Peter Andre

TOTP 24 JUL 1998

I’m starting to get behind with these TOTP reviews. All it takes is one busy week in my own life and suddenly I’ve got four shows to write up in seven days to keep pace with the BBC4 schedule. I’ve tried skimping on the word count when this scenario arises but the completist in me fights hard against this strategy. Besides, nobody wants to read a couple of dozen words on each song stating whether I liked it or not do they? Our host tonight is Jayne Middlemiss who hasn’t been on the show for a month (maybe she really had been ill when they did that skit to introduce Kate Thornton the other week).

We start with Pras Michel featuring Ol’ Dirty Bastard and introducing Mýa and their hit “Ghetto Superstar (That Is What You Are)” to quote the full title which I don’t think I did in the last post (no brackets, no points!). I also failed to mention that this came from a film called Bulworth which was written and directed by and starred Warren Beatty. I was a regular cinema goer around this time but I failed to catch this movie which was a political black comedy that was well received critically but failed to put bums on seats in the cineplexes (wasn’t just me then).

The soundtrack album was popular in the US selling a million copies but that success didn’t translate across the pond in the UK. In fact, I don’t recall it being released over here at all and certainly don’t recognise the art work of the cover. The album featured some of the biggest names in hip-hop and rap including Dr. Dre, LL Cool J, Method Man, Ice Cube and Public Enemy. As for Pras, he would have two more UK hits – “Blue Angels” which was the follow up to “Ghetto Superstar” and he also featured on “Another One Bites The Dust” which was a remix of the Queen track by Fugees band mate Wyclef Jean for the soundtrack to the film Small Soldiers. Ol’ Dirty Bastard sadly passed away in 2004 from a drugs overdose whilst since 2013, Mýa has been married to herself. No, really.

Next up is the singing medical student Ultra Naté. OK, she wasn’t really but she did seem to have an obsession with medically themed song titles. After her previous hit “Found A Cure”, she was back with the follow up “New Kind Of Medicine”. It strikes me that Ultra Naté was a bit of a musical chameleon. On her biggest hit “Free” she channeled her inner Rozalla and then looked to “No More Tears” (Enough Is Enough)” by Donna Summer and Barbra Streisand for the inspiration for “Found A Cure”. Chic were her muse for “New Kind Of Medicine” and it worked well for her albeit that the single couldn’t match the chart numbers of its two predecessors.

As for that unusual name, it turns out that was her actual real name and not a stage moniker. No, really. It’s Ultra Naté Wyche. Sticking with the name theme, I note that “New Kind Of Medicine” was co-written by one Ed Baden-Powell who surely must be a relative of Lord Baden-Powell, founder of the Scouts movement. It doesn’t stop there though – “Free” and “Found A Cure” were co-written by one Lem Springsteen though he doesn’t seem to be related to ‘The Boss’.

Still with Peter Andre?! Still?! In 1998?! Panic not though as I believe this is the last time we’ll see him on TOTP; at least the last time I’ll have to write about him anyway as he didn’t have another hit after this until 2004 with a rerelease of “Mysterious Girl” and I’m packing in this blog after the 1999 episodes have finished. I have zero recollection of “Kiss The Girl” but listening back to it, I thought it sounded like it could have been from the soundtrack to something like The Lion King. Well, blow me down but, on reading up on the song, I wasn’t a million miles away as it was from The Little Mermaid. Originally, the song was a calypso number but, as part of the film’s rerelease in 1998, the soundtrack was revisited with some of its songs being re-recorded by new artists. For some unfathomable and despicable reason, Peter Andre was one of those invited to the project and he turned it into a dismal, sappy ballad, the berk. How did this guy ever become and continue to be famous? Minuscule talent but massive pecs see seems to be the answer. I swear down, has there ever been a more useless celebrity?! Away with you sir and your overly gelled hair!

There’s quite a back story to this next hit. “Mas Que Nada” is a song written by Brazilian Jorge Ben who originally recorded it with bandleader Zé Maria in 1962 and it was subsequently covered by other Brazilian acts such as the Tamba Trio in 1963 and Louis Carlos Vinhas the following year. However, the most commonly known version came in 1966 when Sérgio Mendes covered it with his band Brazil ‘66. Thirty-one years later, its profile was raised again when it was famously used in a Nike commercial featuring Brazilian footballers such as Ronaldo and Roberto Carlos. In 1998, it resurfaced again, I’m guessing as part of the plethora of football related songs released due to the World Cup of that year (I could be wrong on that). Not just once though but twice as the aforementioned Tamba Trio version was a Top 20 hit the week before this danced-up version by Echobeatz just pipped it by making the Top 10. I’ve no idea who Echobeatz were/are but clearly whoever was behind this version had one eye on the clubs judging by the Italian House flavoured mix they gave it. “Mas que nada” is a Portuguese expression that can mean “more than anything else in Spanish” but in Brazilian Portuguese it has a more colloquial meaning of “whatever” or “no big deal”. I wonder if Ariel got Peter Crouch to record an advert for the Brazilian market with him saying “Mas que nada”?

Just as with B*Witched and Billie recently, last week’s No 1 gets another airing despite the fact that it’s been deposed from its chart crown. In her intro to “Freak Me” by Another Level, did Jayne Middlemiss say one of them was called Bobak? Sounds more like a Croatian footballer…

*checks Wikipedia*

Oh that was Zvonimir Boban who played most of his career with AC Milan. I’m sure there was a footballer called Bobak though…

*checks Wikipedia again*

There was a Peter Bodak who played for Coventry City in the 80s…

*checks Wikipedia one last time*

Found him! Roman Bobak! A Polish right back. I can’t mean him though. He’s hardly had any sort of career at all. Maybe I was thinking of Stjepan Bobek, a Yugoslavian player in the 40s and 50s and manager in the 70s. As dull as all this is for you to read and for me to write, it is more interesting than anything Another Level ever did.

P.S. Remember the last post when I said I always get Dane Bowers mixed up with Blue’s Anthony Costa? Well, when Another Level appeared at the RnB Nation festival in 2024. Only Bowers and Mark Baron from the original line up signed up for the gig so they got two new blokes in to make up the numbers and one of them was called Greg Costa. No wonder I’m confused!

I seem to have developed a theme to this post as I’ve gone along which is that of names. Joining the 15 year old Billie (Piper) in the charts this week was another Billie – Billie Myers. This Billie was 27 years old at the time and that older age meant that her hit was a little more…mature than Ms Piper’s. Well, a lot more if you watch the official video for “Tell Me”. Set in what see seems to be some sort of bondage club, Myers is a participant in some erotic scenes which look like they could have been in Bram Stoker’s Dracula film starring Keane Reeves and Winona Ryder.

The song itself sizzles with passion and even, dare I say it, menace and is a definite lost classic of the 90s. It really should have been a much bigger hit than its No 28 peak. After its appearance on this BBC4 TOTP repeat, there was a lot of love for it declared online. Sadly, in 1998, the record buying public was more enamoured with Billie Piper than Billie Myers and it slipped thoroughly the net. Shame.

Billie Piper and stuff like this. If I was surprised that Peter Andre was still having hits in 1998, then colour me shocked that Ace Of Base were as well. Their No 1 “All That She Wants” had been as long ago as 1993 whilst their last visit to the Top 10 had been in 1994. Somehow though, they convinced us that this life-affirming slice of pop fluff that was “Life Is A Flower” made them still relevant deep into the 90s.

Apparently the favourite Ace Of Base song by the band member who wrote it (Jonas Berggren), “Life Is A Flower” was radio friendly but brain cell hostile. It would rot your mind if you listened to it too much. Its lyrics included:

“Please Mr. Agony, release them for a while,

Learn them the consequences of living without life”

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Jonas Berggren
Life Is a Flower lyrics © Megasong Publishing

“Learn them”?! Surely you mean ‘teach’ them? In an act of redemption though, after Tina Arena the other week with the title song from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Whistle Down The Wind musical, here’s another use of those words in the opening two lines to remind us of not only a great film but a great pop song too…

It’s another new No 1 and the only one of Jamiroquai’s career. “Deeper Underground” was taken from the soundtrack to the Godzilla movie of this year starring Matthew Broderick. As with the aforementioned Bulworth, I’ve never seen this film and, judging by its reviews, I’m glad I haven’t. Rated mainly as a stinker, it also underperformed commercially. Even the director never wanted to make this film apparently. However, its soundtrack album did go some good business, debuting at No 2 on the charts and achieving platinum sales in America. It mainly featured what would be defined as ‘rock’ songs, including another huge hit called “Cone With Me” by Puff Daddy and Jimmy Page which sampled the legendary Led Zeppelin track “Kashmir” but we won’t be seeing that on any BBC4 repeat due to the Puff Daddy issue. Although definitely not a rock song, “Deeper Underground” did have a harder sound than we had come to expect from Jamiroquai it seemed to me.

Despite only having one week at the chart summit, it was a pretty hardy single spending three weeks inside the Top 10 and two months on the Top 40 in total. Is it Jamiroquai’s most famous song? I don’t know. They’re a funny act. For all their 26 hits, only nine of them went Top 10. And could you name them? I might be able to pull out two or three from the recesses of my mind and I’ve probably reviewed most of them. Have they all just morphed into one because, dare I say it, they all sound the same?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Pras Michel featuring Ol’ Dirty Bastard and introducing Mýa	Ghetto Superstar (That Is What You Are)	I did not
2	Ultra Naté	New Kind Of Medicine	Negative
3	Peter Andre	Kiss The Girl	As if
4	Echobeatz	Mas Que Nada	Nah
5	Another Level	Freak Me	Nope
6	Billie Myers	Tell Me	Great song but no
7	Ace Of Base	Life Is A Flower	Never
8	Jamiroquai	Deeper Underground	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/m002kkmx/top-of-the-pops-24071998

TOTP 23 JAN 1998

Posted on June 30 by 80stastic

Constantly writing reviews of these BBC4 repeats of TOTP for the past eight years has been quite a drain on the old creative juices. I mean, nobody would be interested in a list of songs with me denoting whether I liked them or not would they? I try to give each show some context about what else was happening in the world at the time of its broadcast or perhaps something from my own personal life (if I can remember!). On other occasions, I’ll try and hang the whole past around a theme (however tenuous it might be). Sometimes it’ll work and sometimes it can feel like I’m shoehorning stuff in that really has no place being there. And sometimes…well, sometimes everything just sort of dovetails together by delightful happenstance. This post is one of those. This is how it unfolds. The day after this TOTP aired, a brand new BBC sit com aired called Unfinished Business. Now, I never watched this nor have I even any memory of it but having read its Wikipedia entry, it didn’t sound like it was a laugh-fest. Anyway, what’s that got to do with TOTP? Well, apart from both shows being on the BBC and being broadcast within a day of each other, nothing. Except…our host tonight is Jamie Theakston who I was delighted to find out (when I was looking for a theme for this post) has presented a reality show on Netflix called Cheat: Unfinished Business with Amanda Holden. Is that it I hear you ask? No, one of the artists on this TOTP released an album in 1998 which was called “Unfinished Monkey Business”. And there’s more. The band who had the No 1 record this week, I would argue, are a perfect example of having unfinished business but more of that later.

We begin with half man, half washboard Peter Andre who I’m amazed to find was still having hits as late as 1998. “All Night, All Right”, as Jamie Theakston says, was based around a sample of 1978 hit “Boogie Oogie Oogie” which is familiar from my youth but if I’d been pushed to name who it was by, I would have come up with Earth, Wind & Fire rather than the correct answer of A Taste Of Honey. None of this affects the truth that Andre should have given up on his pop star notions long since. He did after one more hit in the 90s for a whole six years but, deciding he had unfinished business with the charts, relaunched himself after appearing on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here with the wretched “Insania”.

According to Wikipedia, “All Night, All Right” was a collaboration with Coolio on the album version of the track but with Warren G on the single release. Unless I’m missing something, there’s no sign of either rapper in this performance. What gives?*

*Oh, there’s Warren G! Two places below Andre at No 18 in the charts with “Prince Igor”!

It’s a hat-trick of consecutive appearances for the Lighthouse Family! Yes, the duo (they were a duo despite it all being about singer Tunde Baiyewu) have been on every TOTP of this new year so far with their hit “High”. In an attempt to keep things fresh though, executive producer Chris Cowey has come up with the idea of a stripped back, acoustic performance (witness Robbie Williams doing the same last week on his own third time on the show doing “Angels”). It was a decent shout I guess but maybe the better solution would have been to not have the same songs on every week? Certainly the TOTP community seemed to have had enough of this one judging by their online comments or were said comments triggered by who the artist was rather than how many times they’d been on the show? The usual accusations of being ‘bland’ and ‘vacuous’ were made – an almost obligatory event when discussing the Lighthouse Family it seems. I have to say that I certainly wasn’t a fan but would I have gone as far as to call them the Shitehouse Family? I don’t think so (even though I just did).

We have reached, what is for me, the point of peak Radiohead also known as the moment before they disappeared up their own arses musically speaking. If you are a Radiohead devotee and that offends you then I refer you to my disclaimer at the bottom of this post. Let’s not dwell on the negative though – “No Surprises” is possibly one of the most affecting songs on its first hearing you could ever imagine. Not many* tracks have that inherent emotive power that stirs something within you immediately but that’s how it was for me.

*And certainly not many featuring a glockenspiel!

The third single taken from the “OK Computer” album, it would also be the band’s final commercial release of the 90s and what a way to end their decade. Maybe that’s part of the reason why I couldn’t follow their musical path from this point onwards – I’d already drawn a line under my interest in them subconsciously prompted by the arrival of the new millennium.

Anyway, “No Surprises” was just magnificent – a simple lullaby on the one hand the melody of which was at complete odds with its lyrics that were a caustic indictment of modern life. It had a sense of distress about it, as if it was recorded under duress. Both these extremes of the song were portrayed visually. The lullaby narrative was turned into comedy gold by this scene from The Royle Family…

When “no surprises” by @radiohead plays on @XSManchester it reminds me of this from the royle family 💙 pic.twitter.com/yGpn0hExgp
— RACH / ♡ 🐝 (@rach_griff) December 30, 2019

Meanwhile, that theme of duress was captured by its striking video. Directed by Grant Gee, it depicted Thom Yorke in an astronaut type helmet that slowly filled with water as he sang the song’s lyrics that scrolled upwards, reflected in the helmet. Yorke has to lift his head above the water level to sing until he is fully submerged and then stays motionless for over a minute before the water is released and he completes the song. It was genuinely unnerving and took multiple takes before Yorke could complete it to everyone’s satisfaction.

Apparently, Gee was influenced in his vision for the video by the old Gerry Anderson science-fiction series UFO which featured aliens whose spacesuits had a helmet that was filled with a green liquid that they breathed rather than oxygen. That show scared the crap out of me as a very young kid.

As I write this, it’s Glastonbury weekend of which I’ve watched the following artists:

Shed Seven – not bad but Rick Witter introducing them as a 90s band rather dates them
Alanis Morissette – good vocal but she was clearly very nervous
The 1975 – just insufferable
Pulp – reliably excellent
Noah Kahan – a favourite of my teenage son and fast becoming one of mine too
Olivia Rodrigo – better than expected

However, I don’t think anything I’ve seen this weekend can rival Radiohead’s 1997 Glastonbury set which featured “No Surprises”…

Now, here’s some business that is definitely being finished – the dreadful business of OTT that is, who are on to their final UK chart hit and I’m guessing (please!) their last ever TOTP appearance. Their valedictory song is – surprise, surprise – not another cover version but a serviceable pop ditty aimed squarely at capturing the hearts of teenage girls across the land called “The Story Of Love”. Two of their previous three hits had been with other people’s material but this one could easily have been a Boyzone single. Well, they did seem to be copying their fellow Irish lads at every turn so I guess it makes sense to have a hit that was indiscernible from one of theirs. OTT really were second rate in the boy band stakes though. Apparently Asia went mad for them but over here, they never once even made the Top 10. The story of love? Nah, this was more a tale of tosh. Utter guff. OTT were over and OUT!

And now to that artist whose album featured the words ‘unfinished business’ in its title. Since the messy demise of the Stone Roses in 1996, we’d seen John Squire rise from the ashes with The Seahorses, Mani join Primal Scream and not much else. Suddenly though, frontman Ian Brown was back and throwing his hat into the solo career ring. His debut album was titled “Unfinished Monkey Business” and its lead single was “My Star”. Basically a Brown tirade against the expenditure on and reasoning behind the space race, the Mission Control type voices and sound effects put me in mind not of space exploration though but of CB Radios and trucking and that song “Convoy” from the mid 70s by C.W. McCall. Funny how the mind works isn’t it? I recall quite liking this at the time but on reflection, there doesn’t seem to be much to it other than more than a passing resemblance to this rather good track by The Jam…

Anyway, I guess we’d better address the elephant in the room…what was going on with all those eggs?! There’s a man playing a set of them like they’re a percussion instrument and then Brown himself lobs some at the image of him at the back of the stage. The only explanation I can find is that Brown wanted an organic sound effect for the production on the track and so the sound of an egg being cracked into a frying pan was inserted into the mix. Truth or myth? Who knows? What I do know is that it was quite the comeback given the place Brown found himself in after the Roses imploded after a catastrophic performance at Glastonbury in 1996. It was the very antithesis of the aforementioned appearance by Radiohead at the festival a year later. Having said that, given his ex-band’s fanbase, perhaps a hit was almost guaranteed regardless of its quality but its lo-fi sound had some appeal I guess. It was certainly a far cry from the huge expense of the production on the last Stone Roses album “Second Coming” – apparently Brown financed the recording of “Unfinished Monkey Business” himself and it was partly recorded at his home studio.

Looking at Brown’s discography, I’m slightly taken aback at how many hits he’s had under his own steam although he was part of the reformed classic Stone Roses line up in 2011 proving that the four members had some unfinished business with each other. Said business seems to have finally been dealt with as in September 2019, John Squire confirmed in an interview with The Guardian that the Stone Roses had disbanded.

It’s the world’s favourite boy band according to host Jamie Theakston next – Backstreet Boys. Oh dear Lord. I’m not sure I have anything nor want to say anything about this lot at this juncture. They were just so dull and grim. Look, here are the facts…”All I Have To Give” was their eighth consecutive UK hit of which six went Top 5. It was another wimpy ballad that was written and produced by Full Force who collaborated with Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam back in 1985 on “I Wonder If I Take You Home” (I’m sure they’re famous for much more but that’s all I know of them). Apparently the track allowed Backstreet Boy Howie D to do some lead vocals as his voice wasn’t suited to the more pop orientated hits they’d had up to this point. I wonder if Howie had threatened to take his ball home if he wasn’t given his chance? OK, enough of this! My puns are almost as bad as their song!

Oasis are No 1 with “All Around The World” and just like Radiohead before them, this would be their last release of the 90s. Also like Radiohead, it could be seen as a watershed moment. Not only was it the final release on Creation before the label folded but was the last to feature original members Bonehead and Guigsy. This week there’s another intro courtesy of Noel explaining that the band are still in America touring so we get the video rather than a studio appearance. If anyone was in any doubt as to the influence of The Beatles on Oasis and Noel in particular then one watch of this promo surely resolved that. The Yellow Submarine vibe is not so much prevalent as a direct steal.

Now, as fortune would have it, I write this as we enter the week of the first Oasis reunion gigs – yes, the much heralded concerts are nearly here and it will be interesting to see/hear what shape the band are in after sixteen years away. After all the hype, anticipation and negative publicity surrounding dynamic ticket pricing, it’s surely the music that matters right? Well, there is no new music of course – the much speculated and indeed leaked set list won’t have anything we haven’t heard before in it but is that what the hordes would have wanted anyway? I’m not part of the horde by the way. I didn’t feel the need to spend hours virtually queuing for tickets – I saw them in 1996 when they played Maine Road, Manchester when they were at the height of their powers and popularity and felt no pull to revisit the band nearly 30 years later. The band (or more pertinently Noel) clearly don’t feel the same and so we get to the ‘unfinished business’ bit. The reasons behind the Oasis reunion tour have been widely speculated. Did Noel and Liam genuinely want to rebuild their tattered relationship? Was it all about nostalgia and reliving that feeling of when the band could do no wrong? Or is it purely about the money? I think I’m plumping for the last option.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Peter Andre	All Night, All Right	As if
2	Lighthouse Family	High	No
3	Radiohead	No Surprises	No but I had OK Computer
4	OTT	The Story Of Love	Nah
5	Ian Brown	My Star	Nope
6	Backstreet Boys	All I Have To Give	Never
7	Oasis	All Around The World	No but I had a promo of the Be Here Now album

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002dt1y/top-of-the-pops-23011998?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 07 NOV 1997

Posted on May 12 by 80stastic

With the release schedules geared up for the Christmas rush, 75% of the tunes in this TOTP are hits we are yet to have seen in these BBC4 repeats. Only the opener and the No 1 which top and tail the show have previously featured. Sound good? Yeah well, a third of those new songs are by Peter Andre and Michael Bolton – not so keen now are we? Fear not though as there are some quality tunes as well. Our host is Zoë Ball who begins the show in a bed but it’s not a Big Breakfast / Paula Yates flirting with Michael Hutchence affair. No, this is the BBC after all. No, it’s a lame sketch about Zoë being the new co-host of the Radio 1 Breakfast Show and how she’s working so many hours she doesn’t know what time of day it is. Very poor.

After that we’re straight to the music and we begin with repeat airing of “As Long As You Love Me” by the Backstreet Boys. What was it about boy bands that you had to have five members? This lot did, so did New Kids On The Block, Take That, Boyzone, Westlife and, of course…erm…Five. Now admittedly, many of the above groups lost members along the way but the basic template seems to be five. There were exceptions obviously like Bros who started out as a trio (before slimming down to a duo) and East 17 only had four but even back in the 80s with the likes of Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet (whom I wouldn’t describe as boy bands at all but whom certainly attracted a teenage girl fanbase), the classic line up was five. Was it to broaden their appeal so there was a member to cater for all the tastes of the fans? Said tastes would always include the obligatory small, cute one (Mark Owen, Stephen Gately etc). Who was the cute one in the Backstreet Boys? The blonde one? Must be as the rest of them you wouldn’t look twice at if you passed them in the street if they weren’t famous. I guess they didn’t care though as long as you loved them.

Soap star in decent song shocker! That was essentially the reaction to the news that Natalie Imbruglia had joined the ranks of ex-Neighbours stars to try their hand at this pop star lark. Natalie’s debut offering was no early era, SAW produced Kylie hit though nor indeed anything from Jason Donovan’s career (and don’t get me started on Stefan Dennis’s mercifully short foray into pop music). No, “Torn” was a good, solid, proper song that was perfect for radio playlists and discerning pop music fans alike (myself included). Now, I don’t think I knew this at the time, but the song had a lengthy backstory. Originally co-written by Scott Cutler, Anne Preven and Phil Thornalley (who had previously worked with the likes of The Cure, The Psychedelic Furs, Thompson Twins and Duran Duran and was briefly a member of Johnny Hates Jazz), it laid unreleased for a couple of years until Danish singer Lis Sørensen released it as “Brændt” meaning “Burnt”. Cutler and Preven then formed alt-rock band Ednaswap who released the first English language version of the song which was then superseded by American-Norwegian Trinne Rein’s cover which was a hit in Norway but nowhere else. This low profile gestation period meant that most of us didn’t know the track and accepted it as Natalie’s song – the whole kit and caboodle which possibly helped to give her some extra and unexpected if undeserved credibility.

Of course, not only was the song a winner but Natalie Imbruglia was a great choice to sell it. I’d long since stopped watching Neighbours on a regular basis but I knew who Natalie’s character in the Aussie soap was and she hadn’t looked like the woman on TOTP. She had long hair and played a girl-next-door type but the woman on our TV screens that night had a short, messy-looking haircut that you know was actually very expensive and those amazing, Disney Princess eyes giving her that pop star sheen. “Torn” was such a big hit – Top 5 just about everywhere (No 2 over here) including No 1 in six countries and shifting 2.4 million copies in the UK alone – that it was a double edged sword. It got her career off to a stunning start but everything she released from that point on ran the risk of being overshadowed by that debut. For a while though, the hits did follow – three more singles were released from her “Left Of The Middle” album (itself triple platinum selling) which peaked at Nos 2, 5 and 19. Natalie Imbruglia was a pop sensation even earning herself two BRIT awards. A four year delay before her second album meant momentum was lost though and sales suffered accordingly. However, she continues to record and release music with her last album arriving in 2021. She also won the third season of The Masked Singer as ‘Panda’ in 2022. However, that profile wasn’t enough to save her from this fate when she was a guest judge on The X Factor…

Yes! Yes! YES! Finally, one of my favourite bands makes their TOTP debut. I love Embrace and they are possibly the band I have seen live the most (probably five or six times). There’s something about their particular brand of indie rock that speaks to me – it might be my weakness for the anthemic which they are very good at. Back in 1997 though, I’m not sure that I was on board from the first pick up point. I certainly wasn’t aware of their initial release of “All You Good Good People” on the independent label Fierce Panda but then only 1,300 copies were made so I can be excused for that. The reaction to that limited run release was enough to give the band national recognition and create a buzz around them that would prompt a move to major label Hut Records (a subsidiary of Virgin and an early home for The Verve and The Smashing Pumpkins). Early releases for Hut (the “Fireworks” and “One Big Family” EPs) were respectable but not huge hits but then came this – a rerelease of “All You Good Good People” in EP format – which took them into the Top 10 for the first time. A gigantic song of epic sonic proportions, it slowly builds to a euphoric chorus that just can’t be ignored. And yet…I don’t think it was this song that drew me in. I believe that I only got the boat to Embrace island once “Come Back To What You Know” was released the following year but having arrived, I was more than happy to be marooned there. Their debut album “The Good Will Out” would become one of my favourite albums whilst going to No 1 and going gold on the day of release. Comparisons with Oasis were as inevitable as they were widespread but for me at least, not valid. Sure, on a surface level, you can join the dots but I think there’s more depth to Embrace’s sound whereas their Manc counterparts ploughed a defined seam that they were reluctant to deviate from.

Embrace would experience highs and lows throughout their career from being dropped by Hut after third album “If You’ve Never Been” underperformed commercially followed by a No 1 comeback album in 2004 with “Out Of Nothing”. A poor decision to record the England World Cup song (“World At Your Feet”) in 2006 which rather tarnished their reputation was followed by a seven year hiatus after lead singer Danny McNamara suffered health problems. However, a return to recording in 2013 has led to the release of three further studio albums and a very active touring schedule.

From the sublime to the ridiculous now as Peter Andre fills our screens and he’s in serious mode. Gone is the two-curtains hairstyle and the infamous abs are covered up for Peter is trying to reinvent himself as some sort of 50s teen idol balladeer! Check out his slicked back hairstyle with the exaggerated kiss curl locks at the front and witness how he stares meaningfully down the lens of the camera as if to say “Don’t you get it? I’m a serious artist!”. Then there’s his song – “Lonely” – which starts off sounding a bit like George Benson’s “Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love For You” made famous by Glenn Medeiros but turns into a right old dirge. Although it made No 6, its parent album “Time” was a right old duffer when it came to sales and it looked as if the pop star career of Peter Andre was mercifully coming to an end. Somehow though, this berk is still a name in 2025 and has so far released eleven studio albums! Eleven! That’s three more than Embrace! Make it make sense someone. Please!

Now, from a dirge of a ballad to a…dirge of a ballad. Oh Lordy! Toni Braxton made her name on sad love songs (I mean like literally – one of her hits is called “Another Sad Love Song”!) so we shouldn’t have been surprised to see her back on TOTP with another one but “How Could An Angel Break My Heart” was a real stinker. Everything is wrong with this one from its awful title (Toni had a real thing about songs with the word ‘heart’ in the title – “Un-break My Heart”, of course but then “Make My Heart” and “I Heart You” in the 2010s) to its dreadful lyrics (“I wish I didn’t wish so hard, maybe I wished our love apart”) to its lumbering, mournful sound. Oh and don’t get me started on Kenny G’s sax parts. No, seriously please don’t. I can’t do my Kenny “The G Man” G story again*. Then there’s Toni’s performance here. At one point she sings “oooh, mmmm” (according to the subtitles) where she moves her lips into a Shirley Bassey style tremble. Talk about over emoting! Next!

*Actually, it seems I can. Read on.

Oh no! How can this be?! It’s a hat-trick of dirge-like ballads as we follow Peter Andre and Toni Braxton with Michael Bolton and his single “The Best Of Love”. What dreadful running order scheduling! The saving grace here was that it was Boller’s final UK chart hit – the last of 17 (SEVENTEEN!). This one was part of a double A-Side with “Go The Distance”, a track taken from the soundtrack to the Disney film Hercules. What a terrible way for Bolton to bow out on such a poor song. “The Best Of Love” was written by US songwriter and producer Babyface as was the preceding track performed by Toni Braxton. Right that’s him off my Christmas card list then.

In an attempt to distract us from how awful the song he’s peddling is, Michael has had his famous long locks shorn off. I can’t even make a joke along the lines of Samson losing his strength and power after his hair was cut because Bollers was useless when he was overly hirsute. I probably shouldn’t be making any jokes about Michael full stop as he is recovering from surgery for a brain tumour. Instead, I’ll simply say farewell Mr Bolton. We’ll always have Sheffield in 1993…

TOTP 16 JUL 1987

Read the above post for my Michael Bolton / Kenny G story

How do you follow up an era defining album like “Different Class” that housed such classics of its time as “Common People” and “Disco 2000”? Well, Pulp decided to go with a song about thinking more about our old folks. It wasn’t the obvious direction to go in but it was a reflection by Jarvis Cocker on the ageing process and how he himself was not getting any younger. That he was only 34 when this song was released kind of undermines his musings but then age is relative I guess. He probably did feel older than some of his chart contemporaries having started Pulp in 1978. He’ll be 62 this birthday – I wonder how he feels about his song “Help The Aged” these days?

There were definitely some who weren’t keen on the track, namely the charity Help The Aged (now AGE UK) who objected to their name being used on the single and who were only assuaged by having some of the single’s royalties donated to their cause. Was I one of those who weren’t convinced by this new direction? I honestly can’t recall what I thought of it but listening back to it now, I quite like it. It has that idiosyncratic Pulp feel but it also has a quiet intensity. In fact, is it just me or does its backing sound a bit like “Creep” by Radiohead? OK, just me then. Anyway, its No 8 chart peak was a relief to Cocker at least who was pleased to have got a song about growing old and dying so far up the charts. However, the parent album it came from – “This Is Hardcore” – failed to match the sales of its predecessor shifting a tenth of the units that “Different Class” did. What I remember most about the album is they hugely long final track “The Day After The Revolution” which clocked in at a mammoth 14 minutes 56 seconds the majority of which was what felt like a never ending fade out. We nearly got caught out by that a few times when playing the album in the Our Price where I worked in Stockport.

Aqua remains at No 1 with “Barbie Girl” and for this performance singer Lene Nystrøm is channeling her inner Mike Nesmith as she’s donned a woolly hat. Ironically, their bubblegum hit was just the sort of saccharine, sweet pop that Nesmith rallied against when he was in The Monkees as he strove for creative control of the band. Legend has it that the straw that broke the camel’s back was that they were told they had to record “Sugar, Sugar” and Nesmith refused whilst putting his fist through the wall of a hotel in anger at the idea. The song would be a hit for fictional cartoon band The Archies becoming a No 1 hit in both the UK and the US in 1969. In some ways, “Barbie Girl” mirrored “Sugar, Sugar” both in terms of its chart performance and pure pop sound. However, I don’t think there was any deeper meaning going on in lyrics like “Oh sugar, oh honey honey, you are my candy girl and you got me wanting you” unlike “Barbie Girl” which sought to make a subversive social comment on the inherent misogyny of the values attached to the Barbie doll. Apparently. However, “Sugar Sugar” was bestowed with the honour of soundtracking the Apollo 12 space mission when it was one of the songs astronaut Alan Bean chose to play during the journey to the moon. Not to be outdone, a Barbie doll based upon the first female commander of the International Space Station Samantha Cristoforetti spent six months orbiting the Earth with her in 2022.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Backstreet Boys	As Long As You Love Me	Nope
2	Natalie Imbruglia	Torn	Liked it, didn’t buy it
3	Embrace	All You Good Good People	No but I had the album
4	Peter Andre	Lonely	Of course not
5	Toni Braxton	How Could An Angel Break My Heart	Negative
6	Michael Bolton	The Best Of Love	Never
7	Pulp	Help The Aged	I did not
8	Aqua	Barbie Girl	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/m0026dt5/top-of-the-pops-review-of-the-year-2024

TOTP 07 MAR 1997

Posted on February 5 by 80stastic

We’ve entered a new phase of TOTP history with this repeat as it marks the changing of the guard of the show’s executive producer role. Outgoing was Ric Blaxill* who been in the post for three years following the ‘Year Zero’ revamp debacle and in his place would come Chris Cowey who had worked on The Tube in the 80s and been the producer of its (sort of) 90s successor The White Room. I’m assuming that Blaxill’s rather sudden departure was due to the viewing figures for TOTP being down to two million though in fairness to Blaxill, the show being moved to a Friday night at 7.30 and going up against Coronation Street was probably the biggest factor in that outcome and that may have been a decision made way above him.

*Blaxill makes a valedictory cameo appearance at the end of the previous show when the Spice Girls are messing about with Ian Wright. He’s wearing a T-shirt that says ‘Bye TOTP Bye’

Cowey was brought in to reverse that trend and he did with viewing figures rising to five and a half million within the six year period he was executive producer. How did he do it? In his own words:

“There wasn’t any one fact why it worked. It was a million and one tiny fixes”

Sunderland Echo, Published 17th Jan 2024

One such fix was a phasing out of the ‘golden mic’ slot which saw celebrities from the world of music and showbiz taking over as presenters. Instead, a regular roster of hosts was assembled being sourced from BBC youth magazine show The O–Zone and existing Radio 1 DJs. This was no return to the ‘Smashie and Nicey’ days of the 70s and 80s though with the DJs being sourced from the cooler, edgier end of the spectrum like Jo Whiley and Zoe Ball. I know that both are no longer seen as cool or edgy in 2025 but they possibly were back in 1997. Look, they were young at least and we should all be thankful that neither was Simon Mayo – OK?! Erm… where was I? Oh yeah, Chris Cowey. Well, he was all about live performances so artists appearing on the show were encouraged to sing live and he also saw the potential to take the TOTP brand abroad which resulted in localised versions of the show being broadcast throughout Europe. He would also favour a bit of nostalgia when he reintroduced a revamped version of the classic “Whole Lotta Love” theme tune and a new logo and title sequence. All of that’s to come though as Cowey wouldn’t officially take over until the Summer of 1997* so I’m assuming there was an interim period where a caretaker producer (or series of producers) was in charge of the show. The credits for this one says the director was one John L. Spencer.

*Credit to loyal blog reader Essor for that info

As for tonight’s edition, it was the aforementioned Jo Whiley as solo host for the first time introducing Eternal as the opening artist tonight. Now you can say what you like about this lot but you can’t deny that they were prolific in their output. “Don’t You Love Me” was their twelfth consecutive UK chart hit in just over three years of which all but two went Top 10. Taken from their platinum selling “Before The Rain” album, it was (at the time) the highest charting of the lot. I recall thinking back then that this was quite classy sounding but I think I may have misjudged it. For a start it rips off the bassline from the Dennis Edwards track “Don’t Look Any Further” (which I knew from The Kane Gang version) and which M People had taken to No 9 as recently as 1993. Secondly, it’s all a bit overwrought with lyrics about homelessness and poverty completely over cooked by adding a children’s choir at the song’s climax along with a harpsichord for some reason. Then there’s all the pointy, angled choreography that accompanies this performance. The song’s subject matter is hardly something to dance along to. It just looks odd and jarring. For all my misgivings and despite the threat posed by the phenomenon of the Spice Girls, Eternal were about to score their only chart topping single with their very next release – “I Wanna Be The Only One”.

Around 1994, I started losing sight of Erasure’s output after they’d been a constant presence in my pop music life since 1985 and their first ever single “Who Needs Love Like That”. By 1997, I could hardly see them at all. “Don’t Say Your Love Is Killing Me” was their 26th UK chart hit but it was also their first not to make the Top 20. It was from their eighth studio album called “Cowboy” the title of which I didn’t recall so I looked it up and I didn’t even recognise its front cover! And I worked in a record shop! I really did have a blind spot when it came to Vince and Andy at this point.

As for this particular single, it kind of feels like it should be better than it is. Some of the trademark Erasure components are in place like a catchy chorus and a jaunty synth pop backing but it just doesn’t quite hang together right for me. Sort of like Erasure by numbers but the finished composition is a bit wonky. Bits of the electronic bleeps in the production sound like they’ve been lifted directly from their 1988 hit “Stop” whilst it goes all “Telstar” by The Tornados towards the end with what sounds like a clavioline prominent. The end effect feels like it’s all been thrown together somewhat. “Don’t Say Your Love Is Killing Me” would be Erasure’s last hit of the 90s but they would return in the new millennium with yet more new material.

The first video of the night comes courtesy of the Bee Gees and their hit “Alone”. Apparently there were two different promos shot for this single – one for the US and another for all other territories. Not sure why. Anyway, the latter features the brothers performing against a clearly green screen created background of a futuristic styled spinning room intercut with images of a woman floating in zero gravity removing her spacesuit – an obvious homage to the movie Barbarella. And that’s it. Nothing else. One single idea to base the whole video on. Wikipedia tells me that the US promo features the band in the recording studio intercut with footage of them from throughout their career and images from the UK video. Both were directed by Nick Eagan who has designed some iconic single and album covers for the likes of Dexys, The Clash, INXS and Duran Duran but he was clearly phoning this assignment in. “Alone” would peak at No 5 on the UK charts.

Any hopes that Peter Andre’s pop career might be a flash in the pan have been dashed over and over as the buffed up goon is onto his fifth UK hit in just under a year. At least this one didn’t go to No 1 like his previous two singles. I think we missed having to endure “I Feel You” which topped the chart not long before Christmas but no such luck this time around as the title track from his album “Natural” is straight in at No 6. This was more of the same nasty, knowing R&B dance pop with lyrics designed to get his female teenage fanbase dreaming of clandestine meetings with their hero. Just to ramp up the sexual tension, there’s even a bit in it that steals from another godawful hit from the 90s with carnal referencing lyrics – “I Wanna Sex You Up” by Color Me Badd. Horrible, wretched stuff. Andre’s ‘music’ really was desperate like going into the only cubicle in a public toilet that’s free when you’re dying for the loo and realising that the bloke who was in there before you has made the most unholy stench and you are left with the despairing choice of soiling yourself or breathing in that rancid air – that level of desperate. Just naff off mate.

Jo Whiley is a bit gushy introducing the next artist though I’m not surprised that she’s jumped on this particular bandwagon. “The muso’s muso. He can do no wrong” she says. Who can she be talking about? Well, it’s Beck of course. Just about everyone I ever worked with during my time in record shops were crazy about Beck. He was effortlessly cool (even when he looked geeky) and his music was a stylish antidote to all that generic dance music and seemingly endless conveyor belt of boybands. This one – “The New Pollution” – was no exception. The third single from his “Odelay” album, it was featured a syncopated (is that the right word?) take on the bass line from “Taxman” by The Beatles forming a wicked groove that pulled you in from note one. The lyrics seem a bit oblique (“She’s got a carburettor tied to the moon”) but I’m guessing it has some sort of environmental message judging by the title or is that too literal a take? A bigger Beck fan than I will put me straight I’m sure. I like all the performers on stage all dressed head to toe in white jumping about at the end like they’re in some sort of Woody Allen movie (or possibly a Madness video). “We salute the godlike genius of Beck” says Jo Whiley at the song’s end. I’m not sure I’d go that far but he was pretty cool. Far too cool for the likes of me though not my record shop colleagues nor my wife who bought the album.

Some smooth, R&B soul next courtesy of Babyface. Given that nickname by funk legend Bootsy Collins on account of his youthful looks (his real name is Kenneth Edmonds), it made me wonder how many other people were given that moniker. Well, there’s ‘Baby Face’ Nelson, the 1930s gangster and Ole Gunnar Solskjær, the ex-Manchester United player and manager who was nicknamed ‘The Baby Faced Assassin’. And that’s where the well runs dry. There’s plenty of people who were known as ‘Baby’ – Emma Bunton was ‘Baby Spice’ for example – but ‘Baby Face’ or indeed ‘Babyface’? I’m not so sure. It appears that not only are there not that many who go by the name of Babyface but even those that do are not that well known to some people. At the 2025 Grammy Awards that took place a few days ago, Babyface was being interviewed on the red carpet when hot new star Chappell Roan walked past. The Associated Press reporters immediately forgot they were interviewing the 13 times Grammy winning producer and recording artist and shouted out “Chappell” clearly smelling a much bigger interview in their eyes. Babyface was extremely magnanimous by allowing the reporters to pursue Roan without taking offence. The fallout from the incident showed that others had taken offence though including Dionne Warwick who tweeted her disgust at the incident and the panel on US talk show The View who balked the disrespect shown to Babyface and the apparent lack of knowledge as to his accomplishments…

Quite right too. Well said. His 1997 hit “Every Time I Close My Eyes” however was never going to inspire me to interview Babyface if I’m honest. Just not my thing and the presence of Mariah Carey on backing vocals and Kenny G* on sax wasn’t going to sway me either.

*No I’m not going to go into my Kenny G story again! It’s in the blog archives if you must relive it!

Despite their longevity, this was only the second ever TOTP studio appearance by Aerosmith. Surprising? Maybe not. Up to this point, they had only achieved seven UK Top 40 hits of which none had gone higher than number 13 and they were still over a year away from Top 5 international smash “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing”. However, an eighth in “Falling In Love (Is Hard On The Knees)” earned them another not just a No 22 chart placing but a visit to the BBC Elstree Centre in Borehamwood. The pop kid that I was, Aerosmith had not been a band that had crossed my path in my youth with my first engagement with them coming via their 1986 collaboration with Run DMC on “Walk This Way”. After that, they occasionally piqued my interest with tracks like “Dude (Looks Like A Lady)” and “Cryin’” but I was hardly a huge fan. Such was my lack of commitment that I don’t even remember this one at all but listening to it now, it’s not a million away from the aforementioned “Dude (Looks Like A Lady)”, being that bluesy yet camped up rock n’ roll sound that they made their name on. As to what the song was about, well, it’s not so hard to work out is it?! No, he wasn’t singing about proposing!

“When I grow up, I want to be a rock chic!” trills Jo Whiley after that Aerosmith performance. Hmm. Anyway, No Doubt are No 1 for the last of three weeks with “Don’t Speak”. What’s the link between this song and the artist we’ve just seen Aerosmith? Listen to the intro to this and see if it reminds you of something…

Yep, very similar. Anyway this week we get the promo video for “Don’t Speak” with its plot about the media focus on singer Gwen Stefani whilst the rest of the band are ignored. This wasn’t a narrative of pure fiction though. Tensions in the band had been riding high perhaps not helped by bassist Tony Kanal and Stefani’s romantic relationship breaking down. That wasn’t the only relationship breakdown in the camp though. Legend has it that the band were on the verge of splitting at the time of shooting the video but they decided to go through with it as a sort of healing treatment – group therapy if you will. I’m guessing it worked as the band carried on until 2005 and are back together today after a couple of sabbaticals.

As Comic Relief was only one week away, we end the show with the official song for that year’s campaign – “Who Do You Think You Are” by the Spice Girls. For the promotion of the song and the event, a video was shot which harked back to 1989’s Comic Relief. I say ‘harked back’ but I mean totally pinched the idea from. I refer to the appearance of Kathy Burke, Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders. Back in 1989, Bananarama were tasked with delivering the charity’s single – a cover of “Help” by The Beatles – which was credited as being by Bananarama and Lananeeneenoonoo who were a spoof group made up of…yep…Kathy Burke, Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders. The concept was revisited in 1997. As the Spice Girls had five members, two other celebrities were drafted in namely Lulu and actress, comedian and writer Llewella Gideon. For Lananeeneenoonoo read the Sugar Lumps (a name which would have made more sense if the Sugababes had been around then). I didn’t find this skit funny back in 1989 and was even less enamoured of its 1997 counterpart but hey – it was for charity.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Eternal	Don’t You Love Me	Negative
2	Erasure	Don’t Say Your Love Is Killing Me	Nope
3	Bee Gees	Alone	I did not
4	Peter Andre	Natural	As if
5	Beck	The New Pollution	No but my wife and the album
6	Babyface	Every Time I Close My Eyes	Not my bag at all
7	Aerosmith	Falling In Love (Is Hard On The Knees)	Nah
8	No Doubt	Don’t Speak	Good tune but no
9	Spice Girls	Who Do You Think You Are	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/m0027fvx/top-of-the-pops-07031997?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 13 SEP 1996

Posted on November 1, 2024 by 80stastic

I’ve been waiting for this one to come up. Anyone for Pennis? Yes, it’s the episode hosted by fictional character Dennis Pennis aka comedian and actor Paul Kaye. You must remember this guy. He came to prominence on BBC2’s The Sunday Show* in which his Pennis creation had a regular slot posing as a reporter and attending celebrity events such as film premieres and asking them baffling questions.

*Bizarrely, the show was also a launch pad for another comedian with a very similar name – Peter Kay. What were the chances?!

Armed with an image meant to make him stand out from the crowd – red hair, loud clothes, thick glasses and an American accent – he was a comedy anarchist, a construct presumably informed by Kaye’s own punk background. As the popularity of his character grew, he was afforded his own two part special called Very Important Pennis filmed on location at film festivals in Cannes, Hollywood and Venice which had aired only a month or so before this TOTP. Consequently, his profile was very high and presumably why he was booked for the gig of hosting the BBC’s flagship music show. I really liked him though he riled the other authentic showbiz reporters who were trying to do their job but it couldn’t last as he became too well known and his intended ‘victims’ too aware of him. The character was killed off in 1997 in a video only release called Dennis Pennis RIP: Too Rude To Live though Kaye did resurrect him to introduce The Prodigy on stage at Glastonbury the same year. I’m hoping for a lot from him in this TOTP. Let’s hope he doesn’t disappoint…

We start with a band and a song that I only finished writing about yesterday in my last post – it’s Rocket From The Crypt with rocket “On A Rope”. The first thing I’m noticing is that they’ve stuck with those horrible glittery shirts again for this second performance. Was it their trademark like ABC and gold lamé suits back in 1982? Not many can pull off such an item of clothing and pull them off they should have though I’m not sure I would have been prepared for what was underneath especially in the case of the sideburns wearing lead singer. Was their version of ‘Bez’ with them last time? His main purpose seems to be to jump about the stage like he’s sat on an ants nest. Get in the shower mate for some quick relief – don’t forget your soap…on a rope. Ahem.

Pennis Putdown: “This band came straight in this week at 12. Unfortunately the building didn’t open until 5 so they’ve been hanging around the car park for hours” – Not bad 6/10

If it’s the mid 90s, then you can’t get through an episode of TOTP without having to endure yet another dance tune by some faceless DJ types fronted by a female singer in a PVC outfit. This week was no exception so here comes Stretch & Vern present “Maddog” with “I’m Alive”. Wikipedia tells me that this lot were Stretch Silvester and Jules Vern (real names Stuart Collins and Julian Peake) who were on the FFRR label whose A&R was run by one Pete Tong. Quite who “Maddog” was I haven’t been able to ascertain. The sample their tune was based around didn’t need any research to identify though with it being instantly recognisable as “Boogie Wonderland” by Earth, Wind & Fire. It’s all very frenetic with the speeded up vocal adding to the intensity and that proved to be attractive to UK record buyers as it topped the dance chart and made No 6 in the national Top 40. It sounds very early 90s to me listening back to it now but then what do I know about dance music. Apparently, one of the PVC clad women is actress Jaime Murray who is best known for starring in BBC crime drama Hustle. I didn’t know that before either.

Pennis Putdown: “Coming up on the show we’ve got exclusives from Skunk Anansie and Deep Blue Something plus a brand new No 1 from Peter Andrex with a song that goes on and on and on” – Clever enough pun though clearly couldn’t come up with anything for Stretch & Vern Present “Maddog” 5/10

What is it with this post and people called Kay? After name checking Peter Kay and Paul Kaye we now have Jay Kay of Jamiroquai although Dennis Pennis just refers to him as if his name is Jamiroquai (that was the band of course) in his intro. Despite having already peaked at its debut chart position of No 3 and started descending the charts, they are granted another outing to the show as “Virtual Insanity” is holding for a second week at No 5 so not technically breaking any TOTP appearance rules. This exposure wouldn’t stop it slipping again in the following chart but did afford it one final week in the Top 10.

Pennis Putdown: “Jamiroquai? Love him or hate him, you gotta love him! Or HATE him! He takes environmental issues seriously. He makes music by recycling classic funk records. This song is no exception. Take it away. AWAY!” – Wickedly barbed 7/10

How do you follow up a hit that would prove to be the biggest selling of the year in the UK? Well, if you’re the Fugees then you come up with another No 1 record that was also a million seller* and would forge your reputation as the new creative light of East Coast rap.

*It couldn’t quite replicate the sales of “Killing Me Softly” which sold 1.8 million copies in the UK. “Ready Or Not” would shift 1.2 million units and be our 24th best selling single of 1996.

“Ready Or Not” has come to be regarded as a defining moment in hip-hop for its blending of rap with soulful singing and inspired use of samples (albeit said samples hadn’t been copyright cleared at the time leading to threatened litigation and an out of court settlement). The vision of Lauryn Hill to see how a song by ambient, new age superstar Enya could be used as the basis for a Fugees track was…well…visionary. She wasn’t finished there though using a song by 70s Philly soul group The Delfonics to create that hypnotic chorus. Even that wasn’t the end of the band displaying their influences. They also manage to sneak in a reference to the Nas hit “If I Ruled The World (Imagine That)” which Hill had featured on and which itself borrowed heavily from the Kurtis Blow tune of the same name AND a lyric from Bob Marley’s “Buffalo Soldier”. There’s a lot going on in this song!

And yet, there was even more going on in the video which cost a reputed $1.3 million to produce making it one of the most expensive promos ever filmed at the time with only the likes of those by Guns N’ Roses and Michael Jackson above it. Even 28 years later, it is still the 32nd most expensive video ever made. The reason for its high costs was presumably all the helicopters, explosions, sharks, chase scenes and a submarine that it features. It really was quite epic, especially given the period it was made in.

The purpose of the song was to be a shot across the bows at gangsta rap and its attendant culture helping to make “Ready Or Not” be named by The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as one of the Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll in 2018. Former US President Barack Obama has named it as his favourite song ever. Given all of this, I really thought it must have gone straight in at No 1 here but its inevitable ascent to the top was ludicrously delayed for a week by a jumped up, muscle man from Australia with a washboard stomach peddling some wishy washy R&B crud. Come on Pennis – give him both barrels when the time comes!

Pennis Putdown: “What a video, man. More like a Fugee film really” – Even Pennis couldn’t find fault with the Fugees 0/10

Skunk Anansie are one of those bands who I was aware of during the 90s and had a decent idea of the type of music they played but I can still to this day only name one of their songs – that being “Weak”. One of the reasons for this state of affairs might be that their albums seemed to always come with Parental Advisory stickers on them meaning we couldn’t play them in the Our Price I worked in. That was certainly the case with their second album “Stoosh” and I recall having to tell at least one member of staff to take it off the shop stereo. In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have worried so much and not been so draconian about it but as Assistant Manager, it was potentially me in the firing line if we got complaints.

The lead single from “Stoosh” was “All I Want” which sounds as if the band just rewrote “Weak” if I’m honest. That’s not a bad thing as I really liked “Weak” but just an observation. Lead singer Skin does her usual intimidating performance, looking threateningly down the camera and leaping about all over the stage including standing erect on the drum kit at one point. She really did have quite the striking image – a bit like Grace Jones in that you’re not sure that she isn’t really an alien descended to Earth in human form. “All I Want” would peak at No 14, the band’s then highest chart position and the third highest of their career in total.

Pennis Putdown: “Now, some bands are very appropriately named. Skunk Anansie are a classic example. They’re black, they’re white and their music really stinks” – Bit obvious but very well executed 7/10

It’s that dastardly ‘flashback’ feature now that has extended the show’s length by four minutes or so which presumably explains why it was now starting at 7.25pm rather than 7.30pm during this particular era of the show’s history. Having had its day and time of broadcast changed and its channel switched from BBC 1 to BBC2, the show was in a state of flux from which it would ultimately never recover. Being reminded of its past glories in the form of this ‘new’ slot maybe wasn’t the wisest idea on reflection. Tonight its spotlight shines on ABBA and perhaps their most famous song “Dancing Queen”. Indeed it is widely considered to be one of the best pop songs by anyone ever thanks to its catchy hooks and feelings of euphoria it promotes.

However, can you actually dance to “Dancing Queen”? I don’t mean the choreographed routine in the Mama Mia! film but rather just if it was played at a wedding disco or such like? Aren’t its bpm not quite right for cutting some rug? Look at Agnetha and Anni-Frid in the video – they’re just sort of swaying about or doing the nerd shuffle. Sacrilege? Possibly. Its accolades include being ranked No 2 in Billboard’s 2023 list of The 500 Best Pop Songs and was the inspiration* for Elvis Costello’s “Oliver’s Army” and Blondie’s “Dreaming” and similar to Barack Obama and “Ready Or Not”, is the favourite song ever of Republican Party party nominee for the 2008 US Presidential Election where he was beaten by…yep…Barack Obama.

*”SOS” was the inspiration behind “Pretty Vacant” by the Sex Pistols but that’s another story altogether.

Pennis Putdown: “Like most good Swedish video footage I’ve seen, the men have beards and the women are clean shaven” – Lowers the tone a bit but what did I expect from Dennis Pennis? 6/10

Way Out West – both a Laurel and Hardy film and a 90s purveyor of dance music – I know which one I prefer and it’s not option two. This lot were Jody Wisternoff and Nick Warren who met in a Bristol record shop and teamed up to do remixes for other people before signing to Deconstruction Records as an artist in their own right. “The Gift” was by far their biggest hit peaking at No 15 on the national chart and No 2 on the specialist dance chart. It featured the vocals of Joanna Law who’d had a minor hit in 1990 with a version of Roberta Flack’s most well known hit “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”. Said version was sampled for “The Gift” though I don’t personally think it’s that obvious. As with Stretch & Vern earlier, it all sounds a bit early 90s and fairly dull with the same lyric repeated over and over. It probably made more sense on a dance floor if you were under the influence of something rather than on TOTP. Probably.

Pennis Putdown: “Now Way Out West featuring Joanna Law – classic yuppie hangover music. It’s called “The Gift” – appropriate cos no-one’s likely to buy it” – First line is better than the second so 6/10

After her last appearance on the show, Donna Lewis seemed to divide opinion among those watching the BBC4 repeat. I wrote in my post reviewing that show that her hit “I Love You Always Forever” had a timeless quality and was light and joyful and seemed to bring hope to a world that so often seemed dark. On reflection that seems slightly over the top – I should maybe have gone with something along the lines of it being a fluffy, soothing punctuation mark in the long narrative of the day. However, other people went online to say how much they hated it and that it was a whole lot of nothing. It’s a game of opinions as they say and anyway, we’re all just pissing in the wind – as Frank Zappa once said, writing about music is like dancing about architecture.

Pennis Putdown: “They say Donna Lewis is gonna be a one hit wonder. Sounds optimistic to me.” – Cutting and personal; a solid insult 7/10

Here’s another song that split opinion but I think it may have been a case of musical snobbery causing the division as the music press hated it but the UK record buying public loved it enough to send it to No 1. Deep Blue Something were a bunch of good ol’ boys from Texas (well, they were pretty young actually) whose members included brothers Todd and Toby Pipes who sound like they should be a firm of plumbers in Trumpton. Their song “Breakfast At Tiffany’s” clearly stole its title from the Audrey Hepburn film of the same name though apparently the inspiration for it came from another of her films – Roman Holiday. It was the tale of a couple on the verge of breaking up due to no longer having anything in common only to realise that they both sort of liked the film Breakfast At Tiffany’s and so maybe they should stay together. As the foundation for a full blown romantic relationship, it’s pretty unstable you’d have to say. And random. Imagine you’re in the scenario of tying to salvage your relationship and when trying to think of a reason to stay together, you delve into the darkness and come up with the title of a film you both quite liked. Not that you share the same values, have a similar sense of humour, enjoy each other’s company…no, you both have a fondness for a specific Audrey Hepburn film. Never mind it being a flimsy foundation for a relationship, it’s a pretty ludicrous basis for a song.

And yet…and yet it was as catchy as hell with some nifty guitar work and a memorable chorus. It was also very daytime radio friendly which must have helped. Even so, its rise to the top did seem unlikely and I was surprised at its level of success. The band weren’t the prettiest of boys either. I recall a friend said at the time that their six year old daughter liked it but he mistakenly believed it was a new song by Lloyd Cole And The Commotions. I’m not sure that I can hear their sound in “Breakfast At Tiffany’s”. However, it does kind of make me think of “I’ll Be There For You” by The Rembrandts who’d been in the charts recently and I can imagine it being the theme tune for a Friends type show. Deep Blue Something would annoyingly have one further minor hit (“Josey” made No 27) thus spoiling their status as perfect one hit wonders – one chart topper and then nothing.

Pennis Putdown: “When most people think of the title “Breakfast At Tiffany’s”, they think of an Audrey Hepburn film. This song is unlikely to change that unfortunately” – Nice line but it’s his facial expression at the end that is the real kicker. So dismissive 8/10

This a joke right?! How the hell did we give Peter Andre a No 1 record and such a terrible one to boot. Any hopes that he might just disappear after his god awful hit “Mysterious Girl” disintegrated when he returned with “Flava”. This wasn’t so much a follow up as a follow through, a honking stinker of a song. Well, I say song but it was more of an identikit exercise in putting together all the bits of previously successful hits and seeing if you could just recycle them. It’s built around that awful parping riff used by the likes of Montell Jordan, MN8 and the Backstreet Boys and then proceeds to name check artists such as Dr. Dre and Bobby Brown who presumably would have thought Andre was a joke. And he was/is. Just to absolutely hammer home his lack of creativity, he even throws in a lyric about the Mack being back, like we hadn’t heard that line enough in 1996 already.

Despite all the fuss and promotion of Andre’s pecs and six pack, he keeps them hidden most of the time under a huge leather jacket which must have stank under those hot studio lights. The occasional glimpses of his body that he allowed the studio audience are met with predictable screams. Weren’t we better than this?

Pennis Putdown: “Peter Andrex is finding it virtually impossible these days to sell records in Europe due to the ban on British beef but in the UK, the kids are mad for it and its my pleasure to announce that Peter Andrex is top for the poops!” – It was topical (the EU had imposed a worldwide ban on exports of British beef in 1996) but the last line is weak 5/10

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Rocket From The Crypt	On A Rope	Never happened
2	Stretch & Vern present “Maddog”	I’m Alive	No
3	Jamiroquai	Virtual Insanity	It’s a no from me
4	Fugees	Ready Or Not	No but my wife had the album
5	Skunk Anansie	All I Want	Negative
6	ABBA	Dancing Queen	No but we all have a copy of ABBA Gold don’t we?
7	Way Out West	The Gift	I did not
8	Donna Lewis	I Love You Always Forever	Nah
9	Deep Blue Something	Breakfast At Tiffany’s	Nope
10	Peter Andre	Flava	NOOOOOOO!!!!

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/m002497x/top-of-the-pops-13091996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 26 JUL 1996

Posted on October 8, 2024 by 80stastic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*She has completed the London Triathlon twice.

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

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

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00fsvcm/top-of-the-pops-26071996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 14 JUN 1996

Posted on September 19, 2024 by 80stastic

It’s mid June 1996 and the TV schedules are full of football as the Euros tournament is in full swing. England have started with a disappointing draw against Switzerland so there’s a lot riding on the next game against Scotland the day after this TOTP aired. As flagged by Nicky Campbell last week, the show has moved to Friday night for the duration of the football but it would never return to that hallowed Thursday night slot. In retrospect, it could be argued that this was the beginning of the end for TOTP with the subsequent decision to change its time of broadcast from 7.00 to 7.30pm an act of wanton self destruction, pitting it against Coronation Street as it did.

Before any of that though came an act of physical destruction that would put football and audience figures for a pop music show into a terrible and shocking perspective. The day after this episode of TOTP was broadcast, the Manchester bombing happened when the IRA detonated a 3,300 lb bomb on Corporation Street in the centre of the city. I was living in Manchester at the time (but working in the Our Price store in Stockport) and had booked the Saturday off to watch the England game. I wasn’t in the centre that morning though my wife had been as she’d gone to pick up her Mum from Piccadilly train station as she was visiting us for the day. Fortunately, they were in and out before the bomb was detonated at 11.17am. Thanks to the efforts of the emergency services (and the fact that an IRA code-worded warning had been made an hour and a half prior to the detonation), there were no fatalities that day though 212 people were injured. The explosion caused a 300m high mushroom cloud to rise above the city and could be heard up to 15 miles away. I was out walking at the time (can’t remember why) and, like everyone else in the vicinity, heard the bomb go off. My immediate thought was that a waste incinerator had exploded rather than a terrorist attack. Sadly, I was wrong. The devastation to the area would prompt the regeneration of Manchester City centre at a cost of £1 billion in today’s money that was paid out by insurers. 400 businesses in a half mile radius of the blast were affected 40 percent of which never recovered. There is a narrative that the bomb was the best thing to ever happen to Manchester City centre though the counter argument is try telling that to people and businesses that were caught up in it. Also, there were already regeneration schemes in place following the city’s ultimately unsuccessful bid to host the 2000 Olympic Games. Whichever side of the argument you came down on, the IRA bomb of 1996 will never be forgotten.

On that sombre note, I’ll try and shift subject to the rather more trivial subject of pop music and there was no greater example of its sometimes redundant nature than Peter Andre. Now the last time I reviewed “Mysterious Girl”, I forgot to mention the contribution of rapper Bubbler Ranx who was brought in as Andre, it turned out, was as hopeless at rapping as Gazza* was when he tried out for the John Barnes role on “World In Motion”. Congratulations then Bubbler for your part in “Mysterious Girl”. Who can forget your cry of “Baby girl” that opens the song and your superb control of language and beautiful phrasing on lines such as “Body weh you have a make de man dem a bawl”. Yes, your legacy to pop music is that you made this dreadful track even shittier than it already was. Well done sir. Reports suggest that Ranx has retired from rapping and is now a preacher. Lord have mercy!

*Thankfully he was much better at football as his iconic goal in that England v Scotland game proved.

A couple of pieces of housekeeping to mention at this point. Firstly, tonight’s host is Mark Owen who is still a few months away from launching his solo career with the “Child” single and “Green Man” album so he seems to have been spending his time since the dissolution of Take That cultivating a look that resembles 1970s TV series Catweazle or at last an extra in a Robin Hood movie. What was going on there Mark? His look isn’t much better these days with someone I work with recently telling me that she thinks Owen looks like a tramp!

Secondly, there’s been a change to the show’s opening with the direct to camera message by a featured artist having been replaced by a montage of clips of the acts to come on tonight’s show. I’m not sure I have an opinion either way on which one I prefer. Thirdly, Owen reminds us of a competition that the show is running in which you can win the opportunity to meet and hang out with a mystery pop star. I don’t remember this at all but what are the chances that said pop star was Peter Andre?!

Back to the music and we now get “Don’t Stop Movin’” by Livin’ Joy. Nothing to do with the chart topper by S Club from 2001, this was the follow up to the act’s somewhat surprising No 1 from the previous year “Dreamer”. This was a case of some things change, some things stay the same as the band had a new singer in the extravagantly named Tameko Star replacing original vocalist Janice Robinson but their sound on this new song was exactly the same as previously. Robinson herself had superseded Penny Ford as the vocalist with Snap! as the Eurodance /Italo House merry-go-round twirled throughout the 90s. She would continue a career in music post Livin’ Joy supporting the likes of Tina Turner on tour before eventually ending up as a contestant on X Factor in 2018. No, really. Look…

Anyway, Janice’s departure didn’t stop the flow of hits as “Don’t Stop Movin’” went Top 5 and was followed by another three UK chart entries. As I hadn’t liked “Dreamer” much, it will surprise nobody (including myself) that its follow up did little for me either. It was all a bit too frantic and energetic and listening to it now, it reminds me of “Don’t Give Me Your Life” by Alex Party but guess what? The two Italian brothers in Livin’ Joy were also members of Alex Party! Clearly, the notion of having two creative ideas as opposed to one they kept recycling was beyond these people!

It’s the theme tune to the biggest movie of the year according to Mark Owen now as “Theme From Mission: Impossible“ by Larry Mullen and Adam Clayton is up to No 7. So, was it the biggest movie of 1996? Well, depends on what you mean by ‘biggest’ I guess. Seeing as the film hadn’t even been released in the UK by this point, Owen was either referring to its reception in the US where it opened in the May or the hype that was surrounding it. Going by gross box office receipts though, no it wasn’t the biggest film of the year – that was Independence Day. It wasn’t even second in that list as it trailed in third after disaster movie Twister. Maybe it got the best reviews then? Probably not. Reviews ranged from mixed to positive with aggregator Rotten Tomatoes giving it an average of 6/10. Indeed, the cast of the original 60s TV series were also unimpressed with one actor leaving the cinema before the film ended. It did, however, open in a then record 3,012 theatres in America becoming the first film to break the 3,000 mark. It also broke the record for the biggest receipts for a film opening on a Wednesday with $11.8 million.

The soundtrack was also a success selling half a million copies in the US. Looking at the track listing for the album, it’s not a bad collection at all featuring contributions from The Cranberries, Massive Attack, Pulp, Skunk Anansie, Longpigs, Cast and of course the reworked theme tune. However, only the Clayton and Mullen treatment and The Cranberries from those names above actually feature in the film.

To get us in the mood for the much heralded Paul Weller double live performance later in the show, here are mod revivalists Ocean Colour Scene as his warm up act. Too harsh? Probably. Were/are they a ‘mod’ band? I don’t think so really but having turned around their initially failing career thanks to a leg up from Weller whom invited them to tour with him in 1993, the lazy labels coming their way from the music press were inevitable. That connection continued when guitarist Steve Craddock and singer Simon Fowler were invited to contribute to Weller’s “Wildwood” album when the whole ‘Modfather’ tag started to appear. Having seen Ocean Colour Scene live just last month, I couldn’t detect much of a ‘mod’ vibe coming from them or their music though there were plenty of Weller style haircuts on middle aged men in the audience.

As for being Weller’s warm up act here, that’s also unfair as the band were becoming firmly established in their own right by this point. This track, “The Day We Caught The Train” – was their third consecutive hit single (and joint biggest of their career) when it debuted on the chart at No 4. My accusation is also undermined by the presence of Weller himself self on piano in this performance so he would have effectively been supporting himself which doesn’t quite work*. As we shall see with Weller later, the vocals here are live. In fact was the whole show meant to be live performances? Tameko Star could have been for Livin’ Joy earlier. Peter Andre? Surely not?

*Having said that, I once saw Haircut 100 at Cadogan Hall and Nick Heyward was his own support act.

As for “The Day We Caught The Train”, this is probably my favourite OCS tune (did people really refer to them in abbreviated form like OMD?) but why didn’t they do the “We’ve got the whole wide world” line as the song comes out of the middle eight? Maybe because it has a definite sound effect over it on the recorded version and they were doing this live? What was the song about? It seems to have been inspired by the 1979 film Quadrophenia with lyrics like “riding the coast” referring to Mods riding their Lambretta scooters down to Brighton whilst the song’s protagonist Jimmy surely refers to the film’s lead character Jimmy Cooper played by Phil Daniels. There’s even a picture of a scooter in the cover of the single. So they were mods after all!

Right, is anyone having it that this was a live satellite link up with Celine Dion? It reeks of being pre-recorded to me. The fact that there’s no actual conversation between her and Mark Owen suggests that the whole thing is staged. A quick search of the internet shows me that Celine did indeed play Quebec for two nights in June 1996 but on the 7th and 8th of that month. Given that this TOTP was broadcast on the 14th, even allowing for the fact that it might have been recorded the day before, there’s no way that link up was live. Celine didn’t play a live concert on the 14th and she was in Sydney not Quebec on the 13th. Pure hokum. Fair play though to Celine for playing along with it and doing a little intro as if she was talking to Owen. Not good enough though – just like your song “Because You Loved Me”.

Right, what’s this nonsense? A horrible, hackneyed dance tune based around the chorus of Blur’s “Girls & Boys”? Oh brilliant! Just what we all needed and wanted I’m sure. Pianoman was actually Bradford producer James Sammon who worked with the likes of Ian Brown, Craig David and…erm…Donna Air whilst still finding the time to be a pirate radio DJ and run a record shop. His only hit under the moniker of Pianoman (he had others, didn’t they all?) was “Blurred”. Confusingly, the TOTP caption says it was originally a hit in March 1994 but I’m guessing that refers to the Blur track itself as I can’t find any record of an official release for “Blurred” other than this one in 1996 though Wikipedia tells me it was a hit in Ibiza in 1995 – a ‘hit’ presumably means it went down a storm on the dance floors of nightclubs.

Even back in the mid 90s this must have sounded dated – the production feels very start of the decade to me albeit the track is based around a song that didn’t even exist then. Why did they need a rapper on it to shout the inane, generic phrase “Move to the groove” or that computerised voice that says “One, two, three” and “Breakdown”?! The guy on keyboards in the red Adidas T-shirt looks like the geekier, younger brother of Graham Coxon (if indeed it is possible to look geekier than the Blur guitarist). The whole thing is just nasty but enough people bought it to send it to No 6 in the charts. Sammon tried to repeat the trick by sampling Belinda Carlisle’s “Live Your Life Be Free” for the follow up but thankfully the British public didn’t fall for this nonsense a second time.

After the Top 10 rundown, as ever, we get to the No 1 but it isn’t the usual climax of the show. No. We still have those two live performances by Paul Weller to come so it’s a bit of a false ending and I’m not sure it worked. From its very beginnings, TOTP always ended with the No 1 record; it was the natural apex of a chart based show; it made sense. What didn’t make sense was having two more songs after the chart topper one of which had already been a hit a year before, live version or not. If this was a new direction for the show, it didn’t feel properly thought through.

Anyway, let’s deal with that No 1 which is the Fugees for a second week with “Killing Me Softly”. With sales of over 350,000 copies in just two weeks, it was always going to stay at No 1 but nobody surely foresaw the phenomenon it would become, not even the band’s record company Sony who would have to actively withdraw it from sale when it was still at No 2 into August to allow follow up single “Ready Or Not” to be released unimpeded.

The song was a No 1 US hit for Roberta Flack in 1973 and was originally recorded by Lori Lieberman in 1972 after she collaborated on the lyrics with Norman Gimbel. Then came the all conquering take on it by Fugees but there exists out there another version which is both dreadful and entertaining at the same time…

There’s one more piece of housekeeping to be discharged before the Weller double bill and it’s the details of that chance to meet and hang out with a mystery pop star that may involve foreign travel. Ooooh! I love the fact that the BBC felt the need to put the ‘Lines are now closed’ caption up for a competition that happened 28 years ago! Also, the price of the phone call to enter was 20p!

Finally Paul Weller is on stage and he kicks off with “The Changingman”, the second single from his 1995 album “Stanley Road”. Quite why I’m not sure. It seems an incongruous choice for a music show that is based around the current chart. Presumably I’ll have reviewed this when it was initially a hit. I wonder what I said about it. If you’re wondering too, well, here’s the link to the relevant post:

TOTP 04 MAY 1995

Here’s the answer to that competition question which Weller helpfully announces. “Peacock Suit” was the lead single to his fourth studio album “Heavy Soul” but it didn’t actually get released until the 5th August, nearly two months after this performance. “Heavy Soul” itself wouldn’t appear until June 1997! Why the long gap? I’ve no idea – all I know is that it pissed off both Weller fans and record shop employees when the former would try and buy the record only to be told by the latter that it wasn’t out yet. Cue lots of “It must be, it was on Top of the Pops last night” type comments. Listening to “The Changingman” and “Peacock Suit” back to back, I’m struck by how similar they sound. That’s not a criticism – they’re both decent enough tunes – but an observation. In the case of the latter, just as Ocean Colour Scene were similarly inspired earlier, it’s surely about those pesky, preening mods again isn’t it? The single would debut and peak at No 5 when it was finally released making it not only Weller’s highest charting solo hit ever but also his biggest since “You’re The Best Thing” achieved the same position as part of the “Groovin’” EP in 1984.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Peter Andre featuring Bubbler Ranx	Mysterious Girl	Never
2	Livin’ Joy	Don’t Stop Movin’	Nah
3	Larry Mullen and Adam Clayton	Theme From Mission: Impossible	Nope
4	Ocean Colour Scene	The Day We Caught The Train	No but maybe should have
5	Celine Dion	Because You Loved Me	As if
6	Pianoman	Blurred	No chance
7	Fugees	Killing Me Softly	No but my wife had The Score album it was from
8	Paul Weller	The Changingman	No but I had the Stanley Road album it was from
9	Paul Weller	Peacock Suit	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/m0022v3w/top-of-the-pops-14061996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 30 MAY 1996

Posted on September 4, 2024 by 80stastic

Those sneaky BBC4 schedulers have done me dirty by suddenly announcing with a day’s notice that the 1996 TOTP repeats are back. I thought I had at least another week to knock out this last remaining episode for review before they’d start again! Serves me right for dragging my feet I guess. Sadly, as well as being my favourite word, procrastination is also my middle name.

Before I crack on with this particular show, I should address the fact that we’ve missed one. The 23rd May episode was not repeated with the general consensus being that it was for reasons of sensitivity. One of the artists featured was the actor John Alford who is best known for his roles in Grange Hill and London’s Burning. Alford was giving this soap star turned pop star malarkey a go – well, it had worked for loads of others before him including another ex Grange Hill pupil in Sean Maguire who, by massive coincidence, was also on the same show. Alford managed three UK chart hits in 1996 (all cover versions obviously) but subsequently disappeared after his only album tanked when peaking at No 171. In later years he has had several run ins with the law and is currently awaiting trial for alleged sex offences involving a girl aged under 16 hence the decision not to air the show he featured on presumably. I’ve had a look at the rest of the running order for that particular episode and there is little chance of FOMO raising its head in my personal opinion. In addition to the aforementioned Alford and Maguire, most of the other hits on that week we’d already seen before including those by Robert Miles, Black Grape, Tony Rich Project, Gina G and, unbelievably, Mark Morrison (again!). We did miss out on SWV and Dodgy but I can live with that.

Tonight’s hosts are funny men Jack Dee and the late Jeremy Hardy who do the whole show as if they were BBC presenters from the 50s which is fairly amusing for most of the time. We open with, I read to my astonishment when researching them, the best-selling boy band of all time!! What?! The Backstreet Boys?! That’s what Wikipedia tells me, yes. It also says that they are the first group since Led Zeppelin to have their first ten albums reach the Top 10 on the US charts. OK, so there are a couple of things to unpack here before we go any further. Firstly, the Backstreet Boys have made ten albums?! Surely not! I’m checking their discography. Wait there…

…they have! Although, one of them is a Christmas album and didn’t make the Top 10 in America. Maybe that claim included Greatest Hits compilations? Secondly, the biggest selling boy band of all time? What about New Kids On The Block or Take That or One Direction? Or even one of those K-pop groups? And what criteria are we using to define boy band? Were The Beatles* a boy band or The Jackson 5? If they qualify the. Surely they outsold Backstreet Boys?

*Obviously they weren’t but I’m playing Devil’s Advocate here

Whatever the truth behind the claim, their sales certainly didn’t start out like that. Not in the UK anyway. Their first two singles releases failed to make the Top 40 over here (though both were subsequently rereleased and became hits). Somehow the UK were initially impervious to the five piece’s charms but we finally caved when third single “Get Down (You’re The One For Me)” made it to No 14. Quite why though remains a mystery to me as it’s awful, useless, just no good. Based around that annoying swing beat riff that was prevalent about a year before and used on hits by the likes of MN8 and Montell Jordan with hackneyed, pseudo sexual lyrics, it truly stank the place out. They weren’t even that good looking were they? Maybe the pretty boy one with blonde hair but the rest? What did I know though. Their next thirteen singles went Top 10 in the UK including a No 1, two No 2s and four No 3s. It seemed that we really were getting down with the Backstreet Boys and they were indeed the ones for us.

From a boy band to a collaboration that was rather more out of left field albeit that one of the collaborators was about to become so successful that a crossover into the mainstream would be inevitable. Jamiroquai were an established chart act by this point with two hit albums and a readily identifiable sound to their name. They also had Jay Kay as their frontman who was providing the gossip columns with material as he embraced the pop star lifestyle. In 1996, their third album “Travelling Without Moving” was released and would go on to sell eight million copies worldwide, four times more than the sales of their first two combined. It also generated their three highest charting singles to date in “Virtual Insanity” (No 3), “Cosmic Girl” (No 6) and “Alright” (No 6). Before all of those though came “Do U Know Where You’re Coming From”. This was a joint project with jungle pioneer M–Beat and you might be forgiven for thinking that this was a revamp of the similarly titled Diana Ross hit “Theme From Mahogany (Do You Know Where You’re Going To)” given that M-Beat’s last hit had been a cover of another female soul singer – Anita Baker’s “Sweet Love”. It wasn’t (thank God!). What it was though, to my ears, was a track that was trying to tick too many musical boxes but ended up being a confused, mess of a song. I think there might be a decent tune in there somewhere but all those shuffling, jungle breakbeats just kept fracturing any cohesiveness it might have had.

The single did get to No 12 and was included as an extra track on “Travelling Without Moving” (albeit with a very slight title change). M-Beat (aka Marlon Hart) would not have any further UK chart hits though he did produce remixes for Soul II Soul and Roy Davis Jr. who would have minor hits with them in the late 90s. Hart himself would become homeless not long after this TOTP appearance before taking IT consultancy positions for McLaren F1 and Lloyds Bank and finally returning to music in 2022. So he did know where he was coming from after all!

Well, this is shaping up to be a show of extremes. We move from a jungle/acid jazz-funk mash up to some hard rock courtesy of Metallica. A Top 10 hit pretty much everywhere, “Until It Sleeps” was the lead single from new album “Load”. It’ll come as no surprise to anyone who’s taken even a passing interest in my blog previously that I‘m not the biggest Metallica fan. I can acknowledge the power of “Enter Sandman” but that’s the extent of my appreciation. Consequently, this track didn’t and doesn’t make my musical radar bleep.

Its video is more interesting to me though. It looks like the set of a horror movie or perhaps the darker moments of Stranger Things most of the time but its imagery is apparently inspired by the work of 15th century Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch, specifically The Garden Of Earthly Delights, Haywain and Ecce Homo. I can’t say that I’m that familiar with Bosch’s work but here’s @TOTPFacts with the visual evidence:

The video for “Until It Sleeps” was inspired by the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. This bit has a basic similarity to “Ecce Homo”, for example. #TOTP pic.twitter.com/ySF60N1qPw
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) August 9, 2024

And this human-eating monster is a nod to “The Garden of Earthly Delights” #TOTP pic.twitter.com/gW5BapAz4t
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) August 9, 2024

From high art to a rancid fart of a song. That dreadful moment of the 90s is upon us – it’s time for Peter Andre and “Mysterious Girl”. Brace yourselves everyone, we’re going in! It seems an odd concept to grasp now but there was a time when Peter Andre wasn’t a part of our lives, always there in the cultural milieu, grifting away at his latest cash grab and attempting to give himself a sheen of relevance and currency. So embedded is he in our society that in the 2007 British comedy film Grow Your Own starring Eddie Marsan, at one point in its story about locals on an allotment reacting angrily when some refugees are given plots on it, one character announces “You know who I blame? Peter Andre!”.

Back in 1996 though, he was only known for one minor hit single in the UK called…erm… “Only One”. A concerted media campaign targeting teen magazines though raised his profile enough to put out a follow up. “Mysterious Girl” was actually a rerelease having peaked at No 53 in September 1995. We all dodged a bullet then but when the gun was reloaded for a second time we were hit right between the eyes with both barrels. This horrible, cod reggae, Inner Circle rip off would spend eleven consecutive weeks in the UK Top 10 mainly skittering between Nos 2 and 3. Thankfully it never made it to the top of the charts though even that silver lining would become a black cloud burst in 2004 when it got to No 1 after a concerted campaign by DJ Chris Moyles. Gee, thanks Chris. I was working in the Our Price store in Stockport in 1996 and we sold this single over and over and over again. When we’d finished doing that, we sold it some more and every time I did, the questions running around my head were “What am I doing with my life? How did it come to this?”. I’d had similar thoughts when I’d been the stand in Father Christmas in Debenhams seven years earlier whilst sat in Santa’s Grotto surrounded by soft toy reindeers and nodding penguins. Peter Andre – so much to blame him for.

It’s an Antipodean double whammy as we go from an Australian dope in Peter Andre to a song called “Australia” that’s pretty dope – I believe that can also mean ‘good’ in the modern vernacular*.

*God, I sound like the two stuffy characters Jeremy Hardy and Jack Dee are using to present the show!

Occupants of the revived ‘album’ slot are Manic Street Preachers and a track from their “Everything Must Go” album that would also turn out to be the fourth and final single released from it when it made No 7 in the charts in the December of 1996. The album had only been out for ten days at this point and with it going straight in at No 2, a place on the BBC’s flagship music show was not only deemed appropriate but also assured and deserved. Interestingly, the band shunned the chance to preview their next single, the album’s title track, that would hit the shops in July and instead opted for this song that was written as a metaphor for getting as far away from the UK and its tabloid press as possible in the wake of band member Richey Edwards’ disappearance the previous year. Also of note in this performance is the nerdy look of James Dean Bradfield including spectacles and a neat and tidy haircut. Quite the change from those early “Generation Terrorists” era TOTP appearances.

I’d seen the Manics support Oasis* at their Maine Road gigs a month before this show aired and would see them headline their own show about a year afterwards. I also had the album – I was becoming quite the fan though what I was not a fan of was the cardboard sleeves they insisted releasing their singles in at this time. Working in a record shop as I was, they were a pain to display.

*No, I didn’t get involved in the frankly shameful Oasis reunion gigs tickets fiasco. I saw them when they were at the top of their game and relevant – I have no desire to revisit the money grabbing so and so’s they seem to have become nearly thirty years later.

If it’s time for Celine Dion then it must also be time for a big, heart string pulling ballad and we do indeed get both these outcomes with “Because You Loved Me”. Released as the second single from her “Falling Into You” album, it was also included on the soundtrack to the film Up Close And Personal starring Robert Redford and Michelle Pfeiffer. I’ve never seen this film before but reading the plot synopsis on Wikipedia, I don’t think I’ll be seeking it out for a viewing anytime soon. A rather stodgy sounding news drama/romance that bore no resemblance to the book on which it was based? No, I’m alright thanks. Pfeiffer was making a habit though of starring in films that had a huge big hit single featured in them. Just a few months before, Coolio had conquered the globe with his Stevie Wonder channeling “Gangsta Paradise” from Dangerous Minds.

As for “Because You Loved Me”, it’s all pretty laboured and predictable to my ears but was clearly aural nectar for lots of other people’s lugholes as it went to No 1 in America and won a Grammy and was nominated for an Academy Award. And to think we’re still 18 months away from her even bigger film ballad “My Heart Will Go On” from Titanic. Gulp!

Having finally scored themselves a massive hit by rereleasing their debut single “Lifted”, the Lighthouse Family have shone their spotlight onto another earlier release to secure themselves a follow up. As well, as being the title track of their debut album, “Ocean Drive” was also their second ever single and their first ever Top 40 hit when it peaked at No 34 in October ‘95. Could the old rerelease strategy work for a second time? Of course it could and not even the fact that “Ocean Drive” was almost identical to “Lifted” would stop people buying it for a second time. Harsh? Possibly but almost certainly accurate. Yes, this was more of that radio friendly, lilting groove, smooth vocal, easy listening soul/pop that they made their name on. And why not? You didn’t have to buy or listen to it if it didn’t float your boat did you eh?

So where is Ocean Drive? Well, there’s a mile long road in the South Beach neighbourhood of Miami Beach, Florida which bears that name and is famous for its Art Deco hotels, restaurants and bars. So, that must be what inspired the song then? Well, according to Wikipedia, it wasn’t as it’s about a road in the UK. A quick search of the internet reveals that there is indeed an Ocean Drive and it’s not that far from me in Hull being located in a village in the East Riding of Yorkshire called Newport. There might not be any Art Deco buildings there but google maps shows me that there is a pub called the Crown & Anchor, one called The Jolly Sailor Inn and a fish and chip shop called Johnny Haddocks so Ocean Drive kind of fits the nautical theme. Mr and Mrs Lighthouse (as name checked by Dee and Hardy in their intro) would fit right in.

After being on the show as an ‘exclusive’ two weeks prior, Bryan Adams is back again as his single “The Only Thing That Looks Good On Me Is You” has blasted into the charts at No 6. There’s something different about this second performance though that I can’t quite put my finger on…oh yeah, that’s it…Bry’s missing a member from his band. Where’s the guitarist that was standing on his left from the last time? In an attempt to fill the space, they’ve moved the keyboard player to the front of the stage but he’s no substitute for standing back to back with Bryan and rocking out like his guitarist did. Also, the drummer looks very different. On the first appearance the guy behind the kit had huge Afro hair but that’s all gone this time around. Is it the same guy? Was he just wearing a wig the first time? If it was the latter, he clearly decided to ignore the advice of the title of the track he was drumming on and ditched it.

Listening back to this, is it me or is there a slight whiff of U2 about some of the guitar work as it comes out of the chorus? No? Nothing like The Edge? How about Bry’s bass player then? If you squint your eyes does he look a bit like Adam Clayton? OK, you got me. All this talk of drummers, Adam Clayton and U2 is me trying to tee up the show’s play out tune but more of that later. First, we have a new No 1 to deal with…

And so after weeks of anticipation and a flurry of football songs in the charts that weren’t that football song, it’s finally here and it’s gone straight in at No 1. As with Peter Andre, it’s hard to recall now that there was a time when “Three Lions (It’s Coming Home)” wasn’t a part of the national psyche, wasn’t trotted out every time England played in a football tournament and wasn’t sung on the terraces. A time when the subject of a song about the England football team would instantly bring to mind New Order’s “World In Motion” or possibly “Back Home” from 1970. All of this was trampled into the turf by Baddiel, Skinner and the Lightning Seeds in 1996. Now bearing in mind that Euro 96 hadn’t even started by this point, the promotion surrounding the release of the single must have been pretty extensive to have propelled it straight to the top of the charts on week one. Despite working in a record shop at the time, I can’t recall if there was a massive buzz around the song before a ball had been kicked in anger but we must have sold loads of it in that first week. After debuting at the very top of the charts, the following month saw it mostly at No 2 with a solitary week at No 4 before returning to No 1, with sales no doubt fuelled by the England team progressing to the semi-finals. We all know what fate befell them there sadly. That month gap between the two occasions that “Three Lions” was the UK’s best selling single saw “Killing Me Softly” by Fugees at No 1. It dropped a place as Euro 96 came to its climax and then leapfrogged back to the top for another week after it had finished. This meant that these two singles spent seven weeks swapping the No 1 position between them. There’s another less talked about twist of trivia that bonded the two together acts together and it really is quite bizarre – the single that the Lightning Seeds released before “Three Lions” was a song called “Ready Or Not” whilst the single that the Fugees released after “Killing Me Softly” was a song called…yep…”Ready Or Not”. What are the chances eh?

Quite why the FA approached Ian Broudie of the Lightning Seeds to write a song for the tournament I’m not sure but Broudie’s decision to get Frank Skinner and David Baddiel involved made perfect sense (ooh, see what I did there? ‘Perfect’ and ‘Sense’? Oh never mind!) what with the duo having recently finished the third and final series of Fantasy Football League for the BBC. Both comedians were by now also synonymous with the beautiful game with Skinner professing his love of WBA and Baddiel a fellow fan of my beloved Chelsea.

Like everybody in the country it seemed, I got caught up with the feel good factor that the football was bringing and “Three Lions” seemed a perfectly good soundtrack to that period. However, its repeated appearance at every football tournament since has made it almost unlistenable now. They really did flog it to death. An updated version with changed lyrics went to No 1 two years later for the 1998 World Cup and it topped the charts again as England reached the semi final in 2018 in the same competition. As far as I can tell, the only tournaments that England qualified for since the song was originally released when “Three Lions” hasn’t featured in the charts were the 2000 and 2004 Euros. My research tells me that Fat Les’s “Jerusalem” and a version of “All Together Now” were the predominant England songs for those years respectively.

The play out track is “Theme From Mission: Impossible” by Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jnr. Yes, here’s the reason for my cack handed referencing of the two members of the aforementioned U2 earlier in the post. The very first movie of the Mission: Impossible franchise was released this year and nearly 30 years later it is still going, still with Tom Cruise as the star and with the most recent outing Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One (the seventh film so far) having been released in 2023. I caught the first film at the cinema in Stockport as the Our Price store there where I was working had an arrangement with the local cinema to supply them with CDs to play in the foyer. It might even have been a special preview screening that I attended as I seem to remember coming out with a press pack of still photos etc. I think I enjoyed it but I’m not sure that I’ve watched any of the sequels in their entirety. I recall watching the original 60s TV series as a small child and being confused by Leonard Nimoy being in it but not being dressed as Mr Spock!

I’m guessing that Adam and Larry were approached to record the movie’s theme tune off the back of U2’s wildly successful contribution to the previous year’s Batman Forever film. They don’t muck about with it too much though they’ve clearly danced it up a bit and explore that further with a number of remixes on the 12” and extra tracks on the CD single. At the end of the day though, it all pales in comparison to the iconic original which kind of negates the whole thing. Competing with its composer Lalo Schifrin really did prove to be an impossible mission.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Backstreet Boys	Get Down (You’re The One For Me)	As if
2	Jamiroquai / M-Beat	Do U Know Where You’re Coming From	No
3	Metallica	Until It Sleeps	I did not
4	Peter Andre	Mysterious Girl	Sir! You insult me with your impertinence!
5	Manic Street Preachers	Australia	No but I had the album
6	Celine Dion	Because You Loved Me	Never
7	Lighthouse Family	Ocean Drive	Nope
8	Bryan Adams	The Only Thing That Looks Good On Me Is You	Negative
9	Baddiel, Skinner and the Lightning Seeds	Three Lions (It’s Coming Home)	Nah
10	Theme From Mission: Impossible”	Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jnr	Another 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/m0021s8z/top-of-the-pops-30051996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 14 MAR 1996

Posted on June 18, 2024 by 80stastic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001zyvf/top-of-the-pops-14031996?seriesId=unsliced

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