Oleta Adams

TOTP 05 OCT 1995

Posted on by 80stastic

We’ve entered October with these TOTP repeats and three days before this show aired, an album hit the shops that would prove to be a landmark release in UK music history. “(What’s The Story) Morning Glory?” by Oasis would shift 345,000 copies in its first week and spend 10 weeks at No 1 on the album chart in total. It would eventually go 17 x platinum in the UK alone and win a Brit award for Best British Album. It even broke through in America going to No 4 over there selling 4 million copies in the process. It spawned two chart topping singles and two No 2s. In short, it was a monster, a phenomenon even. After the Battle of Britpop in the Summer that had put record shops at the heart of the national news, this album was a slam dunk off the back of it for the takings of stores across the country. It sold and sold and sold and then it sold some more. It sold more than any other album in the entire decade that was the 90s. Whether you liked it or not, you couldn’t ignore it.

Something else that you couldn’t ignore but it would be hard to like are the comedy characters dished up for our entertainment by tonight’s ‘golden mic’ hosts Hale & Pace. So, I have questions. To start with, why were these two on the show in the first place? Well, the eighth* series of their TV comedy series was just about to air but that was on ITV so it can’t have been seen as an opportunity to plug one of the Beeb’s shows.

*I know! Eight! They even did a couple more before it came to an end in 1998.

Was it just that they had these characters Jed & Dave who were like the stoned rocker versions of Smashie & Nicey and so executive producer Ric Blaxill took a lazy decision to get them in as guest presenters? It certainly wasn’t anything to do with Comic Relief as we’d already had that in March. Whatever the reason, they were in the TOTP studio and were ready to annoy!

There may not be any of the aforementioned Oasis on tonight’s show but there is certainly some Britpop. We start with Sleeper who are just getting into their stride with their third and biggest hit of 1995 with “What Do I Do Now?”. The lead single from their second album “The It Girl” which would be released the following May, it built on the success and sound of previous chart entries “Inbetweener” and “Vegas” but if anything was even more radio friendly. With that sophomore album not making an appearance until well into the following year, its subsequent success would mean that Sleeper were never as big as they were in 1996. “The It Girl” would go Top 5 and sell 300,000 copies in the UK spawning four Top 20 hits including two No 10s.

The performance here seems to me to cement Louise Wener’s position as one of the faces of Britpop and what a face! Wide eyed innocence, wrapped up in knowing coyness and a smile that you knew meant she’d be the best person to have a laugh with down the pub. I caught Sleeper live at the Manchester Academy in 1996 and they were pretty good as I remember. I went with my mate Steve and I have a clear memory of him grooving away to “What Do I Do Now?” which was way more entertaining than anything Hale & Pace served up on this TOTP.

Oh come on! How many times is this now that Smokie and Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown have been on the show? I think this is the third already. The success of “Who The F**k Is Alice?” was absolutely baffling to me. Were there really people up and down the country whom, having bought the single, took it home, put it on their stereo system, pressed play and then listened to it waiting for the chance to shout out “Alice? Who the f**k is Alice?!” at the top of the voices and then chuckling to themselves?! I guess there were mobile DJs who bought it and would play it at a birthday do they’d been booked for. That might account for some sales but this single stank out the charts for a total of 14 weeks on the Top 40 including 8 within the Top 10. It spent 9 consecutive weeks without once going down the charts. Surely wedding DJs can’t have accounted for all those sales?! And where was the outcry from the press about this record ?! Sure, it couldn’t be played on the radio unless it was a bleeped version but I don’t recall the papers in a meltdown about this youth corrupting filth. No, they were too busy getting their knickers in a twist about another chart hit but more of that later.

By the way, Hale & Pace’s intro with one of them (I never did know which one was which) getting lifted in the air on a wire really wasn’t worth setting up as the punchline for a limp play on words. Give me Cheryl Baker instead any day…

Some West Coast hip-hop next from Cypress Hill. As a pop kid, this lot were never really going to be my bag though I did quite like their previous hits “Insane In The Brain” and “I Ain’t Goin’ Out Like That”. This one – “Throw Your Set In The Air” – was the lead single from their third album “III: Temples Of Boom” but I have to say I don’t remember it. Cypress Hill were one of those ‘parental advisory explicit lyrics’ sticker artists which meant we weren’t supposed to play them on the shop stereo in the Our Price store I was working in at the time. Consequently, I was never that familiar with their work. I knew the album covers of such artists better than their songs due to the fact that the CD and cassette inlays were so nickable that we would keep them behind the counter and put a temporary, generic inlay out on the shop racks. This was in the days before the stock was security tagged and out on the shop floor live as it were. Rather pathetically, the hip-hop/rap artists would most likely be pinched by middle class white kids pretending they were from the hood (or something).

Another contrived yet duff intro from Hale & Pace about going metric and rhyming ‘a litre’ with Oleta ushers in the return of Oleta Adams. Yes, I was surprised to see her on the show again too. In my head, she had one massive hit single in the early 90s with her version of Brenda Russell’s “Get Here” (the success of which also catapulted her album “Circle Of One” to the top of the charts) and then nothing. This was plainly not the case though. Exhibit A, m’lud – “Never Knew Love”. The lead single from her “Moving On” album, its sound was nothing like the balladeering of “Get Here” but rather a competent if unremarkable R&B track – Oleta had indeed ‘moved on’.

Of course, I should have remembered earlier that in addition to “Get Here”, Oleta had added her considerable voice to the Tears For Fears hit “Woman In Chains” back in late 1989. By a pleasing quirk of fate, TFF were back in the UK Top 40 nine places below Oleta this week with their single “Raoul And The Kings Of Spain”. However, by this point, Curt Smith had left the band and it was essentially a Roland Orzabal solo track. By the way, I’m pretty sure that’s Shirley Lewis on backing vocals in this performance who was married to Luke Goss of Bros fame for 23 years before splitting in 2017. She clearly did “Drop The Boy” though I have no idea if there is any truth that Luke said of the divorce settlement “I Owe You Nothing”. I know – I’m looking for my coat as I type.

After their first appearance in the TOTP studio since 1980 the other week, Iron Maiden are back on the show again though clearly the experience scarred them as they have put a distance of approximately 3,000 miles between them and London for this second performance of “Falling Down”. Obviously, that’s not the reason – they’d played a gig in Jerusalem and then travelled to the ancient fortification of Masada to record this footage. It’s a stunning backdrop and is another example of the show’s executive producer Ric Blaxill’s vision of taking the satellite performances away from empty concert halls and giving them landmark locations instead.

However, I’m not sure that the helicopter views aid the song. It just makes the band seem small, inconsequential and rather silly against such a massive vista. I’ll leave the final word on this though to a Twitter user who posted this rather sage observation:

Robbie Williams wasn’t the only high profile departure from a successful five piece group in 1995. Louise Nurding left Eternal amid unsubstantiated rumours that a prominent US radio station dedicated to music made by black artists wouldn’t promote an interracial group. Rather obviously, a solo career beckoned and after a small rebrand (Nurding possibly wasn’t the best name for a pop star), Louise emerged with her debut single “Light Of My Life”. Now, I remember this as being a huge ballad but hearing it back, it’s quite a slight thing really. Written by Simon Climie of Climie Fisher fame, it never really gets going despite all those strings in the mix trying to beef it up. More 40 watt bulb than incandescent theatre spotlight. Watching this performance, Louise’s miming doesn’t seem very convincing somehow. Not that she’s out of sync or forgets the words or anything like that but just it all seems a little artificial – most strange.

Louise would go onto have a procession of hits including nine Top Tenners and two platinum selling albums. I know, I wouldn’t have believed it either if I hadn’t read it for myself. She would shed the girl next door image and then some by the time of her hit “Naked” but that’s for a future post. Let’s not get to that point too quickly (ahem).

And so to the hit that the British press couldn’t turn a blind eye to as they seemed to be able to with “Who The F**k Is Alice?”. Pulp’s double A-side single “Mis-Shapes / Sorted For E’s And Whizz” had careered into the UK charts at No 2 – we’d seen the band perform “Mis-shapes” on TOTP two weeks earlier as an exclusive preview. However, it was the second song that had caused controversy. Now, clearly its title contained some rather in your face drug’s references but that didn’t seem to bother the BBC as Jarvis Cocker is allowed to sing the lyrics without any censure* in this show.

*I think they may have shortened the title to just “Sorted” for the caption on that performance of “Mis-Shapes” though it is restored to its full, corrupting glory here.

And why would he have? If you listen to the lyrics, Jarvis isn’t pro recreational drugs but rather he’s pointing out what a hollow experience it ultimately is; that it’s just an artificially induced high and that the comedown can be brutal. He was writing from personal experience of attending raves and taking Ecstasy but at no point does he condone drug taking. The actual song title had come from something a girl he knew had said about going to see the Stone Roses at Spike Island in 1990. All she could recall of it was loads of dodgy looking geezers going around asking people if they were sorted for E’s and Whizz. Talking of the Roses, Pulp stood in for them at that year’s Glastonbury at the last minute whilst I myself was working in the Our Price store in Stockport alongside the late and very great Pete Garner who was their original bass player. I distinctly recall Pete saying that he couldn’t believe that Pulp had got away with releasing a single called “Sorted For E’s And Whizz”.

However, one newspaper in particular was determined to publish a story of outrage about the song and so turned their attention to the CD single’s cover which included an illustration of how to fold a speed wrap (though it doesn’t mention anything about it being used for that purpose in the text). The Daily Mirror went all in on this “sick stunt” as they called it with the article being written by one Kate Thornton later of X Factor fame. Here’s @TOTPFacts with the details:

DJ Neil Fox jumped on the bandwagon and refused to play it on his show and in the end, the band pulled the artwork and replaced it with something non controversial. With echoes of Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s “Relax”, all the press attention just increased sales of the single. Jarvis used both these TOTP appearances to make wry observations on all the fuss. In the “Mis-Shapes” performance, he channels his inner Bob Geldof and reads a copy of the Daily Mirror with that front cover during the middle eight and in this one, he finishes the song by producing an origami bird sculpture. Nicely done Jarvis.

One of the most interesting hits of the year now as we get Kylie Minogue and Nick Cave with “Where The Wild Roses Grow”. Everybody at the time was talking about how had this duet come about, so unlikely was the pairing – Cave, the gothic Prince of doomy art rock with the intimidatingly deep voice and Kylie, the Princess of Pop. Really though, there was no great story behind it. They were both Aussies and Nick really liked Kylie and so he wrote a song for her. Well, I say ‘liked’ but in his own words Cave described himself as having:

“…a quiet obsession with her for about six years.”

Jenkins, Jeff; Meldrum, Ian (2007). Molly Meldrum presents 50 Years of Rock in Australia. Melbourne, Vic: Wilkinson Publishing. p. 227. ISBN 978-1-921332-11-1.

Hmm. Doesn’t sound like the best starting point for a friendship but still. The song he came up with after a few ‘inappropriate” (his words again not mine) attempts was a murder ballad, that dark sub genre of the ballad form that told the narrative of a crime and (usually) gruesome death. I suppose that wasn’t your typical subject matter for a chart hit in 1995. However, it was quite brilliant – haunting, disturbing and yet beautifully melodic with both singers telling their version of the story superbly in tandem. It wasn’t just their differing musical backgrounds that made the duet so curious (though Kylie was well into her first career transformation from perceived SAW puppet to dance diva by this point) but their physical appearance. Cave has naturally…erm…striking (?) looks whilst Kylie has those fine, beautiful features but then there’s also the height difference – it really shouldn’t have worked but it absolutely did.

Around fifteen years after this TOTP performance, I did my own version of “Where The Wild Roses Grow” in a guitar class I was attending at the time, as a duet with a fellow student called Lisa. It even got recorded by the teacher. If only I could work out how to get it embedded into this post…

Simply Red are No 1 again with “Fairground” and this is already the third time in four weeks that it’s featured on the show. Mick Hucknall is, by all accounts, a massive…wait for it…Man United fan (you thought I was going to say something different then didn’t you?!) so no doubt he would have been delighted that his beloved team beat Liverpool in the FA Cup quarter final on Sunday just gone. Somebody who wasn’t impressed was my Hucknall despising mate Robin who texted me at the final whistle to say that United’s victory was the “footballing equivalent of a new Simply Red album”. I was just glad the result stopped Liverpool’s pursuit of a quadruple and thereby putting a spoke in the wheel of the media’s Jürgen Klopp love in. Jürgen Klopp…now he really is a “bleep” to quote Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown!

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1SleeperWhat Do I Do NowLiked it, didn’t buy it
2Smokie and Roy ‘Chubby’ BrownWho The F**k Is Alice?Away with you!
3Cypress HillThrow Your Set In The AirI did not
4Oleta AdamsNever Knew LoveNah
5Iron MaidenFalling DownNope
6LouiseLight Of My LifeNo
7PulpMis-Shapes / Sorted For E’s And WhizzNo but I had the album Different Class with them on
8Nick Cave and Kylie MinogueWhere The Wild Roses GrowNo but I sang it!
9Simply RedFairgroundNever!

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/m001wsmh/top-of-the-pops-05101995?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 10 OCT 1991

Posted on by 80stastic

Welcome to the brave new world of the ‘year zero’ TOTP revamp where we are into the second show of this new era. My take on the first show was that it was a right shambles and that the new features didn’t really work at all. The presenters Tony Dortie and Mark Franklin were enthusiastic but yet to find their feet and cement their personalities on the show whilst the chart rundown was an abomination. As D-Ream would say two years on from here (and indeed Howard Jones six years before), things can only get better.

An acid test of the new format arrives in the very first act on tonight as we see if the changes introduced by new producer Stanley Appel allow dance tunes to be showcased any more effectively. The person in the test drive seat is DJ Carl Cox with “I Want You (Forever)”. Once again we open the show without seeing a host at all as we get the disembodied voice of Dortie who really is shaping a reputation for himself as a mumbler. What’s he saying? “Everyone is live and firing interaction from Brighton”? What?! Take a breath man – you’re running your sentences together! As for the staging of the performance, I have to say I don’t see anything much different from how dance acts were presented previously. The main man is once again in the background on the decks whilst the singer is up front with some dancers. So far, so same as before. Yes, the vocal is live this time as per keeping with the new edict about artists appearing on the show and there’s a bit of graphic trickery when some trippy colourisation effects are laid over the top for the non-singing parts of the track but apart from that? OK, there’s maybe some more camera angles than usual in an attempt to dazzle us into thinking that there’s more going on here than our brains can take in but I’m not sure it works. They even resort to that old strategy of slipping in some bits of the promo video to try and liven up proceedings. Nah, not for me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HW1Iu5RCTrk

Oh, hang on. That’s new! As DJ Carl Cox finishes, the camera tracks to a bank of six TV screens and Mark Franklin appears stretched out over all of them to form one big collage of his face. Ooh! Swanky! I take it all back – the whole revamp was worth it just for that moment! Franklin introduces the Top 10 countdown and – oh no – disregard my previous comment as this new countdown is just atrocious. Unforgivable.

Talking of unforgivable, here’s Morrissey! OK, a touch unfair on the 1991 version of Morrissey maybe but some of his more recent comments are truly unpalatable. Here he is a with a fairly downbeat (if not downright miserable) tune called “My Love Life” which was the fourth and final hit single that he had in the calendar year of 1991 none of which got any higher than No 25. It was also the second of two consecutive non-album singles (following “Pregnant For The Last Time”) before he would return the following year with a proper album in “Your Arsenal”.

Mozza’s backing band are now full on rockabilly rebels with quiff-tastic hair which is not a surprise as this was around the time that Boz Boorer, founder of new wave rockabilly group The Polecats, would enter into a permanent working relationship with Morrissey as his co-writer and guitarist. “My Love Life” though wasn’t a Boorer / Morrissey composition but was written with Mark Nevin who used to be in “Perfect” hitmakers Fairground Attraction.

Coincidentally, I recently read the autobiography* of another Nevin, one of my all time football heroes Pat Nevin who himself was a big Smiths fan and indeed, he devoted an entire chapter of his book (entitled This Charming Man) to the time he went round to Morrissey’s house. Pat went to Morrissey’s gaff with his friend Vini Reilly from The Durutti Column and found his host to be overly guarded on first meeting (or “defensive preciousness” as Pat called it). To try and warm him up a bit, Nevin asked Morrissey if he had ever been interested in football to which he replied:

“I can’t say I have ever really thought about it. My mind and my thoughts have never ventured towards that area, my soul was otherwise engaged“.

A typical lah-di-dah Morrissey answer you could be forgiven for thinking. However, there was a sting in the tail. Pat was playing for Everton by this point and one of his fellow players, ex-Man Utd legend Norman Whiteside, lived on the same road as Morrissey it turned out. Nevin followed up by saying:

“I only ask because another player from our team was going to pop round with me tonight, his name is Norman and he lives not far from here.”

Quick as a flash Mozza replied:

“You mean Norman Whiteside who used to play for United and moved to Everton last year?”

You little tinker Morrissey!

Nevin replied:

“Not bad knowledge for a guy whose soul is engaged elsewhere”

The ice was broken and they got along famously for the rest of the evening. They never met again but Morrissey sent Pat a postcard inscribed with ‘From one dribbler to another’ which as Pat says, could have been a perfect Smiths song title.

*All quotes in italics are from Pat Nevin, the accidental footballer published by Monoray, 2021.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2F2FUvT8EDM

Next one of those songs that got so much airplay that you end up convinced that it was a bigger hit than hit actually was. “Walking In Memphis” by Marc Cohn had already been released once in 1991 when it peaked at No 66 in June. I’m guessing it was still being played on the radio enough to warrant a re-release just a few months later and this time it would become a UK Top 40 hit. Where do you reckon it go to though? Top 10? Top 5? Nope, it didn’t even go Top 20 peaking just outside at No 22.

I think it’s the lyrics that made the song memorable with those references to Elvis, The King and Graceland but it’s not really a tribute to Presley but rather concerns Cohn’s “spiritual awakening” as he puts it himself. Cohn had come to a realisation at the age of 28 that he didn’t actually like the songs he had so far written so he took a trip to Memphis to try and clear his writer’s block. The lyrics are almost entirely autobiographical, outlining his experiences whilst there like attending the Full Gospel Tabernacle Church on a Sunday morning to hear the Reverend Al Green preach (‘They’ve got gospel in the air, and Reverend Green be glad to see you, when you haven’t got a prayer’). The words also reference visiting the Hollywood Café in Robinsonville, Mississippi to see Muriel Davis Wilkins, a retired schoolteacher who performed at the cafe (‘Now Muriel plays piano, every Friday at the Hollywood’). Cohn also references blues legend W.C. Handy, Carl Perkins who originally recorded “Blue Suede Shoes” whilst that line about the ‘ghost of Elvis’ that security didn’t see is supposedly about a story that Bruce Springsteen once successfully scaled the wall at Graceland, trying to deliver a song he wrote to Elvis but The King wasn’t at home.

Inevitably Cohn drew comparisons with the likes of Billy Joel and Elton John but unlike those two, Cohn’s career was defined by that one song which won him a Grammy in 1992 for Best New Artist. As with so many albums in 1991, the surprise success of the single created a demand for his debut eponymous album which had been released in February but which was now withdrawn by Warners (it always seemed to be Warners) before being re-released meaning that those of us working in record stores had to explain what an album being withdrawn meant to confused customers wanting the album by ‘that bloke who sings the song about Elvis’.

Interesting to note that just like Carl Cox earlier, the TOTP production team felt the need to beef up the studio performance with some clips of the video. So that was dance acts and blokes sat at pianos that the show struggled to accommodate.

For the sake of completists everywhere I should mention the following:

  • Cher recorded a version of this in 1995 for her “It’s A Man’s World” album and it outperformed Cohn’s version when it peaked at No 11 despite being f*****g horrible.
  • In 1992, jungle pioneers Shut Up And Dance released a bastardised version of “Walking In Memphis” with the lyrics and song title changed to “Raving I’m Raving”. However, as they hadn’t obtained song clearance from Cohn, he took out an injunction to stop them from making any more copies of the record. The original version had sent the song to No 2 in the UK charts but it dropped like a stone when the shops couldn’t get any more stock. A re-recorded version was then released which sounded nothing like Cohn’s song and which nobody wanted and it fell out of the charts within two weeks.
  • German happy hardcore ravers Scooter released a version of it entitled “I’m Raving”in 1996 but seriously, let’s not go there.

After last week’s Exclusive feature showed a song that wasn’t even a hit in the UK (“Fun Day” by Steve Wonder), this time it’s a better choice as the video for Queen‘s latest single is showcased. Possibly one fo the most poignant song titles ever, “The Show Must Go On” was the last Queen single to be released in Freddie Mercury’s lifetime. Despite no official statement from the band, rumours were now rife that Freddie was very ill by the end of November, he had gone.

Despite being the last track on the band’s final album with Freddie “Innuendo”, it was released as a single to promote their “Greatest Hits II” album that was released at the end of October. It sounds strange to say it now as the album went to No 1 and 12 x platinum in the UK but I recall that we hadn’t sold as many as expected in the Our Price I was working in (we’d got shed loads of it in). I clearly remember the store manager saying to me that we could do with Freddie dying to shift some more units. It wasn’t his finest hour to be honest.

The video is basically just an advert for “Greatest Hits II” being a montage of clips from some of their singles included in the retrospective including “I Want to Break Free”, “Radio Ga Ga” and “Breakthru” as well as some shots of the band’s legendary The Magic tour dates at Wembley Stadium.

Last week, I referenced a poll that stated that by 2014, Monty Python’s “Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life” was the most requested funeral song by us Brits. However, in 2005, a poll by digital TV channel Music Choice asked 45,000 adults across Europe which song they would like played at their funeral – “The Show Must Go On” came out on top.

The single peaked at No 16 initially but after Freddie’s death, it re-entered the Top 75 spending as many weeks there as it had done on its original chart run.

Tony Dortie’s at it again next with his urban jargon when he introduces the next act Cathy Dennis as “whipping up a storm and creating a flavour all over the world?” Creating a flavour? Actually, I bet he spelt it ‘flava’. Was that really a phrase back in ’91? Anyway, our Cathy is adopting that well worn record company strategy of following two fast hits with a slow one with the release of her ballad “Too Many Walls”. Previous singles “Touch Me (All Night Long)” and “Just Another Dream” had made a star of Cathy (although she was formally introduced to us on D Mob’s 1989 hit “C’mon and Get My Love”) so now was the time to consolidate on her success by demonstrating her diversity and that there was more to her than some sprightly dance/pop tunes. You can tell there has been some restyling of her image to support this new direction as Cathy is wearing a classy looking (albeit day- glo coloured) jacket and roll neck sweater outfit as opposed to the slinky catsuit of her “Touch Me (All Night Long)” appearance on the show and the Betty Boo style space cadet outfit for “Just Another Dream”.

“Too Many Walls” was a decent attempt at a ballad even if the final result is a little underwhelming. I was surprised to discover that it was co-written by Cathy with Anne Dudley of pioneering sound explorers Art of Noise as the song resides squarely in the safer parts of the pop world.

Despite her UK success, Cathy was still a bigger star in the US than over here at this point with this single peaking inside the Billboard Top 10 at No 8 whilst it got no further than No 17 here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtzE_Z-1LeM

After the disastrous decision in last weeks’ TOTP of getting Status Quo to launch the new album chart feature, this week we get Simply Red. Whether this is a better choice or not is open to debate. On the plus side, they were probably seen as more contemporary and they were undeniably popular as “Stars” would become the biggest selling album of the year in the UK. On the downside, it means having to stomach Mick Hucknall. The track they perform here is “For Your Babies” which you would have been forgiven for thinking must be the second single released from the album but that wasn’t the case. The title track would take that slot when it was released a month on for this performance. Maybe new TOTP producer Stanley Appel was fastidious in the details of the show and insisted that an artist must perform a non-single album track if featured in the album chart section rather than just the latest single? As it was, “For Your Babies” was released as the third single in early 1992 and would make No 9 in the charts.

Whatever you say about Hucknall, I would imagine that this new policy of making artists sing live on the show wouldn’t have fazed him in the slightest and he gives a controlled, quality vocal here on what for me, was one of the tracks on the album that I could actually stand. Mind you, by the time the album had been played to death in the Our Price I was working in all over Xmas, I could quite happily never had heard it or Mick Hucknall ever again. We get another of those ill advised interviews at the end of the song as Dortie climbs onto the stage to have a rather obsequious word with the ginger one for no apparent reason other than to plug his forthcoming tour and namecheck the new members of the band. Clearly no lessons were learned from the sphincter clenching embarrassment of an interview with Belinda Carlisle last week.

The Breakers are back to pre-‘year zero’ revamp levels with four of them crammed into 1 minute and 35 seconds. Dortie makes a bit of a mess of introducing them as he refers to “The rugby song” by Kiri Te Kanawa (you couldn’t remember “World In Motion” Tony?) and mispronouncing Public Enemy as Public Enery reviving memories of Sir Henry ‘Enery’ Cooper and this advert:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xf-4Gbqyni4

Anyway, the Breakers start with Oleta Adams doing a version of Elton John’s “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me”. This was taken from the Elton John / Bernie Taupin tribute album “Two Rooms: Celebrating the Songs of Elton John & Bernie Taupin” which included covers of their songs by some huge names such as Kate Bush, Tina Turner, Hall & Oates, The Beach Boys, Eric Clapton and Sting. Despite scoring a huge global breakthrough hit with “Get Here” earlier in the year, maybe one of those aforementioned artists would have been expected to be picked as the single to promote the album but Oleta it was who got the nod and I personally think she does a decent job of one of my favourite Elton tunes. I think her take on it got patchy reviews as did the album as a whole despite its platinum sales in this country.

Also on the album was George Michael doing a song called “Tonight” from Elton’s 1976 “Blue Moves” album and yet it is George’s cover of “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me” that is far better known than Oleta’s. Elton and George first performed it together at Live Aid in 1985 with Michael including it in his set list for his Cover to Cover tour of 1991 with Elton being introduced on stage at Wembley Arena for the final show to reprise it. That performance was recorded and released as a single in November and would go to No 1 raising money for ten different charities all of which makes you wonder why George’s version wasn’t used for the “Two Rooms” album.

Oleta’s cover reached No 33 in the UK charts.

Back in 1991, the UK pretty much only knew Mariah Carey for her big ballad “Vision Of Love” from the previous year which went Top 10. Subsequent singles were only very minor hits and we could have been forgiven for thinking that Mariah might have had her day over here already. So when “Emotions” came out, those of us who had been of that opinion had to eat some humble pie. Not only was the single a Top 20 hit but the album of the same name went platinum in the UK alone. Furthermore, the single was a completely different sound and tempo to “Vision Of Love”, being an R’n’B disco stomper. Ah yes, that disco influence. Did it sound ever so slightly like the 1977 No 1 disco hit “Best Of My Love” by (ahem) The Emotions? Yes, yes it did and it didn’t go unnoticed by one of its songwriters, none other than Maurice White of Earth, Wind & Fire who took legal action and received a settlement. “Emotions” was co-written and produced by producers du jour Robert Clivillés, and David Cole of C+C Music Factory and according to one of their touring party, Carl Sturken, this is the story behind the song as he told it in an interview with songfacts.com:

“I am absolutely one thousand percent certain that when they wrote that groove, they labeled it ‘Emotions’ because it’s The Emotions’ groove. Then when Mariah Carey comes in to write over it, she sees ‘Emotions’ written as the name of the groove, so she writes a song called ‘You’ve Got Me Feeling Emotions.'”

Yeah, a likely story.

Was “Emotions’ the song where we really became aware of Mariah’s infeasibly wide vocal range? When she performed it at the 1991 MTV Video Music Awards, she reportedly sounded a G-sharp three and a half octaves above middle C. This was one of the highest notes produced by a human voice in the history of recorded music! I know we’re supposed to be impressed and all but listen to this compilation of her highest notes and tell me if it sounds nice!

Public Enery Public Enemy now with their tribute to the newly appointed Foreign Secretary of Boris Johnson’s government Liz Truss. “Can’t Truss It”was the lead single from their “Apocalypse 91… The Enemy Strikes Black” album and was the follow up to seminal long player “Fear Of A Black Planet”. I say follow up but how did you follow up such a seismic album when it included such tracks as “911 Is A Joke” and “Fight The Power” the latter of which has come to be regarded as one of the most influential songs in hip hop history and which regularly appears in polls that try to quantify the best /most important songs of all time. “Apocalypse 91… The Enemy Strikes Black” certainly attempted the impossible performing well commercially but some reviews of it described it as good rather than classic.

As well as the much sampled James Brown and Sly & the Family Stone, “Can’t Truss It” features the more left field sample of “Im Nin’Alu” by Ofra Haza and peaked at No 22 on the UK Top 40.

And so we get to “The Rugby Song”. The1991 Rugby World Cup was only the second time the tournament had been held and this time host countries were England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and France with the final taking place at Twickenham Stadium, London. To celebrate this event, an official Rugby World Cup song was recorded and released by New Zealand opera singer Dame Kiri Te Kanawa. “World In Union” was its title and it was based on “Thaxted” from the middle section of “Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity”, a movement from Gustav Holst’s “The Planets” though most of us knew the melody as being from the hymn, “I Vow to Thee, My Country”. It was hardly “World In Motion” by New Order but it proved to be surprisingly (at least to me) popular earning itself a chart high of No 4.

As for the tournament itself, it kind of passed me by. I had to look up that England actually made the final (losing to Australia 12-6) though when I checked the names of the team that day, I certainly recognised the likes of Will Carling, Rory Underwood, Rob Andrew and Jeremy Guscott. Maybe I even watched the final on TV but I can’t recall. There seemed to be a much bigger fuss about the 2003 final probably because we won it (Johnny Wilkinson and all that) and I definitely remember watching that match.

Just as the era of “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You” is coming to an end, we enter another that defies explanation – the time of 2 Unlimited is upon us. This lot were formed by Belgian producers Jean-Paul De Coster and Phil Wilde but those aren’t the people that we associate with 2 Unlimited. No, they would be Dutch rapper Ray Slijngaard and vocalist Anita Doth who fronted the act. “Get Ready for This” for this was their debut hit and it was just dreadful. Totally annoying and basically just a keyboard riff played over and over again. Apparently the UK release was different to the version the the rest of Europe got served up which featured a rap from Ray but all we got was the line ‘Ya’ll ready for this?’ repeated four times plus the occasional ‘yeah!’ thrown in for good measure. Oh and an 808 State-lite middle eight. This was just an awful nonsense.

Foolishly I consoled myself with the thought that this would just be another one off Eurodance hit and we would never hear from 2 Unlimited again. How wrong I was as they would clocked up 14 UK Top 40 hits over the course of the decade including their only No 1 “No Limits:” in 1993. My God! What were people doing in the 90s?!

“Get Ready For This” closes with Dortie dancing on stage with 2 Unlimited (Gary Davies would never have done such a thing!) and we get the aforementioned “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You” by Bryan Adams now into its 14th of 16 weeks at the top to close the show. By this point, I think the papers were seriously talking it up as the Xmas No 1! I’ve really got nothing left to say about this other than the parent album “Waking Up The Neighbours” had been released about three weeks before and had gone to No 1 as well. If it’s any consolation to those all Bryan’d out, he would not record another studio album for five years and once he had stopped releasing singles from “Waking Up The Neighbours” in early 1992, he would only release three singles in that time two of which were from film soundtracks and one was a stand alone to promote 1993’s Best Of album “So Far, So Good”. The end is in sight…

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1DJ Carl CoxI Want You (Forever)Nah
2MorrisseyMy Love LifeNo thanks
3Marc CohnWalking In MemphisI wasn’t tempted
4QueenThe Show Must Go OnBut I didn’t buy a ticket for it – no
5Cathy DennisToo Many WallsNope
6Simply RedFor Your BabiesNO!
7Oleta AdamsDon’t Let The Sun Go Down On MeI did not
8Mariah CareyEmotions Negative
9Public EnemyCan’t Truss ItAnd I didn’t – no
10Kiri Te KanawaWorld In UnionNothing here for me
112 UnlimitedGet Ready For ThisAway with you!
12Bryan Adams(Everything I Do) I Do It for YouIt’s a final 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/m0010k2r/top-of-the-pops-10101991

TOTP 21 FEB 1991

Posted on by 80stastic

As I write this, the England national football team have just turned in a turgid performance in the Euros against bitter rivals Scotland deflating pre -tournament talk of them finally ending the now 55 years of hurt since winning the World Cup in 1966 (and all that). It really was poor stuff from Gareth’s men and he will find the media turning on him very quickly if they don’t improve. Here’s a thought, if they don’t qualify and Gareth gets the blame, will the press have a ‘Southgate-gate’ on their hands? As for Scotland, they now have a chance of getting out for the group stages but will need to do something they haven’t done yet which is score a goal. They could do with Kenny Dalglish in his pomp in their side. Ah yes, King Kenny, Back in 1991, he shocked the football world by resigning as Liverpool manager the day after this TOTP was aired pretty much handing the title to Arsenal in the process. A tenuous link I know but while we’re here, let’s review the VAR and decide whether the charts of 30 years ago were any good or not.

Now, before we start, I should say that I was never a TOTP studio audience member but my mate Robin advised me this week that he was in attendance at this particular show – he worked for the BBC at the time – and described the whole experience as ‘f*****g tragic’. Him and a mate had gone along expecting to see Morrissey having read in the music press that he was due to appear and indeed Mozza was a new entry at No 26 that week so their hopes were high. However, having asked a cameraman which stage he would be on so that they could position themselves in anticipation, they received the reply “that miserable git isn’t on” and realised that they had made a terrible mistake and could not escape.

We’ve come to TOTP by mistake

They decided that their best plan of action, as the rest of the mainly teenage audience was herded around like cattle, was to hide from the cameras and stay well away from host Mark Goodier and his banana coloured flight jacket. Robin described the whole experience as ‘like being trapped in Willy Wonka’s factory clapping umpa lumpa everywhere’. Excellent!

So with no Mozza on the running order, who did Robin and his mate get to see instead. Well, we start with Chris Rea – or as Robin described him Chris diarRhea which is a beautiful put down which works on at least two levels possibly more. The man from Middlesbrough was on a roll at this point after 1989’s six times platinum selling album “Road To Hell” and he followed it up with another No 1 album in “Auberge”. The title track was released as the lead single and is pretty standard Rea fare finding a comfortable place to reside somewhere between the upbeat “Let’s Dance” and the more sombre “Road To Hell”. Chris himself never looked comfortable when on appearing on TOTP though. He looks as convincing a pop star as Gavin Williamson does as Secretary of State for Education. The cameraman (possibly the Mozza dissing one) doesn’t seem to know what to do with him and decides to focus on the rather unusual sight of a tuba being played on TOTP just when Chris starts some slide guitar action making it look like the sound is actually coming from the tuba. A case of umpa lumpa stick it up your tuba maybe?

“Auberge” the single peaked at No 16.

From Kenny Dalglish to another Kenny. In a recent post, I admitted to my totally irrational dislike at the time of the next artist and apologised to him. My aversion to Kenny Thomas though was nothing compared to Robin’s who described him as simply “Kenny F*****g Thomas”. Well, he was no Morrissey I suppose and with 30 years of hindsight, thank God he wasn’t. The world really doesn’t need two of him right now. As for Mr Thomas, despite having been a pop star for about two weeks at the time, he looks far more suited to the job than the more experienced show opener Chris Rea. Just give him a microphone, a backing singer, some bloke to play the bongos and a groove and let him at it. Actually, far from being ‘some bloke’, isn’t that M People’s Shovell on bongos duties? I think it is – the hair was making me doubt myself though.

“Outstanding” was actually a cover of an old single by The Gap Band and having checked, it seems that three of the four singles taken from Kenny’s debut album “Voices” were cover versions with “Best Of Me” being a Booker T. Jones song whilst “Tender Love” was the old Force MDs hit from 1986. It’s not occurred to me before but, given the above, Kenny Thomas was almost a 90s version of Paul Young in terms of being a soul singer who made it big with covers of fairly unknown songs from the past. I say a 90s version but Paul himself was still churning out cover versions into the new decade and indeed we’ll see him back in the charts in this year soon with another song that he didn’t write – albeit he does perform “Senza una donna (Without a Woman)” with its writer Zucchero.

I’ve no idea what Robin made of the next hit but I certainly don’t remember it. “Think About” by DJH featuring Stefy? I’ve got nothing. Let’s have a listen then…

…oh God it’s just some wanky Italian House track based very loosely around a sample from Aretha Franklin’s “Think”. Apart from gyrating around in not many clothes, Stefy’s input is limited at best with even the rap bits done by one of the two blokes on keyboards in the background. I mean, two bloke on keyboards to the rear of the stage was standard practice for Italian House outfits but they usually remained anonymous throughout, leaving the female singer to front the song. The woman from Black Box became a star on the back of miming vocals that weren’t hers – I think Stefy missed a trick here.

Watching this performance back, Robin must have wondered what sort of place he’d got himself into when Stefy appeared in that outfit.

“Think About” peaked at No 22.

The first video of the night is from Thunder who were onto their fifth consecutive Top 40 hit by this point. Like the previous four, “Love Walked In” was taken from their debut album “Backstreet Symphony” which proved to be reasonably enduring spending a combined total of 16 weeks on the album chart over five different periods between March 1990 and March 1991. Presumably every time a single was released from it, the album experienced another spike in sales. However, it never got any higher than its No 21 peak on its first week of release. The band’s singles chart stats followed a similar trend. Five hit singles but some pretty unremarkable peaks (see below):

32 – 25 – 36 – 34 – 21

Despite being the final single to be taken from “Backstreet Symphony”, “Love Walked In” was also the most successful which was a bit weird. Maybe it was something to do with being more of a ballad than all the other singles which were all fast paced rockers. I didn’t mind their sound – I had a soft spot for a bit of soft rock – but it was very similar to lots of other UK rock acts that were experiencing commercial success at the time. like The Quireboys and Little Angels. They would return with sophomore album “Laughing On Judgement Day” in 1992 that would be the apex of their success when it peaked at No 2.

Oh and when host Mark Goodier said they were a terrific live band? Guess how many live albums are listed in their discography? 32!

The Breakers are back this week and we start with a man who we hadn’t seen in the Top 40 in nigh on two and a half years. Julian Cope‘s solo career was…well….more interesting than commercially successful I think it’s fair to say. Apart from “Word Shut Your Mouth” back in 1986, all his other singles failed to make the Top 20. I’d always been intrigued by him though – his 1984 single “The Greatness And Perfection Of Love” remains one of the greatest non hit songs of the whole decade.

1991 saw him release *”Peggy Suicide” which was already his seventh solo album. Despite its heavy lyrical subject matter (the poll tax riots and anti police sentiments, organised religion, women’s rights, the occult, paganism, animal rights, and ecology), lead single “Beautiful Love” was a lovely, lilting piece of pop perfection. It really should have been a bigger hit than the No 32 peak it achieved. Subsequent singles released from the album failed to dent the Top 40 (including the brilliant “East Easy Rider” in which Julian does a passable Jim Morrison vocal) but undeterred, the following year would see two albums released under his name -studio album “Jehovahkill” and compilation album “Floored Genius: The Best Of Julian Cope And The Teardrop Explodes 1979–91” the latter of which I duly bought.

Cope has continued along his personal life journey of a rejection of the mainstream to pursue his interests in occultism and paganism. He is also a published author on the subject of British megalithic sites with specific reference to stone circles. His antiquarian researcher credentials stretched to him giving two talks at the British Museum about the norse divinity Odin although he did then rather undermine said credentials by wearing five-inch platform shoes and setting off the fire alarms with his hairspray forcing an evacuation of the building. A few years back, I read both volumes of his autobiography Head-On/Repossessed – it was a fascinating read about a true maverick and eccentric character.

* It took me ages to realise the title was a pun on Buddy Holly’s “Peggy Sue”. Doh!

Now, if like me, you remember Stevie B as a one hit wonder (if you remember him at all that is), then we are both wrong. Yes, he technically he only had the one hit in this country but he had this whole other career in his native US. Apparently he was a prime move in the ‘freestyle’ movement. This was a form of electro funk which (according to Wikipedia) was characterised by ‘a Latin American-based rhythm with a heavy syncopated drum sound’. Supposedly the first ever ‘freestyle’ hit was “Let The Music Play” by Shannon but I always thought that was a Hi-NRG track. Look, I’m not going to get bogged down in musical sub genres which I know little about – suffice to say Stevie B was a big deal and had already racked up a string of US dance chart hits before he crossed over into the mainstream with “Because I Love You (The Postman Song)” which was an American Billboard Hot 100 chart topper. This was nothing like “Let The Music Play” though. No, this was a big soul ballad. What was the deal? Well, apparently this was the route a lot of the ‘freestyle’ acts took around this time to achieve crossover success with the likes of Exposé and Sweet Sensation doing there same. I had no idea about any of this at the time of course. It was just a soppy love song with a daft title to me.

“Because I Love You (The Postman Song)” didn’t quite replicate its US success in the UK but it did go Top 10 spending three consecutive weeks at No 6 which was quite apt seeing as it was the Devil’s work.

If you think of the Rocky franchise, what springs to mind musically? “Eye Of The Tiger”? Yes, definitely. “Gonna Fly Now” (otherwise known as “Theme from Rocky”) when he’s running up those steps? Absolutely. “Burning Heart” from Rocky IV? Well, yeah maybe, just about. How about “Go For It (Heart and Fire)” by Joey B. Ellis AKA MC Breeze and Tynetta Hare? Pretty sure that’s a jackpot winning answer on Pointless.

This was actually from Rocky V, a film I’m not sure I even knew existed until I saw it in a hotel room in New York in 1994. For me, it’s easily the worst film of the whole franchise with a ludicrous plot peppered with holes and no actual boxing match featuring Rocky. Instead we get a crazy street fight. Originally planned to be the last of the Rocky films, it was a poor way to bow out. Thankfully, the much superior Rocky Balboa came out 16 years later to right this wrong. In keeping with Rocky V‘s lack of quality, its soundtrack was also a poor effort. For a start Bill Conti hardly features on it at all and it is subject to the dominant market forces of the music world of the time. For example, MC Hammer has two tracks on it, Snap! are on there and then there was “Go For It (Heart and Fire)”. This was a cynically calculated rap number that recycles the “Eye Of The Tiger” riff and adds a hackneyed ‘Go For It’ chorus over the top of it. It sounds like a C + C Music Factory cast off. Somehow it got to No 20 in our charts. And I thought that the Bond themes had gone off the boil once the 80s ended!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x36_GZgoAIc

Right, that’s the Breakers done with. What’s next then? “Move Your Body (Elevation)” by Xpansions? Doesn’t ring any bells yet. Let’s have listen to it…

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

…oh yeah. I remember this. It was bloody awful. I’m pretty sure that this lot did nothing to improve the mood of my mate Robin. This was less a dance hit and more a work out routine. Who did the singer think she was? Mad Lizzie? It turns out she was actually called Sally Anne Marsh and had been in a girl group called Faith Hope & Charity with The Word presenter Dani Behr. She went on to work with Mike Stock from SAW and released a dance version of “Windmills Of Your Mind”. What that song from The Thomas Crown Affair by Noel Williams? Oh I quite like that but a dance version you say? I have to listen to this…

…oh what did I expect?! Seriously though. Why do I do shit like this to myself?! A total abomination.

“Move Your Body (Elevation)” peaked at No 7 whilst a new mix of it took it back into the charts in 1995 when it peaked at No 14.

Did somebody say MC Hammer before? Well, here is the main man back with a new single called “Here Comes The Hammer”. This was his fourth consecutive hit single (all taken from his “Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt ‘Em” album) and would peak at No 15 in the UK. Curiously, although it was released in the US and despite a trio of Top 10 hits over there prior to it, this stalled at No 54. Nevertheless, in spite of its poor chart placing, It was nominated for a 1991 Grammy Award for Best Rap Solo Performance at the 34th Annual Grammy Awards. Spooky.

Talking of spooky things, the video for it was based a round a storyboard of Hammer and his dancers getting chased through a haunted house (a Hammer House of Horror if you will). It cost more than $1 million to produce and was one of the most expensive music videos ever made at the time. It was almost 15 minutes in length (MTV had a shortened 9 minute version) and was panned by the critics. It does sound like Hammer’s ego was maybe out of control at this point. “I want a horror video like “Thriller” and it has to be a long one. None of that 3 minute crap” you can imagine him saying.

Someone else who wasn’t impressed with “Here Comes The Hammer” was one Kevin Abdullah who sued Hammer claiming he had stolen the hooks from his own song “Oh Oh, You Got the Shing” for it. His story was that he had sent Hammer a demo tape of it which Hammer rejected. Hammer settled the lawsuit for $250,000. Hmm.

MC Hammer would release another single from “Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt ‘Em”, a remix single, a new album (plus two singles from it) before 1991 was done. “Here Comes The Hammer” indeed.

That nice song by Oleta Adams is next but Robin wouldn’t have got to see her perform “Get Here” as this is just a reshowing of her studio performance from a couple of weeks ago. He was probably relieved – I don’t think this was his bag at all. As with MC Hammer before her, Oleta’s version of “Get Here” (it was originally written and recorded by Brenda Russell) was nominated for a Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.

The song has been covered by loads of different artists apart from Oleta down the years including Will Downing, Sam Smith, Johnny Logan (ahem) and gloriously fictional singer Michelle Coffee from Phoenix Nights. Also there was a danced up version by Q featuring Tracy Ackerman in 1993. Right, remember what happened last time with Sally Anne Marsh. You don’t have to play it, you don’t have to play it…oh shit…

Ooh that was a bad one! Tracy Akerman’s Wikipedia page tells me that she is also a songwriter as well as a singer and has penned tracks for the likes of Cher, Tina Turner, Kylie, B*Witched, Darius of Popstars / Pop Idol fame…erm…Sonia….S Club Juniors…I’ll stop now.

To counteract Tracy’s nasty dance cover, here’s The Beautiful South’s song called ‘Get Here” which isn’t a cover but does make reference to Oleta’s song in lyrics like these:

You can get here by crossing sea or desert
I can barely make Blackpool Sands
Railroad, caravan, save it for the mad man
Lets see if love just stands

Excellent!

The Simpsons are still at No 1 with “Do The Bartman”. “You can see why it’s No 1” says Mark Goodier at the song’s end. Can we Goodier, can we?! Like Matt Hancock’s evidence to the Select Committees on the government’s response to the pandemic, I don’t think that remark stands up to any sort of scrutiny.

The play out video is “Love Rears Its Ugly Head” by Living Colour. I didn’t know anything much about this band at this time but I recall there being a lot of talk about how they had fused lots of different musical genres together to come up with their sound. They were broadly categorised as ‘funk metal’ alongside Red Hot Chili Peppers and Dan Reed Network and were expected to go onto massive things but although their album “Times Up” achieved Gold status sales in the US, they seemed to fall away after that. The band have only released six studio albums over the course of their career which began in 1984 (albeit with a five year hiatus between 1995 and 2000) with the last one being released in 2017.

In the UK, we had our own example of a band fusing musical styles together around this time in And Why Not? who fused pop with reggae on hits like “Restless Days (She Screams Out Loud)” and “The Face” but they withered away pretty quickly as well.

“Love Rears Its Ugly Head” peaked at No 12.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9PYBeBPNXE
Order of AppearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1Chris ReaAubergeNah
2Kenny ThomasOutstandingIt’s a no – sorry Kenny
3DJH featuring StefyThink AboutNo
4 ThunderLove Walked InAnd out again…no
5 Julian CopeBeautiful LoveNot the single but I have that Floored Genius Best Of with it on
6Steve BBecause I Love You (The Postman Song)I’d have returned this one to sender – no
7 Go For It (Heart and FireJoey B. Ellis AKA MC Breeze and Tynetta HareAbsolutely not
8XpansionsMove Your Body (Elevation)Hell no
9MC HammerHere Comes The Hammerand that’s my cue to exit – no
10Oleta AdamsGet HereNice enough but I never considered buying it
11The SimpsonsDo The BartmanAway with you!
12Living ColourLove Rears Its ugly HeadNo but it was on that first Q magazine compilation album that I bought

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/m000wvlz/top-of-the-pops-21021991

TOTP 07 FEB 1991

Posted on 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:

  1. 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 appearanceArtistTitleDid I Buy it?
1Kim ApplebyG.L.A.D.I did not
2Gloria Estefan Coming Out Of the DarkNope
3The UK MixmastersNight Fever MegamixCertainly not
4Oleta AdamsGet HereLiked it but not enough to buy it
5The SimpsonsDo The BartmanExcuse me? NO!
6Kenny ThomasOutstandingI thought it was anything but back then – sorry Kenny!
7NKOTBGames I would have been ashamed
82 In A RoomWiggle ItHell no!
9The KLF3 am EternalThought I might have but it seems I didn’t
10The Source featuring Candi StatonYou Got The LoveSee 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