Rod Stewart

TOTP 31 OCT 1997

Although I know the name Mary Anne Hobbs, I couldn’t tell you much about her other than she’s a DJ. Well, she’s also the presenter on this particular episode of TOTP (the second of only two she hosted but we missed the first one due to the Puff Daddy issue) so a little research on her seems in order. It turns out that she’s had a career as a radio presenter, music journalist and a DJ but that doesn’t really tell her whole backstory. She left a chaotic family home in the small Lancashire village of Garstang to work for and live with a rock band from London on a bus in a coach park in Hayes, Middlesex before securing employment with Sounds and then the NME. Following that, she moved into radio broadcasting with XFM before a confrontational interview with the BBC’s Trevor Dann* brought her to the attention of Radio 1.

*Dann was head of Radio 1 Production known as ‘Dann Dann the Hatchetman’ for his role in overseeing the culling of the station’s old guard of DJs.

Having joined in January 1996, she presented a movie review show alongside Mark Kermode and the station’s rock show but perhaps she is best known for her show The Breezeblock that showcased experimental electronic music and was particularly influential in promoting music from the then little known grime and dubstep movements (Mary Anne even has the show’s name written across her stomach here). She would leave Radio 1 in 2010 before returning to the Beeb two years later via Radio 6. She has also run parallel careers as a touring DJ, a presenter of the World Superbikes series for British Eurosport and as a documentary maker producing a series about biker culture for BBC Choice. Phew! With all that in mind, it strikes me that she wasn’t the obvious choice to present such a mainstream music show as TOTP, what with her passion for experimental and leftfield genres. I wonder what she made of some of the acts she was introducing here?

Exhibit A m’lud. “Party People…Friday Night” by 911. I can’t believe that this would have been the sort of thing that Mary Anne played either publicly on the radio or in private for her personal listening pleasure. This piece of dance/pop fluff was the band’s fourth Top 5 hit of 1997 and the lead single from their sophomore album “Moving On”. Remarkably given the lack of depth of their talents, this lot were building themselves quite the pop career. Watching this performance back, I’m struck by a number of images. Firstly, the surfeit of balloons being held aloft and waved about by the studio audience. It’s as if we’ve been transported back to 1983. Maybe that was deliberate on the part of executive producer Chris Cowey? Secondly, why is lead singer Lee Brennan wearing a jacket with sleeves that don’t fit him? Look at the length of them! Wardrobe clearly didn’t think his outfit through as it made him far more vulnerable to the grabbing hands of the teenage girls in the studio audience. Finally, they seem to have given up completely on any pretence that they weren’t miming when dancer Jimmy strides forward to take over lead vocal duties. Surely that’s still Lee’s voice we can hear? What was all that about? Was there some dissent in the ranks about Lee always being the centre of attention? I’m probably overthinking it – something I never imagined myself doing given that the subject of my thoughts are 911!

Exhibit B m’lud. Surely this horrid 90s work over of Rod Stewart’s 1978 No 1 “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” can’t have been Mary Anne’s cup of tea can it? The trend for nasty dance covers of hits from yesteryear was unfathomably popular around this time. The other week we had Clock getting their hands all over Hot Chocolate’s “You Sexy Thing” and pulling it to pieces in the most disrespectful way and now here was N–Trance following a similar path. As with the aforementioned Clock, this lot had taken a clear decision to pursue a cheesy pop route after more credible dance beginnings. It’s hard to believe this is the same people who brought us “Set You Free” two years before. Since then though, they’d already released covers of oldies by the Bee Gees and Ottawan and now we had this monstrosity completing a most ignoble hat-trick. Apparently, Rod himself gave his blessing to this version to the point where he is credited as appearing on it. He must have smelt a potential big hit rather than the rancid stench of desperation that filled my nostrils. I never much liked his original to be fair though. Written as a response to the disco movement of the late 70s, it was a clever move by Stewart I guess but oh so cynical. Unbelievably, N-Trance would do a version of the Guns N’ Roses classic “Paradise City” for their next single before returning to their former glories in 2001 when they rereleased “Set You Free”.

With Mary Anne Hobbs referring to the Spice Girls as The Teletubbies in her intro, I think we can infer from that she wasn’t a fan. Talking of fans, were they beginning to lose a few what with them only being No 1 for a single week with “Spice Up Your Life”? Even if that were true, it doesn’t stop them being on the show again seven days later – this was the ‘repeat appearances’ era of executive producer Chris Cowey after all and he wasn’t going to miss out on recycling that ‘exclusive’ performance from New Delhi, India. However, that decision means we don’t get to see the Bladerunner inspired official promo video that accompanied the single. Obviously, the promo will have been used by other pop programmes throughout the world (I’m sure the UK’s own Chart Show would have shown it) but it does seem a waste somewhat that the BBC’s premier and historic music show chose not to feature it. I suppose Cowey was trying to rebuild the TOTP brand which didn’t include showing very many videos it seems. The Spice Girls would recover from the knock of their short-lived chart topper to bag the 1997 Christmas No 1 with follow up single “Too Much”. We aren’t nearly done with them yet in these BBC4 repeats.

Now this might have been more to Mary Anne’s taste – the latest offering from Dannii Minogue…erm…sorry…it was just Dannii by this point wasn’t it? Having made a successful comeback with her last single “All I Wanna Do” going to No 4, the youngest Minogue sister was rivalling Kylie in the popularity stakes who was struggling to get the public to buy into her ‘indie Kylie’ phase. Dannii’s follow up single was “Everything I Wanted” and it rather cleverly combined a pop melody with a shuffling drum & bass style backbeat – at least that’s what it sounds like to my unsophisticated ears. Was she going for a sound similar to the likes of Baby D or Dubstar that had garnered commercial sales as well as critical acclaim? If I’m being super critical I would say that I’m not sure about the quality of her vocals but she sells the track pretty well with a more restrained, dressed down image than previously. A tour and a role in Grease: The Arena Spectacular as the character of Rizzo would follow before she returned to music with perhaps her best received album “Neon Lights” in 2003.

Surely Mary Anne Hobbs would have approved of this one? A ‘speed garage’ anthem which was emblematic of a scene that was big in London at the time – this was just the sort of thing she’d have plugged on her The Breezeblock radio show. I’m guessing here as I never actually listened to said show obviously and that seems like a good decision if indeed “Ripgroove” by Double 99 was the sort of thing that got played on it. What a racket! Is this what speed garage sounded like? Lordy! Double 99 were duo Tim Deluxe and Omar Adimora who also recorded under the pseudonyms R.I.P Productions and 10° Below but they are best known for this track which was released twice in 1997 peaking at No 31 initially but 17 places higher the second time around. The rerelease featured the vocals of MC Top Cat though what he is actually banging on about I’m not entirely sure. Something about “bruk whine”?

*googles “bruk whine”*

Well, AI Overview tells me that it’s Jamaican patois meaning a dance move that is a twist on the traditional ‘whine’ or circular hip movements/gyrations with ‘bruk’ meaning ‘broken’ or ‘out of order’. That’s that solved then. It doesn’t change my opinion about the track though. It reminds me of that hit “Incredible” by M-Beat but Wikipedia tells me that was ragga jungle rather than speed garage. Despite working in record shops throughout the 90s and despite all these years of blogging about TOTP and all the dance tunes I’ve listened to, my knowledge of dance and all its genres and sub genres hardly seems to have improved at all. I guess that’s why ‘Dance Collections’ was always the scariest section of those record shops for me. I’m not sure me and Mary Anne Hobbs would have much to talk about in terms of music were we ever to meet.

Now, apparently we’re missing a performance from this repeat – Puff Daddy and his hit “Been Around The World” which has been edited out for obvious reasons. So why couldn’t that approach have been applied to all those shows featuring his chart topper “I’ll Be Missing You”? My guess would be that it was precisely because his hit was a No 1 and to have removed it would have wrecked the natural flow of the show as it worked its way up to the best selling hit of the week. Its place in the running order would have made editing it out look odd and incongruous.

With the offending Puff Daddy removed, we find ourselves in the company of The Charlatans. I’d forgotten that they released the title track of their album “Tellin’ Stories” but release it they did as the fourth and final single to be taken from it. It doesn’t veer too far from the style of its predecessors but there’s a definite tinge of soul in there. However, it does have a bit of a stop-start feel to it, as if it’s really going to swing into something anthemic but then it pulls itself back. Probably just me. We didn’t have to wait an age for another Charlatans album which would appear in 1999 with the intermediate gap plugged by the Best Of album “Melting Pot” which I duly bought.

As for this performance, are my eyes deceiving me or did the TOTP cameras briefly catch an attempted stage invasion that was thwarted by studio floor staff? Could be as Tim Burgess seems momentarily distracted by something going on to his left. After Oasis and Stereophonics both experienced members of the studio audience breaching the consecrated safety of the stage this year, at least BBC security seemed to have got themselves organised finally.

And so to the song that deposed the Spice Girls at the top of the charts after just one week – it’s “Barbie Girl” by Aqua. So, let’s address the controversy attached to this hit which was the litigation brought by toy manufacturer Mattel against Aqua and their record label MCA for impinging upon their trademark and copyrights for the Barbie doll. In a counter move, MCA sued Mattel for defamation. In the end, both cases were thrown out by the courts with a ruling advising both parties to ‘“chill”.

Heh. Sounds like the judge in the case was John Cusack’s character Lloyd Dobler in Say Anything. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Just watch this…

As for Mary Anne Hobbs, this would be her last time as a TOTP presenter which is probably just as well as she didn’t really look comfortable in the role. A mainstream platform in a peak viewing time slot was really taking her out of her late night comfort zone.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	911	Party People…Friday Night	Negative
2	N-Trance / Rod Stewart	Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?	As if
3	Spice Girls	Spice Up Your Life	Nope
4	Dannii Minogue	Everything I Wanted	Nah
5	Double 99	Ripgroove	No
6	The Charlatans	Tellin’ Stories	I did not
7	Aqua	Barbie Girl	Never

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002blmk/top-of-the-pops-31101997?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 04 OCT 1996

Posted on November 13, 2024 by 80stastic

We are well into the Autumn of 1996 here at TOTP Rewind as we enter the month of October and big changes are afoot. No, I don’t mean the show’s new opening titles but rather the fact that Manchester City have just appointed a new manager – Steve Coppell replaced Alan Ball two days after this TOTP aired. This was big news where I worked in the Our Price store in Stockport where many of my colleagues were City fans. Coppell had done wonders over two separate stints at Crystal Palace and big things were expected of him but his reign would last just 33 days and 6 matches after which he quit stating that the pressure of the job was to big for him. What I remember most of this time was that in those 33 days, the Man City calendar for 1997 came out and had a team photo on the cover with Coppell front and centre. The calendar company and the club must have been so pissed off. What were the chances? With Stockport not being far from Manchester, we stocked the calendar and decided we would try and hide the recently resigned Coppell’s face with the price sticker to try and make it seem like it wasn’t an already out of date product which, let’s be fair, is not a good look for a calendar. Anyway, I wonder if there are any artists on this show that had a similarly short career in pop music?

Our host is ‘Tony from Terrorvision’ (that’s was his official name around this time) who looked like he might have a potential career in the media if the whole rock star thing didn’t work out. To be fair to him, his appearance on Never Mind The Buzzcocks was very good and indicated that a projected media career wasn’t so fanciful. He starts his shift by introducing Sleeper and their latest hit “Statuesque”. The fourth and final single released from “The It Girl” album, it also drew a line under their most successful period. By the time that third album “Pleased To Meet You” came out in the Autumn of 1997, Britpop was in its last vestiges and with no zeitgeist to ride, reaction to it was cool with neither of the singles taken from it making the Top 20. For now though, it was success as usual. “Statuesque” was very much in the same style as its predecessors from the album and secured a No 17 chart peak and a third hit for the band in this calendar year. However, the winning formula of the music wasn’t translating into a ring of confidence when it came to Louise Wener’s stage presence. I’ve said it before but she does look a bit uncomfortable up there in terms of knowing what to do with herself when not singing into the mike. She just sort of shuffles about, swinging her arms and flicking her hair. They could have at least given her a guitar to strum.

Rivalling ‘Tony from Terrorvision’s’ profile at this time, Louise would appear on the Vic Reeves/Bob Mortimer TV game show Shooting Stars in December of this year. Actually, the pair would mirror each other’s extra curricular TV appearances with Wener also appearing on Never Mind The Buzzcocks in 1997 having already presented TOTP six months prior to Tony’s slot here. All of this must have only highlighted the gulf of recognition between Louise and the rest of her band mates whose anonymity was seized upon by the music press who referred to them as “Sleeperblokes”. They took it in good spirits though even having T-shirts produced for them to wear with the phrase on the front.

Steve Coppell-ometer: Burnt brightly but briefly in their heyday but were saved from a higher score by reforming in 2017

We’re still in the ‘techno bollocks’ stage of Everything But The Girl’s career and I still can’t get in board with it. “Single” was the third single taken from the “Walking Wounded” album that had seen them take a more electronica direction following the huge success of the Todd Terry remix of “Missing”. This track, like its predecessors from this era, just sounds a bit ‘meh’ to me (for want of a better word). If I’d been out at a club on an all nighter and I’d made it back home in the early hours and wanted some comedown music to chill out to as the sun came up, then maybe “Single” would be a good choice in that scenario but as I can count on the fingers of one hand how many times I’ve been in that situation…

I had wondered if “Single” was a clever marketing ploy as per the one used by Public Image Ltd back in 1986 when they released an album called “Album” (the CD version of it was called “Compact Disc” and the cassette format “Cassette”). Its lead single was a song called “Rise” but was packaged as being called “Single”. Sadly, Everything But The Girl’s song was just about being single, as in not in a relationship. Miserabilists.

Steve Coppell-ometer: A very low score for Ben and Tracey who recorded under the Everything But The Girl banner between 1982 and 2000 before resurrecting it in 2021 and releasing the “Fuse” album in 2023. They have also been in a relationship with each other for decades finally marrying in 2009. So they didn’t really know anything about being single did they?

It’s another female lead vocal now. Having gone from a band to a duo we now get a solo artist. Gabrielle’s career might have gone another way after her debut single “Dreams” went to No 1 in 1993. She could have been a classic one hit wonder but a series of follow up hits ranging in size from minor to middling to mighty meant that her time as a pop star would carry on until the present day. “If You Really Cared” was one of those middling sized hits I would suggest, peaking at No 15. It strikes me as typical Gabrielle fare, smooth R&B pop, very radio friendly (some of the guitar parts put me in mind of “You’re The Best Thing” by The Style Council) though not likely to last long in the memory. There’s only really the aforementioned “Dreams” plus “Rise” and “Out Of Reach” from her back catalogue that I could tell you how they went.

There is something else to say about this song though and it’s this: why did Gabrielle put out a single so close to the scheduled release of her duet with East 17? Everyone clearly knew it was in the pipeline as ‘Tony from Terrorvision’ describes her as the drinking partner of the boys from Walthamstow and the TOTP caption says ‘Soon releasing duet with East 17’. “If You Really Cared” was made available in the shops on 23 September whilst “If You Ever” came out on 21 October. Was that really an advisable strategy and whilst we’re at it, having the titles of both singles start with the word “If” – would they not have been slightly confusing for punters and indeed record shop staff?

Steve Coppell-ometer: Hardly a blip on its radar which is understandable given she’s been a recording artist for over 30 years

Things I know about LL Cool J:

He’s a rapper non
He had a hit in the 80s called “I Need Love”
He’s also an actor (though I couldn’t name any of the films he’s been in)
The name LL Cool J stands for Ladies Love Cool James
Erm…that’s it

Clearly that list doesn’t include this hit “Loungin’” so this must have passed me by despite going to No 7 in our charts. So back in the day, did the word loungin’ mean something other than relaxing (probably) on a sofa? Was it a forerunner of Netflix and chill? Well, the online urban dictionary gives a definition of:

“The act of a girl lying across a guy’s chest with her head on his shoulder. Usually undertaken while on a sofa watching a film.”

Frodrick Frankenstein February 4, 2009

Hmm. Kind of a Netflix and chill vibe then. “Loungin’” would the first of a run of five UK Top 10 hits for LL Cool J including a No 1 with his version of “Ain’t Nobody” for the Beavis and Butt–Head Do America soundtrack. Well, there’s something to look forward to then. Ahem.

Steve Coppell-ometer: Cool James hardly registers a flicker with a career stretching into five decades

This week’s ’flashback’ section features a very famous TOTP performance – it’s Rod Stewart doing “Maggie May”. Yeah, that one with a very hirsute John Peel miming the mandolin. Apparently Rod was told he couldn’t have a non musician up there with him but he insisted on Peel being part of the performance with the latter having to guarantee the Musicians’ Union that he hadn’t received payment for the privilege. The TOTP cameramen were instructed not to focus on Peel but Rod got wind of this and so indulged in some horseplay in and around the DJ so that he would be caught in shot on camera. The performance as a whole is a riot of ill discipline with The Two Ronnies Laine and Wood disappearing off stage mid song meaning that they missed their miming cues whilst scrambling back to their original positions. Sadly in this clip, we don’t get to see the infamous scenes of Rod, Wood and Laine kicking a football about on stage as the song finishes.

“Maggie May” was Stewart’s first solo No 1 and has become perhaps his most enduring song though my first awareness of him would be via his 1975 No 1 “Sailing” which my Mum and Dad liked. They weren’t the only ones. Apparently ex-footballer turned pundit Alan Shearer replied “Sailing by Rod Stewart” when asked by then Blackburn Rovers team mate Graeme Le Saux to name his favourite song ever. Shearer would have been in his early to mid 20s at that point! Le Saux, who is two years older than Shearer and was all about the likes of Jamiroquai at the time, was (perhaps rightly) flabbergasted.

Steve Coppell-ometer: Are you mad?! Rod’s 80 in January and still going strong

There are only nine songs on this TOTP as opposed to what has become the standard ten and I can only assume that was to allow the show to feature the six minutes long video of Celine Dion performing “It’s All Coming Back To Me Now”. As ‘Tony from Terrorvision’ says, “it goes on and on and on…”. The way that the decks were cleared to accommodate it is similar to the special treatment reserved for a Michael Jackson video exclusive – I know she was shifting some units but really?! You don’t have to listen to the song for long to realise it’s a Jim Steinman composition – legend has it that his on/off pal Meatloaf wanted to record it but Steinman told him to hang fire and he could have it for “Bat Out Of Hell 3” but then gave it to Celine to record. Also unimpressed by that decision was one Elaine Caswell, singer with all female group Pandora’s Box who Steinman put together in the 80s and who first recorded “It’s All Coming Back To Me Now”. Apparently, the original recording just had her vocals removed and Dion’s added over the top. Elaine was so upset that she couldn’t bear to be in the room if Celine’s version came on the radio. Supposedly Caswell collapsed five times whilst laying down the track in the studio. It is not known whether it was due to physical exhaustion from all that overwrought singing or that the rancid stench of the song overpowered her senses causing her to faint.

As for the video that TOTP executive producer Ric Blaxill seems to have made such a fuss over, it’s all very derivative with a “Total Eclipse Of The Heart” promo vibe detectable and substantial nods to the movie Ghost and even to The Rocky Horror Picture Show* present. Celine emotes all over the place and the whole thing feels like it wasn’t really worth all that bother. “It’s All Coming Back To Me Now” would take Celine to No 3 in the UK and No 2 in the US. All of this and we haven’t even got anywhere near that Titanic song yet…

*That bit where the ghost of her dead lover drives his motorbike in the house reminds me of Eddie riding his round and round the stairs before he is ultimately despatched by Dr. Frank-N-Furter with an ice pick. Eddie was, of course, played by Meatloaf.

Steve Coppell-meter: Nothing doing here. Despite health issues, Celine still has the desire to record and perform live. She completed an eight year residency in Las Vegas in 2019.

On and on and on…do you think ‘Tony from Terrorvision’ knew that as well as poking fun at Celine Dion that he was also referencing a song by the next artist. Longpigs would rack up four chart hits in 1996 – “On And On” was the second of them peaking at No 16. This one though – “Lost Myself” – was the fourth and final single to make the Top 40 for them in that calendar year. I thought I didn’t know this one but I did remember it when I watched this performance back – the hook of lead singer Crispin Hunt pausing momentarily between the words ‘live’ and ‘by’ in the lyric “to live by myself I’m far too weak” was very arresting and immediately rang a bell. It did strike me as unusual that there were two bands in the charts at this time with lead singers with very similar and… well…let’s have it right, quite posh sounding names in Crispin Hunt from Longpigs and Crispian Mills from Kula Shaker. Still, what’s in a name. I mean, I couldn’t tell you if that’s a Barbie or a Sindy doll strapped to Hunt’s microphone. Actually, what was that about?

Steve Coppell-ometer: Finally an artist who shows up on it. Longpigs were only in existence for seven years and bar one minor chart entry in 1999, all their hits came in this year.

As in the previous two years, Boyzone (now elevated to being the UK’s premier boy band after the demise of Take That earlier in 1996) looked to that old chestnut of a cover version to secure themselves a massive hit. Having taken both “Love Me For A Reason” by The Osmonds and “Father And Son” by Cat Stevens to a chart peak of No 2, the band’s decision to record a version of “Words” by the Bee Gees would reward them with their first UK chart topper. Sound logic but was it all becoming just a little bit cynical? Off the top of my head, I can think of at least another two covers that they released as singles in Tracy Chapman’s “Baby Can I Hold You” and Billy Ocean’s “When The Going Gets Tough” (the second one was for Comic Relief at least) so it’s a concept they weren’t done with yet.

“Words” was originally a No 8 in 1968 for the Bee Gees and you can see why Boyzone (or their management) chose it. A wistful, weary ballad that suited Ronan Keating’s wistful, weary voice perfectly and of course, it had that Gibb Brothers stardust that so many other artists had found themselves sprinkled with when covering a Bee Gees song. The lads seem a bit overdressed here in all that stuffy clobber of large coats, scarves and ties – they must have been sweltering under those studio lights. What do they care for what I’m writing about them though? It’s only words.

Steve Coppell-ometer: Nothing registering here. The lads would carry on until 2000 and then again from 2007 to 2019.

And so to the No 1 and it’s “Breakfast At Tiffany’s” by Deep Blue Something and what a divisive chart topper it was. Literally the worst song ever for some online commenters, it was also undoubtedly popular at least briefly. Where do I stand on it? Well, I certainly wouldn’t describe it as the worst song ever but is it a great track? Probably not. However, look it up on YouTube and there are so many videos of people having a go at playing the song – it seems to be quite the busker’s favourite and if the mark of a song is how many times it’s been played then, at least that’s one thing it’s got.

Steve Coppell-ometer: Finally a massive score on this. They came, they saw, they conquered… and then they disappeared having spent as many weeks inside the Top 10 as Coppell had games in charge of Manchester City – six.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Sleeper	Statuesque	Decent song but no
2	Everything But The Girl	Single	Not happening
3	Gabrielle	If You Really Cared	Nope
4	LL Cool J	Loungin’	Negative
5	Rod Stewart	Maggie May	No but my parents liked it
6	Celine Dion	It’s All Coming Back To Me Now	Never
7	Longpigs	Lost Myself	I did not
8	Boyzone	Words	Nah
9	Deep Blue Something	Breakfast At Tiffany’s	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/m0024hpb/top-of-the-pops-04101996?seriesId=unsliced

Cannot

TOTP 24 FEB 1994

Posted on February 11, 2023 by 80stastic

Musical comebacks – there have been a few across the decades, some more successful than others. Take That made a remarkable return to the charts in 2006 ten years after they had disbanded with a No 1 album and single and sold out tour dates, all without the presence of Robbie Williams in their ranks (at least initially). In 1983, Tina Turner’s “Private Dancer” album would bag her four Grammy Awards following years in the commercial wilderness after finally escaping her abusive relationship with husband Ike. And what about Elvis Presley’s 1968 TV Special which would become unofficially known as ‘The ‘68 Comeback Special’, reinvigorating his career which had declined into a spiral of those awful movies he made. Even in these BBC4 TOTP repeats, we’ve seen both Meatloaf and Duran Duran rise from the ashes of their past careers to record huge sellers in 1993.

Then there’s the less well received comebacks. When Guns N’ Roses self destructed causing a massive delay of fifteen years between albums, by the time “Chinese Democracy “ finally came out, there was little appetite for Axl Rose and his new band line up. Spandau Ballet did pull off a successful reunion in 2009 with a sell out tour, an album of re-recorded versions of songs from their back catalogue and a feature length documentary biopic Soul Boys Of The Western World. However, when lead singer Tony Hadley left for good in 2017, the band tried to carry on by replacing him with relative unknown Ross William Wild. They only lasted a handful of gigs before realising that a Hadley-less Spandau wasn’t really what the people wanted. Nor did people have any room in their lives for the second coming of Vanilla Ice who attempted a comeback in 1998 with a nu-metal influenced album called “Hard To Swallow” (indeed it was). And then there was Level 42 who kick off this edition of TOTP. Was it a return to their glory days of the mid 80s or did they illicit an indifferent reaction?

The dawn of the 90s saw the band looking every bit the 80s anachronism. Their long term record label Polydor allegedly rejected their first new material of the decade (the 1991 album “Guaranteed”) which led to the band relocating to RCA but the album wasn’t well received when it finally appeared. Could they achieve an unlikely comeback three years on just as Britpop was brewing?

“Forever Now” was the title of both their tenth studio album and lead single from it. It was also the last album to feature three members of the original line up in Mark King, Mike Lindup and Phil Gould with the latter returning to the fold for the first time since 1987. It was a short lived return for Gould who refused to tour the album due to his lack of confidence in the record company. The fan base saw the album as very much a return to form but for an uncommitted observer like me, it sounded a bit directionless. They’d added a load of horns into the mix alongside King’s trademark slap bass but it just seems to meander along without really going anywhere ultimately. Maybe channeling the origins of the band’s name (with 42 being the answer to “the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything” as per The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy), the song’s lyrics seem to ponder the existential mystery of time, coming up with the conclusion that we should all just live for the moment. However, it expresses that sentiment in the most cack-handed of ways with these words:

Holy grail, holy cow

I just want to live forever now
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Frank John Musker / Mark King / Richard Simon Darbyshire
Forever Now lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Chappell Music, Inc

Dear oh dear. Later in the year, another song would appear with the lyrics “live forever” in it. It was so much better than Level 42’s effort, you could see the difference in quality between them from space.

“Forever Now” the single did achieve a respectable peak of No 19 though whilst the album made the Top 10. The band would break up in the October of 1994 before reappearing with King and a new touring line up in 2001.

https://youtu.be/Y7Jfa_-b0GE

Level 42 weren’t the only ones in revival mode on this show as the host was also on the comeback trail. Bruno Brookes hadn’t been on the show since 1991 just before the ‘year zero’ cull but was brought back into the fold alongside Simon Mayo, Mark Goodier and Nicky Campbell by new producer Ric Blaxill. So here he was in 1994 with the same hairstyle that he had on his first TOTP appearance back in 1984. Quite remarkable. Bruno Brookes introducing Level 42 on TOTP – this really was an 80s flashback.

The next act weren’t exactly looking to make a comeback as they’d had a No 1 single less than 12 months earlier but the comparative lack of success of its follow ups had led me to believe we’d maybe already seen the last of them. How wrong I was. Ace Of Base have sold an estimated 50 million records worldwide to date making them the third best selling artist from Sweden ever behind the mighty ABBA and..ahem…Roxette. Their debut album sold 9 million copies in the US alone and it’s from that album that this track – “The Sign” – came. Sort of. As with Red Hot Chili Peppers the other week, Ace Of Base’s release history was a bit complicated. Originally entitled “Happy Nation”, it was initially released in the UK in June 1993. However, it was kept back for nearly 6 months in the US and retitled “The Sign” with that track plus two others added to it. When the title track went to No 1 over there for 6 weeks, the single was given a release in the UK whilst the “Happy Nation” album was also rereleased with those extra tracks added and retitled “Happy Nation (U.S. Version). Got all that? Good.

In my head, “The Sign” went to No 1 over here just as it had done in the US but Wikipedia assured me it was a No 2 record. Depending on your point of view it’s either incredibly catchy or intensely annoying (I’m in the latter camp) yet it many circles it is cherished. Katy Perry has acknowledged it as a big influence on her music and it regularly appears in those 50 Best Songs of the 90s polls. For me though, it was always a very slight, lowest common denominator pop song. Its Wikipedia entry refers to it as ‘techno-reggae’ whatever the hell that was. As with all of Ace Of Base’s hits, I couldn’t get along the overly nasal vocals. As for its legacy, it surely doesn’t get any bigger than Pitch Perfect?

Another comeback of sorts now as we find the rather unusual event of a record going back up the charts having already peaked once. There’s no great mystery to why this happened though. “All For Love” by Bryan Adams, Rod Stewart and Sting had entered the charts at No 7 back in mid January before making its way to a peak of No 2 and then descending the charts. However, the film it was from – The Three Musketeers – was released to UK cinemas just two weeks before this TOTP aired and so, with it playing over the end credits, people’s attention was drawn to it once more resulting in a sales spike. It’s still a shocking song though.

No comebacks here – “Stay Together” was a bit of a stop gap single though between Suede albums. Crashing straight into the charts at No 3, was this official proof that they were not just the next big thing but indeed, the current big thing? As for that by rather out there Derek Jarman reference by Bruno Brookes, here’s @TOTPFacts with the story behind it:

No, you didn't dream that, Bruno Brookes just mentioned avant garde filmmaker Derek Jarman, who died of an AIDS-related illness on 19 February 1994. Jarman directed the video for Suede's "So Young". #TOTP https://t.co/p1HxIRGrJy
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) February 3, 2023

They’ve also got the info on drummer Simon Gilbert’s 16 T-shirt:

Suede drummer Simon Gilbert's "16" t-shirt was a message in support of lowering the gay male age of consent to 16. At this point it was still 21. On 21 February 1994, the House of Commons had voted to reduce it to 18. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) February 3, 2023

Look, it takes a long time to write these reviews so sometimes I allow myself a shortcut by relying on other sources to tell the stories – OK? And anyway, Suede were only just in the TOTP studio performing “Stay Together” the other week so I’ve already said everything I wanted to say about it.

An artist next who would achieve a couple of comebacks during her time and in 1994, her career trajectory would suggest she’d be in need of one soon enough. After bursting into the charts in 1993 with a debut No 1 single in “Dreams”, Gabrielle had failed to replicate that success with the follow up singles which had peaked at Nos:

9 – 26 – 24

“Because Of You” was the last of those figures and, in its defence, it was the fourth and final track released from an album that had been out for four months already including the busy Christmas period. Even so, these were surely disappointing numbers for both artist and record company. Another reason why “Because Of You” underperformed could be that it was basically “Dreams” without the killer chorus. However, Gabrielle would pull off the first of those aforementioned comebacks two years later with a Top 5 single in “Give Me A Little More Time” and a platinum selling eponymously titled sophomore album. In 2000 she would produce an even better comeback with her chart topping “Rise” single and album.

Oh, and if you need a song called “Because Of You” in your life, there’s always this…

Here come the Breakers starting with an artist who had already made a comeback at the start of the decade after his last two albums of the 80s had seen his sales fall away dramatically. Both 1986’s “Leather Jackets” and 1988’s “Reg Strikes Back” had underperformed commercially and 1990’s “Sleeping With The Past” looked to be going the same way until a rerelease of “Sacrifice” coupled as an A-side with “Healing Hands” made Elton John relevant again by giving him his first solo UK No 1. Elton built on that success with a No 2 album in “The One” and a platinum selling “Duets” album. It was from the latter that this ghastly single was taken – a reworking of his 1976 No 1 with Kiki Dee “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” but this time fine with US drag queen and TV celebrity RuPaul.

This was just a terrible idea badly executed. Elton’s last single had been a duet with the aforementioned Kiki Dee on the Cole Porter song “True Love”. Couldn’t he have ditched that and done a revamped version of “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” with her instead? The nasty, tinny sounding production on the Hi-NRG RuPaul version here does nothing for either of the protagonists’ careers. And the video is just a cringe fest. Perhaps due to its then recent performance at the BRITS, the 1994 version of “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” peaked at an inexplicable No 7.

No comebacks here as this was one of the first chart hits for Soundgarden that took them from being just another grunge rock band from Seattle to global recognition. I have to admit to not knowing that much about Soundgarden. I knew there was a small, dingy club at Back Piccadilly, Manchester called Soundgarden as we had an Our Price Christmas do their once – caterer ran off with the food budget without supplying any actual grub – but the band? Not much. Did they do one called “Black Hole Sun”?

*checks their discography*

Yes, that was them and that track was the third single from their 1994 album “Superunknown”. The first though was this one – “Spoonman”. Nothing to do with Noel Gallagher’s quote about sibling Liam being “as angry as a man with a fork in a world of soup” nor Mr Spoon from Button Moon, it was actually inspired by something I did have some knowledge about – the film Singles. The plot revolves around the love lives of some Generation X’ers in Seattle including the wannabe rock star character Cliff played by Matt Dillon. Soundgarden and Pearl Jam worked on songs for the soundtrack with the latter’s bass guitarist Jeff Ament tasked with coming up with names for Cliff’s fictional rock band in the film. ‘Spoonman’ was one of his suggestions but in the end they went for ‘Citizen Dick’. Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell used the title as the basis for this track. It didn’t appear in the soundtrack album initially though a version was included on a 2017 super deluxe edition. It would peak at No 20 on the IK charts.

This next song is from a band not so much attempting a comeback as being at the centre of a rerelease campaign for their decade old back catalogue. “Two Tribes”, perhaps surprisingly, was the last of Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s first four singles to get the 90s remix/rerelease treatment after “Relax”, “Welcome To The Pleasuredome” and “The Power Of Love” before it. Surprising in the respect that it was No 1 for 9 weeks in 1984, the longest running No1 record in the UK during the entire 80s. Is it their most popular/well known song though? Could a case be made for “Relax” which is, after all, the 7th best selling single in the UK of all time. Or how about “The Power Of Love” what with its festive season associations and place on many a Christmas playlist? What is not surprising is that none of the singles from Frankie’s second album “Liverpool” were deemed worthy of a second outing. “Two Tribes (Fluke’s Minimix)” achieved a peak of No 16 whilst “Bang!…The Greatest Hits Of Frankie Goes To Hollywood” made No 4.

A second helping of Sting on the show now as we go live by satellite to Sydney, Australia for a performance of his latest single “Nothing ‘Bout Me”. This exemplified new TOTP producer Ric Blaxill’s approach to these live by satellite links to have artists doing a turn in front of a famous landmark (in this case Sydney Opera House). This was the final single from the “Ten Summoner’s Tales” album which brought a nice symmetry to the tracks taken from it if you include one that originally featured on the Lethal Weapon 3 soundtrack but ended up on the Sting album. Why? Well, it was called “It’s Probably Me”. Mr Sumner was obviously keen on three word song titles where the last one was ‘me’ at this time.

It’s a fairly jaunty number and was written as Sting’s retort to all the attempts by the music press to dissect his psyche every time he released an album. It suffered from being the last single from an album that had already been out for nearly a year and got no higher than its No 32 chart position it was at here. Bruno Brookes talks about Sting having “a cast of thousands” with him in this performance and there’s certainly a fair few there with him including seven backing singers! However, even that’s not the most noticeable thing about this performance. Where did you get that outfit sir?!

https://youtu.be/x8jTa6ksKVI

So here’s a bit of a thing as UK music fans get their first look at Beck. What an interesting artist this guy is but he would probably say that the least interesting thing about him is his debut hit “Loser”. There’s so much to unpack and discuss about Beck but I’m pushed for time again this week so let’s start by dispelling a couple of myths:

He is not related to the Hanson brothers of “Mmm Bop” fame. His surname is spelt Hansen.
“Loser” is not a stoner rap or anti-establishment slacker anthem that speaks of Generation X ennui. The ‘loser’ theme is, according to Beck himself, merely a description of his lack of skill as a rapper, made up on the spot when he was writing the song.
It has nothing to do with Nirvana nor Kurt Cobain’s death a few weeks after it was a hit despite their label Sub Pop selling T-shirts emblazoned with the word ‘LOSER’ on them.

It remains, however, a great track in my humble opinion despite Beck declaring it interesting but ultimately unimpressive. It would not be indicative of his future musical direction though with many fans of the song being caught out by the rest of his material. A bit like when those people who loved “More Than Words” by Extreme being disappointed at the rest of their funk metal back catalogue perhaps?

“Loser” with its bizarre lyrics (“beefcake pantyhose” indeed!) would go Top 10 in the US though we were slightly more conservative in our liking of it over here where it peaked at No 15. By the way, I’ve no idea who these old fellas are up there on stage with Beck or why they are there but they’re great all the same.

https://youtu.be/KJ7mEbf29lk

There is a rather tragically poignant version of the song in the TV series Glee. Both the actors featured in the performance are now no longer with us. Cory Monteith died in 2013 of an accidental drug overdose whilst Mark Salling committed suicide by hanging in 2018.

No comebacks apparent in the No 1 slot as Mariah Carey holds steady for another week with “Without You”. The popularity of her version led to a surge in sales for parent album “Music Box” which had been out for six months already giving her the double whammy of a No 1 single and album simultaneously. Curiously, despite eight of her previous ten singles going to No 1 in the US, it peaked at No 3 over there. Mariah would eke out another UK Top 10 hit from “Music Box” in “Anytime You Need A Friend” before undertaking another cover of a love song when she duetted with Luther Vandross on Lionel Richie’s “Endless Love”. She would end 1994 by releasing that Christmas song.

The play out song this week gives us one final comeback and how unlikely was this one?! Anyone who had a bet on the Charleston dance craze being back in 1994 must have coined it in. “Doop” by Doop was a mash up of ragtime, the aforementioned Charleston and some house beats and would be at No 1 in the UK soon enough. Criminally, it denied Bruce Springsteen what would have been his first and so far only solo UK chart topper.

Although the bpm are completely different, it does put me in mind of this intensely creepy single that was released in 1982. A synth pop version of Irving Berlin anyone? Although UK record buyers were unable to resist the ‘charms’ of Doop in 1994, back in the 80s we had a bit more taste as this drivel bombed over here whilst going to No 4 in the US.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Level 42	Forever Now	Nah
2	Ace Of Base	The Sign	Never happening
3	Bryan Adams, Rod Stewart and Sting	All For Love	See 2 above
4	Suede	Stay Together	Could have but didn’t
5	Gabrielle	Because Of You	Nope
6	Elton John and RuPaul	Don’t Go Breaking My Heart	As if
7	Soundgarden	Spoonman	No
8	Frankie Goes To Hollywood	Two Tribes	Bought it in 1984 but not 1994
9	Sting	Nothing ‘Bout Me	I did not
10	Beck	Loser	See 4 above
11	Mariah Carey	Without You	Negative
12	Doop	Doop	And no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001hqvk/top-of-the-pops-24021994

TOTP 13 JAN 1994

Posted on January 20, 2023 by 80stastic

Christmas and New Year are now distant memories – not just in 2023 but in 1994 where we currently find ourselves in the BBC4 TOTP repeats schedule. The charts have pretty much evacuated from their bowels all that Christmas stodge and some new songs are cleansing the Top 40. Well, I say cleanse but there are still some rotten tunes stinking the place out. Oh well, nose pegs at the ready then as we go again..,

We start with the previous year’s Eurodance sensation Culture Beat who are back with a third consecutive hit in “Anything”. There’s no let up in the formula here – they couldn’t have mixed things up with a ballad? – as Jay Supreme performs a high speed rap workout while vocalist Tania Evans chips in with a chorus including lyrics that seem to suggest desperation to please a (potential) partner. I’d like to think such themes were not prevalent today but toxic masculinity is on the increase with hateful figures like Andrew Tate generating headlines. I’m probably reading far too much into it but seeing Tania sing those words does jar a bit. On closer examination of the lyrics online, Jay Supreme seems to be having similar relationship problems where nothing he does, says or wears is good enough for his other half but he’s rapping so fast nobody can decipher what he’s on about. “Anything” was at its chart peak of No 5 already. They would never return to the Top 10.

Get those nose pegs ready as here’s a bona fide toilet bowel dweller in the form of “All For Love” by Bryan Adams, Rod Stewart and Sting. This was proper dog shit, baked for the latest cinematic take on the Alexandre Dumas novel The Three Musketeers. I recall there being a big buzz about the film starring Charlie Sheen, Kiefer Sutherland, Oliver Platt and Chris O’Donnell in the titular roles and I, myself, duly went to see it. Sadly, like its song, it was no good, without merit and, in short, a stinker. There was something very cynical about casting Sheen and Sutherland together to reunite them in some sort of 17th century cousin to their Brat Pack western Young Guns (indeed, some reviewers christened the film ‘Young Swords’). This was just one of a long list of film adaptations of the famous story – I had no idea there were that many – but I’d take the cartoon from my childhood from The Banana Splits TV show over any of them.

Back to that song though and its protagonists were probably more of an unholy trinity than they were The Three Musketeers for many. Certainly there are a fair few musical crimes that can be levelled at Adams, Stewart and Sting individually (though some of all three’s back catalogue stands up to scrutiny) but this collective effort really is a low point. It probably sounded like a good idea in theory – three massive mainstream stars (the musketeers) record a song that borrows its title from the main characters’ motto (‘All for one and one for all’) but the actual song is such a dirge that it can’t fail but to reek. Composed by Bry and his go to songwriting partner Robert ‘Mutt’ Lange, who was also responsible for that other Adams turd “Please Forgive Me”, it really is an awful record. The film did decent business though and so the single was a huge hit off the back of it going to No 1 in the US and around the world though its peak of No 2 in the UK meant it wasn’t quite a case of all for one and one for all.

“All For Love” isn’t the only Three Musketeers inspired pop song though. “You’ve Got Everything Now” from the eponymous debut album by The Smiths features the line “I’ve seen you smile but I’ve never really heard you laugh” and borrows from a narrative description of the musketeer Athos

He was very taciturn, this worthy signor. Be it understood we are speaking of Athos. During the five or six years that he had lived in the strictest intimacy with his companions, Porthos and Aramis, they could remember having often seen him smile, but had never heard him laugh.
— Chapter 7, The Interior of the Musketeers, The Three Musketeers Project Gutenberg.

Proving that it’s not a total clean sweep of new songs in the charts, here’s K7 with “Come Baby Come”. Released in mid December back in ‘93, it would spend a giant sixteen weeks on the charts peaking at No 3. Despite the single’s success, K7 didn’t sustain. Indeed, if you Google K7 these days you will find an entry for him but behind results for an independent music label, a brand of power washer and alongside anti virus software.

What’s this? A Ce Ce Peniston hit that isn’t “Finally”? Well, there’s actually a few of them but to me they all sound like inferior re-writes of “Finally” including this one called “I’m In The Mood”. Nothing to do with The Nolans’ biggest hit but the lead single from her second album called “Thought ‘Ya Knew”. According to reviews at the time, this was meant to have a bit of a jazz slant to it but I’m not sure I can hear it. The single actually did OK chart wise making No 16 but the parent album, unlike her debut “Finally” which went Top 10, floundered to a high of No 31. I have to say that I don’t recall anything of this stage of Ce Ce’s career but she carried on gamely throughout the 90s releasing two more albums before the end of the decade to little reception before scoring one final hit in 1997 with a cover of Jocelyn Brown’s “Somebody Else’s Guy”.

How can I have forgotten about this?! The The on TOTP and I’ve erased it from my memory banks?! What was going on in my life at the time to have dislodged this from a special place in my grey matter?! So many questions but surely the biggest of the lot should be why isn’t Matt Johnson routinely lauded as a national treasure?! I first became aware of his genius in 1983 when I heard “Uncertain Smile”. Then I saw the striking artwork on the single’s cover in WH Smith and, even as a 15 year old pop kid, knew something special was going on here. By the time I was a Poly student, I had the first album “Soul Mining” in pride of place in my cassette collection to make me look…well, I’d have maybe said ‘trendy’ back then but probably I meant non mainstream (even though I hopelessly was).

The album also included the singles “Perfect” and “This Is The Day” and it was the latter of those two which was chosen as the main track on the “Dis-Infected EP”. Remodelled as “That Was The Day”, it was backed up by a take on the title track of 1986 album “Infected” plus remixes of two tracks from the most recent album at the time, 1992’s “Dusk”. Presumably this EP was released to maintain profile in between albums (Johnson’s album of Hank Williams cover versions – “Hanky Panky” – didn’t appear until 1995) and its No 17 peak would make it The The’s biggest ever hit just eclipsing 1989’s “The Beat(en) Generation”.

Coming after Culture Beat, K7 and Ce Ce Peniston in the running order, this incarnation of The The looks every bit the outlier on TOTP. Matt, for all his genius, never looked like a pop star bless him whilst the minimal set up of a keyboard player and a guy on harmonica were at odds with all the synchronised dance moves, rapping and general party atmosphere of the acts before. And thank God for that.

“This Is The Day” was covered in 2011 by Manic Street Preachers to promote their third compilation album “National Treasures – The Complete Singles” thus affording Matt Johnson a sliver of that national treasure status he so richly deserves.

Three Breakers this week starting with “Everyday” by Phil Collins. I don’t remember this at all and there’s a case to be made that I just count my blessings and leave it at that. The reviewer in me won’t allow that though (Damn you!) so I’m going in for a listen – this isn’t going to end well is it?

*manages two and a half minutes before switching off*

Well, it was, as I suspected, not worth the effort. According to Wikipedia, Phil played every musical part on this track which means it was him that ripped of Bruce Hornsby for the piano intro. After that it drifts off into predictable Collins territory with a melancholic melody and lyrics so rank and hackneyed that there should be a law against this form of song composition. Phil bangs on about being knocked off his feet and the fire inside him and his life being worth nothing without the object of his affections…turn it in mate! I can imagine it being used in a lame rom com movie starring Paul Rudd and Jennifer Anniston to soundtrack the bit where the film’s couple have broken up. Nice work for Phil but all rather cynical.

The song was the second single from his “Both Sides” album and though making a respectable chart high of No 15, possibly didn’t allay record company fears after lead single “Both Sides Of The Story” underperformed.

The era of Toni Braxton is upon us. A huge star straight off the bat in the US where “Another Sad Love Song” went Top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100, that single stalled on initial release over here meaning that “Breathe Again” would become her first UK Top 40 hit. And what a hit! It would eventually peak at No 2 over here which seemed like a slight case of overachievement for an R&B ballad. Clearly the song had something that set it apart from the other examples of the genre we had seen. It did ebb and flow quite nicely and Braxton could clearly deliver the required vocal. Even so, I for one was slightly taken aback by its popularity.

“Another Sad Love Song” was rereleased in this country in the wake of the success of “Breathe Again” and this time was a hit making No 15. However, Toni really came into her own in 1996 when she had another No 2 hit record in “Un-break My Heart”, a single that sold and sold and sold, spending nineteen weeks in total on the charts.

The final Breaker is a cover of a glam rock hit from the 70s courtesy of Def Leppard. Having taken five years to record a follow up to the multi platinum selling “Hysteria” album, these lads were not exactly prolific. “Adrenalize” had been a success but not on the same level as its predecessor and another studio album wouldn’t arrive until 1996. So, how to fill the gap? With a compilation album of course. However, Def Leppard wanted to give something back to the fans that was not just a boring Best Of that would just mean the completists forking out for tracks they already owned so they came up with “Retro Active”, an album of touched up B-sides and unreleased recordings from the band’s vaults. There were also a couple of cover versions including Mick Ronson’s “Only After Dark” and this one, a 1975 Top 20 hit from The Sweet called “Action”. I didn’t think I knew this song but having given both versions a spin, it did ring some bells in the deepest corners of my mind.

Is it just me or do The Sweet not get the recognition they deserve? Whenever glam rock gets mentioned, it seems that the first names to crop up are T-Rex, Slade, Wizzard and even Roxy Music (nobody can talk about Gary Glitter anymore for obvious reasons). Do The Sweet get overlooked slightly? In their early 70s heyday, they tore up the charts with songs like “Ballroom Blitz”, “Teenage Rampage” and “Block Buster!” clocking up ten Top 10 hits including a No 1 and five (!) No 2s making them one of the unluckiest bands ever. By the time of “Action” though, the hits were drying up. This would be one of their last with only a change of musical direction giving them one final Top Tenner with “Love Is Like Oxygen” in 1978.

Def Leppard do a decent version of “Action” though the original is easily better. After the almost philanthropic act of the “Retro Active” release, the band went and released a proper Best Of anyway in 1995 called “Vault: Def Leppard Greatest Hits (1980-1995) which became another platinum seller. It’s all about the Benjamins at the end of the day isn’t it?

Back in the studio we find Eternal who are consolidating on the success of debut single “Stay” with another mid tempo soul/pop track called “Save Our Love”. The buzz around this lot was still very vibrant coming out of Christmas and so another hit was almost guaranteed. “Save Our Love” duly did the business going Top 10 though falling short of the No 4 peak of its predecessor by four places. For me, this follow up was nowhere near as strong as their opener. Sure it was radio friendly with a shiny production but it didn’t have the nuance of “Stay”. It all felt a bit too straightforward – Eternal by numbers. Talking of numbers, the group still had its full complement of them at this stage but by the following year, Louise Redknapp (Nurding as was) would have left the group. She, along with her band mates, were kept busy in 1994 though releasing five singles and promoting their debut album “Always And Forever”.

I’m not sure what the petrol station vibe is all about for this performance. Can’t think of many other artists who have channeled it. Billy Joel was a mechanic in a garage for “Uptown Girl” wasn’t he so not quite the same. Oh yes though – mechanics or more specifically Mike And The Mechanics who used an image of a gas pump attendant asleep on some tyres next to his pump as the cover of their Best Of album entitled “Hits” in 1996. By the way, those combat trousers that Eternal are wearing were all the rage in 1994. I think I even had some. No doubt we’ll be seeing more examples of their popularity in future repeats.

The reggae Rick Astley next as studio tape operator/ tea boy turned pop star Bitty McLean is back with another hit. After the No 2 success of his debut single “It Keeps Rainin’ (Tears From My Eyes)”, it looked as though Bitty’s career was over almost immediately when follow up single “Pass It On” steadfastly refused to do so and stalled at No 35. However, here he was back with another hit in “Here I Stand” that would ultimately make No 10 despite being awful. It was another cover version (originally released by Justin Hinds And The Dominoes in 1967) but Bitty makes it sound completely tuneless in his rendition. I really didn’t get the appeal of Bitty and his music but I’m sure that he’s a lovely chap all the same!

It’s a second week at the top for Chaka Demus And Pliers with their version of “Twist And Shout” despite heavy competition from D:Ream who are up to No 2 this week. Apparently, “Twist And Shout” was selling less at the top of the charts than it was when lodged at No 3 at Christmas. The vagaries of the post festive season sales slump and all that.

There are, of course, many different versions of “Twist And Shout”. Here’s one from Bruce Springsteen which segues into “La Lamba”…

I’m sure I heard a story about the recording of The Beatles’ first album in which “Twist And Shout” wasn’t going to be included on it but a journalist told them that they should record “La Bamba” as he’d heard them do it live and it sounded great. The band responded that they didn’t play “La Bamba” in concert but realised the press guy was talking about “Twist And Shout” which they did perform live and that’s how it got onto the album. This is surely the definitive version of the song…

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Culture Beat	Anything	Never happening
2	Bryan Adams / Rod Stewart / Sting	All For Love	NO!
3	K7	Come Baby Come	I did not
4	Ce Ce Peniston	I’m In The Mood	Nah
5	The The	Dis-Infected EP	No but I had the Soul Mining album which includes lead track This Is The Day
6	Phil Collins	Everyday	Double NO!
7	Toni Braxton	Breathe Again	Nope
8	Def Leppard	Action	Negative
9	Eternal	Save Our Love	It’s a no
10	Bitty McLean	Here I Stand	Never!
11	Chaka Demus And Pliers	Twist And Shout	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/m001h027/top-of-the-pops-13011994

TOTP 24 JUN 1993

Posted on September 12, 2022 by 80stastic

1993 is not one of my favourite years for music. That’s based on my memory and what I’ve seen on these TOTP repeats from this year so far but I would have to say that the singles chart was pretty eclectic. I’ve moaned and moaned about the proliferation of Eurodance tunes on the show but a glance at the running order for this episode paints a different picture. Yes, there are what you would term dance acts but there’s also some old timers like Rod Stewart and Brian May plus Gloria Gaynor makes her bow in the 1993 disco revival. There’s a boy band (sort of) plus there’s even some actual decent music courtesy of one of Scotland’s finest bands. Oh and Joey Lawrence is on as well. There has to be some utter tripe on or how would we know it’s still 1993?

We start with one of those dance acts but it’s a homegrown one as opposed to being imported from Europe. For me, this was the moment when M People became a proper big deal. Yes, they’d already cracked the Top 10 with a remix of “How Can I Love You More” earlier in the year but that track had topped and tailed debut album “Northern Soul” by being the first and last single released from it. What we had now was new material from a traditionally difficult second album. How would the public receive it? As it happened, they made “One Night In Heaven” the band’s biggest hit to date by sending it to No 6 in the charts giving them a second consecutive major smash and thereby continuing a run of eight singles that would all make the Top 10. It was official – M People would be sticking around for a while.

That second album was of course “Elegant Slumming” that would go triple platinum in the UK and produce another three hit singles after “One Night In Heaven”. It was also, memorably, the winner of the Mercury Music Prize in 1994. Mike Pickering had hit upon a successful formula of dance music which had enough beats to satisfy the bpm addicts and enough melody to appeal to the less hardcore dance heads. As an aside, I had a lecturer when I was a Polytechnic student called Mike Pickering but we all called him Mick Prick. No idea why. He seemed like a decent sort.

Before the next act, we have to address host Mark Franklin’s hair. What’s he done to it? Where’s his usual bouncy quiff gone? He’s plastered it all down to his head! I guess it does look very 1993 or is it jazz club?

Somebody else having hair issues is the next artist, the aforementioned Rod Stewart. I’m sure you’ve all seen this as it’s been doing the rounds but just in case…

Fuck sake 😂 https://t.co/53wGzX0wSr
— Sir Rod Stewart (@rodstewart) August 31, 2022

Heh. Anyway, Rod was back in the charts with a cover of Van Morrison’s “Have I Told You Lately”. He’d recorded it for his 1991 “Vagabond Heart” album but this live version was taken from his “Unplugged…And Seated” album recorded as part of the MTV Unplugged series. That format was already well established in music fans’ minds with artists such as Paul McCartney, Mariah Carey and Eric Clapton having released albums under its banner recently. Even so, I was still slightly surprised at the success of Rod’s MTV album which went to No 2 and was platinum selling. As for his performance of “Have I Told You Lately” here, it’s all a bit much with Rod over emoting all over the place and then there’s that weird bit in the middle where a woman in the audience gives him a bunch of flowers and then rushes off past the camera and seemingly out of the venue. What was that all about? Now if she’d have handed him a hairbrush, that might have made some sense.

“Have I Told You Lately” peaked at No 5.

https://youtu.be/-C-YqmLtVJ4

Next to the (sort of) boy band and so far I’d say that East 17 had done a good job of becoming the anti- Take That. However, the decision to release a cover of “West End Girls” by Pet Shop Boys was a complete misstep. What was the thinking around this? Were record label London concerned that last single “Slow It Down” had failed to make the Top 10 and so released a cover to ensure a hit? If so, it was a strategy that was not a complete success as the East End boys version of “West End Girls” peaked at No 11. Somebody suggested on Twitter that it was down to their manager Tom Watkins who was trying to restart a working relationship with former clients Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe after they had separated at the end of the 80s. Whatever the truth, it was a calculated decision as the original pressings of their album “Walthamstow” didn’t include “West End Girls”. It was re-released with it added on in the wake of the single charting and we had to withdraw all the old copies from sale in the Our Price I was working in.

It’s just such a stiff, unconvincing cover not helped by the performance here which is just a lot of twirling around and jumping about on stage. All except for John Hendy. Were the other three trying to tell John something? He always seemed to be the one left to his own devices when the band appeared on TOTP. He was relegated to the back of the stage noodling on a bass guitar when they performed “Deep” and sat on a sofa idling away at a keyboard for “Slow It Down”. He’s back on the bass again here whilst Brian, Terry and Tony are doing their thing out front. I’m surprised that he’s not kicking in chairs and knocking down tables in frustration. Ahem.

https://youtu.be/35U-5OKWbx8

Number One in the World! Except it’s not. It’s No 6 in the chart this week on its way to a high of No 3 for Chaka Demus and Pliers and “Tease Me”. It’s another of those live by satellite performances (New York this week) which might just be in a room next door to the TOTP studio for all we know. It’s literally an empty setting other than a light pattern projected onto the blank walls. Seriously, what was the point?

I find it hard to discuss Chaka Demus and Pliers without finding them completely ridiculous because of that tool-related name. I’m sure there was a scene in the 90s sitcom 2point4 Children where the Belinda Lang character asks her teenage daughter what she’s listening to and when the answer comes back as Chaka Demus and Pliers, it’s the foundation for a whole litany of jokes. So what was the story behind that moniker? Here’s @TOTPFacts with the details:

Pliers explains his moniker: "I first got the name… when I was in the studio recording a song for a DJ in Jamaica who was like, ‘You sound like [Jamaican reggae singer] Pinchers, so shouldn’t you be called Pliers?' He was really excited about it…" #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) September 2, 2022

"I was never really interested in being called Pliers. So when they went on and renamed me Pliers anyway, I wasn’t happy… It wasn’t until the record came out that I realised they’d changed it! But because it had already been done I just went with it." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) September 2, 2022

So now you know.

Four Breakers again this week. I wish they would give this up. Really elongates these reviews unnecessarily. Most of them we never see again anyway. Ho hum.

SWV are the first of the four with their single “Weak”. The UK was still resisting the charms of the Sisters With Voices unlike in the US where this song was No 1 for two weeks and sold a million copies. By contrast, it stiffed at No 33 over here. It wasn’t until the “Right Here/Human Nature” mash up single came out a few weeks later that we decided we quite liked them after all.

And so we arrive at the time of Joey Lawrence. Who? Well, he was one of the stars of an American sitcom called Blossom that had been picked up by Channel 4 over here and was based around the title character played by Mayim Bialik. The premise of the show was of a family of three kids and their Dad dealing with their mother/wife leaving them. Lawrence played middle child Joey, a sports jock (to use the American vernacular) who wasn’t blessed with great intelligence but fancied himself as ‘one for the ladies’ and was given a catchphrase of “Woah!”. He was a sort of prototype Joey from Friends I guess. The show actually had far more depth to it than Lawrence’s character suggests. Firstly, it centred around a female lead which was not the norm at the time but it was also the atypical comedy themes that it dealt with such as sexual assault, Blossom’s first period and drug abuse (Blossom’s elder brother Tony was a recovering alcoholic and drug addict).

It was a decent watch and indeed me and my wife did tune in to it regularly when it was broadcast on Fridays I think. Bialik would go on to star in The Big Bang Theory whilst Lawrence starred in Melissa & Joey for four seasons. That’s not what concerns us here though. No. We have to address Lawrence’s music career which began whilst he was just 16 with the single “Nothin’ My Love Can’t Fix”. Actors becoming pop stars was nothing new of course – we’d had a plethora of them in recent years mainly from the Aussie soap Neighbours but supposedly music was always Joey’s first love and he co-write this tune. It was a bit Bobby Brown-lite sounding to me (and I wasn’t a fan of the full fat flavour in the first place) and did he get a “Woah oh oh” into the chorus to play up to his character’s catchphrase?

Thankfully Joey Lawrence mania never really took off (although there was one young female customer in the Altrincham Our Price that I ended up working in who was a bit obsessed) and the whole thing was done by the end of the year. For the record though, “Nothin’ My Love Can’t Fix” peaked at No 13.

And now for some ‘proper’ music though I have to admit I wasn’t an early adopter of Teenage Fanclub. Even though they were on to their fourth album (“Thirteen”) by 1993, they seemed to have eluded my radar which must have been on the blink as their brand of jangly power pop was right up my street. “Radio” was the lead single from that album and would become their second Top 40 hit after the previous years “What You You Do To Me” (how had I missed that single?!).

To me, they always seem more recognised for their influence and legacy than their commercial deeds and indeed were described by Kurt Cobain as the best band in the world in 1992 when they toured with Nirvana. I’ve since become a convert and “My Uptight Life” from their “Howdy!” album is one of my favourite ever tunes. Alas, I fear they won’t make their full TOTP appearance until the 1997 repeats come around.

“Radio” peaked at No 31.

Ah shit! More Shabba Ranks? Really?! Yes, if we thought he only had one song in “Mr Loverman” then we were wrong for here he is back again with “What’cha Gonna Do”. This was another collaboration, this time with Queen Latifah following his hit “Housecall” with Maxi Priest. You know what? Sod this for a game of darts. What am I gonna do Shabba? I’m moving straight on. “Laters!” as Tony Dortie might say.

Right what’s next? Oh come on! This wasn’t what the kids wanted in 1993 surely? Some hoary old rock from some hoary old rockers? I speak of Brian May and Cozy Powell who, having been a Breaker last week, are in the studio this time to perform “Resurrection”. This sounds horrible. Can I just get away with skipping this one as well? No? You want some more content? OK – here’s host Mark Franklin no less with some trivia:

Yeah, not a particularly good one for me I agree. Bit of trivia ahead of TX for those who enjoy it. Bryan May’s backing singer on this performance is Shelley Preston who replaced Jay Aston in Bucks Fizz in 1985.
— Mark Franklin (@MarkFranklin123) September 2, 2022

Now away with you all!

I’m gathering some speed now so look out anybody who gets in my way! Oh, it’s alright as it’s Gloria Gaynor – she’ll survive (ahem). Yes, inevitably given the disco revival of 1993, Gloria Gaynor has entered the fray with a Phil Kelsey remix of her 1979 No 1 and subsequent gay / feminist anthem, “I Will Survive”. This was always going to happen wasn’t it? There is an interesting back story to this track though. Gloria had lost her ‘Queen of Disco’ crown to the emerging Donna Summer and so was looking for a hit to reclaim it. “Substitute” was chosen as the song to relaunch her. It had originally been recorded by The Righteous Brothers but had been a recent massive hit for South African all-girl group Clout (one of the best records of the 70s – fact!). Needing a B-side, songwriters Dino Fekaris and Freddie Perren supplied “I Will Survive” which Gloria loved but which her label Polydor didn’t and “Substitute” was released as the A-side.

When it failed to do the business, Gloria persuaded club DJs to flip the record and it eventually became a favourite at New York superclub Studio 54. Meanwhile, Boston disco radio DJ Jack King was also playing “I Will Survive” and this combined promotion would convince Polydor to re-release the single with “I Will Survive” on the A-side. The rest is history.

The 1993 remix though is awful with a horrible Chicago House backing installed for no apparent reason other than bandwagon jumping. It would rise to No 5 and a Very Best Of album was put out on the back of its success. Gloria’s vocal in this performance is effortless though I could have done without the audience sing-a-long that she encourages towards the end.

Oh God! Mark Franklin hasn’t just restyled his hair – he’s added an earring aswell! That camera angle of the back of his head which shows it in full effect was surely planned?! Anyway, Mark is back on screen to introduce Alexander O’Neal who is in the studio to promote his latest single “In The Middle” which was the second track to be lifted from his “Love Makes No Sense” album. A whole studio appearance seems a bit like overkill for a single that only got to No 32 and was a follow up to the album’s title track and lead single which only made No 26. Things didn’t get any better for Alexander who only returned to the UK Top 40 once more in 1996 with the No 38 hit “Let’s Get Together”.

Gabrielle is the new No 1 with “Dreams” though it’s hardly a surprise given its entry last week at No 2. The TOTP producers have decided that Gabrielle is a classy performer and adorned the stage with white drapes for some reason to make that point. As with Gloria Gaynor earlier, I could do without the metronomic clapping from the studio audience. At the end of the song, we get something which I don’t think we’ve seen since the early days of the ‘year zero’ revamp where Mark Franklin joins Gabrielle on stage for a little chat to ask when her album is out. It’s still cringey and still a bad idea. Maybe he just wanted to get more screen time for his earring?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	M People	One Night In Heaven	No but my wife had the album
2	Rod Stewart	Have I Told You Lately	Nah
3	East 17	West End Girls	See 1 above
4	Chaka Demus and Pliers	Tease Me	Not likely
5	SWV	Weak	No
6	Joey Lawrence	Nothin’ My Love Can’t Fix	As if
7	Teenage Fanclub	Radio	No to my shame
8	Shabba Ranks and Queen Latifah	What’cha Gonna Do?	Not buy it obviously
9	Brian May and Cozy Powell	Resurrection	I say again, “Away with you!”
10	Gloria Gaynor	I Will Survive	Nope
11	Alexander O’Neal	In The Middle	Never happening
12	Gabrielle	Dreams	And no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001bm8v/top-of-the-pops-24061993

TOTP 15 APR 1993

Posted on July 31, 2022 by 80stastic

Sometimes I genuinely feel sorry for the kids of today. Sure they’ve got stuff that we never had thanks to the developments of technology – mobile phones and the internet alongside platforms like Spotify have given them access to endless swathes of music at the touch of a button. On the other side of the coin though there’s cyber bullying and trolling and a relentless stream of images of what they are told they should look like. Plus, of course, we didn’t have to go through a global pandemic as kids and teenagers – we still don’t know the full extent of the damage to their collective mental health that COVID lockdown and associated restrictions has caused.

If that all sounds a bit heavy for a blog about TOTP then fear not – I’m not talking about any of that. No, I’m talking about the fact that they never experienced the joy of watching Saturday morning kids TV, not properly anyway. Yes, these days they have their own dedicated TV channels showing programmes designed to appeal to their age groups leaving the schedules for BBC and ITV clear to be filled with cooking shows. That’s not right though is it? When I was a kid, Saturday mornings involved choosing between Tiswas and Multi Coloured Swap Shop – the anarchic fun of Chris Tarrant, Lenny Henry and the object of many a schoolboy crush Sally James or the more respectable and bigger budgeted entertainment offered by Noel Edmonds, Cheggers and Maggie Philbin. I wonder if the BBC won the ratings war in the end? After all, their presenting trio even had a hit record as Brown Sauce with “I Wanna Be A Winner”.

As the 70s gave way to the 80s, both shows were replaced. The new vehicles were Saturday Superstore (basically a continuation of Swap Shop) on BBC1 and No 73 (with its legendary Sandwich Quiz section) on ITV. Five to six years seemed to be the shelf life of these shows and so in 1987 Saturday Superstore was no more being usurped by Going Live and it’s that show that is the reason for this intro as two days after this TOTP aired, the 179th and final ever episode of it aired after a run of six years. Hosted by Philip Schofield and Sarah Greene, it saw me through many a hungover Saturday morning as a student but by the 90s I was working every weekend at Our Price and so rarely saw it. The pop star guests that would come on the show would be very much of the mainstream variety and usually those who would have a large teen fanbase like Bros or A-ha but they sometimes had artists a bit less obvious on like Squeeze and Transvision Vamp. After the show’s finale, it was replaced just six months later by Live And Kicking which was exactly the same format but with different presenters. It would run for a very solid eight years but couldn’t compete in the end with Ant and Dec’s SMTV Live. There’s a good chance some of the acts on this TOTP appeared on Going Live. Let’s see…

We start with East 17 who my research tells me were on Going Live just two weeks before the final episode, presumably performing this single “Slow It Down”. I wonder if they did it like this then? This performance must surely go down in the annals of TOTP history as one of the most awkwardly staged appearances by a group ever! What were the other two blokes doing in the background?! Were they have meant to have ‘slowed down’ so much that they’d actually stopped?! They were literally just sat around twiddling- one with a keyboard and the other with a microphone. If mobile phones had been invented then, they would have had those as props instead. Talk about sidelining! They were always seen as ‘the other two’ who did nothing anyway so this really wasn’t helping their profiles. Who decided on this arrangement? Their management? Were there plans afoot to ditch Terry Coldwell and John Hendy (to refer to them by their proper names and avoid accusations of sidelining myself) and relaunch the band as a duo? It looks so deliberate. Why did they go along with it?!

Their nemesis Take That also had a couple of members in Jason Orange and Howard Donald who were very much seen as ‘the dancers’ in the group’s early days but they were never subjected to public humiliation like this! Take That always seemed a tight unit (until the Gary Barlow / Robbie Williams tension split the band) with each member having fan attention of their own but poor old Terry and John always seemed superfluous to say the least.

As for the song itself, “Slow It Down” always seemed a poor choice of single being nowhere near as accomplished as “Deep” or later single “It’s Alright”. Supposedly it’s about sex (slow it down, don’t rush it – geddit?) but that probably went over the heads of the younger elements of their fanbase.

“Slow It Down” came to a halt at No 13.

https://youtu.be/uu7Nu4XsSfw

As far as I can tell, Dr. Alban never appeared on Going Live – maybe the Tampax ad association scared the producers off – but many a ‘doctor’ has been on TOTP before. There was Dr Hook and Dr. Feelgood in the 70s, Doctor and the Medics and Dr. Robert of The Blow Monkeys in the 80s and tons of songs that featured a doctor. Just off the top of my head there’s “Doctor Doctor” by The Thompson Twins, “Dr. Beat” by Miami Sound Machine and “Doctorin’ The TARDIS” by The Timelords. Any and all of these (and it’s not a great list is it?) are preferable to my ears to Dr. Alban and his song “Sing Hallelujah!”. I mean just listen to him! His voice is so flat and monotonous. Then after you’ve finished listening to him, look at him. Have you ever seen such a spiritless, passionless and lifeless performer? He just aimlessly wanders around the stage, occasionally shrugging his shoulders as some sort of substitute for a dance move and even nips around the back of his gospel choir a couple of times as if he’s trying to hide from the camera. Staggeringly awful.

“Sing Hallelujah!” peaked at No 16.

Duran Duran seemed to be on Saturday Superstore every other week around ‘82 to ‘84 but I’m not sure if they were ever on Going Live as that show’s run coincided with a downturn in the band’s commercial fortunes. By the time they were reviving with “Ordinary World” and the “Wedding Album”, Going Live was nearly dead. “Come Undone” wasn’t though and kept their rejuvenating success going by rising to No 13.

The video has the guys seemingly reverting to their New Romantics heyday with ruffled shirts and frilly sleeves on display. I’d always wanted Simon Le Bon’s hair when I was a callow youth but had failed dismally to recreate it. However, his 1993 locks never seemed to suit him, like he was in between styles and in a constant state of growing out a haircut gone wrong.

“Come Undone” was followed by a third single from the album called “Too Much Information” which I thought was great but it only made No 35 on the UK charts. For shame.

There’s no way that Cappella were ever on Going Live surely? How would the public phone-in have worked? Would anybody have been arsed to ask them a question? The only one I would want to ask them is “Why?”

“U Got To Know” peaked at No 6.

https://youtu.be/WKWRCHTI1g0

Now this next bloke was on twice in the early days of Going Live. Terence Trent D’Arby appeared in Episode No 4 in October ‘97 and episode No 16 in January’ 88. This would have been in his first and most successful period of his career after he burst onto the pop scene with his eight million selling debut album “Introducing The Hardline According To Terence Trent D’Arby”. The album spawned four hit singles. I’m guessing that he was promoting the third and fourth of those on his Going Live appearances – “Dance Little Sister” and “Sign Your Name” with the latter only missing the top of the charts by one place.

What followed two years later has come to be seen as possibly the most infamous example of career sabotage ever. Sophomore album “Neither Fish Nor Flesh” was nothing like its super commercial predecessor. It produced zero hit singles, it spent a paltry four weeks on the charts (“Introducing The Hardline According To…” spent nine weeks at No 1 in comparison) and was widely regarded as self indulgent tosh. Now I’ve never heard any of it so I’m just repeating what I’ve read about it but then the fact that I’ve never heard a single minute of the album speaks volumes of its inability to resonate with pop music fans. By way of contrast, I reckon it would only take 15 minutes of listening to a retro 80s radio station before you would hear “Sign Your Name”. Terence himself says of the album that it was “the project that literally killed TTD and from those molten ashes began the life of Sananda”. Ah yes, I’m sure you know this but D’Arby goes by the name of Sananda Maitreya these days. Although his new identity has no religious significance, Maitreya believes it means ‘rebirth’ in Sanskrit.

His version of the story of his name change doesn’t quite tell the whole story though as he released a further two albums as TTD before taking on his new identity. The first of these was 1993’s “Symphony Or Damn” the lead single of which was “Do You Love Me Like You Say”. The first of four hits from the album, I have to say I don’t remember this one much. It sounds like a song in search of a tune, trying a bit too hard to be a knockout track without finding that crucial punch. There’s a lot going on in it but none of it is very cohesive. Terence / Sananda looks every inch the star up there though, like a soul brother to Lenny Kravitz’s rock persona.

A No 14 hit was a very respectable return to the charts though. The album made the Top 10 and featured a few good tracks like “She Kissed Me” and the theme song from the Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer film Frankie And Johnny which my manager Ian at the Our Price store in Rochdale loved.

It’s that time again! Four Breakers this week starting with a song that would become one of the most well known of this band’s entire catalogue of work despite being the fourth single released from an album that had been out for six months by this point. “Everybody Hurts” is the song and the band is, of course, REM. Written to offer understanding and hope to those with suicidal thoughts, it’s an understated yet powerful piece with Michael Stipe’s vocal completely on point. Many critics used the word ‘melancholy’ in their descriptions of the track which it is but the crucial element to its success is that it wasn’t ‘maudlin’. It was pure and people could identify with it for that very reason.

The video was shot by Ridley Scott’s son Jake and although the band are in it, there’s virtually no performance element to their appearance. Instead they are sat in a traffic jam with the camera picking out other drivers and car passengers whilst their inner thoughts are displayed on screen via subtitles. It sounds as boring as hell but it’s actually very affecting and if you watch to the very end, there’s an even bigger pay off.

“Everybody Hurts” peaked at No 7 in the UK, their second biggest ever hit after “Shiny Happy People” which in many ways was the exact antithesis of the song.

My God, Rod Stewart was all over the charts at this time. “Shotgun Wedding” was the third single taken from his curious compilation album “Lead Vocalist” which was a combination of songs from his own back catalogue (including his work with The Faces) and cover versions. This song was written by one Roy C who may not be a familiar name (he wasn’t to me) but he was actually a great musical influencer. How come? Well, Roy C (Roy Charles Hammond in full) wrote a song called “Impeach The President” that was recorded by The Honey Drippers in response to President Nixon and the Watergate affair. That song included a distinctive drum pattern that would become the template that was used by every big name you can think of in the hip-hop / R&B field. I’m talking Public Enemy, N.W.A, LL Cool J, De La Soul, Ice Cube, 2Pac, TLC etc etc.

See what I mean? Anyway, “Shotgun Wedding” was another of Roy’s tunes. Here’s his original set to a scene from The Monkees for some reason:

Rod’s version is predictably vile and soulless yet it still made it to No 21 in the charts. One month after this single, he released his “Unplugged…And Seated” MTV album that would go to No 2 in the UK. Like I said, he was all over the charts like a cheap (wedding) suit at this time.

The Prodigy are up next with a fifth single from their debut album “Experience” none of which – including this one “Wind It Up (Rewound)” – peaked lower than No 11. Quite a feat. I kind of get the impression though that this one was released just to maintain their profile in between albums. There was nearly two years separating “Experience” and “Music For The Jilted Generation” with the first single from the latter not due to appear for another six months from now.

A radically different remix of the album version, this release would signal the end of the band’s ‘kiddie rave’ era and they would reject that formula in favour of a commitment to pioneering dance music with next release “One Love”.

Now I’m pretty sure none of the Breakers so far ever appeared on Going Live and the final band in this section were unlikely to change that sequence. New Order had of course been on TOTP just last week in the now legendary Baywatch performance but this week we get the official video for the “Regret” single. Apparently labelled by bassist Peter Hook as “the last good New Order song”, it would also be the band’s last Top 5 hit.

Having checked the schedule, I can see they are on the show again next week as well so I’ll leave it here for this one except to say that the video is exceedingly dull (though I think it’s meant to be arty) and I’d rather have watched the oddity of the Baywatch performance again.

If it’s April then there must be a whiff of Eurovision in the air and indeed there is with the next act being the UK’s entry for 1993. This year we’d all known for a while that Sonia was our official entrant though we didn’t know what song she’d be singing until six days before this TOTP aired. You see, in the weeks before, Sonia appeared in four separate preview programmes in which she showcased two potential songs that would go forward as the UK entry. A Song For Europe was broadcast on April 9th and a viewer vote determined the winner. The track that came out on top won easily and so it was that “Better The Devil You Know” was picked as Sonia’s song. Nothing to do with Kylie, this track was written by Brian Teasdale and Dean Collision and here’s a young Dean aged 10 playing guitar with Burt Weedon and then 21 in his own pop group Blue (not them) again, improbably, with Burt Weedon. Apologies in advance for the glimpses of Sa-vile:

Why am I going out of my way to make a big thing of Dean Collinson? Well, in her youth orchestra days as a teenager, my wife knew him. Not very well but there paths crossed due to that musical connection. That’s the whole story. Not very interesting but a story nonetheless.

Anyway, Sonia and Dean (and that Brian bloke) were the team flying the flag for the UK in Ireland and a pretty good job they did too coming in second with 164 points behind the winners Ireland (yep, them again). What was the song like you ask? Oh, it was awful – a horrible, plastic sham of a mockery of an attempt to sound like “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go” (Collinson even admitted that had been his intention). It made it to No 16 in the UK charts.

Oh and though I was sure that Sonia was absolutely the type of pop star that was perfect for a spot on Going Live, I can only find one instance of her on the show when she appeared remotely for the Video Vote section.

Ah, finally! Despite being a going concern since 1986, World Party are finally on TOTP! That it took so long is plain criminal. So many great singles had come and gone – “Private Revolution”, “Ship Of Fools”, “Way Down Now” and their one and only Top 40 entry to this point at No 39 “Message In The Box” and yet none had resulted in a hit big enough to warrant a performance on the show. Suddenly and unexpectedly there was “Is It Like Today” peaking inside the Top 20 at No 19. That wasn’t all. Parent album “Bang!” was a No 2 hit. Their previous album “Goodbye Jumbo” had got no higher than No 36 despite being named Q Magazine’s album of the year. What had changed? Well, rather than just being the name of a vehicle for prime mover Karl Wallinger, World Party were now a proper band with David Carlin-Birch and ex-Icicle Works drummer Chris Sharrock becoming permanent and full time members. Even so, it was quite the turnaround.

As quickly as the success had come, so it also left. The album spawned just one other Top 40 hit (the No 37 peaking “All I Gave”) and World Party retreated to the world of critical acclaim but small commercial inroads. Wallinger saw the royalties roll in when Robbie Williams covered his song “She’s The One” but most people believed it was written by either Williams or song writing partner Guy Chambers (who helped produce the original) including my Robbie worshiping sister. Wallinger suffered an aneurysm in 2001 but recovered to tour again. That I never saw them live despite their playing Sunderland Poly whilst I was studying there remains an eternal embarrassment to me.

Oh and as for appearing on Going Live, it seems unlikely given their struggles to get on TOTP.

https://youtu.be/y7cPYUytcEE

The Bluebells still have command of the No 1 spot with “Young At Heart”. After the original 1984 video was aired last week, they’re back in the studio this week and have clearly put some thought into what they would do. The result was The Bluebells disco complete with record decks and something I’ve never seen at any wedding reception disco I’ve been to, a quartet of female backing dancers. This is the show where we they did the ‘Shabba!’ shout out that we all found hilarious at the time but I’m not sure it’s aged that well. The 2 Unlimited parody didn’t either.

P.S. Has Karl Wallinger copied Bobby Bluebell’s hairstyle or was it the other way round?

https://youtu.be/42i4O5q2wNQ

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	East 17	Slow It Down	No but my wife had the Walthamstow album
2	Dr. Alban	Sing Hallelujah!	As if
3	Duran Duran	Come Undone	Not the single but I have it on a Greatest hits CD
4	Cappella	U Got To Know	Never happening
5	Terence Trent D’Arby	Do You Love Me Like You Say	No
6	REM	Everybody Hurts	No but I had the Automatic For The People album
7	Rod Stewart	Shotgun Wedding	NO!
8	The Prodigy	Wind It Up (Rewound)	Nah
9	New Order	Regret	I regret I didn’t but I should have
10	Sonia	Better The Devil You Know	It wasn’t better. I knew Sonia and I was never buying her single
11	World Party	Is It Like Today?	No but I have their Best In Show CD with it on
12	The Bluebells	Young At Heart	Nope

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/m0019mbn/top-of-the-pops-15041993

TOTP 18 FEB 1993

Posted on June 27, 2022 by 80stastic

I write this as the 2022 Glastonbury festival has just taken place the previous weekend which garnered large viewing figures and reviews a plenty off the back of some massive performances by the likes of Billie Eilish (I didn’t get it) and Paul McCartney (marvellous stuff). It got me thinking about what the festival was like back in the day. Now, I have to fess up straight away that I’ve never actually been to Glastonbury – the myriad bands and music you could see and listen to was appealing but the thought of all that scuzziness was less so. So my recollections of it are all based on radio, TV and press coverage.

Thinking back to the 80s, I don’t remember much being made of it at all in the media, probably because it wasn’t broadcast live until 1994 when Channel 4’s 4 Goes To Glastonbury programming made it available to the masses at home. If I think about say, 1983, when I was first becoming obsessed with pop music, I don’t recall it appearing on my radar at all. A quick search on Wikipedia tells me that the big acts that year were UB40, Marillion, King Sunny Ade and his African Bests and, rather implausibly New York singer-songwriter Melanie who once had a hit with a cover of “Ruby Tuesday”. Hmm. It didn’t cater for my admittedly chart-centric tastes at the time and that would continue for a couple of years although the line up would become progressively more of a broad church as the decade worn on. By the end of the 80s, I was just finishing being a Poly student and was aware that some of my peers were going to Glastonbury but a jaunt to Somerset was never high on my list of Summer priorities somehow.

By the mid 90s, I was working in record retail and therefore much more aware of Glastonbury as just about everyone I ever worked with seemed to have either been or was planning to go. The TV coverage was much bigger with the BBC taking over from Channel 4 and so we all got to see those iconic sets from the likes of Radiohead, The Prodigy and Massive Attack. But what of 1993? That is the year we are up to in these BBC4 TOTP repeats after all. Well, at least a couple of tonight’s acts appeared at the festival that year but the headliners included The Black Crowes, The Kinks (replacing Red Hot Chili Peppers), Suede and The Orb.

Before we get into the nitty gritty , I should note that we have skipped the 11 February edition of the show as it featured the now taboo Rolf Harris doing his version of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway To Heaven”. Incidentally, Harris was also on the bill at Glastonbury that year.

Right, that’s enough preamble. Let’s blog! We start with a rather incongruous and improbable five second message from Sting and Take That from New York saying that their both on the show later. Erm…OK. Cheers for that guys. The first performing act tonight are Stereo MC’s with a single that seems destined to forever remain in the shadow of previous hits “Connected” and “Step It Up” despite being a hit of a comparable size. “Ground Level” was the third release from the band’s “Connected” album and although it’s a decent track, it lacks the immediacy and urgency of its two predecessors.

Such was the visual impact of the spectacle that is/was frontman Rob Birch, I’d almost completely forgotten that they had three female singers complementing him but they are very much to the fore in this performance. For all of them though, their time in the spotlight was coming to and end. There would be one more hit single pulled from “Connected” and then nothing for eight long years until follow up album “Deep Down & Dirty” appeared.

Played Glastonbury? Yes

In 1993? Yes, their only appearance thus far

https://youtu.be/D8zFNomLTKg

1993 was a massive year for Whitney Houston as she released multiple singles from The Bodyguard soundtrack. Her cover of “I’m Every Woman” by Chaka Khan was the second of those and would peak at No 4 both here and in the US. Although the chart topping reign of “I Will Always Love You” was brought to an end in the UK by *spoiler alert* 2 Unlimited, over the pond it remained No 1 even while “I’m Every Woman” ascended and then descended the charts.

Chaka Khan features in the video and even receives a shout out from Whitney on the record at the track’s coda. Chaka’s original was a hit twice; first in 1979 when it reached No 11 and a decade later when a remix of it peaked at No 8. Duran Duran singer Simon Le Bon once admitted that he initially misheard the song’s lyric as ‘climb every woman’ – the dirty dog!

Played Glastonbury? No but the video features TLC who played this year’s festival

Not seen in our charts for nearly two years, 1993 brought us the return of Lenny Kravitz with his new album and title track single “Are You Gonna Go My Way”. Whilst his last hit was the almost sweet sounding “It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over”, this was a full on, all out rocking scorcher of a song fuelled by a heavy guitar riff and powered by the spirit of Jimi Hendrix. This really was the point when the Hendrix comparisons were out in force. I couldn’t tell if they were valid or not on account of not being a big Jimi fan. I don’t think I could hear him…

…an argument that’s kind of nonsense sure but it makes for a good scene in the movie. Anyway, all I knew was that Lenny looked every inch the rock god up there on stage and he was killing it. I’m not sure that I fully appreciated the track at the time but it’s a belter. It peaked at No 4 here instantly making it his biggest UK hit at the time but curiously it was released as an airplay only single in the US meaning it didn’t qualify for the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Apparently this was a common practice back then in America to increase album sales as buying the parent album was the only way to get that groovy tune you’d heard on the radio. What was it about though? Here’s Lenny himself courtesy of @TOTPFacts:

Lenny Kravitz explains "Are You Gonna Go My Way?: "I thought the subject matter was really interesting, because it's coming from the mouth of Jesus Christ… So basically, 'Are you gonna go my way?' meaning 'my way of love.'" #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 17, 2022

I liked these two reply tweets to this explanation…

Ephesians – Chapter 5 – Verse 23
— 🎨 ∟ ∪ ∨ 🎶 (@fkaPLuv) June 17, 2022

By the way, I’m currently watching Lenny’s daughter Zoë starring in the TV series of High Fidelity which is based on the book by Nick Hornby and the film starring John Cusack and Zoë’s mother Lisa Bonet. It’s pretty good too. In it, Zoë’s character Rob is involved with a young, up and coming Scottish rock star who, in the story, has just bagged himself a slot at Glastonbury. I love it when a blog post comes together!

Played Glastonbury? Yes

In 1993? Yes and again in 1999

https://youtu.be/5WTWqApTqgI

My god! TOTP were really pushing this latest Sting tune! After last week’s studio appearance he’s back just seven days later with another full performance of “If I Ever Lose My Faith In You” this time live from New York. Thankfully he’s lost the ridiculous Witchfinder General outfit from the previous week but maybe he should have kept it – at least it might have livened up this dreary run through. This was a classic example of why these live by satellite link ups were ultimately disappointing. Look at the setting for it. I don’t know exactly where he is but Sting is singing against a back drop of literally a brick wall. I’m guessing it might be a rehearsal room or sometimes it was an empty theatre venue neither of which worked for me.

I’ve told my Sting tale before haven’t I? The one about how a friend of my mate Robin, who was a guitar player who toured with some major artists, was at a dinner party at Sting’s house and in the middle of the dinner the host made all the guests stop eating and go and watch a documentary…about Sting.

“If I Ever Lose My Faith In You” peaked at No 14.

Played Glastonbury? Yes

In 1993? No. One and only appearance in 1997

https://youtu.be/hoRRq6grPk0

There’s three Breakers on this show starting with REM and “The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite”. I think I’m right in saying that despite the popularity of parent album “Automatic For The People” (a No 1 and seven times platinum seller in the UK alone) and despite all three singles released from it to this point making the Top 20, TOTP never featured any of them for more than the few allotted seconds in the Breakers section. A travesty really.

One of the lighter tunes on the album, there’s quite a lot to unpack about this one. Firstly, what the hell is Michael Stipe singing about? Indeed, I could just rephrase that question as ‘What is Michael Stipe singing?’ as the lyrics in the chorus topped a 2010 poll as the most misheard lyric ever. The official words in the chorus are ‘Call me when you try to wake her’ although that doesn’t seem to scan right to me. It is commonly misheard as ‘Calling Jamaica’ or ‘Only Jah waker’ and even ‘Call me Tom Baker’! OK, that’s the line sorted but what is the song about exactly? Well, as you would expect there’s various theories to be found online ranging from a couple being in rehab to a homeless woman sleeping in a phone box to a gambling addiction and finally, inevitably about drugs. Even the band themselves aren’t sure with bass player Mike Mills on record as saying “Half the song is about somebody trying to get in touch with someone who can sleep on his floor. The other half – you’re on your own”.

The song’s opening and title borrows heavily from “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” made famous by The Tokens in the 60s and Tight Fit in the 80s. Apparently REM paid for the rights to use the song and part of the deal was that they had to record their own version of it. They duly did and it appears as an extra track on the single.

According to Wikipedia, despite the song’s popularity, “The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite” is one of a very few songs the band has never played live. Is that right? It seems an odd decision. Is it a technical thing that it’s hard to reproduce out of the studio environment? Maybe Michael Stipe himself doesn’t know what the words are that he should be singing?

Played Glastonbury? Yes

In 1993? No in 1999 and finally in 2003

There’s a few comparisons I think between REM and the next Breaker artist Metallica. Not sonically but in terms of career trajectory and intense scrutiny from fans about their songs and their meanings. Both bands had been around for years and been very successful but both, it seems to me, went to another level globally with the release of an album quite some time into their career. For REM it was seventh album “Out Of Time” (though a case could also be made for their sixth and major label debut “Green” I guess) and in the case of Metallica, their eponymously titled fifth also known as ‘the black album’. Again I’m sure hard rock fans could argue that earlier albums were also seminal but I’m talking purely sales and “Metallica” sold three times as many copies as any of its predecessors.

In terms of fathoming what their songs were about , as with “The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite” before it, Metallica’s “Sad But True” had lots of fans dissecting the lyrics. Many theories can be found online and many concern the same subjects as REM’s tune – addiction and drugs – but also the concept of religion and the duality of good and evil. It’s pretty heavy stuff but then three members of the band were going through divorces at the time of its writing and recording so…

Predictably, “Sad But True” did little for me. It’s those crunching guitars and the shouted vocals that always put me off. The single peaked at No 20 in the UK charts.

Played Glastonbury? Yes

In 1993? No. Only appearance came in 2014

Did someone mention “Ruby Tuesday” earlier? Well, yes it was me (obviously). It turns out that Melanie would not be the only artist to take on The Rolling Stones classic. If you were to place a bet on somebody doing a cover around this time then Rod Stewart would surely have been the bookies favourite. In recent years he’s carved out a new career for himself of interpreting classic standards via his “Great American Songbook” series but even back in the day, Rod wasn’t averse to a cover version. Just look at some of the singles he’d released leading up to 1993:

“Downtown Train” by Tom Waits
“It Takes Two” by Marvin Gaye and Kim Weston
“Broken Arrow” by Robbie Robertson
“You Are Everything” by The Stylistics
“Tom Traubert’s Blues (Waltzing Matilda)” by Tom Waits (again!)

Plus he’d done a version of “Your Song” for the Elton John / Bernie Taupin tribute album “Two Rooms”. Then, in early 1993, came the “Lead Vocalist” album. This was an odd release which seemed to have been cobbled together by record company Warners just to cash in on the fact that Rod had just been given a Lifetime Achievement Award at the recent BRITS. The album was a mixture of five newly recorded covers and a random collection of material from Rod’s past including tracks from The Faces and his solo career. Those covers included the aforementioned “Tom Traubert’s Blues”, “Stand Back” by Stevie Nicks and of course “Ruby Tuesday”.

Let’s be fair, Rod’s version is horrible. Mechanical of sound and cynical of conception, it has none of the charm of The Rolling Stones original nor the emotion of Melanie’s cover.

Look I don’t mind the odd bit of Rod but there’s an awful lot of crud in his back catalogue as well and this one certainly deserves that description. He would return to covers later in the decade with his album “When We Were The New Boys” which included his take on “Cigarettes And Alcohol” by Oasis and “Rocks” by Primal Scream. Dear God!

https://youtu.be/g4SlcBFbiJI

Played Glastonbury? Yes

In 1993? No, Rod’s only appearance came in 2002

We swing back over to New York now for a performance by Take That with what surely must be one of their least remembered songs. After the dynamic fun of “Could It Be Magic”, “Why Can’t I Wake Up With You” was a turgid, lifeless affair and I can’t understand why they would have gone with this as a choice of next single. Was this a one off release or was it from the album?

*checks Take That discography*

Huh. Well, it was on “Take That And Party” (surely one of the worst album titles ever by the way?) but it wasn’t the version released as a single. Here’s the album version which is a bit of a weepy ballad:

The single version was eventually included on the sophomore album “Everything Changes” and it’s had a dance back beat applied with an annoying, repetitive bleep noise in the mix. Apparently, the lyrics were changed as well but frankly who cares?! We’re they already trying to look for a mature audience less than a year after finally getting some proper chart action and were therefore pushing the whole Gary Barlow as talented singer-songwriter schtick? I thought this was completely yawn inducing. Bore off!

By the way, their live by satellite performance here is as underwhelming as Sting’s with the lads performing against a backdrop of some draped material and a smoke machine. What was the point? Then again I wasn’t a teenage girl desperate for a look at my heroes. Maybe the idea of them being ‘live’ as it were was more appealing than the video?

Played Glastonbury? As if

https://youtu.be/1LwKuaCcw54

Ah well now, this is timely. The hero of this year’s Glastonbury is on the show! The 90s however weren’t peak era Paul McCartney. He didn’t manage one Top 10 single and the three albums he released that decade are hardly amongst his most cherished by fans. “Off The Ground” was the first of those three and, as host Mark Franklin states, had given him a chart entry in “Hope Of Deliverance” but it was all very underwhelming. The follow up was “C’Mon People” which I don’t recall at all, possibly because it didn’t even make the Top 40 despite this TOTP performance. Was it meant to be some sort of anthem of unity? It’s all a bit drab sounding to me. Interesting how they’ve staged Macca’s performance here with members of the studio audience crowding around him and his piano. It’s a bit “All You Need Is Love” isn’t it?

Those audience members in shot seem unsure what to do with themselves. It’s a difficult tune to dance to though the guy in the sleeveless denim jacket gives it a go. He’s got his thumbs inside his waistline at one point. He needs to go some to beat these guys dancing with Mud though…

Seeing some of the reaction on social media to Macca’s Glastonbury set list made me wonder what would have happened if he’d included “C’Mon People” in it. A Twitter meltdown I’m guessing and possibly the breaking of the internet.

Played Glastonbury? Played it? He rocked it on Saturday night. Amazing. Oh and he also performed there in 2004

In 1993? No

Finally a new No 1 but careful what you wish for as Whitney is toppled by one of the most annoying chart toppers of the whole decade. Widely (and perhaps rightly) pilloried for its lack of lyrics (“No no, no nuh no no, no nuh no no, no no there’s no lyrics”) 2 Unlimited’s “No Limit” also had an inane hook that lent itself to many a moronic football chant. I think my favourite was for former Bolton Wanderers forward Mixu Paatelainen. You can work out how it went for yourselves easy enough.

Supposedly there was a controversy over this week’s chart as to who was actually No 1 – Take That or 2 Unlimited – so close were the sales but I don’t remember any such stories in the press and certainly nothing to rival the Deee-Lite vs Steve Miller Band battle of 1990.

Played Glastonbury? Ha! Ha! Never!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Stereo MC’s	Ground Level	Nah
2	Whitney Houston	I’m Every Woman	I did not
3	Lenny Kravitz	Are You Gonna Go My Way	No but it’s a good tune
4	Sting	If I Ever Lose My Faith In You	Nope
5	REM	The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite	No but I had the album it was from Automatic For The People
6	Metallica	Sad But True	Happy to say no and that’s the truth
7	Rod Stewart	Ruby Tuesday	Never happening
8	Take That	Why Can’t I Wake Up With You?	Hell no!
9	Paul McCartney	C’Mon People	No
10	2 Unlimited	No Limit	And no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0018b84/top-of-the-pops-18021993

TOTP 03 DEC 1992

Posted on May 19, 2022 by 80stastic

We’ve clicked over into December 1992 here at TOTP Rewind which means that the population would officially have been starting to get into Xmas mode. Working at the Our Price store in Rochdale, my own days were getting busier and felt very long as sales got brisker. So what were some of the albums that were doing the business as Xmas loomed 30 years ago? The Top 10 albums were made up of eight Best Of / compilations from the likes of Cher, Erasure, Genesis, Gloria Estefan and Simple Minds. Only two were proper studio albums which were “Automatic For The People” by REM and “Stars” by Simply Red which was still in the Top 10 after being the best selling album of 1991! Now I’m all for a good Best Of album but 1992’s Xmas offerings did seem quite cynical on behalf of the record companies.

Whilst the record shops were getting prepared for a frenzy of activity, something else in the world of music was coming to a full stop. Cult TV programme The Hitman And Her broadcast its final show two days after this TOTP went out. It seems odd to recall now but there was a time when TV stations didn’t broadcast all night, when there weren’t any late night schedules and when if you suffered from insomnia then there were no old episodes of Come Dine With Me to keep you company during the wee small hours. So when Pete Waterman’s nightclub based show appeared in our screens in 1988, it felt truly transformative.

Filmed on a Saturday night in various clubs throughout the UK but with a definite North/Midlands bias, it would be televised in the early hours of Sunday morning. Performing hosting duties alongside Waterman and securing her cult status amongst the UK’s young male population was Michaela Strachan. Ever the businessman, Waterman ensured that the programme showcased a number of his PWL artists as well as some of the acid house tunes that he loved. The clubbers themselves were as much the stars of the show as the hosts, with many a punter, eager to get themselves on TV, happy to embarrass themselves by participating in some ‘hilarious’ games. Some of the regular dancers on the show included a pre-Take That Jason Orange and the two blokes who weren’t the singer in naff 90s boy band 911. I wonder if any of the tunes on tonight’s TOTP made the Hitman And Her playlist?

Well, possibly this one. If you’ve finally had a hit after years of trying, what’s your next move going to be? Yes, release a very similar sounding follow up of course! OK, “Step It Up” isn’t an exact replica of “Connected” – its got a faster bpm for one thing – but it didn’t fall far from the tree. Stereo MC’s were on a roll by this point. Their third album “Connected” missed the top of the charts by one place and would go on to sell 420,000 copies. “Step It Up” was their second consecutive Top 20 single after the album title track. They were the bomb (or something). This performance is surely the mental image that most people who were around at the time would conjure up when hearing the name Stereo MC’s. The main protagonist of course is the Catweazle-esque Rob Birch. With his oversize trousers and glimpse of a bare chest, he was a Frankenstein’s monster mash up of MC Hammer and Peter Andre. Then there were his moves. The knees bent, hip swivelling action that Birch brings to the party surely influenced Vic Reeves and his thigh rubbing antics on Shooting Stars. In fact, the whole thing reminds me of our Maltese puppy rolling on his back exposing his bits when being sniffed by some of the local neighbourhood dogs. Yeah, sorry about that mental image. Anyway, you have to give it to Rob; he certainly left it all out there as it were. Here’s his take on his performance courtesy of the ever excellent @TOTPFacts:

Rob Birch on this Stereo MCs #TOTP performance: "You know you've only got three minutes to try to get the crowd going. You're like, 'I've got to go at it like hell for leather. And because you're buzzing on nerves, your voice starts jumping out of your body."
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) May 13, 2022

Rob Birch: "I could just be a bit like some kind of plant in a gale and just, like, let it all hang out… That #TOTP wasn't a pretend performance. it had a fluidity to it."
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) May 13, 2022

Letting it all hang out indeed. “Step It Up” peaked at No 12.

If it’s TOTP in 1992 then there must be a Michael Jackson video due and here comes the latest. “Heal The World” was Jacko’s fifth single released in the UK during the year and the sixth from his “Dangerous” album overall. I’m guessing this was always going to be the track released for the Xmas market given that it’s a huge, saccharine drenched ballad with oh so worthy lyrical subject matter. So about the song’s sound – you can’t ignore its similarity to “We Are The World” which Jackson co-wrote with Lionel Richie. I mean it’s essentially the same song. Supposedly though, it is the track that Jackson was most proud of. It even inspired him to create the Heal The World Foundation, a charity dedicated to improving conditions for children throughout the world. You can’t deny the philanthropy but it doesn’t make the song any more palatable.

I really remember the rather clunky and obvious design on the cover of the single of a plaster covering a crack across the globe which is held between the hands of a black child and a white child. It was one of those fold out sleeves that turns into a poster as I remember that were awful to refold once opened to its full extent.

Sensibly, the video for the song doesn’t include Jackson himself only children set against a backdrop of images depicting war, guns and even the Ku Klux Klan. The theme of healing is portrayed by the final scene of a candle lit vigil of children coming together as one. That restraint was not in evidence at the BRITS in 1996 when Jackson celebrated the receipt of his Artist Of A Generation award with a performance of “Earth Song” that depicted him as a Christ like figure surrounded by children. Thank God for Jarvis Cocker! In any other year, the mawkish song would surely have gone to No 1 but this was 1992 and it was up against the all conquering “I Will Always Love You” by Whitney Houston and had to make do with the runners up spot.

Next we have another studio performance of the reactivated “Temptation (Brothers In Rhythm remix)” by Heaven 17. There’s a couple of differences between this and the previous 19th November show turn. Firstly, Carol Kenyon has a proper name check in the title graphics this time and secondly, she’s up there belting it out alongside Glenn Gregory without the two blokes on keyboards (the titular brothers presumably) for company. Still conspicuous by his absence though is Martyn Ware. Carol and Glenn don’t really need anybody else though certainly not the former who gives a masterclass in doing a live vocal performance for TV.

The original recording of “Temptation” featured a 60 piece orchestra and I’ve heard the aforementioned Ware say in an interview how mad it was back in the early 80s that they would just say to their record label that they required the services of an orchestra to play on one track and the label didn’t bat an eyelid at the cost. The 80s really were a time of excess within the record industry it seems. The Brothers In Rhythm remix of “Temptation” peaked at No 4.

The curious case of Dina Carroll next. Curious? Well, just in the respect that her success seemed to come in stages rather than via the classic overnight sensation mode. Sort of the musical equivalent of that ref who went down in stages when pushed by Paolo Di Canio back in the 90s…

Anyway, Dina had first come to national attention as the vocalist on Quartz’s dance version of Carole King’s “It’s Too Late” in 1991. Despite that flush of success, the Quartz project fizzled out and Dina disappeared from view. Behind the scenes though, a decision by her management company to launch Dina as a solo artist led to her being signed to A&M and the following year she returned to the charts with “Ain’t No Man”. “Special Lind Of Love” replicated its predecessor’s success exactly by peaking at No 16 before this single “So Close” made it a hat trick of Top 20 hits in 1992. Pretty impressive stuff which led to host Tony Dortie describing in his intro that Dina had enjoyed “an amazing year” and that she was “definitely in contention for female vocalist of the year”.

Come January 1993 her album was released and debuted at No 2 staying in the Top 20 for six months. And yet, it seemed to me that the album only really went into hyperdrive sales wise when the sixth single “Don’t Be A Stranger” was released in the October. I’ll type that again. The sixth single which was by far the biggest of the lot taken from the album when it peaked at No 3. Now surely that is curious?! We sold loads of the album in the wake of that single. Did A&M have it up their sleeves all the time, holding it back until the optimum moment? The single was different from the album version in that it was re-recorded with added orchestra strings to give it a dramatic feel. When was that decision taken? Either they got lucky or they had a long term strategy all along. Her success in 1993 led to Dina being named Best Female Artist at the BRIT awards in 1994 – again a marker that her success came in stages with her becoming award winning a whole year after Tony Dortie’s prediction.

As for “So Close” the song, it’s pleasant enough but never had the capacity to rival the sales of “Don’t Be A Stranger”. Maybe it was meant to just keep Dina‘s profile ticking over until the album was released? Surely the clamour for the album would have increased if “Don’t Be A Stranger” had been the third single anyway? Oh I don’t know. The bottom line is that it all worked out pretty well for Dina in the end unlike Paolo Di Canio who received an eleven match ban for his shove on ref Paul Alcock.

We’re back to cramming in the Breakers again this week with four of the little blighters in total. We start with one of REM’s best known songs I’m guessing which makes me wonder why these few scant seconds are all that were ever shown of it on TOTP. “Man On The Moon” was the second single to be released from the “Automatic For The People” album and is one of those songs that just works. Beautifully.

It manages to combine genuinely eccentric lyrics with ear worm producing hooks. Nominally about surrealist performance artist Andy Kaufman with references to his Elvis impersonations and work with wrestler Fred Blassie, it also seemed to be asking the listener to open their mind to multiple different realities. What if the moon landings were fake? What if Elvis wasn’t dead? Ultimately it returns to Kaufman and the conspiracy theory that he faked his own death. It’s a heady concoction. The black and white video with the image of Michael Stipe wearing a cowboy hat walking nonchalantly down a desert road before hitching a ride with a truck is in turns memorable and befittingly random. The original demo without lyrics was known by the band as “C to D slide” due to the opening which includes that shift of chords. When I attended a guitar class a few years ago, this was one of the songs we learned including that slide. It’s actually OK to play but does have some quick chord changes. By the way, I’m really not much of a guitarist. Just a chord strummer really. “Man On The Moon” peaked at No 18.

Another huge band that we only got to see a glimpse of as a Breaker were U2. To be fair they were promoting a fifth single from “Achtung Baby”, an album that had been released almost exactly a year ago so maybe they were pushing it a bit. Did the TOTP producers think that a fifth single from a year old album wasn’t a big enough story? It hardly qualified as an ‘exclusive’. Indeed, perhaps the real reason that a fifth single was released was to complete the last piece of the jigsaw that formed a picture of the band driving a Trabant car when you put all five single covers together. A nice bit of marketing by record label Island there.

The single in question was “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses” which I always quite liked. Apparently the gestation of the song had been quite laboured and the band had several failed attempts before they laid down a version they could live with. I always presumed that the song’s title was inspired by The Rolling Stones track “Wild Horses” but I haven’t seen anything online that comes anywhere near confirming that.

The singles from “Achtung Baby” achieved the following chart positions:

1 – 13 – 7 – 8 – 14

It’s not a bad haul for an album that was seen as a gamble in many ways with it being a definite shift in musical direction from where their success had led the band. It remains their second biggest selling album after “The Joshua Tree”.

Think of Xmas and then think of Cliff Richard. What song is currently running around your head? “Mistletoe And Wine”? How about “Saviour’s Day”? Bet it isn’t this one. It tends to get forgotten given the success of those aforementioned festive chart toppers and their ubiquity in Xmas playlists but Cliff didn’t just do those two Chrimbo tunes. There was “Little Town” in 1982, “We Should Be Together” nine years later and this one – “I Still Believe In You”.

This completely passed me by despite me working in a record shop at the time and despite it going Top 10. That’s probably because it had about as much staying power as wrapping paper come mid morning on Xmas day. In fact, it hardly even qualifies as a Xmas song with the only reference to Yuletide in the lyrics being one mention of Santa Claus. Just terrible. Cliff didn’t give up on the concept of making festive records though. In 1999, he scored an unexpected No 1 with “The Millennium Prayer”, in 2003 went Top 5 with “Santa’s List” and in 2006 got to No 2 with “21st Century Christmas”. There have also been numerous chart re-entries for “Mistletoe And Wine”, “Saviour’s Day” and even “I Still Believe In You” down the years when December rolls around once more.

The final Breaker comes from Rod Stewart and his cover of “Tom Traubert’s Blues (Waltzing Matilda)” by Tom Waits. We saw this the other week as an ‘exclusive’ live by satellite performance and the video here looks very similar to that as it’s just Rod wandering around an empty stage with a solitary piano player for company. I defy anybody to watch the video in full and be able to look at anything other than Rod’s beard for the whole four and a half minutes.

What on earth was this all about?! Boney M on TOTP?! In the 90s?! Well, it’s a straightforward answer. It was clearly another case of money for old rope. Record label Arista released this “Megamix” single with an eye on the Xmas party scene figuring the UK’s work force, pissed up and ready to party, wouldn’t be able to resist these 70’s tunes all over again. And so it came to pass that the single – a medley of “Rivers Of Babylon”, “Sunny” and “Daddy Cool” – returned Boney M to the UK Top 10 for the first time since 1979. I say Boney M but was this really them? Where was the guy with the mad Afro (Bobby Farrell) who used to leap about all over the place like he’d sat on an ants nest? Yes, there was a guy in the line up doing his best impression of Farrell but it’s clearly not him. In fact, there’s only the lead singer up there on stage that looks vaguely familiar. A bit of research tells me that it’s original member Liz Mitchell doing the singing but the rest of the group were just some randoms that were drafted in to promote the single. In an act of utter shamelessness / good business practice depending on your point of view, a cash-in “Greatest Hits” album was released early the following year which made the Top 20.

Apparently there were a number of different touring line ups of Boney M after the original line up was finally disbanded in 1986. I know! Boney M were still a thing in 1986?! They were not alone in this of course. There are plenty of examples of concurrent versions of groups following the disintegration of the originals. Off the top of my head there’s been The Temptations, Bucks Fizz, The Bay City Rollers and more recently UB40. All three female members of the original line up are still with us though sadly Bobby Farrell died of heart failure in 2010 while on tour with his version of Boney M. Unbelievably, he died on the same date and in the same city (St Petersburg) as Rasputin who was of course the inspiration behind one of the band’s biggest hits and whom Farrell used to dress up as when performing the song.

1992 had been a busy old time for Madonna. She starred in a well received film in A League Of Their Own and wrote a hit single for its soundtrack. She founded her own entertainment company called Maverick with production arms in records, film, music publishing, book publishing and merchandising. Not content with that, she released her controversial coffee table book Sex and her fifth studio album in “Erotica”. She was only 34 at the time and yet still had been a global superstar for nearly a decade.

“Deeper And Deeper” was the second single taken from “Erotica” and seems to have undergone some retrospective critical revisionism. It seems to me at the time that it didn’t create much of a fuss – how could it compete with Sex and the “Erotica” single for fuss to be fair? It now though seems to be recognised as one of Madonna’s better tracks. Indeed some may even say a banger. Certainly it was a return to that more mainstream dance sound on which she made her name but also embracing the house music movement. I have to say it never did that much for me though. At least the Andy Warhol inspired video with Madonna playing an Edie Sedgwick style character isn’t laced with whips and dominatrix style imagery like those for her recent singles “Erotica” and “Justify My Love” though there is some very loaded and deliberate peeling of bananas. “Deeper And Deeper” peaked at No 6.

This seems like a bit of overkill on behalf of the TOTP producers. This is the second time Simply Red have been on the show with two different tracks from a live EP recorded at a jazz festival. Really? “The Montreux EP” had four songs on it and after “Drowning In My Own Tears” was on a couple of weeks ago, this time we get “Lady Godiva’s Room”. Apparently this song had originally been released as the B-side to the band’s 1987 single “Infidelity” which kind of makes sense as it really sounds like B-side material to me. Uninspiring and a bit of a dirge, I was surprised that the EP got as high as it did (No 11). Make the most of this appearance though as we won’t be seeing Hucknall and co again for nearly three years (hurray!) when they will return with 1995’s “Life” album including No 1 single “Fairground”.

Right, strap in for a ten week run at the top of the charts for “I Will Always Love You” by Whitney Houston. Not quite Bryan Adams but still ten weeks of having to find something to say about this song. I’m going to start off by not talking about the song but about the film it was taken from. The Bodyguard seems to get quite a bad rap from critics but I don’t mind it actually. My theory is that the negativity stems from perceptions of Kevin Costner or more specifically his lack of acting ability. OK, he’s done some turkeys like Waterworld and The Postman but he’s also been in some decent films. His run of four films in the late 80s of The Untouchables, No Way Out, Bull Durham and Field Of Dreams is impressive and then there was Dances With Wolves which won seven Oscars including Best Director for Costner. Not too shabby. I actually think he’s decent in The Bodyguard too.

Maybe a lot of the anti-Costner stuff comes from his lack of an English accent in Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves (which is ludicrous) and Madonna sticking her fingers down her throat in reaction to him describing her show as ‘neat’ in her documentary In Bed With Madonna. Seems a bit unfair.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Stereo MC’s	Step It Up	No
2	Michael Jackson	Heal The World	Nah
3	Heaven 17	Temptation (Brothers In Rhythm remix)	No but my wife has the Luxury Of Life album
4	Dina Carroll	So Close	…but no cigar. No
5	REM	Man On The Moon	No but I had the Automatic For The People album
6	U2	Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses	No but I had the Achtung Baby album
7	Cliff Richard	I Still Believe In You	…but I don’t believe in you Cliff. No
8	Rod Stewart	Tom Traubert’s Blues (Waltzing Matilda)	No but I think my wife has the Tom Waits album it’s from
9	Boney M	Megamix	No but one of the first albums my wife ever had was Night Flight To Venus
10	Madonna	Deeper And Deeper	Nope
11	Simply Red	The Montreux EP	Never!
12	Whitney Houston	I Will Always Love You	I did 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/m001772z/top-of-the-pops-03121992

TOTP 26 NOV 1992

Posted on May 13, 2022 by 80stastic

Late November in 1992 was a sad time. I’m not talking about the Queen who two days before this TOTP broadcast had described the year as her annus horribilis as the Royal Family was involved in various scandals plus there was a fire at Windsor castle. Compared to the brouhaha they find themselves enveloped in today, photos of Fergie topless don’t seem such a big deal it seems to me but maybe life was a tad more innocent 30 years ago? Viewed against the daily shitshow of the 2020s, so far it does seem so. Anyway, it wasn’t the Windsors I was referring to but the fact that a major presence of British cultural life would come to an end in four days time. I speak, of course, of The Sooty Show! Yes, the original long running programme bid farewell on 30 November 1992 after 37 years on our screens. It wasn’t away for long returning just a year later as the rebranded Sooty & Co and then Sooty Heights and even today exists courtesy of Richard Cadell who bought the rights to the Sooty brand in 2008. The ending of a 37 year old TV show seems like quite a big deal though. Neighbours is ending soon after an almost identical length of run and there seems to be quite a fuss in the media about that so if it’s good enough for Scott and Charlene there it’s good enough for Sooty and Sweep. So much did Sooty permeate society that he’s responsible for this memorable spoof from my childhood:

What has this to do with TOTP? Nothing really but you find different ways to introduce a review of early 90s chart music on a twice weekly basis without resorting to such tactics!

OK, so like Sooty, EMF we’re also having problems staying as popular as they once were. Having arrived on the charts in 1990 like a bowling ball, skittling their contemporaries down and out with their irresistible “Unbelievable” single and Top 3 album “Schubert Dip”, it had been a case of diminishing returns for the Epsom Mad Funkers since. Two years on and sophomore album “Stigmata” would peak at No 19 and worse still, spend just two weeks on the charts. Its singles also underperformed. Lead track “They’re Here” barely made the Top 30 whilst follow up “It’s You” fared little better peaking at No 23 despite this TOTP appearance.

I didn’t remember how this one went at all but having listened to it back, it’s pretty good. They’ve toned down the frenetic pace of their earlier catalogue for a more (dare I say it) mature sound. This new found maturity is undermined rather by the band’s ‘slacker’ wardrobe which they are still persisting with two years on from their debut on the scene. That and the way in which the song’s chorus sounds like singer James Atkin is sneezing but I still quite like it.

Talking of maturity, the band have recently released a new album called “Go Go Sapiens” and are featured in the latest issue of Classic Pop magazine. Man, the look like any old geezers now but then, don’t we all?

It’s the video for “Yesterdays” by Guns N’ Roses next which provides the musical backdrop for the chart rundown for Nos 40 to 11. The band were in total turmoil by this point, engulfed in a trail of controversy as they straddled the planet on their Use Your Illusion tour. They’d haemorrhaged two band members in Izzy Stradlin and Steven Adler during the course of it, caused riots in St Louis and Montreal and in September guitarist Slash actually died for eight minutes after a drug overdose before being revived by paramedics.

At the time of this particular TOTP they were in Caracas, Venezuela and got caught up in a military coup which found them stranded there as airbases were seized. They eventually made it out and flew into Bogota, Columbia as the tour of carnage continued. Remember when rock star transgressions were just about fast cars and women? Talking of which…

From (literally) death defying rock to a comfy as a pair of slippers cover version. Undercover are back with their tribute to Andrew Gold’s “Never Let Her Slip Away”. For some reason the producers have dressed the stage up as if it were the deck of a Titanic style ship complete with a SS Undercover lifeboat and lifebuoy. I have no idea why. Undercover would never be as successful again as they were at this moment. Two consecutive Top 5 hits, multiple TOTP appearances – not bad for what was quite a ropey old concept really. However, the iceberg of chart failure was lurking unseen in their path and when they hit it, the journey was over almost immediately. There was time for one final Top 40 hit when their version of Gallagher and Lyle’s “I Wanna Stay With You” made No 28 but really they were just rearranging the deckchairs while the good ship Undercover sank.

To be fair, they weren’t the first to dance up some old rock pop staples for a more youthful audience nor the last. East Side Beat scored a big hit the previous year with their Eurodance version of “Ride Like The Wind” by Christopher Cross and then in 1995 Nikki French took her Hi-NRG take on Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse Of The Heart” into the Top 5. It just all seemed like lowest common denominator music to me. What’s the least we could get away with and still bag some chart success.

I think singer John Matthews still performs using the Undercover name on the nostalgia circuit. I really hope he does those slots on cruise liners that seem to be popular for retro artists now. He’s also a massive Arsenal fan whose Champions League qualification hopes sank recently as easily as the Titanic.

Whilst Sooty, Sweep and Sue were about to experience cancel culture nearly 30 years before it was invented, Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine were riding the zeitgeist in 1992. “The Impossible Dream (The Quest)” was their fourth Top 40 hit of the year whilst their “1992 – The Love Album” went to the top of the charts! It could be argued that all this success had gone to Fruitbat and Jim Bob’s heads as apparently they genuinely believed that they had a shot at the Xmas No 1 with this release. They even tried to start a fake war with the King of Xmas Cliff Richard via a poster campaign that said ‘Don’t Buy Cliff, Buy Carter’. In the end, they massively misjudged their chances and the single peaked at No 21.

The song itself has quite the history. Taken from the 1965 Broadway musical Man Of La Mancha, it has been recorded by some legendary names. Look at this list:

Frank Sinatra
Elvis Presley
Jack Jones
Jacques Brel
Shirley Bassey
Matt Monro
Andy Williams
Scott Walker
and erm…Susan Boyle

CUSM were an unlikely addition to that list for sure and I’m not entirely sure they did the song justice. Still, the staging of this performance with the windmill image in the background at least made sense unlike the SS Undercover.

If you really want a song based on a fictional character who picked fights with windmills then you could do worse than listen to this:

Just the two Breakers this week starting with…oh joy…Shabba Ranks and a little ditty he’s recorded with Johnny Gill called “Slow And Sexy”. Lovely stuff. Shabba (!) had already released a track this year called “Love Punanny Bad” which presumably influenced the comedy creation Ali G. You’d never get any of this smut with Sooty!

*checks YouTube to ensure there isn’t a blue, Rainbow style version of Sooty*

Phew! Anyway, this was just a precursor to the biggest era of Shabba’s popularity when “Mr Loverman” was rereleased in 1993 (it had been a No 23 hit earlier this year) and he became a part of that unholy ‘S’ trinity alongside Snow and Shaggy. Dear God!

Now I’ve heard of the concept of the difficult second album. It’s a well known idea that sees a band put their creative juices into writing their debut with all their life experiences so far contributing to the songs. Said debut garners huge commercial success which instigates pressure from the record company to immediately come up with a second hit album just 12 months later. I’m also familiar with ‘third album syndrome’ where a band struggles to define their musical identity after the whirlwind of recording, promoting and touring the first two albums. But ‘fourth album complex’? Not so much.

That was what appeared to be afflicting Deacon Blue in late ‘92 though. With their fourth album “Whatever You Say, Say Nothing” due for release early the following year, lead single “Your Town” was sent out into the busy Xmas market to plug it. Maybe not the best time to trail your new sound on reflection. For it was a new sound. I recall quite some coverage in the media about how this wasn’t the Deacon Blue that we had all come to know and love – well some of us anyway.

After the well crafted pop gems of the first three albums, the band seemed to decide that they needed to add a bit of a dance edge to their work to remain credible in the light of the continuing take over of the charts by that genre. Deacon Blue go dance?! Well, sort of. I mean they didn’t turn into 2 Unlimited overnight or anything like that but “Your Town” definitely sounded different. Beginning with a drawn out, repeated wail from Lorraine McKintosh, it built steadily via some shimmering blips and bleeeps until the driving backing track kicked in. Then came Ricky Ross’s vocals that sounded like they were being sung through a megaphone (or possibly a vocoder?). It was disarming but I presume deliberate. There was a song structure to it of sorts but they’d certainly played around with it. The coda for example was one, long play out with no vocals other than the return of Lorraine’s wail at the end. To be fair, it lent it a soundtrack style epic feel.

For all that, I dismissed it at the time as being experimental bollocks. The fact that the single came with various dance mixes including a Perfecto one didn’t impress me – in fact it depressed me. It was no “Dignity” that’s for sure. Listening to it now, I think that was a hasty judgement that could do with some heavy revision . The album made No 4 and achieved gold status sales. Nothing to be sniffed at but also way below the sales of their first three albums. It would prove to be their final one of the decade and their last for eight whole years.

A milestone next as after nearly five years, we have arrived at Kylie Minogue’s last ever single with PWL/ Stock, Aitken and Waterman. “Celebration” was the single in question, a cover of the Kool And The Gang hit from 1980 and the second single to be pulled from her very first Greatest Hits album. It was also her 19th UK chart hit. 19th! In five years. Just under four a year every year. Like her or loath her, she was prolific. Sadly, I don’t think her voice is really up to interpreting this disco classic. The staging for this studio performance is convincing enough though, giving off a real 70s disco vibe…despite erm…the song being sung dating from 1980. It all just makes the Undercover performance even more perplexing.

“Celebration” peaked at No 20.

From Kylie to Jason (nearly an early KLF song title there). This surely must have been a deliberate decision on the running order by the TOTP producers? It’s hard to tell if Kylie and Jason Donovan were in the studio together at the same time as there’s a weird, swirling, pixelated effect on the camera shot from the former to the latter but I don’t think it’s a retransmission of his performance from the other week as he’s wearing different clothes.

“As Time Goes By” was the single he was plugging and it stank of desperation for a big hit. The fact that it peaked at No 26 and was his last ever UK chart entry tells you everything you need to know about Jason’s decline in popularity by this point. It’s quite a moment in time. Kylie severs her ties with SAW and embarks on a career that is still going to this day and has brought her both sales and credibility. Jason meanwhile had also recently left SAW and can’t get arrested. Bye Jason. Thanks for…everything?!

Another week and another ‘exclusive’ performance which this time is live from Los Angeles and is Rod Stewart sporting a beard and continuing in his quest to convince the world that he is Tom Waits. Not content with murdering “Downtown Train”, he’s now having a hack at “Tom Traubert’s Blues”. The opening track of Tom’s 1976 album “Small Change”, it’s based on Australian folk tune and unofficial national anthem “Waltzing Matilda”. Just to make sure all us Neanderthals realised this, Rod has helpfully renamed his version “Tom Traubert’s Blues (Waltzing Matilda)”. Cheers for that Rod.

It’s an OK version I guess in that he doesn’t completely ruin it but you’d have to worry about someone who thought Rod’s was the definitive take on the song. It was clearly released with an eye on the Xmas No 1 and to be fair it gave a decent account of itself by rising to No 6. One final thing, that’s not Huey Lewis on the piano in this performance surely?

Charles And Eddie are still No 1 with “Would I Lie To You” but not for much longer. They bow out with the second live by satellite performance of the show, this time from Toronto, Canada. When these were first introduced at the start of the ‘year zero’ era, I guess they seemed different and were an attempt to shake up the old format but a year on I can’t really see the point of them. They tend to be in empty venues (possibly due to the time differences) and they generate very little in the way of excitement. There’s not even any interaction with the presenters anymore (as excruciating as that was!). I get that the artists featured are either on tour or doing promotional work and couldn’t be in the TOTP studio but just show the video instead. Really.

As for Charles And Eddie, unlike Sooty and friends, their appeal would not endure and despite winning three Ivor Novello awards for “Would I Lie To You”, they would achieve only three more minor UK hit singles before disbanding in 1995.

And finally some bonus content…

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	EMF	It’s You	Nope
2	Guns N’ Roses	Yesterdays	Not the single but I have it on a Greatest Hits CD
3	Undercover	Never Let Her Slip Away	Never happening
4	Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine	The Impossible Dream (The Quest)	I did not
5	Shabba Ranks and Johnny Gill	Slow And Sexy	As if
6	Deacon Blue	Your Town	Nah
7	Kylie Minogue	Celebration	No but my wife had that Greatest Hits album of hers
8	Jason Donovan	As Time Goes By	No
9	Rod Stewart	Tom Traubert’s Blues (Waltzing Matilda)	No but I think my wife has the Tom Waits album it’s from
10	Charles And Eddie	Would I Lie To You?	And no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00170d8/top-of-the-pops-26111992

TOTP 20 JUN 1991

Posted on August 17, 2021 by 80stastic

This is my fifth year of reviewing these BBC4 TOTP repeats. I started with the shows from 1983 and we are now up to 1991. This is my 367th post over two blogs. Thats over 825,000 words. I’m tired. I’m stuck in the house due to testing positive for COVID and I’m staring at a blank document awaiting inspiration to strike. I’m not helped by the fact that the TOTP production team were determined back then to cram in as many acts as possible into 30 minutes of screen time. This week there are 14 acts! 14! I’m not sure I can do it anymore. Look, I’ll try OK, just for you…

…OK, first song of the night and not only do I not remember it at all but it’s already giving me a headache. The cause of my distress is “Tribal Base” by Rebel MC / Tenor Fly / Barrington Levy. What that Rebel MC who did “Street Tuff” because this sounds nothing like that. Wikipedia informs me that this was from his second album which was in a ‘breakbeat hardcore’ style with some ‘reggae fusion’ thrown into the mix. I have absolutely no idea what any of those words mean. Apparently it was a precursor to the ‘jungle’ sound which then begat drum’n’bass both of which I do remember because you couldn’t escape them in the mid 90s (‘jungle ist massive’ and all that).

As for Tenor Fly, he was a leading light of the rave movement whilst Barrington Levy is a reggae and dancehall legend whose back catalogue stretches back to 1979. Now of course, it’s possible that there are some reggae fusion fans out there reading this (there might be!) that are now shouting at their devices incredulous at my lack of knowledge in this field but I can only tell it how it was and is via my own memories and knowledge. I have very little else to say about this one other than I didn’t expect to see a double neck guitar on stage for a track like this. I thought they were the preserve of prog rock.

“Tribal Base” peaked at No 20.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDpN6GBPMUw

Presenter Nicky Campbell makes a really lame quip about the Rebel MC never stopping and being a ‘rebel without a pause’ (groan!) and then follows it up by saying that “Salt ‘n’ Pepa would have been here tonight but Salt is currently having a baby which is kicking it almost as hard as she is here…”. Surely the pun there was about pushing it Nicky as in “Push It”, one of their most well known hits? Their actual current single is “Do You Want Me” which is promotes the idea of men respecting women and not pressurising them until they are ready to have sex….or as @TOTPFacts put it:

No shagging with Salt 'N' Pepa until the third date. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) August 6, 2021

Yes, well…anyway. Salt ‘n’ Pepa would continue this conversation in their next single “Let’s Talk About Sex” which including these classic lyrics:

Yo, Pep, I don’t think they’re gonna play this on the radio
And why not? Everybody havin’ sex
I mean, everybody should be makin’ love
Come on, how many guys you know make love?

“Do You Want Me” peaked at No 5.

Talking of having sex (as just about every song in the charts seemed to be at this time), here is LaTour with “People Are Still Having Sex”. Campbell bravely takes on the single’s title by trying to intellectualise the subject going on about a “chilling assessment of contemporary attitudes towards an activity fraught with danger” before saying it’s great to dance to. Was it really though? Even the backing dancer up there on stage for this studio performance doesn’t seem to know what moves to do. Oh yes, that backing dancer who’s mouthing “hello lover”? General consensus on Twitter was that she was one of the Bombalurina women last seen cavorting with Timmy Mallett. She got all the good gigs didn’t she?

A stage performance of this track doesn’t really work does it? The tempo of it doesn’t really naturally make for a visually engaging spectacle whilst the main guy (Mr LaTour?) comes across as really creepy. Just nasty.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njX-0VAMcTs

Campbell works very hard in his next link to make sure he gets the title of the song right, overly articulating the world ‘funk’ when introducing “Get The Funk Out” by Extreme. It’s the promo video but surely this performance would surely have been better suited to the TOTP studio than LaTour’s? It’s full of energy with lead singer Gary Cherone looking almost demonic with some of the weird shapes he pulls his body into.

When I first heard this, I thought Cherone was singing ‘No Robbie Nevil’s going to spoil my fun’ as in the “C’est La Vie” hit maker from the 80s as opposed to what he actually sings which is “No rotten apple gonna spoil my fun” which makes much more sense. Quite why Robbie Nevil would have been seen as a party pooper by a bunch of funk metal heads I have no idea.

“Get The Funk Out” peaked at No 19.

Meanwhile back in the studio we find Kenny Thomas having an enormous hit (I said hit!) with “Thinking About Your Love”. Kenny was one of the biggest breakout stars of 1991 with four Top 40 hits and a Top 3 album. Eventually the hits dried up and by the middle of the decade Kenny had disappeared from view altogether. However, he re-entered the public consciousness after appearing in ITV’s Hit Me Baby One More Time in 2005 although he was beaten to a place in the grand final by one of the weakest and weediest pop bands of the 90s in 911 – the shame!

Nowadays, he’s the lead singer of Living In A Box who shared the same record label in Chrysalis Records back in the day which is how they originally met. On the band’s official website, in answer to the question ‘Are you going to be singing some of your own songs at the Living In A Box shows?’, Kenny replied:

Yes, definitely! Fans coming to see The Box will hear their hits and people who want to hear some of mine will get the chance to hear those too. I think the fans will hear six Top 10 records in our set, which is quite something.

Well it would be Kenny if that were true but although ‘The Box’ (nobody calls them that surely?!) did have three Top 10 hits, you only had the one in “Thinking About Your Love” which makes a grand total of four not six.

A load of Breakers now starting with something for which the official description is, I believe, ‘techno bollocks’. Cubic 22 were a Belgian (not Italian for once) dance project whose only UK Top 40 hit was “Night In Motion”. They comprised Peter Ramson and Danny Van Wauwe the latter of whom sounds like he should be a Man Utd midfielder who was bought for a lot of money but who can’t make the team. Apparently we’ll get to see them in the studio next week. Oh joy. Cue another visually bizarre performance just like LaTour.

If the track sounds vaguely familiar, here’s @TOTPFacts with the reason why:

The piano riff from "Night In Motion" was later pinched by British dance outfit Strike for "U Sure Do", which reached 31 in 1994 and 4 in 1995: https://t.co/b639Sfosyr Borremans and Van Wauwe didn't get any money out of it. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) August 13, 2021

“Night In Motion” peaked at No 15.

This is more like it! Despite having been formed in 1987, Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine had never achieved any mainstream success until now. Quite why was 1991 the turning point in their career? Well, it could have been that their brand of sample heavy, indie dance pop that they had been making was finally receiving national recognition with bands like EMF, Jesus Jones and Pop Will Eat Itself all having chart hits around this time. Or maybe it was just that their band name really fitted in with the sex obsessed Top 40 at this time!

“Sheriff Fatman” (possibly their most well known song though certainly not their biggest hit) was a re-release of an early single that had failed to chart though it had been a big indie hit. Like the band themselves, their timeline is a bit chaotic but as far as I can tell, it was re-released when the duo signed with Chrysalis Records (them again!) after the collapse of Rough Trade – a bit like when “Sit Down” was re-released after James has moved from Rough Trade to Fontana. Also like “Sit Down” was the fact that “Sheriff Fatman” had been on that influential ‘Madchester’ themed “Happy Daze” compilation album which I think must have been when I first heard the track.

Highlighting the dodgy practices of slum landlords via the use of some inspired wordplay in their lyrics, “Sheriff Fatman” was an absolute stomper and a mosh pit favourite for fans when played live. Indeed, those lyrics, once heard were impossible to forget.

Moving up on second base
Behind Nicholas Van Wotsisface
At six foot six and a hundred tons
The undisputed king of the slums
With more aliases than Klaus Barbie
The master butcher of Leigh-on-Sea

Those lines of course had their basis in reality. Nicholas Van Wotsisface was a reference to British businessman and convicted criminal involved in property Nicholas van Hoogstraten whilst Klaus Barbie was the German Nazi known as the ‘Butcher of Lyon’ for having personally tortured prisoners of the Gestapo. This wasn’t your average pop song – even Nicky Campbell acknowledges that in his introduction to Jim Bob and Fruitbat as “something very intriguing now…”.

All of this and I haven’t even got onto my CUSM claim to fame yet. I’ll leave that for the next post when they are on the show properly though.

“Sheriff Fatman” peaked at No 23.

Next a young man who was being talked up as the next big thing in British soul…or was it acid jazz?. Time has decreed that it was a sub genre called ‘neo soul’ actually. His name was Omar and his song was “There’s Nothing Like This”. In fact, his full name was Omar Lye-Fook (which sounds like a lyric from Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves Of London”) and he was a hugely talented musician who could play multi instruments and had a smooth, velvety voice to go with that.

Like many singles in 1991 it seems, “There’s Nothing Like This” was another re-release having originally been issued in 1990 on Kongo Records. It was re-released by the hugely influential acid jazz label Talkin’ Loud when Omar signed with them in 1991 becoming his biggest ever hit when it peaked at No 14. The bass riff gave it an instant hook that made it stand out and he looked set for superstardom. And then…nothing. There was no follow up single until the following year and that was actually the lead single from his new album. By that point, momentum appeared to have been lost. Omar didn’t have another Top 40 hit until 1997.

In my mind, I have an image of Simon Mayo saying “That was Omar and “There’s Nothing Like This”….except the rest of the album”. Maybe I made it up but it sounds like the sort of snide thing Mayo might have said.

The final Breaker sees the return of Paula Abdul with the lead single from her second album “Spellbound”. Unlike all her other hits up to this point, “Rush Rush” was a ballad and a big one at that. No uptempo dance number here. It was all very accomplished and polished and all those other words ending in ‘-ished’ but it was ever so slow and just a tad dull I thought.

In the US, it would supply Paul with her fifth consecutive No 1 single and indeed stayed top of the charts or five whole weeks. Over here, it got to No 6 which was just about the same pattern of difference between the UK and America for all her releases. And yes, clearly that’s Keanu Reeves in the video which was a play on the James Dean film Rebel Without A Cause – oh, is that what put the idea in Nicky Campbell’s ahead for his awful ‘rebel without a pause’ pun?

Talking of awful puns, here’s Driza Bone with “Real Love”. The people behind Driza Bone were producers and remixers Vincent Garcia and Billy April but it turns out they didn’t come up with the name themselves though. Here’s @TOTPFacts with the rest of the story:

Driza Bone were named after an Australian brand of oilskin raincoat. Billy April: "[Vincent Garcia] saw that name on a trip to Australia in 1990 and liked it. When we couldn’t come up with anything better we used it." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) August 6, 2021

As well as being an act in their own right (they employed a revolving conveyor belt of vocalists – this one was Sophie Jones), they also used their name for the remixing arm of their set up and worked with artists like Lisa Stansfield, Jody Watley, Mary J. Blige, Shanice and Duran Duran.

Sadly for Drizabone, I remembered their dreadful name more than their song which peaked at No 16.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrKvI7v1zX0

Just when we thought that the Jason Donovan phenomenon was all over, he comes back with a massively successful hit! I have to admit I didn’t see this coming at all. I thought he was spent, done – ‘you’ve had your season in the sun now f**k off mate’ type of thing. Yet his decision to agree to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s offer to play the lead role in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (apparently he mulled it over for a whole three weeks) proved to be completely correct as his version of “Any Dream Will Do” scored him a huge No 1 single.

I’d forgotten that to went straight in at No 2 – not something that happened every week in 1991 – so the buzz around the release must have been big. It would spend two weeks at No 1 whilst the cast album of this production was also No 1 for two weeks. Donovan’s success in the role and the way it reignited his career was a beacon for others to follow in his wake with the likes of Phillip Schofield, Donny Osmond and Boyzone’s Stephen Gately all playing Joseph over the next few years. In 2007, the song gave its name to a second Lloyd Webber talent show-themed TV series as he searched for a new star to play the role in a revival of the show. The winner was Lee Mead who took a version of the song to No 2 in the charts. It was clearly one of those songs that people just couldn’t get enough of.

As for Jason, “Any Dream Will Do” would prove to be a false dawn. There would be just one further Top 10 single (a cover of The Turtles’ “Happy Together”) and an album in 1993 that his new label Polydor Records had so little faith in that they licensed several of his old hits and included them on the album much to his annoyance. It didn’t work and the album stiffed at No 27. It would be the last Jason Donovan album of the 90s.

Oh, and one final thing, what were all those Pet Shop Boys references that Nicky Campbell made in his intro about?

Some sadness attached to this next performance from Bette Midler as the artist who originally recorded “From A Distance”, Nanci Griffith, passed away literally days ago aged just 68. RIP Nanci.

Getting Bette Midler into the TOTP studio in person must have been quite the coup for the BBC and she’s come dressed as if she’s auditioning for the part of Peter Pan in that year’s Xmas pantomime at the Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury. She even adopts a Peter Pan stance when starting the song with one hand at her waist while leaning back as if surveying Neverland. All that was missing was a slap of her thigh. Come the key change at the song’s finale, she attempts a few jumps as if expecting to be lifted high into the rafters by some invisible wires but sadly for her, she can’t get off the ground. Where’s Tinker Bell with her pixie dust when you need her?

Joshing aside, I have to admire ‘The Divine Miss M’ for her very overt social media stance against the horrific presidency of Donald Trump. Good on you Bette.

“From A Distance” peaked at No 6.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2GFBdOiKUI

Those jokers Color Me Badd are still at No 1 with “I Wanna Sex You Up”. In a Smash Hits interview, the band announced that “I Wanna Sex You Up is just a modern way of saying ‘I want to romance you'”. OK, so firstly, nobody’s opening line is ‘I want to romance you’ is it?! Secondly, the phrase ‘I Wanna Sex You Up’ definitely does not say ‘I want to romance you’ anyway!

The play out video is “The Motown Song” by Rod Stewart. In keeping with the sexually charged feel of the show, Nicky Campbell can’t resist one final risqué comment when he introduces the track thus:

You can hear the charts on Sunday 4.30 on Radio 1 FM, see them again next week on TOTP presented by Radio 1’s very own blonde bombshell Simon Mayo. We leave you tonight with a man who’s partial to a blonde bombshell…or three…it’s Rod Stewart and The Motown Song…”

So there you have it – a show featuring songs called “People Are Still Having Sex” and “I Wanna Sex You Up”, a band whose name included the word ‘sex’, a conversation about shagging with Salt ‘n’ Pepa and then we round it all off with an innuendo about threesomes (or was that a foursome?!). And we didn’t even have the song on about female masturbation!

I’ve made it through! Fourteen acts and their tracks all viewed and reviewed! Maybe I have more resolve than I gave myself credit for!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Rebel MC / Tenor Fly / Barrington Levy	Tribal Base	Nah
2	Salt ‘n’ Pepa	Do You Want Me	Nope
3	LaTour	People Are Still Having Sex	Definitely not
4	Extreme	Get The Funk Out	Not in the singles box but I think I might have it on something
5	Kenny Thomas	Thinking About Your Love	Negative
6	Cubic 22	Night In Motion	Not my bag at all
7	Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine	Sheriff Fatman	See 4 above
8	Omar	There’s Nothing Like This	No
9	Paula Abdul	Rush Rush	I was in no rush to buy this
10	Driza Bone	Real Love	Another no
11	Jason Donovan	Any Dream Will Do	Ooh no!
12	Bette Midler	From A Distance	…is where I would like to be when this song is on
13	Color Me Badd	I Wanna Sex You Up	Vile – no
14	Rod Stewart	The Motown Song	One final no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000yhc2/top-of-the-pops-20061991

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 31 OCT 1997

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TOTP 04 OCT 1996

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TOTP 24 FEB 1994

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TOTP 13 JAN 1994

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TOTP 24 JUN 1993

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TOTP 15 APR 1993

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TOTP 18 FEB 1993

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TOTP 03 DEC 1992

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TOTP 26 NOV 1992

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TOTP 20 JUN 1991

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