe it had some influence on those two acts? Maybe. Raval’s partner in the band Jon Donaghy was tragically killed a year after “Hardcore Uproar” was a hit in a road accident in Ibiza on the way to perform at a festival.

One of 1990’s breakout stars is back on the show with her biggest ever hit -it can only be Betty Boo and “Where Are You Baby”. There was lots of love for Betty on display on Twitter when this TOTP repeat aired last week. In stark contrast, there was a massive negative backlash on social media against Anthea Turner after her ill-advised Twitter rant that was accused of fat-shaming and ableism. Silly cow. Anyway, back to Betty and this is peak period Boo (peak-a-boo if you will) when she really did seem to have the pop world at her feet. “Where Are You Baby” was her third Top 10 hit on the spin (if you include her 1989 collaboration with The Beatmasters) and would eventually rise to No 3. Although very similar to previous hit “Doin’ The Do”, this one had a bit more musicality about it to my ears with the chorus sounding much more melodic. Above everything else though, it was damn catchy. Betty really channels her inner Emma Peel in this performance whilst the promo video with its sci-fi space imagery sees her cast herself as a cartoon-like of version of Barbarella. I was fine with either look to be fair!

https://youtu.be/0g2w4EC-Ax8?si=rYJaIDdjkPCf3LN0

Right, what’s the name of the next act Anthea? Unfortunately for Anthea, two one syllable words that are phonically similar proved too much for her presenting abilities and she cocks up introducing Jon Bon Jovi when she gets ‘Jon’ and ‘Bon’ the wrong way round! Come on! This is basic stuff for a presenter surely?

“Blaze Of Glory” was a Breaker last week and is up to No 13 this week and for those of us with even a passing familiarity with the Bon Jovi canon of work (and yes I was one), it seemed to be a wholly predictable culmination of a good few years obsession with cowboys on Jon’s behalf. Starting with “Wanted Dead Or Alive” from the “Slippery When Wet” album (originally the song that Emilio Estevz requested to be used in Young Guns II), Jon couldn’t let go of his Cowboys and Westerns theme and carried it forward to the band’s next album “New Jersey”. That album included songs with titles like “Stick To Your Guns” (opening line ‘So you want to be a cowboy’) and this one…

…give it a rest Jon!

Anyway, I read recently that there are plans afoot for a third instalment of the Young Guns franchise with screenwriter of the first two films John Fusco plus their stars Emilio Estevz and Lou Diamond Phillips on board. I’m not quite sure which direction the plot could plausibly go in given that just about all the characters for the first two films were killed off and Estevez and Diamond Phillips are now well into their 50s. Not so much ‘young guns’ then as ‘antique firearms’.

Another of last week’s Breakers now as we get a studio performance from Roxette of “Listen To Your Heart”. Last year, the BMI confirmed that this song has now been played on US radio more than 60 million times! If those 60 million plays were back to back, it would have been played non-stop for 62 years!

As with Go West earlier, whatever you might think of their musical output, it cannot be denied that they had a great singer. Marie Fredriksson belts this one out and then some. After the re-release success of “Listen To Your Heart”, EMI repeated the trick for the duo’s next single when they shoved “Dressed For Success” back out into the market where it peaked at No 18, some 30 places higher than its initial release.

The final week of four at the top for Partners In Kryme and “Turtle Power”. Now before we all start jumping around, throwing our arms in the air and offering thanks to the gods of the pop charts, know this….*SPOILER ALERT*…next week’s No 1 is Bombalurina!

1990 really was the height of Turtlemania so much so that the four dudes even made an appearance (alongside Partners In Kryme) at the Smash Hits Poll Winners Party that year. As far as I can tell, they didn’t actually win anything per se although they did come 5th in the Best Single category and 3rd in the Worst Single category. Go figure.

The comments about the clip above on YouTube are scary. Here’s someone called Blue Jones:

“Dude! I am one of the biggest TMNT fans on earth. I’ve spent thousands of dollars on original art, comics & toys & I even have the fearsome foursome tattooed on my arm. And yet, I’ve never seen this video before! Yowza! Thanks for uploading this gem!”

WTF?! He even gets a reply from someone called Zwoob Zwoob:

“Same here bruh. except that tattoo part. but i did actually buy this replica of one of the original masks from the 1990 movie. (raph’s head). And even though I was only 2 when this movie came out, it’s my favorite, lol, i can literally recited the whole movie line for line.”

OK, I’m proper getting the fear now. Let’s dial it down with a comment from this poor, uniformed gentleman called MagicalPuddinPops:

“It’s weird I always thought mc hammer performed this.”

Farewell Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles…it’s been…awful actually.

Whilst 1990 hasn’t proved to be the antidote to the late 80s that I thought I remembered, bizarrely the play out song is the third single on this show to be featured in Gary Mulholland’s great book This Is Uncool: The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk and Disco. Split into years, the section for 1990 features “Come Together” by Primal Scream along with The KLF and Betty Boo! The follow up to their breakthrough chart hit “Loaded”, this was very much cut from the same cloth albeit with a more conventional song structure than its predecessor. However….the album version on “Screamadelica” remixed by Andrew Weatherall was nothing like the Terry Farley 7″ mix. Clocking in at over 10 mins with Bobby Gillespie’ vocals completely omitted and replaced with samples of a speech by the Rev Jesse Jackson, it’s that version that was a huge hit in the clubs in Ibiza.

I actually own the CD single of this but I can’t claim that I bought it at the time. I got it as one of those import cut out titles from legendary Manchester record store Power Cuts. It’s got two versions of “Come Together” and three of “Loaded” on it plus “I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have” which was the original track that was remixed into “Loaded”. Not a bad little purchase.

In a Smash Hits feature that took a snoop around Bobby’s flat at the time, his record collection was spread across the floor and featured artists you could well have anticipated like The Rolling Stones, The Ramones, Sly and the Family Stone and Funkadelic. However, it also features “Hippychick” by Soho which wasn’t a hit in the UK until its re-release some six months after this article was published. Bobby Gillespie – a man all over trends before they’ve even happened. And his critics said he was just re-hashing The Rolling Stones. “Come Together” peaked at No 26.

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Go West	King Of Wishful Thinking	I did not
2	Sting	Englishman In New York (Ben Liebrand remix)	Nah
3	The KLF	What Time Is Love (Live At Trancentral”	Nope
4	New Kids On The Block	Tonight	No but I think my friend Rachel did
5	Together	Hardcore Uproar	Harcore! You know the score! Erm…no
6	Betty Boo	Where Are You Baby	No
7	Jon Bon Jovi	Blaze Of Glory	No but it’s probably on my Bon Jovi collection CD
8	Roxette	Listen To Your Heart	I did and it said don’t buy this record
9	Partners In Kryme	Turtle Power	This as a crime…against music. No
10	Primal Scream	Come Together	Yes on CD single (but not at the time)

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000s4ql/top-of-the-pops-16081990

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.

Some bedtime reading?

https://michaelmouse1967.wixsite.com/smashhits-remembered/1990-issues

TOTP 02 AUG 1990

Posted on February 10, 2021 by 80stastic

Like a former Brosette dumping the Goss brothers and transferring her affections onto New Kids On The Block, we have left behind July 1990 and moved into August…and it’s sweltering! The day after this TOTP aired, the UK Summer heat wave peaked with a temperature of 37.1 °C! Apparently immune to the heat though is tonight’s presenter Bruno Brookes who felt the need for a shirt and jacket combo – madman. He does, however, promise us some ‘hot hits’ so let’s see what the little fella has got in store for us…

…well, never mind the heatwave, it’s the UK rock wave of 1990 that’s in full flow. After Thunder were on the show the other week, now we get their doppelgängers Little Angels with their new hit “She’s A Little Angel”. As far as I can ascertain, this seemed to be a stand alone single released between their albums “Don’t Prey For Me” and “Young Gods” although I think it has turned up on the latter album in subsequent re-releases. It was definitely the band’s second chart hit after “Radical Your Lover” made it to No 34 back in May.

Lead singer Toby Jepson does seem to be trying out his best Robert Plant impression in this performance. Drummer Michael Lee would go one better though by actually touring and performing with Plant after Little Angels split in 1994. As well as the aforementioned Thunder, we also had Gun on the show recently who seemed to me to also be a part of this early 90s UK rock movement and it was Jepson who would link all three bands by supporting Thunder in 2006 as a solo artist and then becoming Gun’s lead singer from 2008 to 2010. They should have just gone the Busted/McFly route who joined forces in 2013 as McBusted. What would that have made them? ‘Little Gunder’ maybe? Or ‘Gunder Angels’ even?

Little Angels would have their own season in the sun when their 1993 “Jam” album went to No 1 on the charts. I was working in Our Price Rochdale when that album came out and I bagged the promo copy of it that their record company had sent out to all stores to promote. Somehow it got lost in transit over the years whilst moving cities. I also caught the band doing a PA in HMV Manchester at this time; that makes it sound like I apprehended them doing an illegal set – they were meant to be there doing a PA! They were pretty good as I recall.

“She’s A Little Angel” peaked at No 21.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JzgHpd2dKg

Did somebody mention New Kids On The Block? Here are the pesky little blighters with their single “Tonight”. I’m not sure if the video below is the one that TOTP show which, as Bruno advises, seems to be clips of the group’s recent tour, but it is the official video. I know at least two people who like this song (my wife is one of them!) whilst I completely dismissed it as pop cack at the time. On listening to it 31 years later, I can at least hear what they were trying to do which is come up with a more mature sound than their previous efforts like “Hangin’ Tough” and “You Got It (The Right Stuff)”. They even reference their past chart life in the lyrics hoping to distance themselves from it by admitting its existence. Check these out:

Remember when we said “Girl, please don’t go”
And how I’d be loving you forever
Taught you ’bout hanging tough
As long as you’ve got the right stuff

And then they attempt to break with their past with the line:

Well I guess it’s a brand new day after all

Quite clever really – bit like breaking through a musical fourth wall. Well, sort of.

It wasn’t just the lyrics though, they were obviously trying out a new sound as well. I say ‘new’ sound but they were clearly borrowing heavily from a number of artists. The intro is pure “California Dreamin'” by The Mamas And The Papas, whilst there is more than a whiff of The Beatles circa “Magical Mystery Tour” and The Beach Boys “Pet Sounds” era. Too much? How dare I compare The Beatles and The Beach Boys with T’KNOB? OK – it’s pushing it but you see where I’m coming from? No? OK – you win.

“Tonight” peaked at No 3.

A run of three hits we’ve seen previously on the show next beginning with LFO and “LFO”. OK, this is just weird. Not the track (although it is a bit too out there for my tastes) but this bit of trivia that I found online. Despite the existence of LFO who were from Leeds, from 1995 there was also an American band called LFO. They must have got away with the duplicate name as it stands for ‘Lyte Funkie Ones’ whilst their UK counterparts acronym stood for ‘Low Frequency Oscillation’ apparently. That’s not the weird bit though. This is…the US LFO released a version of “Step By Step” by New Kids On The Block! Yes, that lot that were just on! In fact, “Step By Step” was the single before “Tonight” that we’ve just seen. Here it is….

Despite being released seven years apart, the sprites of pop trivia have discharged their unknown powers to create a tenuous but valid link between acts on this 1990 TOTP. Saves me having to come up with something about LFO anyway.

“LFO” by LFO (the UK one) peaked at No 12.

After being a Breaker in last week’s show, Bell Biv Devoe are in the studio tonight to perform “Poison”. Also known as BBD (enough with the acronyms! – grammar editor), I would have said that this was by far the trio’s biggest hit in the UK but I was wrong. Apparently (and I must have missed this completely at the time despite working in record shops by then), they also appeared on the single “The Best Things in Life Are Free” by Janet Jackson and Luther Vandross. And I don’t mean they were in the studio that day and happened to join in on the backing vocals, they get a proper credit. The single cover includes the legend ‘with special guest BBD and Ralph Tresvant’. Hang on…Ralph Tresvant? Wasn’t he in New Edition alongside Mr Bell, Mr Biv and Mr DeVoe? Indeed he was. And I thought Gun, Little Angels and Thunder were a tight little friendship group!

Anyway, “The Best Things in Life Are Free” was a hit twice for Janet/Luther/BBD/Mr Tresvant – a No 2 in 1992 and a No 7 in 1995 when it was remixed thereby easily outperforming “Poison” which peaked at No 19.

More weirdness now as it’s that incongruous best selling albums of the month feature again. For the record, these were the top sellers in July 1990:

1. Elton John – “Sleeping With The Past”

2. Luciano Pavarotti – “The Essential Pavarotti”

3. Rollings Stones – “Hot Rocks 1964–1971”

4. The Beach Boys – “Summer Dreams”

5. Madonna – “I’m Breathless”

Interesting that two of the Top 5 are essentially Best Ofs from legendary acts plus another one from a classical artist and that the other two albums are the latest offerings by established superstars. Where were all the new groups/bands/artists? Also, I note that TOTP finally play “Healing Hands” for the Elton clip after weeks of persisting with ‘Sacrifice”

And it’s one of those ‘established superstars’ that we stick with as we return to the singles chart as “Hanky Panky” by Madonna gets another spin. 1990 was not only the year that she starred in the Dick Tracy flick which this single was written for but she also embarked upon her Blonde Ambition World Tour. Said tour featured a Dick Tracy segment which, according to a Smash Hits review of the show, was the point at which most of the audience chose to nip out to the toilet. I’m kind of not surprised.

Despite its obvious and calculated attempt at outrage, “Hanky Panky” came across as too knowing and cartoon-ish to be truly pushing the barriers of decency for me. However, it did signpost the direction in which she would take her career from this point in. Her next single was “Justify My Love” with its sexually explicit promo video whilst her next studio album was the controversy courting “Erotica” and that coffee table book of adult content.

The first new single release of the decade from Prince next (well in the UK anyway) and it’s “Thieves In The Temple”. After his last project, the below par (it was to me at least) Batman soundtrack, Prince stays within the world of cinema with his next endeavour, the “Graffiti Bridge” project. Essentially a follow up to 1984’s Purple Rain, the film has been widely dissed since its release. I have to admit I’ve never seen it but given that it was nominated for five Golden Raspberry Awards including Worst Picture, Worst Actor (Prince), Worst Director (Prince), Worst Screenplay (Prince), and Worst New Star (Ingrid Chavez), I not in any hurry to seek it out. As for the film’s soundtrack album, it was critically well received but didn’t shift the units that he had in the past. It was often a title that would crop up in the Special Purchase section during my Our Price days – titles that there were massive overstocks of that specialist companies bought up cheap and then flogged back to record stores to sell at a discounted price. Actually, Prince’s last studio album “Lovesexy” was also a perennial Special Purchase title now I come to think of it.

“Thieves In The Temple” though was a pretty decent tune to my ears and was actually the final song recorded for the album and only added to the track listing at the last minute. I thought the metaphor of the title was clever and the chorus was catchy as opposed to “Batdance” which didn’t appear to have any sort of chorus at all. Although I didn’t buy the single, it was on the first Q Magazine album that I did purchase.

“Thieves In The Temple” peaked at No 7.

“It’s so hot” exclaims Bruno Brookes next as he insists on wearing his heavy looking jacket under studio lights. He subsequently describes the next act as “definitely the No 1 novelty record of the Summer so far”. Novelty record? Not sure about that to be honest. Was “Wash Your Face In My Sink” by Dream Warriors a novelty record? My friend Robin told me recently that when this was a hit, somebody he worked with down in that there London thought it was hysterical that there was a record in the charts whose title was innuendo for a specific sexual act! Robin was new in his job so didn’t know his colleague well and understandably didn’t want to explore the conversation any further so I have no idea which sexual act was being referred to. Every time I have since tried to imagine what it could be I have felt dirty and indeed in need of a wash in a sink.

In a Smash Hits article , King Lou of the band explained the song’s meaning as this:

“We took something as primitive as a washroom and we used the toilet being the dirty and the negative and the sink being the cleansed, the positive. Basically just picture the sink as being a rap book and the lyrics being the flow coming from the tap. It’s basically trying to say you can’t wash your negativity in my positivity. It goes really deep. It was originally to be called ‘Tablecloths and Napkins’.

I hope that clears it all up.

Well, well well. It’s the return of one of the biggest bands of the 80s next. Duran Duran had a hit in the 90s with a song that wasn’t “Ordinary World”? Yes they did. Their first hit of the new decade was something called “Violence Of Summer (Love’s Taking Over)” whatever that meant and was the lead single from their new album “Liberty”. The band had drawn a line under their first era by releasing Best Of album “Decade” at the end of ’89. If they’d envisioned that as a new start for the 90s, it didn’t begin well. They had a new line up for a start with guitarist Warren Cuccurullo and drummer Sterling Campbell having made the transition from session guys to fully blown band members. What would this change of dynamic do to the band? Secondly, did they still have any juice left in the creative tank to rebuild their career and do it all over again? Did they still have a market to appeal to? In short, were they still relevant?

Well, if I was any sort of measure, then the answer was no. Despite owning Duran Duran records in my days of early youth, “Violence Of Summer (Love’s Taking Over)” passed me by completely. A complete non-event. Could this have been because it didn’t actually receive that much airplay at the time? Not a good sign for a band on the comeback trail. Parent album “Liberty” debuted healthily enough inside the Top 10 but dropped out of the charts calamitously within a few short weeks. American magazine Trouser Press gave it this stinging review:

“The album is idiotic with lyrics that set new standards for pretensions gone out of bounds…”

Ouch! When I started at Our Price a few months later in 1990, I worked with a guy called Mark who had been a big Duran fan in his youth (well, he was a fellow Brummie) and he said that he’d bought “Liberty” out of band loyalty but never would do again so bad was it. He was done with them. Double ouch!

Retrospectively, even the band themselves slagged it off. Here’s Nick Rhodes in 2005 (from Steve Malins) Duran biography on “Violence Of Summer (Love’s Taking Over)”:

“It wasn’t right, I didn’t really like it as a single”

Triple ouch!

In subsequent years, the band have mellowed to the album and there has been talk of them revisiting some of the songs and demos that never made the track listing cut but that period of the band’s career will never be more than a depressing footnote.

Listening to “Violence Of Summer (Love’s Taking Over)” today, it sounds very poppy and pretty flimsy. There’s really not much to it at all. Follow up single “Serious” (once described by singer Simon Le Bon as the band’s finest moment) didn’t even make the Top 40. It would be three long years before they would return to the charts again.

Those turtles are still at No 1 this week, or rather Partners In Kryme are with their single “Turtle Power”. Whilst this TOTP repeat aired last Friday evening a debate broke out online about the identity of the first hip hop track to make it to No 1 in the UK. Unbelievably, the following claim was made:

The only UK top 40 hit for Partners In Kryme, “Turtle Power” was also the UK's first hip hop number one. (Thanks to @JonnyWelly for pointing this out!) #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) February 5, 2021

WTF?! That can’t be right can it?! I wasn’t the only one to dispute this statement as various contenders were nominated including Snap!, Bowie’s “Let’s Dance”, Chaka Khan’s “I Feel For You” and even a shout for “Under Pressure”. However, one track rang truer than all these with the watching public and after a quick poll, this was the official result:

Okay, let's sort this out democratically. First UK hip hop number one? VOTE NOW #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) February 5, 2021

Glad that’s sorted out then!

You wait all year for a dance act with an eponymously titled Top 40 hit to appear and then two turn up in the same show! After “LFO” by LFO earlier, here comes “Tricky Disco” by Tricky Disco. And as with LFO, Tricky Disco were also on the Sheffield record label Warp.

As you might have easily predicted, I wasn’t into this at all. Load of breaks, bass and bleeps nonsense. They added to their charge sheet with this piece of crap in 1995….

“Tricky Disco” by Tricky Disco peaked at No 14.

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUnBHDTL79U

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Little Angels	She’s A Little Angel	Nope
2	New Kids On The Block	Tonight	No but I think my friend Rachel did
3	LFO	LFO	LF…NO
4	Bell, Biv Devoe	Poison	Negative
5	Madonna	Hanky Panky	Nah
6	Prince	Thieves In The Temple	No but it was on that Q Magazine compilation I bought
7	Dream Warriors	Wash Your Face In My Sink	Liked it but not enough to buy it
8	Duran Duran	Violence Of Summer (Love’s Taking Over)	Nah – I’d given up on them by this point
9	Partners In Kryme	Turtle Power	This is a crime…against music. No
10	Tricky Disco	Tricky Disco	Tricky Disc-NO

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000rxph/top-of-the-pops-02081990

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.

Some bedtime reading?

https://michaelmouse1967.wixsite.com/smashhits-remembered/1990-issues

TOTP 14 JUN 1990

Posted on January 16, 2021 by 80stastic

We are less than one week (and only one game in the case of England) into the Italia ’90 World Cup and already the nation is gloomy about the team’s chances of progressing. A scratchy 1-1 draw with the Republic of Ireland in the first group match wasn’t the start that we’d hoped for and the game itself was a bit of a stinker. Cue Gary Lineker…

Ahem. Another draw (this time 0-0) with Holland followed two days after this TOTP was broadcast meaning qualification into the knockout stages hung in the balance. The drama, the tension. How about some music to calm our nerves….

Well, for a start off, presenter Bruno Brookes’ jacket of many colours would have been flashing me up and setting me on edge. Look at it! If Shakin’ Stevens and Adam Ant’s wardrobes had ever got together and sired a sprog, this would be it. Just revolting. There should have been a law to prevent such a jacket being worn on national TV. Talking of the law, here’s Guru Josh with his second consecutive hit “Whose Law (Is It Anyway?). Having conquered the charts earlier in the year with “Infinity (1990’s… Time for the Guru)”, here he is again with a single whose title sounds like it was inspired by a certain long running, satirical Channel 4 improvisational comedy series. However, I’m guessing was probably about the Entertainment (increased Penalties) Act, that the government introduced this year allowing fines of up to £20,000 for hosting illegal raves or parties. As you can probably guess by his appearance and performance here, Guru (Mr. Josh?) was very anti this legislation and its curtailing of rave culture.

As for the track itself, it’s pretty similar to “Infinity” to my ears with that distinctive saxophone sound to the fore again although the vocals (if you can call them that) are very grating and distracting. The engineer on this track was someone called Chinito Bandito whose sounds like a character from the Hanna-Barbera cartoon Wacky Races.

After this single only made it to No 26 in the charts, Guru Josh decamped to Ibiza to concentrate on art and running a promotions company. He returned to the Top 40 one more time with a re-release of “Infinity” in 2008 but tragically committed suicide in December 2015.

Right. Who’s this? Maureen? Nothing to do with telephone directory services but in fact the woman who sang on Bomb The Bass’s cover of “Save A Little Prayer” back in ’88. She’s back on the show with another cover version but this time of the 1984 No 11 hit “Thinking Of You” from Sister Sledge. There seemed to be a rush of hit singles around the early ’90s that was based around the practice of taking an original well known song and covering it in a different musical style, usually of a dance orientated nature. Hell, there’s another one along straight after this! Here Maureen (full name Maureen Walsh but probably Mo to her friends don’t you think?) gives a Soul II Soul style treatment of this Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards penned disco classic. I’m not sure it was worth the effort to be fair.

The look of the performance here is very odd. Maureen at 5′ 10″ cuts an imposing figure on a small stage whilst the two guys backing her on keyboards look so out of place that they remind me of Raw Sex from French and Saunders. That’s before we even talk about the guy who comes on in the middle to do the seemingly obligatory but wholly incongruous rap.

“Thinking Of You” was as good as it got for Maureen when it peaked spookily at exactly the same chart position as the Sister Sledge original at No 11. She did release an album called “Take It From Me” in ’91 but you’d be hard pushed to find it anywhere today.

Another old tune given a musical refurbishment now as Snap! bring us their second hit of the year in “Ooops Up”. Not exactly a cover per se but it was certainly inspired by The Gap Band’s dance floor classic “Oops Upside Your Head” whilst also managing to shoe horn references to the nursery rhyme “Little Miss Muffet”. Now I never knew this before but the full title of that Gap Band hit is actually “I Don’t Believe You Want To Get Up And Dance (Oops!)”. Hmm, bit of a mouthful – I can see why it is better known by its truncated moniker. Penny Ford, who does the vocals on this track, was actually a back up singer for The Gap Band earlier in her career although she wasn’t responsible for choosing it to for the Snap! track.

The original Gap Band lyrics ‘Everybody say oops up side your head, say oops upside your head’ were added to by the addition of the line ‘somebody say opala.’ So, ever wondered what an opala is? Well, obviously it’s the German for ‘Oops’ what with Snap! being the brain child of German producers Michael Münzing and Luca Anzilotti and nothing to do with Opal Fruits sweets (and yes I mean Opal Fruits and not the wanky Starburst re-brand). When I was at Poly, I knew a girl who thought the lyrics to “Oops Upside Your Head” were ‘Oops swap sides again, I said oops swap sides again’ because of the dance that went with it. The one where you have two lines sat on the dance floor who lean backwards, forwards and sideways together? You know the one. She had a point.

This next song sounds like it should be a cover version but it isn’t. You’d be forgiven for thinking that Maxi Priest had done a version of The Carpenters classic “Close To You” seeing as he’d already done reggae-fied covers of “Some Guys Have All The Luck” made famous by Robert Palmer and “Wild World” by Cat Stevens but it’s actually a Maxi original. I say reggae but Wikipedia tells me that Maxi’s music was actually reggae fusion as it has an R&B influence mixed in there as well. Whatever.

“Close To You” was (almost unbelievably) a Stateside No 1 which I never knew until now making Maxi (known as ‘The happiest man in pop’ according to Smash Hits magazine) only the second ever UK reggae act to achieve that feat after UB40 with “Red Red Wine” in 1988. The Brummie lads repeated the trick in 1993 with their cover of Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling In Love”. Maybe British reggae was quite the thing in the US at the time then.

For the completists out there, yes there was a cover of The Carpenters “(They Long to Be) Close to You” (to give it its full title) recorded by soul singer Gwen Guthrie in 1986 which made No 25 in the UK charts. So definitely not by Maxi Priest.

Some ropey old shite next as we get the “Freestyle Mega Mix” by Bobby Brown. This was a medley of Brown’s previous hits “Every Little Step”, “On Our Own”, “Don’t Be Cruel” and “My Prerogative” which was released as a single to promote his remix album “Dance!…Ya Know it!” although it wasn’t included on the album itself.

Presumably the whole project was an attempt by his record company MCA to keep Brown’s profile high while he was in between albums (his follow up to 1988’s multi-platinum “Don’t Be Cruel” didn’t appear until 1992) and it reeks of cynicism. Somehow this steaming turd got all the way to No 14 in the UK Top 40.

Another run out for the video for “The Only One I Know” by The Charlatans next. Taken from the album “Some Friendly”, I didn’t realise until now (not having bought it) that it actually didn’t appear on the vinyl version of the album initially as the band wanted to take only one single from each album with follow up “Then” being the designated single.

20 years on from its release, “The Only One I Know” appeared in a Cadbury’s chocolate advert which would have been unthinkable back in the day. At least it wasn’t used to advertise Revels the orange flavour of which was the inspiration for the lyrics to their song “Polar Bear” which was also on “Some Friendly” and was gave the title of Charlatans fanzine Looking For The Orange One.

“The Only One I Know” peaked at No 9.

Pretty sure this is the third time Betty Boo‘s “Doin’ The Do” has been on the show but that this is the first time she has made a studio appearance after the promo video was broadcast twice previously. Now apparently, Betty used to work in Dorothy Perkins on a Saturday before she was a pop star and guess what? Maureen who we saw on the show earlier used to work in Miss Selfridge. This made me wonder if any other pop stars had worked in clothes shops before finding fame. Didn’t Kaiser Chiefs front man Ricky Wilson used to work in Next? I’m sure he admitted this in an interview once and managed to avoid using the till for a whole year as he hadn’t been trained on it. His time there paid off though as he won the Shockwaves NME Award For Best Dressed Person in 2006.

Not sure if Betty won any awards for her dress sense but she’s rocking that space cadet look in this performance. She should have gone for a purple wig though in the style of the female Moonbase personnel in the old Gerry Anderson space series UFO. She would really go for the space theme in a big way though with the video to her next single ‘Where Are You Baby?”

“Doin’ The Do” peaked at No 7.

Oh Lord! As if we haven’t seen enough of this lot already in 1990, New Kids On The Block are back with a new single and another album! “Step By Step” was the title of both lead single and parent album and is their biggest selling record going to No 1 in the US for three weeks and being certified platinum. I obviously wasn’t the target audience but even allowing for my unreceptive ears, this was utter, utter drivel. Bland by numbers dance pop of the most anonymous kind, what did people see in it? I’m missing the point though by looking for any musical merit. The fact was that the group’s popularity was at such a high by this point that they could have released some rectal discharge in a branded NKOTB plastic bag and it would have sold. The Step One, Step Two etc parts where the individual members get a solo bit are especially repugnant though. Worse than all of the above though is that this is only the fifth of eight chart hits that they racked up in 1990 alone! Gulp.

The World Cup is in full flow (even if the England team weren’t by this stage of the tournament) so predictably New Order are still No 1 with “World In Motion”. I say New Order but I think it was officially credited as ‘England New Order’. Unlike the Euro ’96 “Three Lions” anthem which was created by actual football fans in David Baddiel and Frank Skinner that was reflected in the lyrics, New Order weren’t massive football fans and the lyrics to “World In Motion” are suitably vague as to not specifically centre them in the sphere of football. Apparently the FA wanted to avoid anything that could be construed as a football hooligan chant. Yes, Keith Allen was a footy nut but despite his influence, I think there is a huge difference in the tone of “World In Motion” compared to “Three Lions”. New Order were not in a good place as a band (they would split three years later) and so maybe the whole football song experiment was seen as some sort of light relief and a bit of a laugh. Their expectations were low and mirrored the nation’s lack of hope for a successful campaign by the football team. Both perspectives were to be triumphantly turned on their heads by performances both in the charts and on the pitch.

Conversely, by the time Euro ’96 rolled around, football had gone through a transformation and was popular again and not just with the working classes. Under Terry Venables and with home advantage, England were expected to go all the way whilst the “Three Lions” song featuring two well known comedians who had already tied their football colours to the post with the Fantasy Football League TV show, was seen as a potential huge hit right from the off. Ultimately the record would indeed be a smash hit going to No 1 on two separate occasions during its ’96 run alone whilst the football team would fall tantalisingly short again.

The play out video is “Girl To Girl” by 49ers. I barely remembered their biggest hit from earlier in the year “Touch Me”, so this one had no chance, especially with it peaking at a lowly No 31. I don’t think I missed out on much in retrospect.

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Guru Josh	Whose Law (Is It Anyway?)	Nah
2	Maureen	Thinking Of You	Not for me thanks
3	Snap!	Ooops Up	No
4	Maxi Priest	Close To You	Not my bag
5	Bobby Brown	Freestyle Mega Mix	Big no
6	The Charlatans	The Only One I Know	No but it’s on their Best Of Melting Pot CD that I have
7	Betty Boo	Doin’ The Do	No but my wife had it on a Smash Hits Rave album
8	New Kids On The Block	Step By Step	What do you think?
9	New Order	World In Motion	Call the cops! There’s been a robbery. This isn’t in my singles box!
10	49ers	Girl To Girl	Nope

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000qzml/top-of-the-pops-14061990

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.

Some bedtime reading?

https://michaelmouse1967.wixsite.com/smashhits-remembered/1990-issues

TOTP 10 MAY 1990

Posted on December 15, 2020 by 80stastic

I haven’t done this in a while but here is a quick retread of what this blog is about. I, a 52 year old middle aged man, am reviewing each of the TOTP repeats broadcast on BBC4 whilst also trying desperately to remember what I was up to 30 odd years ago when they were originally aired. I’ve been doing this for four years since the TOTP shows got up to 1983 and we are now into 1990! The years ’83 – ’89 are covered in my blog 80spop.wordpress.com whilst ’90 onwards will all feature in this blog. Why am I doing this? I ask myself this question constantly. I guess it’s not to discover ‘new’ music although there are often songs and acts that come up that I have forgotten about or never took any notice of in the first place. I can’t think of many though that have inspired me to delve into any deeper cuts by said acts and discover new musical frontiers. I guess I must just be a sucker for nostalgia and given the state of the current world, who wouldn’t want to escape to a different era for a while to pretend 2020 isn’t happening? Come on then, let’s flee back to 1990 – I’m 21 (soon to be 22) and with my whole life ahead of me…..

Up until this point, Kylie Minogue had pretty much always been regarded as a Stock, Aitken and Waterman pop puppet, singing and dancing and smiling along to their conveyor belt of formulaic songs that they seemed to have an endless supply of. And it had served her well. Her nine single releases with The Hit Factory had yielded four No 1s, four no 2s and a No 4. Not too shabby at all. However, by 1990, following in the footsteps of many other manufactured pop stars stretching all the way back to the 60s and The Monkees, Kylie wanted to be taken more seriously. “Better The Devil You Know” is undoubtedly the starting point for that journey into credibility. Acting like a ‘year zero’ marker, it appeared fully formed out of the changing rooms of pop and said in a confident tone “What do you think?”. After getting over the ‘wow!’ factor of this performance, I think I must have been taken aback at the accomplished sound that SAW had managed to come up with for Kylie. For let’s not forget, “Better The Devil You Know” is a SAW creation in its entirety from its writing through to its production. However, the parent album “Rhythm Of Love” was the first time that Kylie was allowed more creative freedom and resulted in working with producers other than SAW on four tacks that also resulted in credits as co-writer for her. However, the four singles that were taken from the album that really solidified this new era of Kylie were all SAW productions.

Kylie is nine days older than me so, just as I was about to turn 22 and facing up to those big life decisions of what to do next, she was also making some major life choices*. She had already left Neighbours and had starred in a much more gritty vehicle in the film The Delinquents, a coming of age romantic drama. More influential than any of this though was the fact that she was now dating INXS frontman Michael Hutchence. A lot has been made and written about the corrupting effect of wild man of rock Hutchence on little girl next door Kylie but I am of the opinion that Ms Minogue had more than enough about her to be making her own career and life choices. I’m sure Hutchence was an influence but let’s face it, “Better The Devil You Know” doesn’t sound like any INXS song I know.

Generally referred to as the ‘Sexy Kylie’ era of her career, certainly this release ushered in a change of image with the video for “Better The Devil You Know” featuring Kylie recreating the replicant chase scene from Bladerunner where Deckard guns down a see through mac clad Zhora and cavorting about in a black dress with the straps constantly falling down.

“Better The Devil You Know” would peak at No 2 (kept off the No 1 spot only by Adamski with “Killer”) but the album would not sell nearly as well as her first two long players. She would complete her contract with the PWL label in 1991 with the release of “Lets Get To It” before resurfacing in 1994 as ‘Dance Kylie’ with the release of her “Confide In Me” single on Mike Pickering’s Deconstruction label.

*Obviously we took very different career paths on the back of those decisions – my time as a gay icon is yet to happen I have to admit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qycwEwZljcI

The Wonder Stuff up next with “Circle Square”. Miles Hunt and co had been making steady inroads into the business of being a chart act for a couple of years now. After their first chart breakthrough in 1988 with “It’s Yer Money I’m After Baby” which made No 40, the Stuffies had notched up a further three hit singles peaking at Nos 28, 19 and 33. “Circle Square” would continue that consolidation by topping out at No 20.

As far as I can work out, it wasn’t taken from their then current album “Hup” but rather was a stand alone single although it was included in the track listing on its 21st anniversary rerelease in 2010. I liked this and the lyric “I’ve been a long term disappointment to myself” has stuck with me these past 30 years like a personal statement (see also “I failed my own audition” from “Up Here In The North Of England” by The Icicle Works).

However the band would have to wait another year before becoming a massive commercial success when the release of their hit single “Size Of A Cow” propelled them into the Top 5 and parent album “Never Loved Elvis” into the Top 3. Their decision to hook up with Vic Reeves for a cover of Tommy Roe’s “Dizzy” in October of that year would grant them a bona fide chart topper. However, would that be the moment it all came right or the moment it all went wrong?

It’s the man known as Mantronix next alongside vocalist Wondress with a tune called “Take Your Time”. This was the follow up to their No 4 hit “Got To Have Your Love” and it did / does absolutely nothing for me. I’m not the world’s biggest electro-funk fan it has to be said but this sounds as convincing as a Boris Johnson promise.

Asked in a Smash Hits interview who he would rather go out with from a choice of Margaret Thatcher (!), Tanita Tikaram or Kylie, Kurtis Mantronix replied none of them on the basis that:

Mrs Thatch had no compassion (fair point)
Tanita was in a different frame of mind to him
He didn’t know what Kylie looked like!

Hang on, you’re on the same TOTP show as her! Weren’t you watching her perform at the top of the show Kurtis? When pressed on this by his manager Chuck (“You didn’t see her yesterday at Top Of The Pops? She’s real cute man.”) Mantronix replied “No! You guys saw her. I was back in the dressing room. She has no sensuality.” Whaaat?! No sensuality?! Kylie?!

“Take Your Time” peaked at No 10.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vU_IWxWBug

Teen sensations New Kids On The Block are back with their latest offering “Cover Girl” and if you though their previous hits like “You Got It (The Right Stuff)” and “Hangin’ Tough” were drivel, then I advise you not to watch the video below. “Cover Girl” is bubble gum pop taken to a new saccharine low. Propelled by a Wurlitzer sounding organ backing and some of the dodgiest lyrics of all time, this one not only reeks but it stinks the place out. The video is just the band performing live to an adoring audience (didn’t they do the same thing for the “Hangin’ Tough” video?) with Donnie Wahlberg taking lead vocal duties and making a right arse of himself. He absolutely honks at some points in the song and just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse he gets a pre-pubescent little girl on stage with him and sings to her that she’s his ‘cover girl”. Jeeze! Could he be anymore inappropriate?!

“Cover Girl” peaked at No 4 and be warned. New Kids On The Block are not yet done with 1990; not by a long chalk.

1990 didn’t just belong to New Kids On The Block though. Here are one of the year’s biggest break out stars Beats International back in the charts with “Won’t Talk About It”. Having hit on the perfect pop / dance formula with “Dub Be Good To Me”, could Norman Cook, Lindy Layton et al repeat the trick with this new track? I say new but it had already been released as a double A-side together with “Blame It On The Bassline” under the name of Norman Cook back in 1989. That version included Billy Bragg’s vocals alongside his guitar riff from “Levi Stubbs Tears”…

When reissued under the name of Beats International the following year, Lindy Layton and Lester Noel’s had laid down their vocals on the track instead and it sounded much more polished and chart friendly though not necessarily better in my book. To answer the question of whether they could repeat the success of “Dub Be Good To Me”, the answer was yes…and no. “Won’t Talk About It” was another chart hit and even made the Top 10 but its No 9 peak was nowhere near what its predecessor had achieved. It would also prove to be their last ever Top 40 entry before they eventually disbanded in 1992. Whilst Cook went onto massive success under various pseudonyms (most notably Fatboy Slim), Lindy Layton secured herself a solo career via a recording contract with Arista. Her first single was a cover of Janet Kaye’s “Silly Games” (which Kaye also featured on) and was a No 22 hit but it was a case of diminishing returns after that for future releases. Lindy is still in the music business as a song writer and co-runs house label Good Lucky Recordings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4zkj40jCWg

I’m being absolutely tortured by the Michael Bolton appearances in these TOTP repeats. Here he is again with “How Can We Be Lovers”. I knew he would be coming up and that I’d have to confess my Bolton concert story at some point but I wasn’t planning on having to reference it so many times. Look, it was a long time ago and it wasn’t my idea OK?!

“How Can We Be Lovers” was written by Diane Warren and Desmond Child who between them have also penned the following soft rock ‘classics’:

Cher – “Just Like Jesse James”
Bon Jovi -“You Give Love A Bad Name”
Bon Jovi – “Livin’ On A Prayer”
Aerosmith – “Dude (Looks Like A Lady)”
Aerosmith – I Don’t Want Miss A Thing”
Starship – Nothings’s Gonna Stop Us Now”

Depensing on your tastes, that’s either some track record or a charge list of crimes against music.

In 1991, when I was working at Our Price in the Market Street store in Manchester, Bolton released an album called “Time, Love And Tenderness” (the title track was written by the aforementioned Diane Warren) and the picture of him on the front cover looked remarkably like one of our Assistant Managers called Rob (if you ignored all that hair which Rob didn’t have). I’m guessing it wasn’t the most flattering thing anyone had ever said to him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVzV63dld-w

“Hold On” by En Vogue is the next song on tonight’s TOTP playlist. This was not only a No 2 hit in the US and a No 5 hit over here but also an award winning track picking up the R&B Single of the Year pot from Billboard and the Best Single by a Duo/Group title from Soul Train. Given those accolades, it’s fair to say that En Vogue very much paved the way for a slew of female R&B groups of the 90s including Brownstone, Jade, Destiny’s Child, SWV and TLC.

I could never really get on board with “Hold On” though. It really wasn’t my scene in 1990 (if indeed I had a scene) but I did go on to appreciate En Vogue more as the decade progressed with songs like “Free Your Mind” and “Whatta Man” expanding my musical horizons. Free your mind indeed.

It’s new No 1 time and as confidently predicted by Simon Mayo on last week’s show, it’s “Killer” by Adamski and Seal. It’s another studio performance and the ballet woman from the other week is back and is still doing her thing in the background. And I thought Howard Jones’s mime artist Jed was annoying!

I saw Seal live in the early 90s at the Manchester Apollo but I can’t recall much about it other than his voice was amazing. I’d forgotten that, following in the footsteps of Frankie Goes To Hollywood, his debut album was on the ZTT label and was produced by Trevor Horn. Apparently there are two versions of the album in circulation. One is a ‘premix’ version and the second and more common is the updated remix. According to Seal, the two versions exist because he and Trevor Horn had very little time to finish the first version (due to needing to get some single releases mixed and out into the market) and also because of never knowing when enough tinkering is enough or as Seal puts it “a bad habit that Trevor and myself share, the inability to let go” (thanks to http://futureloveparadise.co.uk/ for that quote).

Do you get the impression that I’m finding it easier to comment on Seal rather than Adamski?!

Despite the seemingly endless smorgasbord of dance tunes populating the charts in the 90s, there was also room for some hard rockin’ dudes and I don’t mean the established acts like Def Leppard and Whitesnake. No, these were new names that emerged within the new decade. Tearing up the Top 40 with their brand of hard but melodic rock were the likes of Little Angels, The Quireboys, Terrorvision and this lot Thunder who are back on the show with their new single “Backstreet Symphony”. This was the title track from their debut album, an album that would generate five Top 40 singles – not bad going although that statement is tempered by the fact that none of them actually made it into the Top 20. Even so, it was a pretty impressive start. With former Duran Duran guitarist Andy Taylor producing it, the album was certified gold for shifting 100,000 units. However, in a piece on the band on rock journalist Dave Ling’s website, Thunder guitarist Luke Morley says of working with Taylor:

“He’d just say, ‘Do it louder and faster, and I’ll mix the drinks’”

Hmm. A genius at work no doubt.

I didn’t mind this track although I’d preferred their previous single, T-Rex rip off “Dirty Love”. One more thing, why is it that there always seems to be at least one member of these long haired rock bands that stands out by either having a short haircut or actually being bald?

“Backstreet Symphony” (the single) peaked at No 25.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87BRGJf3wTU

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lDfZTyCyhY

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Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Kylie Minogue	Better The Devil You Know	No but I think my wife has a Greatest Hits album with it on
2	The Wonder Stuff	Circle Square	Nope
3	Mantronix featuring Wondress	Take Your Time	I could take all day but I won’t change my mind about this – no
4	New Kids On The Block	Cover Girl	Away with your nonsense!
5	Beats International	Won’t Talk About It	No but my wife has their album with a version of it on
6	Michael Bolton	How Can We Be Lovers	NO!
7	En Vogue	Hold On	Nah
8	Adamski	Killer	No but I had the Seal album with his version of it on
9	Thunder	Backstreet Symphony	I did not

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000q5l5/top-of-the-pops-10051990

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.

Some bedtime reading?

https://michaelmouse1967.wixsite.com/smashhits-remembered/1990-issues

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 12 DEC 1991

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TOTP 16 MAY 1991

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TOTP 07 FEB 1991

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TOTP 06 DEC 1990

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Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 11 OCT 1990

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Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 30 AUG 1990

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Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 16 AUG 1990

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Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 02 AUG 1990

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Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 14 JUN 1990

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Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 10 MAY 1990

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Some bedtime reading?