TOTP 22 APR 1993
Ever broken an arm or a leg? I once had a hairline fracture of my forearm when somebody pushed me down the stairs at school. I had a plaster cast on it and everything. My injury however was nothing compared to what happened to Arsenal footballer Steve Morrow four days before this TOTP aired. The unfortunate Belfast born utility man managed to break his arm after a game had finished! He’d just scored the winning goal in the League Cup final versus Sheffield Wednesday and in the jubilant celebrations afterwards his captain Tony Adams tried to carry him on his shoulders. Adams slipped, Morrow fell and fractured his arm so badly he needed oxygen and was rushed to hospital. He missed the rest of the season.
That got me thinking of accidents that had befallen pop stars. There’s been a few. For a start, there’s the nicest man in rock Dave Grohl who fell off stage during a Foo Fighters gig in Sweden. He famously finished the gig after the medics patched him up and played the rest of the tour sat down in a chair. Or how about Jessie J who fell off stage whilst rehearsing in 2011, broke her foot and required a bone transplant. Then there’s the youngest Hanson brother who broke his collarbone and cracked three ribs and his scapula when he came off his motorcycle in 2019. Possibly most famously, Ed Sheeran broke his right wrist and left elbow after coming off his bike in 2017. Ed was hardcore though and went to the pub after the accident before giving into the pain in the early hours and undertaking a trip to A&E. I wonder if any of the acts on tonight’s TOTP have any broken limbs stories…
We start with something that I not only don’t remember but that I couldn’t really conceive of happening. Voice Of The Beehive and Jimmy Somerville anyone? So what was this all about? Well, it was a project by the record label Food Records to support the charity Shelter’s ‘Putting Our House In Order’ homeless initiative. Not only did they get Jimmy and VOTB together, they got various other artists (many as duets) to perform versions of “Gimme Shelter” by The Rolling Stones. The recordings were put on four separate singles sorted by musical genre – pop, rock, alternative and dance. I’m not going to list them all here but there’s a few intriguing ones like New Model Army and Tom Jones…
How about Cud and Sandie Shaw…
Surely the oddest though must be Hawkwind and Samantha Fox….
Bizarre doesn’t quite cover it. Anyway, there were some more obvious takes on the song mainly on the rock CD with the likes of Thunder and Little Angels doing their bit for charity but it was Voice Of The Beehive and Jimmy Somerville that were chosen to promote the project on TOTP and there’s a bit to unpack here:
- I quite like it
- Why does Jimmy sing his opening verses in such a low register?
- Jimmy’s T-shirt is right. Shabba Ranks is a bigot
- Why was Woody not on the drums?
- I have no information on whether any of the people on stage have ever broken any bones
All formats of the single included a live version of “Gimme Shelter” by The Stones to keep on the right side of chart eligibility rules enabling it to get to No 23. It was officially credited to Various Artists and each format had the same catalogue number meaning it counted as one record sale whichever version you bought.
The Bodyguard cash cow was still going strong in April 1993. Not only had the film being doing the business at the box office but the soundtrack album was No 1 around the world and there seemed to be a single lifted from it permanently in the charts. “I Have Nothing” was the fourth such single and the third by Whitney Houston (the other coming courtesy of Lisa Stansfield). In truth, it could have come from any of Whitney’s albums up to this point as it was a classic power ballad the type of which she had made a number of times previously. I’m thinking “All The Man That I Need”, “One Moment In Time”, “Where Do Broken Hearts Go” etc. I mean she did it very well and could knock these out in her sleep but it was all a bit Whitney by numbers for me. She also seemed to have a penchant for songs with ‘I’ in the title. There was “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)”, “I Will Always Love You” (obvs), “I’m Your Baby Tonight” – she even did a version of “I Know Him So Well”. All those ‘I’s put me in mind of when Dr Who regenerated from Peter Davison to Colin Baker…
The single went to No 3 in the UK and No 4 in the US where, due to the stagnant nature of their chart, her previous two singles were still selling and it meant she became the first artist since 1991 when their chart compiling software changed to have three songs in the Top 11 chart positions.
The video follows the format of “I Will Always Love You” and is basically a trailer for the film with lots of clips of it all thrown together around Whitney performing to camera. Not content with this power ballad, the next release was also one (and also from the soundtrack album) with “Run To You” being released in June.
It’s a third consecutive appearance on the show for New Order with “Regret” next. After the Baywatch incident then the official promo video, they are finally in the TOTP studio. Despite the live vocal policy in place on the show at this time, this isn’t a shambles of a performance as with “Blue Monday” ten years earlier. It all feels pretty slick although Hooky’s unique bass playing technique and stance never looked slick. It’s as if it weighs a ton and he stretching every sinew to keep it off the ground. He might not have broken it in an accident but as @TOTPFacts says:
Talking of guitars, it feels quite odd to see Bernard Sumner with one in his hands. Now I’m no Eric Clapton and am just a bit of a chord strummer but it looks like his fingers never change from that one chord shape (‘C’ if I’m not mistaken or derivatives of it). Was there really just one chord in the song? And they used to take the piss out of Status Quo!
We swoop over to America next for a live satellite performance of the country’s No 1 record. You’ll probably know the song but not the group. How come? Well, “Freak Me” is the track in question and it will go to No 1 here as well but not for another five years and it won’t be sung by the people we see here but by some chancers called Another Level. Yep, them. Dane Bowers and his mob. Anyway, that’s way down the line. For the moment it’s all about Silk… or rather it’s not as their version of this Keith Sweat written and produced song never even made the Top 40 over here despite this performance.
Slik were from Atlanta, Georgia and had given themselves some truly terrible nicknames. There was Tim ‘Timzo’ Cameron, Gary ‘Big G’ Glenn, Gary ‘Lil G’ Jenkins and my favourite Jonathan ‘John-John’ Rasboro. The lyrics to their big hit are…well kind of explicit and leave the listener in no doubt as to what they are singing about. For example:
Let me lick you up and down till you say stop, let me play with your body baby, make you real hot
Then there’s:
I love the taste of whipped cream, spread it on, don’t be mean
Blimey!
Meanwhile back in the TOTP studio we find Sub Sub featuring Melanie Williams and their big hit tune “Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use)”. Melanie’s come with a big, zebra print floppy hat that she didn’t wear last time. Maybe it was meant to be in keeping with the tune’s retro disco feel?
It’s suddenly struck me that Sub Sub were a bit like Deee-Lite. One huge, crossover dance anthem then pretty much nothing in terms of further chart success. I know that’s not strictly true in that Deee-Lite had one minor hit single after “Groove Is In The Heart” before all you chart enthusiasts get on to me but you get my drift.
Mick Jones (he of the Man Utd score update story the other week) has informed me that when Melanie Williams was in her previous band called Temper Temper, she did a PA at the Our Price store in Piccadilly, Manchester and was absolutely lovely with all the male members of staff under her spell. Thought I’d pass that on. By the way, I have no info on whether she’s ever broken her arm or leg but there is a Melanie Williams serious injury solicitor based in Fitzrovia, London but that’s probably not the same person is it?
There’s four Breakers again this week starting with a band who I genuinely never realised had more than one hit in this country. Aussie rockers Midnight Oil had a huge global hit in the late 80s with “Beds Are Burning” and although they continued to have success back home, they did zip in the UK until this track – “Truganini” -made our Top 30. As with “Beds Are Burning” which was about the territorial rights of native Australians, the song carried a political message (a debate over the future of the Australian monarchy) whilst name checking Truganini who was an Aboriginal Tasmanian woman and one of the last native speakers of the Tasmanian language.
The track came from their album “Earth And Sun and Moon” which is nearly exactly the same title of an album my very own country music loving Dad made a few years back. He included ‘the stars’ in his title though.
You wouldn’t have believed that I worked in a busy record shop at this time as here’s yet another song I don’t remember. What was I doing whilst I was there? Listening to football on the radio if the Mick Jones story is anything to go by.
Anyway, this is a bit weird as after Midnight Oil, we get another song about indigenous people. “Power Of American Natives” was by Dance 2 Trance and was a big club hit that broke through to the mainstream chart. It’s all a bit techno (don’t tell The Bluebells!) and frenetic for me but incredibly there’s another (tenuous) link with Midnight Oil as the album this was taken from also has the word ‘moon’ in its title (“Moon Spirits”). OK, you got me. I’m filling desperately here.
“Power Of American Natives” peaked at No 25.
Despite some considerable album sales, Sting (the solo artist) had never really made many inroads on the singles chart. In the early 90s though, he was finally doing something about that. After just three Top 40 hits in the entire previous decade, by April 1993 he was already up to five. “Seven Days” was the third on the spin if you include “”It’s Probably Me”, his collaboration with Eric Clapton from the Lethal Weapon 3 soundtrack.
This was the second single from his well received “Ten Summoner’s Tales” album and would peak at No 25. It’s quite a nice tune but the lyrics seemed very familiar. And then it struck me. He’s rewritten “Can’t Stand Losing You”. I mean not exactly but there’s a theme of violence arising from a failed relationship in both. In The Police tune the threat comes from a brother who’s gonna kill the protagonist and “he’s six feet ten”. In “Seven Days” it’s from a love rival who’s…yep…”over six feet ten”. I see you Sting! To try and throw us off the scent he’s added in a breakdown of the week Craig David style and then actually goes off into “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” at the end with the exact lyrics included. Didn’t he do that on another of his solo songs as well?
*thinks for a bit*
Yes he did! Right at the end of “Love Is The Seventh Wave” he slips in a line from “Every Breath You Take” and then…and I love it when the artists on the show are in sync with the theme of the post…he changes the lyrics and sings “every cake you bake, every leg you break”. Excellent! Nice one Sting!
“Seven Days” peaked at No 25.
Now when I think of D:Ream (which isn’t often) I think of 1994 not 1993. 1994 was the year they had a No 1 with “Things Can Only Get Better” or perhaps even 1997 when that song was used as the official anthem for Labour’s successful General Election campaign. But 1993? I had nothing down for that. I’m completely wrong though as here is Peter Cunnah in the charts with “U R The Best Thing”. I thought that came out after “Things Can Only Get Better”. It turns out it did but that was a re-release. Hang on, a rerelease when it had already been a hit earlier? How did that work? Well, simple really. The 1993 single only made it to No 19. After their No 1 in early 1994, a Perfecto remix was put out and it went to No 4. Seems sometimes they did know what they were doing these record labels.
It turns out that D:Ream we’re all about rereleases. This was already the second time “U R The Best Thing” had been out as it was initially released in 1992 when it limped to No 72 in the charts. The ‘94 version made it a trio of releases for the track. Not to be outdone, “Things Can Only Get Better” racked up four goes at the chart. It had already been a hit earlier in ‘93 (it can’t have made it into the show) when it peaked at No 24. Then came that No 1 a year later, a No 19 placing in ‘97 due to the election and then a final release in 2014 (not sure why) when it peaked at No 66. Phew!
Oh and in an interview in the Belfast Telegraph last year, Cunnah said that he’d broken his foot once but that was it and he’d been injury free for most of his life. The things you can find out online!
I’m kind of surprised that the next artist got granted a full performance slot on the show rather than a place in the Breakers. Not because I don’t think they were any good (I always liked them) but because they seemed to be going through a difficult, experimental phase that wasn’t bringing in the big hits. Deacon Blue’s last six singles had resulted in just one Top 10 hit with all but one of the rest not cracking the Top 20. Now you could argue in their defence that they were more of an album band than a singles one but even their album sales were in decline. Their current album at this time (“Whatever You Say, Say Nothing”) wasn’t a disaster commercially but it certainly sold less than all its predecessors.
“Only Tender Love” was the latest single taken from it to try and boost its fortunes but I don’t think it was ever up to the task. It’s a bit overwrought and laboured and the band’s performance here doesn’t help as they seem to be taking it all far too seriously. Where had the band that had whooped it up on “Real Gone Kid” gone?
“Only Tender Love” made it to No 22 whilst one final single from the album peaked one place higher. A Greatest Hits album appeared the following year and actually went to No 1 which made the relative failures of their singles even less fathomable.
Tony Dortie is giving it the big ‘un in the intro to the penultimate act on tonight’s show and why not? After all she had recently signed a recording contract with Virgin worth between $32 and $50 million. It made her the world’s highest paid recording artist at the time. I talk of Janet Jackson of course who had fulfilled her obligations to A&M which left her free to sign to Virgin. I recall there being a big fuss about all of this at the time which only heightened the expectations of her first material with her new record company. “That’s The Way Love Goes” didn’t disappoint Virgin as it went to No 1 in the US for eight weeks. Not a bad initial return on their investment. To date it holds the record for the most weeks at the top of the charts for any single released by a member of the Jackson family. It fell one place short of repeating that chart position in the UK.
The track had a much smoother R&B feel to it than some of the harder sounds from her last album “Rhythm Nation 1814” like “Miss You Much”, “Black Cat” and the title track. The lead single reflected the more sensual nature of parent album “Janet”. Just in case anybody was still in any doubt of Janet’s new direction, then the picture on the back cover of her naked from the waist up with her breasts cupped from an unseen man’s hands from behind her surely made it clear.
As with much of Janet’s work, the track was produced by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and featured that sample from “Impeach The President” by The Honey Drippers that I mentioned in the last post. As for injuries resulting in broken limbs, I’m not aware of anything in particular relating to Janet but there was of course that Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction incident in 2004 otherwise known as ‘nipplegate’.
It’s the last of four weeks at No 1 for The Bluebells with “Young At Heart”. It’s as if the band knew the game was up and have decided to go out with a bang as they’re all dressed in white top hats and tails. The set is like a scene from a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers film complete with cane wielding dancers.
Although a Singles Collection album was released to cash in on the renewed interest in the band, nothing else from their back catalogue was rereleased which I think demonstrates the band’s relaxed attitude to their unexpected second go at pop success. As much as I would have loved to see “I’m Falling” and “Cath” back in the charts, I think it was the right decision to literally make it a one off exercise.
The band still perform sporadically at specific events including supporting Edwyn Collins at a 2009 Glasgow gig.
| Order of appearance | Artist | Title | Did I buy it? |
| 1 | Voice Of The Beehive and Jimmy Somerville | Gimme Shelter | I didn’t |
| 2 | Whitney Houston | I Have Nothing | Nope |
| 3 | New Order | Regret | I regret that I did not |
| 4 | Silk | Freak Me | Never happening |
| 5 | Sub Sub featuring Melanie Williams | Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use) | See 3 above |
| 6 | Midnight Oil | Truganini | No |
| 7 | Dance 2 Trance | Power Of American Natives | Not my bag at all |
| 8 | Sting | Seven Days | Nah |
| 9 | D:Ream | U R The Best Thing | Negative |
| 10 | Deacon Blue | Only Tender Love | No but I have that ’94 Greatest Hits album with it on |
| 11 | Janet Jackson | That’s The Way Love Goes | Didn’t do much for me |
| 12 | The Bluebells | Young At Heart | 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/m0019mbq/top-of-the-pops-22041993
TOTP Rewind - the 90s 