Robbie Williams

TOTP 16 JAN 1998

Posted on by 80stastic

It’s the middle of January 1998 and two days before this TOTP aired on the BBC, Channel 4 broadcast the 2000th edition of their soap opera Brookside. I don’t think I was still watching it by this point but, in a cards on the table moment, I can reveal that I have been watching the repeats being shown on STV. From the very start in 1982. We’re up to 1988 now (that’s nearly 650 episodes) and yes, like you, I am asking myself “What am I doing with my life?”. Still, there’s worse things you could do than watch some episodes of a now defunct soap. Or indeed, spend years watching repeats of old pop music shows and then even longer writing up reviews of each one. Oh God – what am I doing with my life?! Oh well, it is what it is and what this TOTP is (or was) we need to find out…

Jayne ‘The Smirk’ Middlemiss is our host and we start with a band who were meant to lead us out of the Britpop years and into…well, a post-Britpop era I guess. Rialto were formed from the ashes of indie rockers Kinky Machine. Retaining their record label (EastWest Records) but not their name and adding some new members, the new look band courted the favour and patronage of the music press and were predicted a hugely successful future by Melody Maker for their epic, soundscape songs that were dripping with atmosphere. Somehow it didn’t quite turn out like that though. Being dropped by their record label shortly before their much anticipated debut album was about to be released can’t have been good for confidence in the band either internally or externally. According to vocalist Louis Eliot, it was just a case of being in the wrong place at the time. EastWest had a change of personnel and sacked their A&R man which led to the band being let go. Their album was released by China Records (home of Art Of Noise, Morcheeba and The Levellers) but in an extraordinary stroke of bad luck, China were bought out by EastWest and Rialto were dropped again.

I’m getting ahead of myself though. Reactions to the album were generally positive but in that ‘build ‘em up, knock ‘em down’ attitude so prevalent in the UK press, some reviewers decided to bury the hatchet right between the band’s collective shoulder blades. It made a reasonable stab at the charts though peaking at No 21 no doubt helped by the respectable performance of this single “Untouchable” (No 20). A sweeping, cinematic track that had echoes of a John Barry TV or movie theme (The Persuaders comes to mind), this was a favourite of mine and my wife’s and a purchase was duly made. We were so taken with the band that we had tickets to see them at The Manchester Academy but I was ill on the night of the gig and we missed them. Their success in the UK was dwarfed by that in South Korea where they even outsold Celine Dion and their album went to No 1 but a trip to South East Asia to catch them live seemed a bit over the top (and I’d been to China for just seven days the year before!). A second album arrived in 2001 but by then the writing was in the wall and Rialto split. Eliot pursued a brief solo career but is currently a permanent member of Grace Jones’s touring band. And then, out of the blue, Rialto were back in 2023 playing festivals and with a new album released on the legendary indie label Fierce Panda in April this year. Maybe I’ll get to see them play live after all.

Next is Robbie Williams whose song “Angels” is continuing its undulating chart journey and is back up to No 6 this week. It would alternate between rising and falling for ten of the twelve weeks it remained inside the Top 10. Quite extraordinary. Perhaps in order to build Robbie some credibility and for him to be seen as a serious artist, this time he’s doing the song live and acoustic (or ‘unplugged’ as we said in the 90s). Whether this gave him that credibility is not for me to surmise but it certainly imbued him with some confidence – you can see it all over his face. It could be his famous bravado of course.

P.S. Why was Louis Theroux playing guitar in this performance?

In many ways, KC And The Sunshine Band’s UK legacy is in complete contrast to its US counterpart. In America, they racked up five No 1s and two No 2s whereas over here, their only chart topper was the sickeningly upbeat “Give It Up” which curiously only made No 18 over the water. Of those American No 1s, only two translated into massive hits over here. “Please Don’t Go” was a No 3 in the UK whilst “That’s The Way (I Like It)” made it to No 4. Of those other massive US hits, none got higher than No 21 over here. There must have been something about those two transatlantic hits as both would become huge all over again in the 80s and 90s. KWS took “Please Don’t Go” all the way to No 1 in 1992 whilst Dead Or Alive’s first hit wasn’t “You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)” but their Hi-NRG version of “That’s The Way (I Like It)” from 1984. And then there’s this cover of it by Clock. Just…just…WHY?! Well, for the money obviously as it can’t have been for reasons of artistic integrity can it?! I think this lot were possibly the most shameful and shameless of all those 90s dance acts, stealing a living by pinching other people’s songs and putting a nasty dance backing track to them. The Four Seasons, Hot Chocolate, Tag Team and even Harold Faltermeyer had received the Clock treatment and now even KC And The Sunshine Band weren’t safe from Clock’s hands. This one though didn’t even seem to have that nasty 90s sheen to it as it was a fairly straight run through of the original.

The only good news is that time was ticking on Clock. They would only have two more UK chart hits before their spring was sprung one of which was yet another cover – this time of The Jacksons’ “Blame It On The Boogie” which itself had already been covered by heinous boy band Big Fun in 1989. None of this nonsense was the way I liked it.

It’s the Lighthouse Family up next with another performance of their hit “High”. I can’t think of a single thing to say about this one having only just commented on it in the previous post. However…having watched their appearance back, there’s something odd going on with the studio audience or more specifically one member of it. If you go to 3:20 in on the clip YouTube clip below, look at the young girl in a patterned top in the forefront of the screen. She seems to be distracted by something or someone out of shot and the look on her face is one of bewilderment with perhaps a hint of disgust. What was going on there? It wasn’t a reaction I’d have expected whilst watching the blandly inoffensive Lighthouse Family!

Early 1998 saw an Oasis milestone occur that was actually more like a line drawn in the sand in terms of the band’s history. “All Around The World” wasn’t just the third single released from the “Be Here Now” album nor the fourth of eight No 1s that they clocked up. No, it was their last release on Creation Records and the last to feature founding members Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs and Paul ‘Guigsy’ McGuigan. It was the end of an era and some might say that things were never the same again. Bonehead and Guigsy would both leave the band within two weeks of each other in the Summer of 1999 after completing preliminary recording sessions for fourth album “Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants”. Said album would appear in 2000 on the band’s own label Big Brother after the dissolution of Creation by Alan McGee in December of 1999.

As for “All Around The World”, this was a track written by Noel Gallagher in the band’s very early pre-record deal days which he infamously said he would leave recording until the third Oasis album. He was true to his word and it was the tenth track on “Be Here Now” clocking in at a mighty 9:20 in length making it the longest track the band had ever recorded. I was always bemused that given its size and stature, it wasn’t the last track in the album with it being trailed by “It’s Gettin’ Better (Man!!)” but there is a two minute instrumental reprise of “All Around The World” to close the album in fairness. It also marks the point at which the band were most open about vaunting their Beatles influences. Not content to try and rewrite “Hey Jude”, the video that went with it was an obvious steal from the Fab Four’s Yellow Submarine film. We don’t get to see that here though and nor do we get a studio performance but, as the personal VT message from the band says, a clip of them playing it live at the old GMEX venue in Manchester as part of the Be Here Now tour which had taken the band to America for its next leg hence their absence tonight. The live version sounds more powerful than the single release and, of course, there’s Liam’s obligatory over pronunciation of the word ‘shine’ as ‘she-iiiiine’. It got me wondering how many of their song has lyrics which feature that word. A quick search of the internet found this lot:

Rock N Roll Star – “I live my life for the stars that shine”

Cigarettes’ and Alcohol – “You could wait for a lifetime to spend your days in the sunshine”

Slide Away – “Let me be the one who shines with you”

Up in the Sky – “I heard that the shine’s gone out of your life.”

Some Might Say – “Some might say that sunshine follows thunder” / “Go and tell it to the man who cannot shine”

Hello – “Cos the sun don’t shine”

All Around the World – “These are crazy days but they make me shine”

Acquiesce – “I only wanna see the light that shines behind your eyes”

Magic Pie – “My star will shine”

Who Feels Love – “Thank you for the sun, the one that shines on every one who feels love”

The Hindu Times – “You’re my sunshine you’re my rain” / “There’s a light that shines on, shines on me”

Stop Crying Your Heart Out – “May your smile shine on”

She is Love – “When the sunshine beckons to ya”

Born on a Different Cloud – “You’re my sun and you’re gonna shine”

The Importance of Being Idle – “As long as there’s a bed beneath the stars that shine”

A Bell Will Ring – “The sun will shine on you again”

Bag It Up – “Gold and silver and sunshine is rising up”

Soldier On – “Shine a light for me tonight”

Boy with the Blues – “Remember to shine”

Cloudburst – “Downtown the moon is shining”

One Way Road – “And are we gonna see the heavens shine”

Round Are Way – “Round are way the sun shines bright”

Flashbax – “There shines a light, like dynamite”

Idler’s Dream – “The light that’s shining through your eyes of gold”

Shout It Out Loud – “I hope the light shines on we as one”

“Shiiiiiine on”!

They’ve finally done it! It’s taken nine weeks of which two saw them going down the charts and three as a non-mover but All Saints are at No 1 with “Never Ever”. They’re in the studio to celebrate their achievement which includes a fairly inane chat with Jayne Middlemiss before they deliver what seems to be a live vocal performance judging by the a cappella bit at the end.

Listening to those spoken word lyrics, some of them don’t seem to make any sense. For example:

“A few questions that I need to know”

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Shaznay Lewis / Robert Jazayeri / Sean Prescott Mather
Never Ever lyrics © Mca Music Ltd., Stl Songs Limited, Rickidy Raw Prod., Inc.

Surely that should be answers not ‘questions’? Then there’s this:

“I need to know what I’ve done wrong and how long it’s been going on”

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Shaznay Lewis / Robert Jazayeri / Sean Prescott Mather
Never Ever lyrics © Mca Music Ltd., Stl Songs Limited, Rickidy Raw Prod., Inc.

That doesn’t quite ring true. Shouldn’t it be “I need to know what you’ve done wrong”?

Then there’s the whole confusion over how to pronounce the letter ‘Z’ – is it ‘zee’ or ‘zed’ as both are used here. All very bewildering. Also bewildering is how many times the band have been on the show to perform “Never Ever”. If you think this must be the last as this was the song’s only week at No 1, you’re wrong. They’re on again in a couple of repeats!

After weeks of finishing the show with the No 1 record, suddenly we’ve reverted to having a play out hit. Was this a temporary thing or will it be here to stay? Anyway, there was clearly a KC And The Sunshine Band mini revival going on in January 1998 as after Clock earlier, here’s another hit based on one of their tunes. For “That’s The Way (I Like It)” read “Get Down Tonight” but with a 90s house beat applied to it and a new title – “Bamboogie”. Who was responsible for this crud? A producer called Andrew Livingstone who created the vehicle Bamboo to peddle this crap. I’m guessing it’s high chart entry at No 2 was taking advantage of the post Christmas sales slump. Thank God for those people who bought the 557 extra copies of “Never Ever” to keep “Bamboogie” from being No 1! A slender but important victory. You just knew this was going to be awful by its vintage cartoon video which stank of “this’ll do”. See also Jive Bunny And The Mastermixers and the Outhere Brothers.

I’m guessing that KC And The Sunshine Band’s record label will have taken advantage of this renewed interest in their artist and released a Best Of album?

*checks KC’s discography*

Yes they did and it sold enough copies to be granted silver status. I should think so too. In any case, if I wanted a song with “Bamboogie” in the title then I would certainly choose this one over that Bamboo shite.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1Rialto UntouchableYES!!!
2Robbie Williams AngelsNo but I had a promo copy of the album
3ClockThat’s The Way ( I Like It)”Of course not
4Lighthouse FamilyHighNah
5Oasis All AroundThe WorldNo, I’d stopped buying their singles by this point
6All Saints Never EverI didn’t
7BambooBamboogieNever

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/m002dfcd/top-of-the-pops-16011998?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 19 DEC 1997

Posted on by 80stastic

Christmas is nearly upon us in the world of BBC4’s TOTP repeats and, unlike nowadays, there is much talk of who will be this year’s festive No 1. Some of the contenders in the race were:

  • The Teletubbies – “Teletubbies Say ‘Eh-Oh’”
  • Various Artists – “Perfect Day”
  • Spice Girls – “Too Much”
  • Robbie Williams – “Angels”
  • Chicken Shed Theatre Company – “I Am In Love With The World”

If you can’t remember who clinched the title then here’s a clue – they had silly names and there was a lot of controversy surrounding them. No, not the Teletubbies! It was the Spice Girls though I’m willing to bet a few of them had handbags to rival Tinky Winky’s!

Anyway, we’re not there yet. We still have one last show for the great and the good of the class of 1997’s pop cohort to promote their Christmas wares and we start with Natalie Imbruglia who is still in the Top 10 despite having spent the last two months in residence there. Although this was the era of singles debuting high and crashing out of the Top 40 completely within a fortnight due to record company first week of release discounting, there were still plenty of examples of hits that bucked that trend. Off the top of my head, just in 1997, there’s No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak”, “Tubthumping” by Chumbawamba, No Mercy’s “Where Do You Go”, All Saints’ “Never Ever” and “Encore Une Fois” by Sash! “Torn” was another such song. Look at these chart stats:

2 – 2 – 2 – 4 – 5 – 9 – 8 – 8 – 8 – 9 – 10

This week’s TOTP appearance was for one of those No 8 positions so presumably because it had gone back up the charts or was holding steady. In the week before Christmas, it seems a bit odd to be opening the show with a months old hit which would also feature in the Christmas Day show but there you go. Would there have been a discussion at her label RCA about deleting it to make way for the follow up single “Big Mistake”? If there was, it was clearly poo-pooed in favour of ensuring it wasn’t swallowed up in the festive rush and was held back for the much slower post Christmas sales period. Nearly thirty years on though, it all see seems a bit academic as despite a triple platinum selling debut album and ten UK Top 40 singles to her name, I’m willing to bet the vast majority of people could only name “Torn” when it comes to Natalie Imbruglia hits.

Here’s another of those songs that took up long term residency in the charts – “Angels” by Robbie Williams. This one spent twelve consecutive weeks inside the Top 10 whilst never going higher than No 4 thus undermining the faith that some of the bookies had in it to be the Christmas chart topper. Maybe some of that belief was based on the fact that:

  1. It was a ballad – always a winner at Christmas
  2. There appeared to be some sleigh bells somewhere in the mix in the intro
  3. There was an extra track on the CD single called “Walk This Sleigh”

History tells us, of course, that this was the single that saved Robbie’s career which got me thinking if there were other examples of this. The first that came to mind was “Instinction” by Spandau Ballet. After scoring their biggest ever hit with “Chant No. 1 (I Don’t Need This Pressure On)” in the Summer of 1981, their next two singles released for the “Diamond” album were chart failures. “Paint Me Down” only managed a humble peak of No 30 whilst “She Loved Like Diamond” was a sales disaster failing to make the Top 40 at all. Suddenly, the pressure was on and the band were in desperate need of a hit to resurrect their career. Enter Trevor Horn whose remix of the album track “Instinction” took them back to the Top 10 before the band became global superstars with “True”.

Then there’s the case of Culture Club. Having had demos rejected by EMI, the band finally signed with Virgin Records but after their first two singles had less longevity to them than TACO Trump’s tariff charges, there must have been concern within the record label that their charges were a dud. A last throw of the dice in third single “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me” saw the track receive support from David Hamilton on Radio 2 (which wasn’t the popular music playing station it is today back then) and a last minute TOTP appearance after Shakin’ Stevens cried off saw the world introduced to Boy George. Cue tabloid hysteria but also massive sales and pop superstardom.

Bringing it back to Robbie Williams, Take That struggled to find chart success in their early days with their first three singles getting no further than No 38. After all the promotional groundwork the band had done in clubs and schools, it was scant reward. A fourth single was given the go ahead but only with the safety net of it being a cover version. Their version of the old Tavares hit “It Only Takes A Minute” took them into the Top 10 and Take That are still with us 33 years later (albeit now as a trio).

Now I remember there was a Bryan Adams MTV Unplugged album because I recognise the cover but I couldn’t have told you that the lead single from it was called “Back To You”. However, I do know the song. How come? Because it was a staple of the early guitar classes I attended back in about 2009 as it turns out the chords to it are pretty basic. We used to start with this one to get us warmed up. Does that mean I liked it? It’s an OK track but it doesn’t come near to the power of “Run To You”. It actually sounds a bit twee in comparison. Still, those chords won’t learn themselves and a part of me will always be reminded of sitting in a circle and strumming along to its backing track whenever I hear it. Bryan’s original would make No 18 in the UK but was a No 1, rather predictably, in his native Canada.

I’m not sure if the bookmakers had this one down as a potential Christmas No 1 but then, in fairness to Ladbrokes, William Hill and the rest, the chart journey of “Never Ever” by All Saints was hard to have predicted. In at No 3 in its first week, it then fell for two consecutive charts before reversing the trend to spend three weeks at No 4 of which this TOTP appearance was one. It would finally top the charts for a solitary week in early 1998. Quite extraordinary really.

P.S. I like host Jayne Middlemiss’ intro where she really lets her Geordie accent come through when she says “Mel. Shaz, Nicki and Nat are gonna sing for wuh”. Lovely stuff.

What’s not so lovely though is the link to the next song which comes from one of the band themselves. Yes, introducing “If God Will Send His Angels” by U2 is Bono himself. What was this all about? A demonstration that the show’s profile was still so powerful that it could get superstars to record exclusives for it? Bono’s Christmas message includes him banging on about his kids wanting him to have a bath after returning from being on tour (how festive) before apologising for not being there with us (by which I presume he means in the studio) and therefore we get the promo for the single which was the fifth and last taken from “Pop”. I had totally forgotten about this one probably because it’s totally unmemorable. Even the by now over used record-at-slow-speed-and-then-sped-up video technique employed on the promo seemed old hat. It really is a bit of a dirge but it managed a chart peak of No 12 nonetheless. You could doubt the wisdom of releasing a fifth track from an album at the height of the Christmas singles rush – what did record label Island think was going to happen? The reasoning behind it seems to be the fact that due to the deadline of a pre-booked tour, the “Pop” album was rushed to market in what the group felt was an unfinished state. As such the band either remixed or completely remade the tracks taken from it for single release making them seem like more essential than usual purchases for the die-hards in the fanbase.

“If God Will Send His Angels” would also end up on the soundtrack album for the film City Of Angels (the clue to the reason why is in both titles!). I’ve never seen it but it starred Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan and was about an angel falling in love with a mortal woman. The film was a commercial success as was the soundtrack which also featured songs by Alanis Morissette and Goo Goo Dolls both of whom were managed by Rob Cavallo who was the album’s executive producer. Funny that. Morissette had the follow up album to global smash “Jagged Little Pill” due out whilst Goo Goo Dolls also had an album forthcoming. Again, funny that. The latter’s track contributed to the film was “Iris” which would top airplay charts around the world when released as a single the following year, be nominated for a Grammy and is still a staple of pop/rock radio station playlists to this day and you can’t say that about “If God Will Send His Angels”,

And so to another of those potential contenders for the Christmas No 1 according to the bookies. “I Am In Love With The World” by Chicken Shed Theatre Company was originally included on the “Diana Princess Of Wales: Tribute” charity album due to her patronage of the theatre company that literally started in an old chicken shed and was released as a single from it in time for Christmas. Presumably the bookmakers were predicting another Elton John style flood of sales. It never transpired with “I Am In Love With The World” (why was it ‘I am’ and not ‘I’m’) peaking at a relatively lowly No 15. Maybe its inclusion on an album that went double platinum in the UK reduced its chances or maybe the nation had taken enough time by this point to shake off its collective malaise that Diana’s death had brought on. Or maybe, and I don’t wish to wield harsh criticism against a charity record, it was just terrible. Because it really was.

Say what you like about Celine Dion (and many of us have) but she worked with some of the biggest names in music. Her previous single to this (which was still in the Top 40) was a duet with Barbra Streisand and the follow up – “The Reason” – was co-written by Carole King. My wife introduced me to Carole’s “Tapestry” LP when we first met back in 1986 so it has a special place in my heart but this track was like a paper doily compared to the songs woven into that classic album. A power ballad (of course it was) but it wasn’t a Jim Steinman type powerhouse like “It’s All Coming Back To Me Now” which she’d had a hit with the previous year. It sounded like a Eurovision* entry or possibly an X Factor winner’s song.

*Celine had, of course, won that particular song contest for Switzerland in 1988.

Tellingly, that duet with Barbra Streisand (“Tell Him”) would endure much better than “The Reason”. It peaked at No 3, spent four weeks inside the Top Ten 10 and a further four inside the Top 20 whereas “The Reason” peaked at No 11 and spent just three weeks in total in the Top 20. In the week of the Christmas chart, “Tell Him” held at No 13 whilst “The Reason” dropped to No 16.

Christmas wasn’t just about selling singles though. Albums was where the real money was and what type of album did record companies love to put out at Christmas time? A Best Of compilation of course! Yes, the reliable old staple of festive release schedules was a Greatest Hits/Best Of/Collection (delete as appropriate) and around this time a new strain of the format appeared – a retrospective of a solo artist and their former band on the same album. Although there had already been a Sting Greatest Hits (“Fields Of Gold: The Best Of Sting 1984-1994”) and two collections from The Police (1986’s “Every Breath You Take: The Singles” and 1992’s “Greatest Hits”), record label A&M reckoned they could still squeeze some more readies out of the back catalogue of both their artists by combining them into one album. Was this a genius move or a hateful idea – you’ll have your own opinion but it didn’t sit well with me. I like my retrospectives to be definitive which this surely couldn’t be. Not everything by two artists could be contained in one album. Surely a box set was needed?

Anyway, in 1997 came “The Very Best Of Sting & The Police” (note the use of the word ‘Very’ to signify that this was something different even though it wasn’t). Featuring fifteen tracks (seven from Sting and eight by The Police), it went four times platinum in the UK either matching or beating the sales of those aforementioned previous collections. So which songs didn’t make the cut?

The Police:

  • “So Lonely”
  • “De Do Do Do De Da Da Da” (though it was included in subsequent reissues of the album)
  • “Invisible Sun”
  • “Spirits In The Material World”
  • “Wrapped Around Your Finger”
  • “Synchronicity II”
  • “King Of Pain”

Sting:

  • “Spread A Little Happiness”
  • “All This Time”
  • “It’s Probably Me”
  • “Nothing ‘Bout Me”
  • “All For Love” (with Rod Stewart and Bryan Adams)
  • “Love Is The Seventh Wave”
  • “Seven Days”

And those lists aren’t completely exhaustive! Bah!

To promote the album, a single was required and so The Police’s first UK Top 40 hit “Roxanne” was recommissioned for the job. However, it wasn’t the original version but a horrible remix by Puff Daddy who probably reckoned he owed Sting one for “I’ll Be Missing You”. What he came up with featured samples and a horrible rap and was retitled as “Roxanne ‘97” and was just a dreadful mess. Thankfully, we don’t get that version here but a rather affecting acoustic take on it. Although Sting might rival Bono in the holier-than-thou arse stakes, you can’t deny that “Roxanne” is a great tune (Puff Daddy remix aside).

I’m guessing that the bookies didn’t want to get burned by a Christmas No 1 they hadn’t seen coming as happened in 1993 when firm favourites Take That were bounced out of the top spot by Mr Blobby and so didn’t underestimate the Teletubbies. Thankfully, history didn’t repeat itself. It seems the joke was wearing thin by this point as we only get 30 seconds of “Teletubbies Say ‘Eh-Oh!’” as the credits roll. I never thought I’d say this but thank God for the Spice Girls.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1Natalie ImbrugliaTornNo
2Robbie WilliamsAngelsNo but I had a promo copy of the album
3Bryan AdamsBack to YouNope
4All SaintsNever EverNegative
5U2If God Will Send His AngelsI did not
6Chicken Shed Theatre CompanyI Am In Love With The WorldHell No!
7Celine DionThe ReasonNever
8The Police / StingRoxanne ’97Nah
9TeletubbiesTeletubbies Say ‘Eh-Oh!’Of course not

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/m002chnq/top-of-the-pops-19121997?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 12 DEC 1997

Posted on by 80stastic

I’ve said before in this blog that I’m not and have never been a massive James Bond fan. The character is just too slick and confident – two things that I’ve never been. I just can’t relate to him. Having said that, I did quite enjoy the films from the Daniel Craig era. As for the rest of the actors who have taken on the role, obviously I have seen some of the Sean Connery and Roger Moore movies but I don’t think I’ve caught any of the Timothy Dalton nor Pierce Brosnan stories and that includes Tomorrow Never Dies which opened in the UK on the day this TOTP aired. Although it grossed $339.5 million worldwide, it was ultimately eclipsed by the juggernaut that was Titanic which was in cinemas at the same time. Also eclipsed by Titanic was the theme song for Tomorrow Never Dies which couldn’t complete with that gargantuan hit by Celine Dion but more of that later.

Our host tonight is Jo Whiley whom I’m increasingly beginning to suspect wasn’t totally enjoying introducing songs by the likes of Aqua and the Teletubbies. Anyway, we start with a superstar (I think that’s a fair description of the artist concerned) in Janet Jackson who is at No 4 with “Together Again”, the second single taken from her album “The Velvet Rope”. You may remember her last trip to the TOTP studio to promote her Joni Mitchell sampling “Got ‘Til It’s Gone” single was a very pompous performance involving Ms Jackson on a throne and a stage full of would be courtiers. Thankfully, this time around, she’s gone for a much more informal and much less po-faced vibe. Apart from her heavily stylised corkscrew hairstyle, it’s all very relaxed with a ‘dress-down-Friday’ feel to what everyone on stage is wearing. As for the song itself, it’s a light, pleasant, upbeat track that actually had a more sombre source material being written about a close friend of Janet’s who died from AIDS. It’s very listenable but for me, her most interesting material came in her “Rhythm Nation 1814” era.

One up her nose and two up her jumper is how Janet rolls according to Jo Whiley (she talking about rings and therefore Ms Jackson’s rack I would assume which is a bit risqué for before the watershed) before our host tells us firmly where she stands musically which is with the next artist The Seahorses apparently. “Next a band who don’t need fancy dances – they have damned great tunes…” she trills except I’m not convinced that “You Can Talk To Me” is that great. After coming out of the traps fast with glorious debut hit “Love Is The Law”, the quality of their output had diminished in consistent increments it seemed to me before plateauing with this standalone single. Presumably released to bridge the gap between debut and follow up albums, it was rendered redundant somewhat as that sophomore collection of songs would never actually appear as the band broke up in 1999. In James Bond terms, The Seahorses were George Lazenby. Maybe it was just as well if this was an example of the direction in which they were going. “You Can Talk To Me” feels like it should be a tremendous track but for me, it’s all surface and no depth, like it was knocked out in about half an hour one afternoon. Or to put it in modern parlance, it’s as if AI had been asked to produce a song by The Seahorses if “You Can Talk To Me” had never existed.

As with Janet Jackson earlier, this appearance was vastly different to their last visit to the TOTP studio when they delivered a bizarre performance that involved all but lead singer Chris Helme seated alongside some random people also on stage looking bored and presenter Mark Lamarr rubbing John Squire’s knee. This time they’ve gone for a much more conventional set up which with their rather conventional song makes me yearn for some of those arbitrary strangers up there with the band again. Finally, if I want to hear a song with a ‘you can talk to me’ chorus, I think I’d rather listen to this:

Sometimes during these TOTP repeats you come across a song that it’s hard to remember that there was a time when you didn’t know it, that is, before it was released and before it became part of our cultural fabric. “Angels” by Robbie Williams is one of those songs. The story of how it single-handedly saved the ex-Take That star’s career and propelled him into superstardom is so well documented that even that narrative is taken for granted but it is an astonishing tale of a truly remarkable comeback. With his debut album “Life Thru A Lens” stalling and the singles from it achieving diminishing chart peaks, the word from the wise was that Williams was all washed up and unwanted by the record buying public. Although I had a promo copy of the album and had therefore heard “Angels” before its release as a single, I can’t lay claim to any great insight that if only Williams would release it, all his problems would be solved. I did think it was a decent song though and, as Jo Whiley says in her intro, the standout track from the album.

So, had “Angels” not been released what would have happened? Would Williams have been dropped by his label Chrysalis? Would pop music history have played out differently? Was this a sliding doors moment? I guess we’ll never know. What we do know is that “Angels” was a sales phenomenon. Twelve consecutive weeks inside the Top 10, sixty-eight on the Top 100 over ten separate occasions spanning seventeen years. Somehow though, it never got higher than No 4 despite shifting 1.16 million copies by 2014. The song’s legacy wasn’t just about its sales though. Its ubiquity was widespread and deep. In 2022, Alex Petridis wrote in The Guardian:

“Throughout the late 90s and 00s, it wasn’t so much a song as an unavoidable fact of daily life”

Petridis, Alexis (25 August 2022). “Robbie Williams’ 20 greatest songs – ranked!”. The Guardian.

In 2005, a Music Choice survey of 45,000 Britons chose “Angels” as the song that they would most like played at their funeral. In that same year’s BRIT Awards, the public voted it the best song of the last 25 years whilst a 2004 VH1 survey saw it voted as the best single never to have got to No 1. Say what you like about Williams but “Angels” certainly left its mark and for many remains his defining moment despite everything that followed including a No 1 less than 12 months later that interpolated the Nancy Sinatra song to the Bond movie You Only Live Twice. I love a post with a theme…

…and it’s the theme that keeps on giving as we arrive at the official track to the 1997 James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies courtesy of Sheryl Crow. Jo Whiley effuses about a new Bond theme being a “big deal” and that “this time they’ve got it right” which implies that they haven’t in the past. Which song could she be talking about? “Goldeneye” by Tina Turner? Yeah, that one was definitely underwhelming. Surely not Duran Duran, A-ha nor Gladys Knight the latter of which is the last great 007 theme to my ears. By its very nature, that last sentence therefore excludes “Tomorrow Never Dies” which I have to admit I don’t remember at all. Having listened to it back, I stand by my earlier statement. My reaction to it reminded me of a Daily Mirror article from when I was young that would be seen as sexist by today’s standards but was presumably acceptable back then. It was a piece where they tried to build a composite image of the ‘perfect’ woman by taking various elements of the most beautiful women in the world (hair, smile, legs etc). The result was less than flattering. Similarly, Sheryl’s song seems to have all the best parts of previous Bond themes but they don’t quite all sit together comfortably. There’s the cinematic orchestral strings, iconic kettle drum, dramatic pauses and twangy guitar refrain in the chorus whilst Sheryl does her best Shirley Bassey impression but it never quite gets there for me. It was nominated for a Golden Globe and a Grammy but lost out on both to the aforementioned “My Heart Will Go On” by Celine Dion.

There were other songs in the running to be the official theme tune that were invited to be considered including this from Pulp which someone has helpfully put over the top of the opening titles. It would end up being a B-side for the band and retitled “Tomorrow Never Lies”…

Hmm. Not sure that they quite nailed it. Not sure at all. There’s this from Saint Etienne…

That’s more like it but then the band’s Bob Stanley does have a second career producing film soundtracks and films themselves as well as curating film seasons for various art institutions. If I had to be critical, I’m not sure that Sarah Cracknell’s vocals are quite big enough for a Bond theme.

We have a winner! Check this out from k.d. Lang! This is perfect! It was used over the end credits in the movie but surely it should have outranked Sheryl Crow’s track?

Before she introduces the next act, Jo Whiley dashes on stage to give Sheryl an award commemorating her album going three times platinum. Fair enough but why do we not get to hear Sheryl speak? What was all that about? The effect is just odd and talking of odd, here comes a most bizarre Beatles cover version from Blackstreet. Now, music history is littered with terrible takes of the Fab Four’s material and this is certainly not the worst but I’m still left asking the question why did they do it? Did the world really need a slowed down R&B version of their 1964 No 1 “Can’t Buy Me Love”? I know there is a school of thought that says there is only any point in a doing a cover if it’s substantially different from the original and I subscribe to that view. However, although Blackstreet clearly also did, I just don’t think that “Can’t Buy Me Love” in its original form lends itself to such a drastically different treatment. Those early Beatles hits were high octane, thrill inducing pop romps. It wasn’t in their DNA to be slowed down like that. Maybe it’s my fault for having a closed mind but I just can’t reconcile myself to Blackstreet’s version and why was it retitled as “(Money Can’t) Buy Me Love”? Was it something to do with the licensing of the track?

I said in the last post that Boyzone wouldn’t be having it all their own way in the boy band stakes as Westlife would be appearing on the horizon soon. However, even before those lovely lads from Sligo and Dublin turned up, there was Five. Or was it 5ive? Anyway, whereas Take That and East 17 had been depicted by the press as polar opposites, Five seems to combine elements of both. Pretty boys that were also ‘street’. It seemed like a plan.

Put together by the same father and son duo who had the idea for the Spice Girls, Bob and Chris Herbert thought the same could be achieved with an all male group. An audition process attended by 3,000 hopefuls resulted in a line up of Abz Love (real name Richard Breen), Jason ‘J’ Brown, Sean Conlon, Ritchie Neville and Scott Robinson (not to be confused with the Neighbours character played by Jason Donovan). Signed by Simin Cowell (him again) to BMG/RCA, the group embarked on months of rehearsals and promotional work before they’d even released a note of music so that their name was already well known by the time debut single “Slam Dunk (Da Funk)” was available in the shops. The hard work paid off when it landed at No 10 in the charts in its first week of release. I have to say as boy bands go, I didn’t mind them. “Slam Dunk (Da Funk)” was daft but it was fun and their Joan Jett sampling hit “Everybody Get Up” was great. Some of their stuff was routine boy band guff though as well. Someone who really did like them though was a person that my wife used to work with in a past job who was a difficult character who took offence at the unlikeliest of things. One such thing he hated was work colleagues who had pictures of their loved ones on their desks. Being a gay man, he staged his own protest by bringing a framed picture to work of J from Five which took pride of place on his own desk.

Five shone brightly for a three year period which included a trio of No 1 singles before splitting up in 2001. A planned reunion in 2006 came to nothing but they did get together again in 2013 via the ITV show The Big Reunion which resulted in a tour although J Brown declined to be part of it. Abz Love left the band after the tour meaning that a second reunion in 2019 featured just three members despite the fact that they retained the name of Five. However, a UK arena tour has been scheduled for October this year featuring all five members.

During late 1997 and early 1998, it was never, ever not time for All Saints – this was their third TOTP appearance out of nine (NINE!) promoting their second single. This must be some sort of record for a song that spent just a solitary week at No 1. How did Executive Producer Chris Cowey justify all these slots in the running order? Well, I guess if you look at these chart positions over nearly four (FOUR!) months inside the Top 10, you could make a case for at least half a dozen by my reckoning if your criteria is a hit going (back) up the charts or holding firm in the same place:

3 – 5 – 6 – 5 – 4 – 4 – 4 – 2 – 1 – 2 – 2 – 4 – 5 – 3 -7

They are spectacular numbers you have to say. Well, I’ve got another six appearances featuring “Never Ever” to write about so I’m going to leave it there for this one for this week.

The Teletubbies are at No 1 with “Teletubbies Say ‘Eh-Oh’”. Of course they are – this was the UK record buying public at work after all (never the most reliable arbiter of taste) and they were especially wayward in their shopping habits at Christmas. For a kids TV show aimed at a pre-school audience, Teletubbies seemed to attract an awful lot of controversy with perhaps the biggest of the lot centred around the character of Tinky Winky. The biggest and oldest (supposedly) of the Teletubbies, he caught the attention of US televangelist Jerry Falwell who proclaimed that Tinky Winky was promoting homosexuality due to his red handbag, his purple colour (purple being the gay pride colour) and his antenna being shaped like a triangle (a gay pride symbol). The BBC released an official response saying Tinky Winky was simply a “sweet technological baby with a magic bag”. Then there was the controversy over the sacking of actor Dave Thompson who originally played Tinky Winky but was fired after receiving a letter from production company Ragdoll saying his “interpretation of the role was not accepted”. Ha!

I’m sure there was also a media furore when a photo of Tinky Winky was circulated without his costume head on. My friend Bev was something to do with the publicity for the show at the time and had to field loads of press enquiries about what the BBC were going to do about allowing the shattering of the illusion of the Teletubbies for its millions of viewers. The truth is that those costumes were incredibly hot and the actors would sweat bucket loads and stink after their 11 hour filming stints in them. No wonder Tinky Winky took his head off! They may have been shot at, chased, punched or had the threat of a laser going up their jacksy but no James Bond actor had to deal with the inferno that was a Teletubbies costume.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1Janet JacksonTogether AgainI did not
2The SeahorsesYou Can Talk To MeNegative
3Robbie WilliamsAngelsNo but I had a promo copy of the album
4Sheryl CrowTomorrow Never DiesNo
5Blackstreet(Money Can’t) Buy Me LoveNope
6FiveSlam Dunk (Da Funk)Nah
7All SaintsNever EverLiked it, didn’t buy it
8TeletubbiesTeletubbies Say ‘Eh-Oh’What do you think?!

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/m002chnn/top-of-the-pops-12121997?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 26 SEP 1997

Posted on by 80stastic

This particular TOTP episode is a curious mix of hits that have been hanging around the charts for ages, one that we only saw seven days ago, two dance tracks that were all about the tunes and not the artists, a mostly forgotten Robbie Williams hit that was actually a line in the sand moment and that Elton John single. Pick the bones out of that! Well, I intend to so let’s get to it…

Tonight’s host is Jo Whiley who seems to be on permanent rotation with Jayne Middlemiss and Zoe Ball (I guess we haven’t got to the Kate Thornton/Gail Porter/Jamie Theakston era yet). We start with Chumbawamba who have spent a solid six weeks in the Top 5 with “Tubthumping” and was now on the move back up the charts from No 5 to No 3 having slipped from its original peak of No 2. It seems there was a reason for this. In the wake of the death of Princess Diana, its airplay completely crashed presumably because:

  1. It wasn’t a ballad and that was the only form of musical composition deemed required at this time
  2. Its lyrics about being knocked down could hardly have been more inappropriate given the events in Paris of 31st August

In the week before that date it had been the most played track on radio but in the week after it almost completely disappeared from playlists. A further week on from that and it was decided that a suitable period of time had passed and it was right back up there on the airplay charts presumably helping to boost its sales once more. And they say a week is a long time in politics.

Depending on your point of view, “Sunchyme” by Dario G is either a work of genius or musical sacrilege – I fall into the latter category. Based around the wonderful “Life In A Northern Town” by The Dream Academy (which I bought back in the day), this monster of a dance tune had been in existence for months as a bootleg but hadn’t got a formal commercial release as label Eternal Records couldn’t get clearance for the samples used in it. This delay in making it available to the masses only helped to build anticipation of its release which, when it finally happened, sent the single to No 2 in the charts. Like George Michael’s “You Have Been Loved” before it, this would also surely have been a chart topper at any other time.

I guess I can hear why “Sunchyme” struck a chord with its Dream Academy sample forming the basis of a catchy hook that sounded almost gospel-esque when chopped up in that way. Allied to a distinctive Italian house piano riff, it really didn’t matter if punters didn’t know the 1985 No 15 hit source material, the track couldn’t fail. My claim that it was committing musical heresy by treating one of the best hits of the 80s (to my ears) like that meant little to the nation’s clubbers which I suppose is fair enough. Quite why this performance comes across as the stage version of The Lion King though, I’m not quite sure. Still, I suppose it makes a change from the usual anonymous, pony-tailed blokes on keyboards behind a gyrating, spandex clad dancer.

Jo Whiley gives us a smooth segue from Dario G to the aforementioned Robbie Williams when she says “from a Northern town to South of the Border”. Not bad Jo. Now I labelled this hit as mostly forgotten earlier and I stand by that description for a number of reasons. Firstly, it’s almost as if Robbie himself wants to consign it to history – it did not feature on his 1999 compilation album “The Ego Has Landed” that was put together with tracks from his first two solo albums specifically for the American market. Then, it didn’t appear on his 2004 Greatest Hits which featured 19 tracks. Nor was it on the 2009 compilation “Songbook” that was given away free with the Daily Mail as part of a promotion campaign for Robbie’s “Reality Killed The Video Star” album. Such freebie albums are usually where lesser hits are to be found but it wasn’t a home for “South Of The Border”. It did make the cut for the 2010 Best Of “In And Out Of Consciousness” but that was a comprehensive, 39 tracks career retrospective. It was his only hit that failed to make the Top 10 for nine years and 20 single releases. So, pretty much forgotten.

And yet…it perhaps shouldn’t be as it demarcated a pivotal crossroads in his career. The relative failure of the single (it peaked at No 14) was seen by many as evidence that Robbie Williams the solo artist would not sustain. It was just a matter of time before he petered out completely and its this commonly held perception that made what came next all the more unexpected and revelatory. His next single, which according to legend was a make or break release, was “Angels”. And yet the story could have all played out very differently as “South Of The Border” was never intended to be a single. The plan was that “Let Me Entertain You” was going to be the third track taken from the album “Life Thru A Lens” but Robbie had a dose of the wobbles and didn’t feel confident enough to release something with such a provocative title. At the last minute, it was ditched for “South Of The Border”. Who knows whether, if the original plan had been adhered to, the Robbie Williams story would have been any different. Maybe. Maybe not.

As for “South Of The Border”, it’s probably a better song than its legacy might suggest. I think I prefer it to previous single “Lazy Days” which doesn’t get the same rap by virtue of a six place chart difference it would seem (it peaked at No 8). There’s a spoken word bit low in the mix in the middle eight that we don’t get in this performance (which isn’t great by the way) where Robbie talks about going for a night out on the town with various celebrities including Anthea Turner and Daniella Westbrook which always quite intrigued me. The turnaround of Williams career would be more compelling though.

Damn! It’s that studio performance by Tina Moore of “Never Gonna Let You Go” again! What am I supposed to say about this one…again? Well, what I have noticed is that so far is that Jo Whiley has only been in the studio at the same time as one of the four artists on the show so far, that being Dario G. Now, two of them are understandable in that they’re just re-showings of previous performances (including Tina Moore) but the Robbie Williams cut away suggests his appearance was pre-recorded and Jo’s intro was tacked on the end separately. Why would that be? A scheduling issue?

Anyway, from what I can work out this was Tina’s fifth week on the chart and she was actually climbing it having peaked at No 7. The positions for her hit in the thirteen weeks of it’s time in the Top 40 were:

7 – 11 – 9 – 12 – 9 – 11 – 11 – 17 – 15 – 23 – 21 – 28 – 35

Check those numbers out. It reversed its decline four times. Four! That’s quite a chart journey. It seems the general public weren’t gonna let Tina go for a while.

It’s the second of those two dance tracks I mentioned at the top of the post now as German group Bellini take to the stage or should that be the dance floor as all the five women on our TV screens were doing was peddling some not overly impressive dance moves. There’s a lot of leg shaking and twerking but not much else. Now, I assumed that said women were just some jobbing dancers put together for TV appearances to promote the single “Samba De Janeiro” but it seems they were full time members of the band. Sort of. Full time they may have been but permanent they were not. Bellini’s list of group members might not be quite of The Fall or The Waterboys proportions but I counted fifteen past and present names in their Wikipedia entry and that doesn’t include the guys behind their sound, the producer duo of Ramon Zenker and Gottfried Engels otherwise known as The Bellini Brothers.

As for the track itself, it pays a huge debt to Brazilian jazz percussionist Airto Moreira sampling two of his tracks from the 70s and was a Top 10 hit all around Europe. If I’d had to guess, I would have put its release date as a year later to coincide with the 1998 World Cup tournament which seemed to have loads of samba themed songs soundtracking its coverage. I wasn’t far off as it was used extensively during the 2008 Euros after every goal was scored and Norwich City has played it as ‘goal music’ for pretty much the last 20 years. Indeed, Bellini took their name as a tribute to Brazilian football legend Hilderaldo Bellini who won the World Cup in 1958 and 1962 which is quite odd as the guys behind the Bellini Brothers moniker were German but then I guess they were never going to name themselves after 80s German international footballer Horst Hrubesch whose surname was pronounced by most English commentators as ‘Rubbish’.

Sly & Robbie featuring Simply Red are the act that we already saw just a week ago but that performance of their cover of “Night Nurse” is re-shown again seven days on because the single has gone into the charts at No 13.

This does nothing for me and, in fact, I’d rather listen to Martin Freeman’s version in a toilet from Breeders…

I’d almost forgotten there was a fourth single from Blur’s eponymous fifth studio album but there was and here it is…”M.O.R” was, perhaps understandably, the smallest hit of those four singles with it being released over six months after the album when it peaked at No 15. Now if you’d forgotten how it goes but then thought that it was instantly recognisable when you watched this TOTP repeat, that’ll be the Bowie effect. We were given a clue by Jo Whiley* in her intro when she said “Now some boys who just keep swinging” as “M.O.R.” borrows from Bowie’s “Boys Keep Swinging” and “Fantastic Voyage” from his “Lodger” album. Bowie and Brian Eno had come up with the concept of composing multiple songs with the same chord progression for the album and those two songs were the ones that made the cut. So were Blur paying homage to or stealing that concept? Does it even matter? The truth is that at least Blur were trying to do something different and not just repeat the formula of past glories. Could Oasis say the same for their output at the time?

*Never one to miss an opportunity to show off her music credentials was she Jo! Dream Academy and now David Bowie references!

The video for “M.O.R.” features four stuntmen as the band members in a plot about escaping the police. The monikers given to the fictional ‘actors’ playing Blur are all genuine anagrams of the band’s actual names. Check these out:

  • Trevor Dewane – Dave Rowntree
  • Lee Jaxsam – Alex James
  • Morgan C. Hoax – Graham Coxon
  • Dan Abnormal – Damon Albarn

That last one is genius, better than Bellini anyway!

Obviously, “Candle In The Wind ‘97” by Elton John is still at the top of the charts. I’m not sure when the sales of the single started to slow down. It was No 1 for five weeks and sold 658,000 copies on its first day of release and 1.5 million in the first week. As of September 2017 it had sold 4.94 million copies in the UK. By those numbers, I’m guessing there must have been a tapering off even when it was still No 1. For context though, this TOTP aired just under a month after Princess Diana’s death and one day shy of three weeks since her funeral.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1ChumbawambaTubthumpingYES!
2Dario GSunchymeNo but I bought The Dream Academy original
3Robbie WilliamsSouth Of The BorderNo but I had a promo copy of the album
4Tina Moore Never Gonna Let You GoI did not
5BelliniSamba De JaneiroNah
6Sly & Robbie/Simply RedNight NurseNope
7BlurM.O.R.No but I had the album
8Elton JohnCandle In The Wind ’97NO!

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/m0029lyt/top-of-the-pops-26091997?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 02 MAY 1997

Posted on by 80stastic

We’ve skipped a month due to the R Kelly issue and find ourselves at the start of May and what a time it was to be alive! Labour have won the 1997 General Election and the Tories have been booted out of power after 18 long years. Hurray! I was on holiday so I could stay up watching the election results come in and I remember waking up in the morning feeling that there was finally some good news and that hope had returned. As I walked into town, I recall that it was a beautifully sunny morning and contemplated that everything had aligned including the weather. Obviously, with the hindsight of 28 years, the promise of New Labour didn’t completely pan out but I hadn’t known anything but Conservative rule for my entire adult life and I was nearly 29 by this point so I was allowed to let myself get carried away a little. It was an exciting time and not just politically – in four days time I would be embarking on a visit to China to see my old mate Rob who was studying out there. I had arranged for someone to cover me at the Our Price store where I worked (we still didn’t have a new manager in place so I was effectively the acting manager) and I would be off for a couple of weeks. I was excited and desperate for a break but a little daunted at such a big trip.

For now though, it was time to kick back and enjoy the good vibes. This TOTP was broadcast at the earlier time of 6.25 and on BBC2 as, understandably, BBC1 was concentrating its content on the General Election aftermath. Whether I would have watched the latest chart tunes or the news coverage I’m not sure but probably the latter not that you could get away for the politics by watching TOTP as we start with D:Ream and “Things Can Only Get Better”. Now you don’t need me to tell you why this was back in the charts but I’m going to anyway. The Labour Party had co-opted it to spearhead their campaign for the election and if the landslide victory was anything to go by then it certainly had a positive impact. It presumably had a positive impact on D:Ream’s career as well which was pretty much in the dirt by 1997. Their 1995 album “World” had sold only a fifth of their debut “D:Ream On Vol. 1” and their last single had peaked at No 40. Step forward Tony Blair and suddenly they were back in the charts, back on TV and with a Best Of album released. Main man Peter Cunnah has lost the yellow and black checked suit this time around and also Professor Brian Cox who was presumably off doing something with the Large Hadron Collider or something. Cunnah also seems to have a little bit less hair. The band’s time back in the spotlight was fleeting though. The rerelease of “Things Can Only Get Better” only made No 19 this time around and their Best Of album flopped and the band split up. They reformed in 2008 and have released new material subsequently but it’s surely this song that they will always be synonymous with. I wonder if Howard Jones ever thinks “if only” when he sees Tony Blair in the news?

I should say that tonight’s host is Cathy Dennis who seems an unlikely choice in retrospect given her profile at this time. Yes, she’s had a hit with her cover of “Waterloo Sunset” this year but her next single released a month or so after this TOTP failed to make the Top 40 which effectively brought the curtain down on her career as a pop star before she became hugely successful writing hits for other people in the new millennium. Anyway, she introduces Robbie Williams as the next act despite the fact that he’s only just been on the previous week and had now dropped down the charts from No 2 to No 8 with “Old Before I Die”. That didn’t matter in this post Ric Blaxill TOTP universe though when songs sliding down the charts were still afforded exposure on the show. Cathy Dennis is given and gives us a line about it being Robbie’s second week inside the Top 10 as a reason for his successive appearance.

As for the song itself, although perhaps not his most celebrated or well known tune, for me it was the one that made me think perhaps Williams might just make a go of being a solo star. Now, the success of “Angels” is widely regarded as being that moment but “Old Before I Die” beat it to it in terms of being a decent rock/pop song. Sure, it drew accusations of being a rip off of his best new mates Oasis but importantly it wasn’t a cover version which his first single “Freedom” had been. That and the fact that one of the extra tracks on his debut as a solo artist had been an interview led me to ask the question “where are your songs mate?” but he answered me with “Old Before I Die”. I liked the play on words inspired by The Who classic “My Generation” and even the rather clunky and childish lyric about the pope getting high. It all hung together quite cohesively. Follow up singles “Lazy Days” and “South Of The Border” would prove to be missteps before “Angels” swooped in and saved the day and Robbie’s career. For now though, he seemed to be doing fine.

Another defining pop career moment next as this was the point when I realised “Shit! This lot aren’t going away!” as a mercifully short chart life is what I had predicted for 911. Alas, “Bodyshakin’” became their then biggest hit when it rattled its way into No 3. My underestimating of their hit potential clearly spilled over into my work life as I’m sure we sold out of this single in its first week of release – a heinous crime for a mainstream record shop but who knew that a Declan Donnelly lookalike, two dancers from The Hitman And Her and a song that recycled that ‘ner nah nah naaa ner nah nah’ riff could be such a big success. Not me clearly. Still, they were very good at synchronised dancing – I’ll give them that.

Next up is a song that has been described as pure pop perfection and who’s to say that’s not 100% true? Not me certainly. “Lovefool” by The Cardigans was originally a medium sized hit in September of 1996 peaking at No 21 but its inclusion on the soundtrack of Baz Luhrmann’s treatment of William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet movie and the success of that film warranted a second stab at the charts and this time it rose all the way to No 2 – I’d forgotten it had peaked so high to be honest. I shouldn’t have been surprised though as it is a brilliant pop song. I must have also not remembered how big a success Romeo + Juliet was and, by association, its soundtrack. I saw the film and enjoyed it and years later, my son would watch it at school as a way of making Shakespeare more accessible to children studying the Bard. As for the soundtrack, my wife liked the music in the film so much she bought the CD which, as well as The Cardigans, featured such artists as Garbage, Radiohead, Des’ree and Kym Mazelle doing a cover of Candi Staton’s “Young Hearts Run Free”. It went to No 3 in the UK charts selling 300,000 copies and affording it gold status. It was even bigger in America and Australia where it sold over 3 million copies in the former and was the second bestselling album of the year in the latter. A choral version of Rozalla’s “Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good)” which was also on the soundtrack would form the basis of a rather bizarre UK No 1 two years later when Baz Luhrmann himself released a single titled “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)” which was essentially a spoken word track voiced by actor Lee Perry of an article published in the Chicago Tribune by columnist Mary Schmich on how to live a happier life. As I said, all rather bizarre.

Anyway, back to The Cardigans and “Lovefool”. The success of the single with its shimmering, seamless pop production full of hooks but with a nod to disco helped parent album “First Band On The Moon” to gold status in the UK. The band were tipped to be on the verge of greatness with the impossibly beautiful Nina Persson dominating their public image (much in the same way Gwen Stefani was for fellow chart stars No Doubt). Someone I worked with was so taken with them that she bought up their earlier back catalogue as well. “First Band On The Moon” wouldn’t provide any further massive hit singles but did pave the way for 1998’s “Gran Turismo” which contained the hits “My Favourite Game”, “Erase/Rewind” and “Hanging Around” helping the album to achieve platinum sales status in the UK and 3 million copies being sold worldwide. The Cardigans split in 2006 but reunited in 2012 as a touring entity only.

“It’s been a great few weeks for DJ Quicksilver. He’s replaced Sasha’s “Encore Une Fois” as the club floor filler that won’t go away. Here he is at No 5 with “Bellissima”

So says Cathy Dennis in her intro to the next act and you know what, that will do for this blogger’s comments about this one because I can assure you that anything else I would say would not be as kind as that.

Next to a young artist who was very much touted as being the next new UK R&B superstar and she won a BRIT and two MOBO awards to back that claim up. Shola Ama was just 18 years old when she burst into the charts with her cover of the Randy Crawford hit “You Might Need Somebody” and it would be another of those singles that defied the ‘debut very high, exit very quickly’ trend of many a chart hit at this time by spending seven weeks inside the Top 10 with five of them at lucky No 7. How did Shola do this? Well, the song that was chosen for her to cover was very radio friendly and also old enough for some young music fans to possibly be unaware of Randy Crawford’s hit with it from 1981. I myself only knew it because my wife had Randy’s “Secret Combination” album that it was taken from. Of course, appearing on TOTP three weeks on the trot probably didn’t hinder the single’s chances (although we missed the first two due to the R Kelly issue). Apparently Shola got so fed up of people not believing that she was singing live on the show that in the third appearance she missed a bit out to prove it was real. Having watched this third appearance back, I’m not sure I can spot this though I think there’s a moment when she appears to go towards the microphone but doesn’t sing. Is that it? Personally, I couldn’t hear what all the fuss was about and that she would disappear once “You Might Need Somebody” finally dropped out of the charts. She didn’t – her debut album “Much Love” made No 6 selling 100,000 copies and included three more hit singles. However, second album syndrome struck despite her working with a host of producers and writers including D-Influence and Babyface and Shola’s time in the spotlight was over within two years. She has carried on recording and has collaborated with artists such as Miss Dynamite and Frisco.

To say they only had four Top 40 hits of which none got higher than No 24, Kenickie’s strike rate for appearing on TOTP was pretty good. This was their second time on the show and I’d forgotten that not all of their songs featured lead vocals from Lauren Laverne. This one – “Nightlife” – sees Marie du Santiago doing the singing heavy lifting and I think I prefer her voice to Lauren’s. This track is a spiky little number that strides along wearing its attitude on its sleeve with pride like a hickey from a certain Grease character. You know, I probably should check out their back catalogue in more detail than I currently possess. After all it’s only two albums deep, coincidentally the same amount of Grease films that there are which reminds me that I used to work with someone who prefers Grease 2 to the original! I know! How do you even begin to explain that?!

I have to say that Cathy Dennis is not very good at this presenting lark – very lacking in any presence but then why should she have been any good at it? She’s made her mark as a pop star then as a songwriter – two successful careers is more than most of us manage. Anyway, Republica are on next with their biggest ever hit “Drop Dead Gorgeous”. Watching it back, I’m struck by what a strange song this is, especially in the verses where Saffron almost speaks the abrupt lyrics which are often just two words at the start. Eventually the chorus kicks in and that point, it sounds like it could have been a hit for Toyah back in the day. It can’t be just me surely? Something in the inflections in Saffron’s phrasing as she almost yelps the words out? No?

Anyway, at this point it seemed, as with No Doubt and The Cardigans, that Republica with their photogenic lead singer were set to conquer the world. What happened next was a complete collapse of their momentum. Second album “Speed Ballads” underperformed so much to the extent that most people didn’t realise that it had been released – indeed it wasn’t in the US after their label Deconstruction Records folded. The band would go into a state of stasis and split in 2001 before reuniting in 2008. Their first album since “Speed Ballads” 27 years ago is due for release in the Spring of 2025.

I know I was busy with preparations for my China trip and distracted by the General Election but how did I not notice what was No 1 this week? I did work in a record shop after all. I have zero recollection of this chart topper from Michael Jackson but maybe that’s a good thing as “Blood On The Dance Floor” is a stinker of the foulest stench. Taken from the remix album “Blood On The Dance Floor: HIStory In The Mix”, it’s just a funky backbeat that goes nowhere and is fleshed out by the usual Jacko yelps and screams as he bangs on about some woman called Susie. Apparently it was initially recorded for the 1991 “Dangerous” album but never made the cut which speaks volumes for its quality. Even the usually impeccable production on Jackson’s output is not up to scratch it seems to me as his vocals are really low in the mix at some points meaning you can’t actually hear him much. Perhaps that was intentional but either way, maybe we should just be grateful for small mercies.

Wikipedia tells me that the album went to No 1 in the UK, achieved platinum status and is the biggest selling remix album in the world EVER! Hmm. When I looked at the front cover of the album, it did bring back one memory which was of massive stocks of the album that we couldn’t give away so its sales figures are surprising to say the least. In conclusion, I say “Blood On The Dance Floor”? Nah, give me “Murder On The Dance Floor” any day. The director of Saltburn agrees with me at least.

We end with a plug for the UK entrant in the Eurovision Song Contest which this year was Katrina And The Waves. I know! Who’d have thought it! Well, Katrina And The Waves presumably as they submitted their entry “Love Shine A Light” (plus a £250 fee) to The Great British Song Contest which was the selection process that year to determine the UK entry. There are also rumours though that Jonathan King contacted the band to see if they had a song that was appropriate so take your pick. Predominantly known for the marvellously upbeat hit “Walking On Sunshine”, the band hadn’t been anywhere near the charts since 1986 when “Sun Street” rather unexpectedly made No 22. Pretty much nothing had been heard of them since but suddenly they were back!…albeit via the much maligned Eurovision Song Contest. I recall thinking that they were bound to win, somehow linking it with the General Election and the new government – if the Tories could be toppled after 18 years of rule, surely the UK could break our 16 year hoodoo and win Eurovision for the first time since Bucks Fizz. In reality, my confidence was probably down to hearing the bookies and media saying all week how Katrina And The Waves were odds on to win. And win they did and like the Labour Party two days earlier, it was by a landslide. Predictably, new Prime Minister Tony Blair was quick to congratulate the band on their victory as he sought to keep the good feeling vibe going. What was New Labour’s legacy ultimately? I’ll leave that for your own private thoughts – this is a music blog after all. As for Katrina And The Waves, “Love Shine A Light” surged to No 3 in the charts off the back of Eurovision though was nowhere near as durable as Gina G’s effort from a year earlier despite it coming nowhere in the contest.

I recall Katrina saying in an interview years later that once they had a hit again, she’d assumed that their career was sorted and they’d no need to worry about that anymore but they were unable to produce a successful follow up and they would split acrimoniously after their credibility as a rock band was tainted by their brush with Eurovision. Katrina herself has maintained ties with the competition though appearing in anniversary shows and even participating in the Swedish national final in 2005.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1D:ReamThings Can Only Get BetterNot in 1994 and not this time either
2Robbie WilliamsOld Before I DieNo but I had a promo copy of his Life Thru A Lens album
3911Bodyshakin’Of course not
4The CardigansLovefoolNo but my wife had there Romeo + Juliet soundtrack
5DJ QuicksilverBellissimaNo
6Shola AmaYou Might Need SomebodyNope
7KenickieNightlifeNegative
8RepublicaDrop Dead GorgeousNah
9Michael JacksonBlood On The Dance FloorNever
10Katrina And The WavesLove Shine A LightAnd 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/m0027xn0/top-of-the-pops-02051997?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 09 AUG 1996

Posted on by 80stastic

I’m looking at the running order for this episode of TOTP from 1996 in the hope that I’ll spot a trend that will give me a foothold for a theme for this post but as usual it’s all over the place. In the latest edition of Classic Pop magazine, feature writer Ian Peel wrote:

But there’s one thing Classic Pop has never talked about or will ever talk about. And that’s ‘80s music’. Because there’s no such thing. There’s music from the 80s but it’s an era not a genre.

Anthem Publishing, 2024

Could the same not be said of the 90s? Sure, there were definite movements and trends like Britpop, Eurodance and the whole ‘Madchester’ thing just as the 80s had New Romantics, acid house music and Stock, Aitken and Waterman. However, these were transient and didn’t account for the whole of the decade’s tastes. They were a component part not the whole entity. Sometimes they would morph into something else or in the case of the dance music explosion, splinter into multiple sub genres. As for myself, I have, on occasion, been labelled as an “80s music fan” but that term is spurious – there’s plenty of music from the 80s I can’t stand and would never listen to. I like some but not all music that happened to be made in the 80s would be a more accurate description but I guess that’s a bit of a mouthful to be fair. Anyway, back to my original point which was that there are all sorts of music types represented in this show so I’ll just have to proceed with an open mind and call it as I see/hear it and see some sort of narrative emerges to glue it all together. One constant throughout the entirety of every show is, of course, the host and tonight’s is…oh god, it’s Peter Andre! He’d only been a thing for five minutes by this point – how did he get this gig so early on? Well, got it he has done let’s see how he did…

His first job is to introduce a reactivated New Edition who he claims are one of his all time favourite R&B groups before referring to them as ‘The Dream Team’. Hmm. Seems a bit over the top for a band whose best known song in this country is the bubblegum pop of “Candy Girl”. But then maybe Andre wasn’t aware of his R&B faves’ past? What was he doing in 1983 when “Candy Girl” was at No 1 in the UK.

*checks Wikipedia*

He was 10 years old and living in Australia having emigrated there with his family in 1979. Was “Candy Girl” even a hit down under?

*checks Wikipedia again*

Yes, it made No 10 in the Aussie chart so it’s certainly possible that Andre was aware of the song. In his defence, by the time he was a teenager and presumably his musical tastes more established and embedded, New Edition were recording an album with legendary R&B producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis so that may well have informed his opinion of them. Having said that, “Hit Me Off” was their first new material released since 1988 and the album before that had been a collection of doo-wop covers so that does rather undermine Andre’s claims. Why am I analysing the authenticity of Peter Andre’s music tastes? Sad as it is, I’d rather do that than write about New Edition’s 1996 comeback. “Hit Me Off”? Turn me off more like.

Another boy band next but one from our own shores. Unlike the squeaky clean New Kids On The Block who were created by ex-New Edition manager Maurice Starr to be “the white New Edition”, East 17 could never be described as beyond reproach or without vice. Whether it be interviews advocating drug use or their urban, grubby image, they were not your standard 90s boy band. It didn’t stop them selling records though, 10 million albums since their first hit back in 1992 according to Peter Andre in his intro. Is that true? 10 million?! Seems like a lot but who are we to doubt the word of a man who renewed his vows to then wife Katie Price in 2008 and ended up divorcing her 12 months later.

Anyway, “Someone To Love” was the fourteenth consecutive hit single for East 17 though by peaking at No 16, became their smallest since their second “Gold” stalled at No 28. Was the writing on the wall for the band’s future? I think it was. 1996 would turn out to be a bit of a swansong with a double platinum selling greatest hits compilation and a No 2 hit with Gabrielle. However, by 1997, first singer Brian Harvey was sacked and then songwriter Tony Mortimer left the band. There was a brief flurry of success in 1998 with Harvey reinstated and a hit single in “Each Time” but it was only delaying the inevitable. Had the band themselves realised that continued success couldn’t be taken for granted as early as 1995 and the recording of third album “Up All Night” and tried to push a new direction for themselves? “Someone To Love” is a passable gentle ballad with an acoustic guitar rhythm augmented by a sympathetic string section and Harvey’s plaintive vocals supported by some considered backing singing by his band mates. It’s actually quite a nice song and not typical of their normal output. Yes, their most famous song “Stay Another Day” was a ballad as well but that was a huge number with everything including sleigh bells thrown at it. “Someone To Love” had much more of a lilting nature. Rather sadly, in both meanings of the word, as of 2024, Terry Coldwell is the only original band member still with the group.

Next up, a song that set a new record at the time for the most plays on radio in one week. “Good Enough” by Dodgy racked up approximately 3,700 plays on national radio in seven days helping it rise to a peak of No 4 on the UK Top 40. By far the band’s biggest hit it is also, thanks to all that airplay, surely their best known as well. As far as I can tell though, it wasn’t the most played track on radio for the entire of 1996. That honour went to Mark Morrison’s “Return Of The Mack” though “Good Enough” did come in at No 8. Of those seven songs above it, only Pulp’s “Disco 2000” and “Give Me A Little More Time” by Gabrielle peaked lower in the charts than Dodgy with three of those above it being No 1 records. Not bad then for a band who had never had a Top 10 hit prior to this.

“Good Enough” wasn’t typical Dodgy fare though. An out and out pop song as opposed to an indie rock track, it felt like a deliberate attempt to write a huge hit but having read an interview with its composer Nigel Clark on its creation, it does sound like it came about organically. Messing around with an Akai S900, a very early sampler, Clark put a Lee Dorsey drumbeat on a loop and grew the track from there. Inspired by listening to Bob Marley’s “Kaya” album, he wanted it to be an upbeat track though he worried about demoing it to the rest of the band. However, their reaction was positive and after laying it down in the studio, Clark recalled thinking that “Good Enough” would last longer than Dodgy would. He was right. Thankfully though, I think their legacy is more than just that one track though – they were/are a band not a song, a fate which has befallen other artists like 4 Non Blondes who found it hard to escape the trappings of their mega hit “What’s Up?”.

The timing of its release to coincide with the Summer was perfect and surely deliberate; the single’s artwork was just a shot of a sunflower – they knew what they were doing. I think at Our Price where I was working, we had a pin badge with said sunflower on it to give away free with the single. The success of “Good Enough” would propel parent album “Free Peace Sweet” to platinum sales of 300,000 units. Pretty good going for a band derided by some as a Britpop also ran.

I’ve used the phrase “musical curiosity” or “curious musical footnote” many times whilst writing this blog – perhaps I’ve overused it but I really should have reserved it for this next hit. Anybody remember “Hanging Around” by Me Me Me? It must have passed me by despite the involvement of one of my favourite pop people ever that is Stephen Duffy. I’m not sure if his presence alongside Blur’s Alex James and Justin Welch from Elastica really qualifies as a ‘supergroup’ – probably more of a collective but it was very short lived either way. This single was their only release with the whole project only generating three tracks in total. The concept wasn’t even conceived to secure a hit single but rather as the soundtrack to a film made by artist Damien Hirst which was made for the Spellbound exhibition at the Hayward Gallery within the Southbank Centre. The film was only screened at the exhibition and once on national television at 11.50 at night.

Given that niche exposure, its peak of No 19 seems rather like a case of overachievement. Or perhaps its chart performance was down to it actually being good? Heh. Don’t be so naive I hear you shout and you’re right. When has quality been anything to do with popularity? In all fairness, there wasn’t much quality to “Hanging Around”. There wasn’t much of anything to it. A few random phrases picked because they rhymed set against a jaunty, Madness-lite tune that would have been discarded at the demo stage when it came to making the cut for a Blur album. What a waste! Stephen Duffy has a back catalogue of some incredibly affecting and crafted pop music but this…this was pure hokum. I can only assume some record label marketing and dubious ‘selling in’ practices got it into the charts at all. “Hanging around”? Nah, it was just angin’.

Although this next track topped the American charts for eight weeks, I can’t recall it being in our charts. However, most unfortunately, I do remember only too well a cover of it going to No 1 in the UK six years later. “Tha’ Crossroads” by Bone Thugs–n–Harmony was written as a tribute to a number of people close to the hip-hop group who had died recently including the rapper and their mentor Eazy-E.

The members of the group were:

  • Bizzy Bone
  • Flesh-n-Bone
  • Krayzie Bone
  • Layzie Bone
  • Wish Bone

That list reminds me of a reality tv series called Tool Academy the premise of which was to take twelve unsuspecting ‘bad boyfriends’ and send them to a ‘relationship boot camp’ to teach them how to be better partners. The boyfriends were given nicknames such as ‘Massive Tool’, ‘Temper Tool’, ‘Stoner Tool’, ‘Jealous Tool’ and ‘Neander Tool’. Anyway, want to know the real names of the ‘Bones’? Here you go:

  • Bryon
  • Stanley
  • Anthony
  • Steven
  • Charles

Heh. As hip-hop tracks go, “Tha’ Crossroads” was a little unusual with an almost gospel feel to the chorus and it was all the better for that. However, the version by Blazin’ Squad in 2002 which was retitled “Crossroads”…what on earth was going on there? I’m guessing that this lot weren’t taken seriously at the time? Certainly watching them back over 20 years later they look staggeringly ludicrous. The fact that there’s so many of them for a start undermines any credibility for me and the there’s their horribly hackneyed hip-hop posturing, all that throwing their arms about and the Ali G hand gestures. Someone from their management really should have had a word with them. One of their number appeared on Celebrity Big Brother and another ended up on Love Island. Says it all really.

Suede are back in the TOTP studio after doing an exclusive performance the other week having crashed into the charts at No 3 with “Trash”. I said in a previous post that I’d caught them live in Blackburn in early 1997 so I looked that gig on the Setlist FM website and can report it was a 14 song strong set of which, rather predictably, 10 came from latest album “Coming Up” – basically the whole album. The only tracks not taken from it were “The 2 Of Us” and “The Wild Ones” from “Dog Man Star” and “So Young” and “Animal Nitrate” from their eponymous debut album. I think I might have been ever so slightly disappointed that they didn’t do “The Drowners” and “Metal Mickey” as well.

Peter Andre says of them in his intro “here’s Suede at their most Suede”. Was that meant to be a play on words? If so, it didn’t match up to my mate Robin who once wrote me a letter (remember those!) informing me he’d been to see Suede at a very early gig when the music press were going crazy for them. His three word review? “Suede. I wasn’t”.

The UK really had a weakness for Michael Jackson in the 90s. By this point in the decade he’d accumulated thirteen hit singles over here including three No 1s and two No 2s. In addition, all three albums he released topped the charts. But it wasn’t just him that was the object of the nation’s affections – anybody related to him was also on our radar. The recently passed away Tito Jackson’s offspring benefited from the UK’s devotion to all things and people Jacko to the tune of five hit singles as 3T including this one “Why?”. There was no chance of us giving this one a miss what the King of Pop himself appearing on it alongside his nephews.

I’m surprised he deigned to be officially credited on it and didn’t just give it to them free of charge as it were given what a dreary, lamentable track it is. And don’t get me started on its lyrics. It’s very first two lines are;

Why does Monday come before Tuesday? Why do Summers start in June?

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Annie Lennox
Why? lyrics © La Lennoxa Music Co. Ltd., Boobie And Dj Songs, Inc.

Give me a break! The song sticks with this theme as a few lines later we get:

Why does Wednesday come after Tuesday? Why do flowers come in May?

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Annie Lennox
Why? lyrics © La Lennoxa Music Co. Ltd., Boobie And Dj Songs, Inc.

What?! The point Jackson was trying to make in a very laboured way was ‘why do we let ourselves fall in love if that love doesn’t last?’. Not sure what that has to do with days of the week or the seasons to be honest. Look, if you want to listen to a song called “Why” then try this one:

For the third week running, we have Robbie Williams on the show with “Freedom”. Wow! TOTP was really getting behind the launch of his solo career weren’t they? Perhaps executive producer Ric Blaxill could see something the rest of us were struggling to, namely that this guy was going to have the kind of longevity that most artists can only dream of. Robbie looks a bit disheveled in this performance though, as if he’s just wandered onto the stage direct from an all night bender. Maybe he did get a couple of hours sleep judging by the ‘ski slope’ bit of hair on the back of his head that you get if you slept in an awkward position that’s a bugger to get to behave. He’ll have eight months to sort it out though as we won’t be seeing him on the show again until his next single “Old Before I Die” is released the following April.

It’s a third week at No 1 for the Spice Girls. In 2014, a study by the University of Amsterdam and Manchester’s Museum of Science and Industry found that “Wannabe” was the catchiest song of all time in that it is the most easily recognisable. In an experiment of 12,000 participants who were asked if they knew songs from a random sample of 1,000 of the most popular songs since the 1940s, the quickest to be recognised was “Wannabe” in 2.29 seconds. Second was “Mambo No 5” and third was “Eye Of The Tiger”. Hmm. Well, the Survivor hit has that very distinctive guitar riff intro with the chord changes designed to match the punches in the boxing scenes from Rocky III so that’s understandable. “Wannabe” starts with Mel B’s laugh and then is straight into the “Well, I’ll tell you what I want” hook so I get that but Lou Bega? He literally just says “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Mambo No 5”! Of course people were quick to identify it!

So how did Peter Andre do as host? I have to grudgingly admit he was alright actually. Nothing too embarrassing, didn’t get his six pack out and didn’t stumble over his lines. His last job is to introduce the play out video which is “Love Sensation” by 911. Of all the 90s bands, this lot were one of the most unlikely. Lead singer Lee Brennan was your typical pretty boy but the other two? They looked like nightclub bouncers. Apparently, they met as dancers on late night, cult viewing music show The Hitman And Her and decided to form a band. Weren’t Take That’s Jason Orange and Howard Donald also dancers on the show? Anyway, despite the odds, having joined forces with Brennan, they somehow managed to score 13 UK hit singles including a No 1. Many of them were cover versions of the likes of Shalamar, Dr. Hook and the Bee Gees. This No 21 hit was all their own work though but is so lightweight as to hardly exist at all.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1New EditionHit Me OffI did not
2East 17Someone To LoveNegative
3DodgyGood EnoughNo but my wife had their Free Peace Sweet album
4Me Me MeHanging AroundNo No No
5Bone Thugs-n-HarmonyTha’ CrossroadsNope
6SuedeTrashNo but I had their Coming Up album
73T / Michael JacksonWhy?What? Of course not
8Robbie WilliamsFreedomNah
9Spice GirlsWannabeNo
10911Love SensationNever

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/p00fsvcz/top-of-the-pops-09081996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 02 AUG 1996

Posted on by 80stastic

We’re still in the Summer of 1996 with these TOTP repeats and we have another guest host in the ‘golden mic’ slot. In any other year, Jas Mann of Babylon Zoo would have got nowhere near this gig but this was the year of “Spaceman” and the stardust of that No 1 hit was still just about glittering over him enough to allow this appearance. It wouldn’t last much longer.

We start though with another guy who, by my reckoning, was also still very fortunate to be appearing on the show. Why was Sean Maguire still having hits two years on from his first one?! “Don’t Pull Your Love” was his seventh of eight in total ranging in size from No 27 to No 12. How could this be true? He couldn’t give away either of his albums which both sank without trace but somehow he managed to keep churning out a string of reasonably successful singles. How? Why? Yeah, he’d been in EastEnders so he was a familiar face and he didn’t look like the back end of a bus but I would have thought he’d have one, maybe two hits at most before the novelty wore off. He was quite the anomaly.

It can’t have been that the quality of the songs he was being given were irresistible to the record buying public can it? Surely not. Listening to this one, it sounds like something The Osmonds might have recorded back in the day. It wasn’t was it?

*checks internet*

No but it was a hit in the 70s by an act called Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds who took it to No 4 in the US selling over a million copies. I knew I was in the right ballpark.

I’ve never heard of them until this moment but apparently they also had an American No 1 called “Fallin’ In Love” and get this, it was covered in 1995 by German Eurodance outfit La Bouche. Wait, I didn’t review it in this blog did I?

*checks internet again*

No, it wasn’t a hit over here so it wouldn’t have been on TOTP. However, the song was in the news again in 2009 when it was sampled by the rapper Drake for his track “Best I Ever Had” which led to a lawsuit being brought against him by Playboy Enterprises who owned the rights to “Fallin’ In Love” as Drake hadn’t sought clearance for the sample. What has any of this to do with Sean Maguire? Not much but it’s surely more interesting than his pop career no?

Rivalling Jas Mann in the famous for 15 minutes stakes were the next act OMC. Yes, the difference between being a one hit wonder and a legendary electronic band who are still going 44 years after their first hit is just one letter apparently. However, whereas the name Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark didn’t mean anything and was chosen by Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys to ensure they weren’t mistaken for a punk band, OMC was an acronym for Otara Millionaires Club and was a tongue-in-cheek reference to Otara’s status as one of the poorest suburbs in Auckland, New Zealand. Their hit was “How Bizarre” which lived up to its name by being a strange concoction of mariachi guitars, tejano trumpets, almost spoken word verses (I’m not sure it qualifies as rapping) and harmonised backing vocals.

What was also atypical about the single was the amount of time it took to become a hit and its chart positions when it finally made it. It took five weeks to break into the Top 10 (including two consecutive weeks at No 19) and then spent six weeks there four of which were at No 8. It would eventually sell 400,000 copies in the UK despite never getting higher than No 5. Not surprisingly though, it topped the charts in Australia and New Zealand. Why was it such a sleeper hit? Maybe it didn’t attract enough airplay initially but when radio finally caught on to it, they realised it was perfect for summertime playlists. My wife loved this and indeed bought the CD single which might still be knocking about somewhere. Though the idea in today’s world of searching it out to put in a CD player when you could just say “Alexa play OMC” does indeed seem bizarre.

If 1996 was Jas Mann’s season in the sun, it was an annus mirabilis for Alanis Morissette. Her “Jagged Little Pill” album was No 1 for weeks and she had three hit singles, each of which charted higher than the one before. “Head Over Feet” was the biggest of those peaking at No 7. Given that so many people were buying the album and therefore already had access to those tracks, that was quite a feat. This particular single seemed almost laid back compared to some of its predecessors like “You Oughta Know” and “Ironic” which had themes of anger and dissatisfaction. By contrast, “Head Over Feet” contained lyrics that talked about falling in love with your best friend. That didn’t mean it was lacking a punch though – it was still in the heavyweight class.

Curiously, there were two videos for the song – the ‘head’ version does what it says on the tin with a camera permanently fixed on a close up of Alanis’s face as she sings whilst the ‘feet’ promo for the European market that we see here is in black and white and has her sat around a camp fire in what looks like a building site with her band, sat cross legged, all strumming guitars. I think I prefer the ‘head’ one as its more affecting. Could it also have been the inspiration for Radiohead’s “No Surprises” which saw Thom Yorke singing under duress in a see through helmet as it filled with water?

Despite all of Alanis’s success in 1996, she would finish the year with a flop single when “All I Really Want” failed to make the Top 40. It seemed six singles from the same album was going too far even for Morissette’s growing army of fans.

Noel Gallagher once said that there was a time in Oasis’s career when everything the band released sounded like “Get It On” by T-Rex. Well, in 1996, was everything starting to sound a bit like Alanis Morissette? OK, Alisha’s Attic were hardly a carbon copy but could their hit “I Am, I Feel” be described as a poppier version of the Canadian singer? Maybe it’s just because they followed Alanis on this particular show that they somehow fused together in my head or maybe it’s to do with that aforementioned anger that is present in their lyrics? I mean, these are fairly dark:

“Like I wanna bite his head off, yeah, that’d be fun, cause I sure got an appetite“

Writer(s): Karen Poole, Michelle Poole, Terence Martin

If I’m being truthful though, Alisha’s Attic weren’t following where Alanis Morissette had walked but in the footsteps of a long line of female pop duos stretching back to the 80s with Mel & Kim and Pepsie and Shirley and on into the 90s with Shakespears Sister, Shampoo and perhaps the couple most like them Scarlet. That lineage would continue into the new millennium with t.A.t.u. and…erm…Daphne and Celeste? Or perhaps they modelled themselves after a trio. I’m thinking Wilson Phillips who consisted of Carnie and Wendy Wilson who were the daughters of The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson and Chynna Phillips who was the offspring of John and Michelle Phillips of The Mamas & The Papas. So what you may ask? Well, sisters Shelly and Karen Poole were themselves from a pop background with their Dad being Brian Poole of *Brian Poole and the Tremeloes fame.

*Their bass player was Len ‘Chip’ Hawkes father of Chesney.

Anyway, I quite liked Alisha’s Attic and their quirky pop tunes of which eight were Top 40 hits. None got higher than No 12 (which was actually the peak position for three of their singles) and “I Am, I Feel” itself would spend three weeks at No 15 plus two at No 18 and for all the No 1 artist’s posturing about ‘girl power’, surely was a better feminist anthem than “Wannabe”.

And talking of feminist anthems, here’s Neneh Cherry with “Woman”. I say ‘feminist anthems’ but I’m not sure that’s the correct terminology anymore. It conjures up images of Viz character Millie Tant and the world is certainly more nuanced than that. Look, just to be clear, I believe in equality of the sexes and hate all the ‘lads, lads, lads’ culture (groups of men can be such pricks) so if I misuse a phrase then please accept my apologies in advance.

Right, with that disclaimer out of the way, let’s get back to Neneh Cherry. She was on The Graham Norton Show last week promoting her memoir A Thousand Threads which was published just a few days ago. It seems to be quite comprehensive and not just a retread of her discography – apparently she doesn’t get to that iconic TOTP appearance when she was seven months pregnant until three quarters of the way through the book. Sounds like an interesting read to be fair. In her interview with Graham we found out that the first record she ever bought was by Donny Osmond and that she’s now a grandmother – quite possibly the coolest grandmother ever but still a grandmother. Yeah, you feel old now don’t you. Me too.

From Neneh Cherry to the Manic Street Preachers via Bernard Butler. In the last post, I talked about how Suede recovered from the departure of their guitarist and song writer to return with their most commercial album ever. Butler, of course, is up there on stage with Neneh for this performance. And the Manics? Well, like Suede, they also lost a founding member from their line up around this time albeit in totally different circumstances with the disappearance of Richey Edwards. As with Suede, they bounced back with their biggest selling album ever in “Everything Must Go” the title track of which was released as the second single from it. I always preferred this to “A Design For Life” though I’m not quite sure why. Maybe it was that huge, orchestral swathe in the mix that they managed to produce that many in the music press compared to Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound. Apparently the song was written as an acknowledgment that since Edwards was no longer giving his input to the band, inevitably their identity and music had to change with the lyric “and I just hope that you can forgive us” a direct plea to the fans.

Despite the hopping around on one leg antics of James Dean Bradfield in this performance, I’m more drawn to the static drummer Sean Moore. It might be because he is stood up throughout as opposed to sat at a drum kit or it could very well be that his look here reminds me of the character of Garland Greene from 1997 film Con Air.

With this single, Eternal set a new record as the first all female group to score ten consecutive Top 20 hits in the UK. What a stinker of a song to do it with though. “Someday” was recorded for the Disney film The Hunchback Of Notre Dame though it only features as an instrumental with the full song having been discarded at the storyboarding stage. You can understand why. It’s a dreary, jaded, love-song- by-numbers snoozefest. In fact, I’d have been more entertained if Eternal had stood there on stage and spent three minutes making snoring noises. Apparently, “I Swear” hitmakers All-4-One recorded “Someday” as well and it’s their take that’s on the US version of the soundtrack. So why were Eternal asked to record it for the European soundtrack? I don’t get it. In an unusual disruption to their timeline, the group’s next single release was from their “Power Of A Woman” album but “Someday” would turn up on their 1997 studio album “Before The Rain” making a right mess of the chronology of their discography. Tsk.

The final three songs on the show have all been on before so I might whip through these at speed. We start with “Macarena” by Los Del Rio and can I get away with just signposting you to other versions of the song rather than thinking of something witty to say about it? I can? Marvellous!

OK, here’s the original 1993 version that sounds very different to the hit we all know and loathe that was The Bayside Boys remix:

Then there’s the Los Del Mar take on it which was out at the same time. Despite it being sung without any English lyrics, this lot were actually from Canada and it was their cover that was a big hit over there. That absence of English lyrics is pretty much the only difference to the Bayside Boys remix and yet amazingly, in Australia, they were both in the chart at the same time with Los Del Rio at No 1 and Los Del Mar at No 2. Just how do you explain that? Fortunately for the UK, the Los Del Mar version peaked at a lowly No 43.

There are loads of other versions including a country version by The GrooveGrass Boyz, a rap version by US rapper Tyga, an Italian version by Los Locos and even a take on it by Los Del Chipmunks (!). Finally, for those that really can’t stand the “Macarena”, there’s this…

Without wishing to discredit the aforementioned achievement of Eternal, I fear it was totally undermined, nay blown out of the water, by the chart feats of the Spice Girls. They are in the TOTP studio for the first time this week I think after two appearances from Japan and though the stage and space in which they have to work are much reduced, they give an energetic performance with Mel C even managing to get in her trademark backflip. “Wannabe” is into its second of seven weeks at No 1 and would be the second best selling single in 1996 in the UK after “Killing Me Softly” by the Fugees. That was literally just the start though. Of the eleven singles released during their career, nine would top the chart. They would sell 100 million records in total being both the best selling British act of the 90s and the best selling girl group of all time. Take that Eternal.

The play out video is “Freedom” by Robbie Williams. Now, if we’re talking chart records as we were Eternal and the Spice Girls, then we can’t ignore this man (whether you really want to or not). He has notched up seven No 1 singles and sold 77 million records worldwide. By 2008, he’d sold more albums in the UK than any other British solo artist in history. And yet somehow, it all started with this fairly straight cover of a George Michael song. Given that Robbie wouldn’t release anything else until “Old Before I Die” nine months later, I think “Freedom” could almost be a forgotten Williams single, like a false start. Indeed, it did not feature on either his 1999 compilation “The Ego Has Landed” that was initially released for the US and Australia markets nor his first official “Greatest Hits” album in 2004. However it was included on No the 2010 collection “In And Out Of Consciousness”.

Apparently, Williams was in a bad way when he filmed the video for “Freedom” struggling with an alcohol addiction and he certainly looks wild eyed in the promo – are his pupils dilated in some shots? He claims to have mimed to the original George Michael track as he hadn’t recorded his version before the video was filmed. Is that likely? Is that how it worked? Anyway, we’ll be seeing lots more of Mr Williams on TOTP in future repeats. As for Jas Mann, I’m not sure we will be seeing him again as he never presented the show after this (he was pretty shit to be fair) and he would only have one more UK hit when “The Boy With The X-Ray Eyes” made No 32. The odds on either him or Robbie becoming pop music superstars were probably evenly matched and low back then. Funny that.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1Sean MaguireDon’t Pull Your LoveNever
2OMCHow BizarreNo but my wife did
3Alanis MorissetteHead Over FeetNo but I had the album
4Alisha’s AtticI Am, I FeelNope
5Neneh CherryWomanNo but my wife had the album
6Manic Street PreachersEverything Must GoSee 3 above
7EternalSomedayNegative
8Los Del RioMacarenaAs if
9Spice GirlsWannabeNo
10Robbie WilliamsFreedomNah

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/m0023k99/top-of-the-pops-02081996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 26 JUL 1996

Posted on 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 appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1Pato Banton & The Reggae RevolutionGroovin’Nah
2Mark MorrisonCrazyNo
3WinkHigher State Of Consciousness 96 RemixesHell no!
4SuedeTrashNo but I had their Coming Up album
5Tina TurnerMissing YouNever
6New EditionHit Me OffNope
7JoyriderRush HourI did not
8Robbie WilliamsFreedomNegative
9Spice GirlsWannabeNot likely
10Peter AndreMysterious GirlAre 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