Snap!

TOTP 13 APR 1995

Posted on October 28, 2023 by 80stastic

After Bruno Brookes’ valedictory TOTP appearance last week, we’re back to the ‘golden mic’ slot and this time it’s given to Phill Jupitus. Now quite how big a name Phill was at the time I’m not sure. Wikipedia tells me that he didn’t start his stint as a team captain on Never Mind The Buzzcocks until 1996 but that he had his own radio show on BBC GLR. In the pre-digital world, I’m not sure that the latter post would have cut through that much but I’m wondering if I would have been aware of him thanks to my Weller super fan elder brother and the fact that Phill had been involved with the Red Wedge movement of the mid 80s. Possibly. Anyway, Phill would go onto have a very successful career as a stand up, actor, radio host, performance poet and podcaster. However, Wikipedia informs me that Phill has now retired and is studying art at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in Dundee.

Back to 1995 though and Phill is doing his best to look excited at the thought of introducing this year’s Eurovision entry which, though the artist didn’t do the business on the night of the contest finishing 10th, is one of the more memorable acts to have represented the UK. Now it may not seem like a big deal to our sophisticated 2023 ears with the hindsight of twenty-nine contests informing our perspective but having a rap / hip-hop group as the Eurovision entry was almost revolutionary. Love City Groove were that group and, as I remember, much was expected of them if not to actually win it then to at least shake the whole competition up a bit. Their 10th place finish wasn’t very glorious but was in line with recent UK form in the competition. Frances Ruffelle had also finished 10th the previous year as had Samantha Janus in 1991. Sure, only Coco in 1978 and Rikki in 1987 had secured a poorer position in the years since the competition’s inception, but given the horrors that were to come for the UK, 10th place would certainly come to be seen as not bad at all. However, Eurovision stalwart Terry Wogan wasn’t that impressed. As the voting played out on the big night and it became apparent that the losing streak that we’d been on since Bucks Fizz were the last UK winners in 1981 was going to continue, Terry grimly stated that “the experiment has failed”.

They may not have brought the bacon home for the UK but “Love City Groove” the single was more successful in winning over the UK record buying public. Its peak of No 7 meant that it was the highest charting UK Eurovision song since Bardo made No 2 in 1982. Indeed, no Eurovision song (UK or otherwise) had made our Top 10 since Johnny Logan’s “Hold Me Now” in 1987.

Watching their performance here, it all looks rather unconvincing like it’s actually a present day parody, sending up mid 90s sounds and styles; even their name sounds like a spoof. I guess that opinion can only exist with 28 years of hindsight though. I’m predicting this won’t be the last time we see Love City Groove on TOTP as Eurovision night was still a month away at this point.

Next an artist who is pretty much known as a one hit wonder over here (although that’s not statistically correct) but is a huge deal in her own country. Tina Arena (not quite her real name but close enough – Filippina Arena isn’t quite as snappy I guess) is an Australian singer-songwriter, musical theatre actress and producer who has sold 10 million records worldwide but how many people in the UK know her just for “Chains”?

A slow building, brooding power ballad with a memorable chorus performed by a strong vocalist with a soprano range, it was always going to do well commercially. And so it did. Going double platinum in Australia, it also crossed over in the UK selling 200,000 copies but then, we’d always been suckers for power ballads. Meatloaf had the biggest selling single of 1993 with “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)” and more recently Celine Dion’s “Think Twice” had been our No 1 single for seven weeks. “Chains” didn’t quite match the feats of those two records but a No 6 hit was highly respectable.

Tina did have four more UK chart entries but none made the Top 20. Her final hit was called “Whistle Down The Wind” from the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical of the same name based on the Hayley Mills film. I thought at the time she must have covered the greatest living Englishman Nick Heyward’s debut solo hit but thankfully she hadn’t. A quick thought on the staging of the performance here. What was the deal with having the backing singers positioned on a separate stage away from Tina? There was plenty of space behind her which Phill Jupitus occupies when he walks on behind her to do the next intro. Odd.

I saw a post on Twitter (I refuse to call it X) on a #TOTP thread the other day saying that everyone had lost interest in REM by 1995. I’m not sure that’s true as most of their post ‘95 albums went to No 1 both here and in the US but I have to admit personally to not following their output as closely from “Monster” onwards. I think a case could be made that those four albums “Green”, “Out Of Time”, “Automatic For The People” and the aforementioned “Monster” represented their imperial phase. “Strange Currencies” was the third single to be lifted from that album but it could easily have been called “Everybody Hurts 2.0” so close is its sound to that previous 1993 hit. It doesn’t mean it isn’t a good song (it is) but I guess maybe I expected more from a band like REM than song recycling.

The video features Norman Reedus who would go on to play Daryl Dixon in The Walking Dead franchise but it’s another US TV show that has a more current link to “Strange Currencies”. If you haven’t caught FX’s The Bear (you can watch it on Disney Plus in the UK), you’ve missed out. A comedy drama about an award winning chef who returns to his hometown of Chicago to run his dead brother’s sandwich shop…yeah, I know that description isn’t really selling it but trust me, it’s great. Anyway, the show has a fine soundtrack featuring the likes of Wilco, Radiohead, The Breeders, Van Morrison and “Strange Currencies”. Such was the show’s impact that a second video for the song was released in June of this year featuring footage of REM’s documentary Road Movie and clips from The Bear.

It’s another outing for the latest incarnation of Snap! now with their hit “The First The Last Eternity (Till The End)”. I haven’t got much else on this one seeing as this is its second studio appearance recently other than to say the staging of it looks very simplistic with just vocalist Summer and two backing dancers for company. I know there was always an issue with presenting dance acts on the show effectively but this does seem overly sparse.

Also looking on the scant side were the band’s album sales. Generating big numbers from a dance act’s albums as opposed to their singles was always a difficult trick to pull off but Snap! had been one of the more successful proponents of the art. Debut album “World Power” went Top 10 and achieved gold status as did the 1992 follow up “The Madman’s Return” but their third effort “Welcome To Tomorrow” bombed out at No 69. To be fair, it didn’t feature a No 1 single like its predecessors did (“The Power” and “Rhythm Is A Dancer” respectively). That kind of makes sense but then how do you explain how 1996’s Greatest Hits collection “Snap! Attack: The Best Of Snap!” could only make a high of No 47? Ah, the vagaries of public approval.

Next, it’s another of those previous ‘exclusive’ performances being wheeled out again once said single has entered the charts. This time it’s for “Doll Parts” by Hole. Did I tell my Hole / Nirvana T-shirt story last time? I think I did meaning I’m struggling for content yet again. Erm…well there’s the influence that Courtney Love has had on inspiring subsequent female performers to embark on a career in rock music but there’s plenty been written about that much better than I could do in my irreverent blog. Instead, here’s an insight to that TOTP appearance from the other week courtesy of @TOTPFacts when Ant & Dec were the hosts:

This Hole appearance is a repeat of their performance from two weeks earlier. Apparently during rehearsals either Ant or Dec introduced Hole as "featuring Kurt Cobain's widow", but Courtney Love objected and insisted on a retake. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) October 20, 2023

Wait. What? Another Bruce Springsteen track from his “Greatest Hits” album?! We had “Murder Incorporated” the other week and now we get the second of four new tracks on the collection “Secret Garden”. His label Columbia must have been hitting the phones hard to get him exposure like this. Or maybe The Boss was such a big name that he told TOTP when he would be on the show.

“Murder Incorporated” was never released as a single in the UK but “Secret Garden” was. However, despite the strength of the track, it only made No 44 originally. What do I mean by originally? Well, it was reactivated two years later by its inclusion on the soundtrack to Jerry Maguire which is possibly why it sounds so familiar to me. Either that or the fact that it could be mistaken for “The Big Ones Get Away” by Buffy Sainte-Marie. The 1997 release of “Secret Garden” would make No 17 whilst the “Greatest Hits” album topped the charts just about everywhere on the planet.

And another dance tune that’s back for another TOTP appearance that I’m not sure I have the stamina to comment on. Strike are up to No 4 with “U Sure Do” which is where they will peak. Will that do? No? OK, how about the contrast in performance between them and Snap! earlier? A vocalist and two backing singers on a bare looking stage was all Snap! had but Strike have two keyboard players, two twirling dancers and two backing singers on their own podiums. I get that there’s a difference in tempo between the respective tracks which may have influenced the set ups but it hardly seems fair does it?

The exclusive performance this week features two controversial and irrepressible characters and a song that has a back story that has a connection to one of tonight’s artists that was on earlier. Shane MacGowan (and the Popes) and Sinéad O’Connor were an unlikely duet or were they? In terms of their voices maybe. Sinéad with her pure, angelic vocal and Shane with his drunken growl but in terms of their background and profiles, perhaps their collaboration was inevitable. The track they chose to record together was an old Pogues song called “Haunted” that had originally been on the soundtrack to the Sid Vicious biopic Sid And Nancy which is where the connection with another act on tonight’s show comes in. Courtney Love had a bit part in that film as a friend of Nancy Spungen. “Haunted” failed to make the Top 40 on its original release in 1986 but its re-recording in 1995 and inclusion on the soundtrack to another film (Two If By Sea / Stolen Hearts) propelled it to a high of No 30.

I quite like it I have to say even if the contrast in Shane and Sinéad’s voices is a bit jarring to say the least. The latter, of course, died in July this year at the tragically young age of 56. Back in 1995, I don’t think any of us would have predicted that MacGowan would live longer out of the two of them.

Take That are still secure in top spot with “Back For Good” for a second week. It would eventually sell over a million copies and is the biggest selling single by a boyband ever in the UK.

Such is its influence that it has been used in The Office as the love theme between Tim and Dawn but I think even that is eclipsed by its use in Channel 4 sit com Spaced which also managed to reference the rather wonderful John Cusack film Say Anything.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Love City Groove	Love City Groove	Not likely
2	Tina Arena	Chains	Not for me
3	REM	Strange Currencies	Neative
4	Snap!	The First The Last Eternity (Till The End)	I did not
5	Hiole	Doll Parts	No thanks
6	Bruce Springsteen	Secret Garden	Nah
7	Strike	U Sure Do	Nope
8	Shane MacGowan and the Popes / Sinéad O’Connor	Haunted	No
9	Take That	Back For Good	No but my wife did

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/m001rk7c/top-of-the-pops-13041995

TOTP 30 MAR 1995

Posted on October 20, 2023 by 80stastic

It’s another golden mic episode of TOTP and this week the slot goes to Ant & Dec or Ant & Declan as they introduce themselves. Or is it PJ & Duncan? Ant says that they are in fact them as well in the intro. They were releasing records as PJ & Duncan at this time (that didn’t change to Ant & Dec until 1996) but maybe they (or their management) were starting to think about a more long term brand. Certainly they’d decided on who should stand where by this point with Ant on the viewer’s left and Dec on the right. They had been positioned the other way round when performing on TOTP as opposed to presenting. I was wondering if this was their first such gig but Wikipedia tells me they’d already co-hosted a children’s programme on ITV called Gimme 5 before getting their own show on BBC. Little did we know at the time that they would come to dominate the TV schedules behemoth like for the next three decades.

Back in 1995 though, they were those fresh-faced lads from Byker Grove who sang that song “Let’s Get Ready To Rhumble” (amongst other hits) introducing Strike as the first act of the night. This is one of those occasional moments in chart history when the hit is much more well remembered than the artist. “U Sure Do” was said hit that actually made the UK Top 40 twice. It made No 31 in early January but was a much bigger hit just a few weeks later in the March and April of 1995 when it peaked at No 4. To be fair, although I used the word ‘occasional’, you could make a case that the vast majority of these 90s Eurodance hits were all about the tracks not the people behind them or indeed in front of them. For example, Strike had four further UK Top 40 hits but I defy anybody to name even one of them.

“U Sure Do” was based around the hook from Donna Allen’s 1987 hit “Serious” though I’m not sure I made that connection at the time. I also didn’t know that Strike’s singer – Victoria Newton – went onto record a dance version of All About Eve’s “Martha’s Harbour”. If that sounds like a hideous concept to you, then I urge you not to click on the video below. Trust your gut feeling. If only Victoria Newton hadn’t heard about the idea of making a dance track of All About Eve’s biggest hit, just like Julianne Regan couldn’t hear the the backing track on that infamous TOTP appearance.

Some R&B balladeering now from a new name in Brownstone. Whilst I do remember this group, I couldn’t have told you the name of any of their hits and certainly don’t recall the info shared by Ant & Dec in their intro about them being signed to Michael Jackson’s label MJJ Music. Indeed, the fact that Jacko even had his own record label can’t have registered with me at all. Apparently, it was in existence from 1993 to 2001 and was owned by Sony and distributed by Epic for whom Jackson recorded but was dissolved over disagreements between Sony and the singer over the promotion of his career. Brownstone were one of the label’s few artists to secure any hits with the other being 3T who famously were a trio made up of Jackson’s nephews. Nepotism much?

Brownstone made a splash when this single “If You Love Me” made the Top 10 in the US and UK but their subsequent releases suffered from a dose of diminishing returns and they split in 1998 before reforming in 2007 and 2019 though only Nichole ‘Nicci’ Gilbert remains from the original line up. As for this performance, the lady on the left surely couldn’t see out from under that lowered peaked cap could she? Had she seen Gabrielle with her eye patch look and said “Hold my beer”?

I’d have to say that Ant & Dec’s links weren’t the best at this stage of their career. Rather obvious and unfunny but they were both very young and not as slick the as they would become. The segue into “Two Can Play That Game” is especially lame unlike the song by Bobby Brown. Like “U Sure Do” earlier and many other hits around this time it seemed, this had already been a minor hit before bestriding the charts giant-like later in its life. Originally a No 38 in the Summer of 1994, it would go Top 3 nine months later.

Now usually it took a remix by a de jour producer to make a track a much bigger hit second time around and indeed “Two Can Play That Game” did have such a sprinkle of magic in the form of mixes by K Klass (the album version didn’t) but here’s the thing; as far as I can tell, these remixes were already present on the 1994 original release as well as the 1995 re-issue. Which begs the question why was it given a second chance? I guess either Bobby or his record company had faith in the track and thought it deserved a second chance. You can hear why I think. Steered by a hand-clapping beat with some strident house piano flourishes, it’s also got an uplifting chorus that I can imagine leant itself to much dancing with abandon on many a dance floor throughout the country. Limbs!

The success of the single prompted the release of a whole remix album of the same name later in the year which did what it said on the tin – featured remixes of some of his biggest songs that led to three more recycled tracks becoming UK Top 40 hits.

Finally! After weeks of wondering where all the Britpop artists were in this year of Britpop, here’s one that were really at the heart of it. Or were they? Well, Menswear were a bit of a conundrum. In some quarters, they were very much seen as manufactured to be part of the burgeoning scene rather than growing out of it organically and therefore not genuine nor credible. There was some truth in that of course. First mentioned in a Select magazine article by founding members Johnny Dean and Chris Gentry before the band even existed, the hype surrounding them was huge. Having put the idea out there, Dean and Gentry decided that they should probably form the band for real and lo, Menswear were born to the world in the epicentre of Britpop, namely Camden. A debut gig had the record labels frothing at the mouth, besides themselves with fear at the thought of missing out on the next big thing. In the end, London Records won the race at the cost of £90,000. A £500,000 publishing deal (they only had seven songs in their repertoire at the point of signing!) and an NME front cover followed before this TOTP appearance. They hadn’t even released anything at the time!

As if the buzz around them wasn’t big enough, they made their first single “I’ll Manage Somehow” a limited edition release with, as Dec says in his intro, just 5,000 copies made available. Ant wasn’t the only one asking the question “Why?”. Around this time, I was doing a further education night course about music of the 70s. One of my fellow course members was a guy called Dominic who had heard about this band called Menswear but was mightily pissed off that he couldn’t find their single anywhere to purchase due to its limited release. Knowing I worked in a record shop, he asked me what it was all about. I said I thought it was a marketing strategy to create a clamour for the product at the counter but Dominic wasn’t having it and thought it was daft. He had a point. In the end, “I’ll Manage Somehow” somehow managed a peak of No 49. Wouldn’t it have been better to mass produce it and give them the chance of a bigger debut hit or was I missing something? The follow up single “Daydreamer” made No 14 so clearly that was made more widely available. It was their third single “Stardust” though that did it for me. Hopefully we’ll get to see that one on a future TOTP repeat.

Having said that, watching this performance back some 28 years later, I’m not sure if the profile the band attained is quite so obviously explained. They made a decent sound to my ears but it was hardly revolutionary and indeed left them open to the same accusations of plagiarism that plagued their Britpop contemporaries Elastica. I’d forgotten Johnny Dean’s military style tunic that he wore here. A few short years later, The Libertines would copy the look in their own brief blaze of hype and glory. So was the Menswear ballyhoo that bad? After all, they were hardly the first to go there. Sigue Sigue Sputnik did it much more outrageously and ridiculously back in 1986 and were vilified extensively and that thing about being the pin up band for a musical movement? Wasn’t that what Spandau Ballet were for the New Romantics? Unlike Spandau though, Menswear weren’t able to extend their life beyond their Britpop origins and when that came to an end, so did they. Drummer Matt Everett would become a writer, presenter and sidekick to ex-Radio 6 DJ Shaun Keaveny whilst lead singer Johnny Dean became an advocate for the National Autistic Society after being diagnosed with Asperger syndrome and briefly restarted Menswear with a new line up in 2013. He ditched the project shortly afterwards though following a change of heart.

When you’ve had a name as big as Prince on your show recently, I guess you’re going to make use of his performance more than once even if you couldn’t actually see his face. Yes, it’s that former ‘exclusive’ appearance by New Power Generation promoting their “Get Wild” single where Prince hides his fizzog throughout it behind a veil in protest at the actions of his record company Warners with whom he was in dispute. With the Purple One using NPG as a means of releasing material whilst hamstrung by Warners and the latter retaliating by issuing a single called “Purple Medley”, it set up a chart battle of sorts though it would hardly rival the Blur v Oasis bout later in the year. Prince would finally disentangle himself from Warners around 1996.

He wasn’t the first pop star to use the gimmick of a mask of course. Here’s David Soul pre his Starsky and Hutch days as The Covered Singer…

https://youtu.be/eqLxxaOtl0c?si=Hto3_7TQSlfgg2KT

He wouldn’t be the last either with the advent of the TV show The Masked Singer being syndicated around the world and featuring actual pop stars…

https://youtu.be/1tUy7C6-xGQ?si=gugv6FYkVTNuwjHY

From one music legend to another. After Prince comes The Boss! The reason behind Bruce Springsteen’s appearance here seems to be to promote his recently released No 1 “Greatest Hits” album from which “Murder Incorporated” was one of four new tracks. I say ‘new’ but it was actually a really old song that was written during the “Born In The USA” album sessions but which didn’t make the cut. In fact, “Murder Incorporated” was going to be the album’s title at one point. It got reactivated for Bruce’s first compilation album and fast became a crowd favourite when played live. It’s a good song I think that doesn’t sound out of place next to some of the other more well known and celebrated tracks on the album. It was never released as a single in the UK (in fact it was only released in Canada) hence the big TOTP caption ‘Album Track’.

The “Greatest Hits” would go multi platinum but Bruce chose to follow it up with an album that would be his first to fail to make the Top 10 in the US for two decades. “The Ghost Of Tom Joad” was his second acoustic collection after “Nebraska” and on the one hand didn’t seem like an obvious direction to go in but on the other it made perfect sense. Draw a line under one phase of your career by reminding everyone how great it was with a Best Of and then deliver something unexpected. That’s how you maintain a career that’s lasted over 50 years I guess.

Snap! were still having hits in 1995? Well, yes they were but both visually and sonically you would be forgiven for believing that this wasn’t the same group that exploded onto the charts in 1990 with “The Power”. Rapper Turbo B had long gone and they were on to their fourth singer in Summer after Jackie Harris, Thea Austin and Niki Haris before her. In this performance with Summer and her two backing vocalists/dancers in crimson ball gowns, they look an era away from those early days which I guess they were. Their sound had also transformed over the years to the point that they were now peddling trance flavoured pop with “The First The Last Eternity (Till The End)” a prime example. With a title that seemed to borrow an awful lot from that old Barry White hit, it consisted of Summer repeating the word ‘eternity’ over and over until it sounded like she was singing ‘eternally’. It does, however, have a deeply hypnotic quality to it that kind of draws you in…and in…and…No! Snap out of it! Ahem.

“The First The Last Eternity (Till The End)” would make a respectable No 15 on the UK charts but the majority of their final hits would be remixes of past glories, mainly “Rhythm Is A Dancer” which provided their last Top 40 entry in 2008. It wasn’t their first hit but it was their last meaning Snap!’s success didn’t last an eternity.

Whilst I can appreciate their place in musical history, I was never a massive Nirvana fan. Consequently, by association, I was never that interested in Hole either. The band started by Courtney Love who was, of course, married to Kurt Cobain always seemed to be inextricably linked to Nirvana because of that relationship. Working in record shops throughout the 90s, obviously I was aware of their releases and the names of their albums but I never had that much interest in hearing them. Plenty of people did though. I don’t think I understood quite how many records they sold. Literally millions of copies of their second and third albums in America achieving platinum status. It wasn’t quite the same story in the UK though those two albums “Live Through This” and “Celebrity Skin” did shift 100,000 units each. In terms of singles, Hole had never had a Top 40 hit in this country until “Doll Parts”. Watching this performance doesn’t make me feel I mistakenly deprived myself of their oeuvre I have to say. It’s all a bit too lo-fi and grunge- high for me and I don’t think I could listen to Courtney Love’s voice on repeat that much.

Despite not being a fan, I do have a Hole story. A month after this TOTP aired, the band played a gig at the Manchester Academy venue. A quick search of the internet tells me it was actually Sunday 30th April. I was living in Manchester at the time and my wife and I had been for a walk somewhere and on the way back home, passed by the Academy. The ticket touts were out in force and they seemed to be particularly interested in trying to flog me one. Approach after approach was made to the point where I was getting annoyed. “No mate, I’m not interested”; my reply was almost becoming a chant. I turned to my wife and, exasperated, said “What’s going on? Why do they keep trying to flog a ticket to me?”. My wife looked me up and down and then pointed to my T-shirt. “Maybe that’s got something to do with it?”. I’d completely forgotten that I was wearing a Nirvana T-shirt. Now you would be forgiven for asking the question “Hang on, I thought you said you weren’t that into Nirvana so what gives with the T-shirt?”. Well, there’d been some sort of Nirvana promotion at the Our Price store where I worked whereby customers got a feee T-shirt if they bought the album or something. Anyway, there were loads left over so they were dished out to the staff and I happened to have mine on the day of the Hole gig completely by chance. For the record, I didn’t buy a ticket for David gig.

Ant & Dec finally start to get into their stride with their links with a nice Morecambe and Wise style routine around the No 1 record “Don’t Stop (Wiggle Wiggle)” by The Outhere Brothers. That intro is the only good thing about this whole footnote in UK musical history when the public lost their minds not just once but twice (there’s another No 1 coming in a few weeks) over these two dolts. The whole appeal of this record it seems to me was its sexually explicit lyrics which, of course, we don’t hear in this performance. You wouldn’t have heard them on the edit version played on the radio either. It kind of makes this TOTP appearance slightly redundant. Still, the studio audience seem to be having a great time whooping it up in call and response fashion.

We should perhaps be thanking our lucky stars for small mercies. If it weren’t for Take That releasing a new single around this time, “Don’t Stop (Wiggle Wiggle)” would surely have stayed at No 1 for longer. In total, it spent six weeks inside the Top 2 with only one of those in the top spot.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Strike	U Sure Do	I sure don’t – no
2	Brownstone	If You Love Me	No
3	Bobby Brown	Two Can Play That Game	Nope
4	Menswear	I’ll Manage Somehow	Couldn’t get a copy despite working in a record shop
5	New Power Generation	Get Wild	Nah
6	Bruce Springsteen	Murder Incorporated	Not released as a single
7	Snap!	The First The Last Eternity (Till The End)	Negative
8	Hole	Doll Parts	Not my bag really
9	The Outhere Brothers	Don’t Stop (Wiggle Wiggle)	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/m001rb0b/top-of-the-pops-30031995

TOTP 27 OCT 1994

Posted on June 13, 2023 by 80stastic

No, no, no, no, NO! Not Simon Mayo again! I can’t. I just can’t. I can’t deal with his smugness and tone deaf belief against all perceivable reality that he is somehow funny and entertaining. I can’t talk about every cringeworthy line he utters in this show – it’ll break me. Just know that he was as unfunny as ever. Jarvis Cocker had it right at the end of last week’s show when the guest presenter wrapped up his stint by saying “Try and watch next week, Simon Mayo will be presenting though”. He might as well have said “Try and watch next week, Simon Mayo will be presenting though so, you know, you’ll have to put up with that gobshite”. I’ll say no more about him…in this post anyway.

I also don’t have much to say about the opening act who are Snap! and are on the show for the third time with their single “Welcome To Tomorrow (Are You Ready?)”, hence why I’ve run out of any meaningful comment on them. What I have said before is that I didn’t mind the Turbo B-less version of the group and preferred this lighter sound that the new line up had brought with it. What I wasn’t sure about though was the staging of this TOTP performance. It looked like every expense had been spared when it came to the set. What is that backdrop meant to be depicting? Some sort of strange new world or planet? Was that an attempt at making a connection (however remote) with the song title? And then what the hell was that computer graphic of a moving target glitter ball all about? It all looked amateurish and crap frankly. Even Simon Mayo’s remark about it afterwards is justified but I’m not talking about him so I couldn’t possibly comment about his…erm…comment. The cumulative effect is that it reduced an act who had already scored two memorable UK No 1s that decade so far to looking like Eurodance also rans. If rhythm was a dancer, you had to be serious about it didn’t you?

You know that thing where an artist is so well known for just one song that it almost comes as a surprise that they ever released anything else? I think we might have another example of it in China Black. During the Summer of 1994, “Searching” had been such a big hit for this duo (7 weeks in the Top 20, 13 in the Top 40) that it was always going to be a struggle to follow it up. Follow it up they did though with a track called “Stars” that stuck to the template of its predecessor so closely that if it had been a race, you would have needed a photo finish to distinguish between the runners. Some more reggae influenced, radio friendly pop music? Certainly – we’ve got lots of that in stock. “Stars” though couldn’t replicate the success of “Searching” when it peaked at No 19. They did manage two further chart hits in 1995 but neither got near to breaching the Top 10.

*Other examples include The Boo Radleys, Aqua and Doctor And The Medics who all had further chart hits but which were overshadowed by “Wake Up Boo!”, “Barbie Girl” and “Spirit In The Sky” respectively.

I’ve said before here and in my 80s blog that I never really caught the boat going to Pink Floyd island. I mean, I can appreciate the majestic aural landscapes of “Dark Side Of The Moon” and the video for “Another Brick In The Wall” was a (scary) part of my childhood but they always seemed a bit over indulgent and that they were posh boys noodling to me. By 1994, my opinion hadn’t changed that much and certainly hadn’t been affected by the release of “The Division Bell” album. However, it did give them something that they were not renowned for – two consecutive Top 40 singles. After Runrig soundalike tune “Take It Back” had charted earlier in the year, “High Hopes” would meet its title by securing a chart peak of No 26.

Nothing to do with that song about ants and rubber tree plants popularised by Frank Sinatra, this was a mournful, heavy density rock ballad that spoke of the band’s days growing up in Cambridge when things all seemed much simpler. Now I can appreciate that sentiment much more now as a middle-aged man of 55 than I could as a 26 year old back in 1994 – hell, this blog is all about nostalgia – but it still sounds too doom laden to me. Built around a constant ringing church bell (the clanging chimes of doom anyone?), it’s very epic and cinematic (I can imagine it working well in a film) but I couldn’t listen to it over and over I don’t think. It would be the last new material released by the band for 20 years.

My resistance to berating Simon Mayo has lasted three songs because I can’t let this one go. After the Pink Floyd video finishes, he glibly announces “And that’s Pink Floyd who are currently on tour with The Scaffold as support but then you probably knew that”. What was he on about? He was referring to a near tragedy that happened on the first night of 14 dates played by the band at Earl’s Court. Early in the concert, a scaffolding stand (block 9) holding 1,200 fans collapsed throwing hundreds of people 20 feet to the ground. 96 were injured with 36 needing hospital treatment. And that was considered a suitable topic by Mayo for a throwaway line that he clearly thought showed how clever he was. A total and utter bellend.

Another of those artists now that could be added to that list of acts who are so well known for one hit that you forgot they released anything else. Rozalla burst onto the scene in 1991 with “Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good)” but could you name any of her other songs? I couldn’t and I’ve probably written about them in this blog! Anyway, this one was called “You Never Love The Same Way Twice”. The music press at the time saw this as a return to form for Rozalla after a couple of previous missteps but it sounds rather lacklustre and uneventful to me. She seemed to have restyled herself as Gabrielle at this point with her short hair stuck flat to her head. I guess she never had the same hairstyle twice.

Sting is back in the studio for a performance of his “When We Dance” single. A new track to promote his Best Of album, it would be his biggest ever solo hit peaking at No 9. He’s on the double bass this week bringing back memories of that video for “Every Breath You Take”:

As ever, there’s a story behind its appearance and also as ever, @TOTPFacts has the details:

That is not just a prop – Sting used to play double bass in a trad jazz band called the Riverside Men before The Police. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 2, 2023

Sting would return with the second new track called “This Cowboy Song” to support that Best Of album in the new year and it featured this week’s No 1 artist. He went on to release a further two studio albums by the end of the decade bringing the number he recorded in the 90s to four. Whatever you think about him, you can’t deny he’s prolific.

https://youtu.be/54sieMk3-Bk

Seriously?! A third outing for the Niagara Falls performance of “Always” by Bon Jovi?! In the show’s defence, the single was experiencing a resurgence of sales and was going back up the charts. It had already peaked at No 2 once and dropped down a couple of places but had just moved from No 4 to No 3 this week on its way to a second peak of No 2 where it stayed for a further two weeks. That’s an awful lot of number twos! Ahem.

There’s actually a Bon Jovi tribute act called Bon Jovi Always but then there’s also, confusingly, one called Always Bon Jovi. Hmm. Then there’s Bon Giovi, The Bon Jovi Experience, Born Jovi and Non Jovi. I think my favourite though is Wrong Jovi which might appeal to my friend Robin, who, on hearing the news that my son had discovered the song “Livin’ On A Prayer” and liked it, said that this was like pissing from the top of a multi-story car park – wrong on so many levels.

After being less than impressed with the line up so far in tonight’s show, here’s somebody interesting at last. I didn’t pick up on Green Day immediately but I probably should have. A US punk three piece but who also knew about melody, I’d completely missed their major label debut album “Dookie” when it was released in the February of 1994. I think I first became aware of them in the August when I had to cover at the Our Price store in Rochdale where I used to work and an ex-colleague of mine called Emma said to me “Haven’t you heard the Green Day album? Don’t you know Basket Case?”. I hadn’t and I didn’t. Emma was into quite extreme stuff like the Riot grrrl movement and industrial artists like Meat Beat Manifesto so I assumed Green Day might be similar but I was completely wrong. And yet I ignored them for quite some time until “Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)” which was a song so brilliant that it was un-ignorable. Back in 1994 though, “Welcome To Paradise” was a No 20 hit and initially appeared on their independently released 1991 album “Kerplunk” but was re-recorded for “Dookie” and it races along convincingly and knocks everything else on the show into a cocked hat. For me though, their 2004 album “American Idiot” is their pinnacle; indeed so huge was it that it outgrew the album format and morphed into a musical. The band’s legacy includes 90 million record sales worldwide, 20 Grammy nominations (5 of which were won) and being voted as the best punk rock band of all time by Rolling Stone magazine.

I used to work with someone in York who was completely obsessed with lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong or, more accurately his looks. The only look I’m going to comment on though is the classic three person band line up of guitar, bass and drums that Green Day had which gives me a fond memory of The Jam. They’ve been acknowledged as having influenced the likes of Fall Out Boy, Sum 41 and Blink-182 though I think I would add Northern Irish punk rockers Ash to that list.

It’s time for the album chart feature now but as with many a track that is showcased in this slot, it would ultimately end up being released as a single and will be appear on a future TOTP down the line. This week’s incumbent is “Let It Rain” by East 17 from the album “Steam”. Despite not matching the chart topping status of their debut “Walthamstow”, “Steam” actually sold twice the amount of copies of its predecessor. I guess the power of a Christmas No 1 shouldn’t be underestimated.

We’re getting ahead of ourselves though (mind you so were East 17). For now, “Steam” had only been out for a couple of weeks but qualified for a spot on TOTP by being at No 4 in the album chart. However, instead of highlighting “Stay Another Day” (their label London Records must have known they would be releasing it for the Christmas market shortly), “Let It Rain” was chosen and it would eventually be released as a single as the follow up to its more famous chart topper. It’s not one of their best by any standard. The intro by Tony Mortimer is quite something though triggering memories of The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown’s “Fire” or maybe Spinal Tap’s “Stonehenge” even.

It’s Sting’s mate Pato Banton now and he’s the new No 1 after deposing Take That after just two weeks. However, he advises Mayo in a pre-song chat that he can’t perform “Baby Come Back” as Robin and Ali Campbell (or the ‘UB guys’ as Pato refers to them) aren’t available so it’s the promo video again this week. It’s split into colour and black and white sections with the latter reserved for Robin and Ali who are portrayed as pop stars performing on a music show in the 60s (hence the black and white tint). Are they meant to be someone akin to The Righteous Brothers because they come across more like Robson and Jerome to me.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Snap!	Welcome To Tomorrow (Are You Ready?)	Nope
2	China Black	Stars	Nah
3	Pink Floyd	High Hopes	No
4	Rozalla	You Never Love The Same Way Twice	I did not
5	Sting	When We Dance	Negative
6	Bon Jovi	Always	Robin would be proud of me – no
7	Green Day	Welcome To Paradise	It’s another no
8	East 17	Let It Rain	Didn’t happen
9	Pato Banton	Baby Come Back	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/m001mffl/top-of-the-pops-27101994

TOTP 13 OCT 1994

Posted on June 6, 2023 by 80stastic

Dearie me. The running order for this TOTP looks especially uninspiring. What am I going to say about this lot? Even Simon ‘Smug’ Mayo isn’t the presenter for me to throw the word equivalent of rotten apples at as it’s Mr Nice himself instead, the completely inoffensive Mark Goodier.

*Starts watching the show*

Woah! Stop right there! What am I looking at?! It’s as if Mark Goodier himself had just read my comments about him being incapable of being abused because he’s just too nice and said “Hold my beer!” because he’s had an image change and turned up as a dead ringer for Jazz Club host Louis ‘Nice’ Balfour from The Fast Show. What was he thinking?! This can’t have been deliberate on Goodier’s part to look like John Thomson’s character surely? Or is it just coincidence? Is it possible that Goodier may not have even seen the BBC’s new comedy series? It first aired on 27 September so maybe three episodes had gone out by the time this TOTP aired? Is it feasible that he missed them all and so had never laid eyes on the fictional Mr Balfour? Whatever the truth, there’s no denying the similarities.

Anyway, we start with Ant & Dec when they were still known as PJ & Duncan who I’m sure we’re on the show just the other week with “Let’s Get Ready To Rhumble” but are already back with a follow up called “If I Give You My Number”. This was their third consecutive UK Top 40 hit peaking at No 15. Their run of charting singles would extend to 13 in total if you only count those whilst they were an ongoing, active concern as a pop act (i.e. between 1993 and 1997). It’s 15 though if you count their 2002 World Cup song and a 2013 rerelease of the aforementioned “Let’s Get Ready To Rhumble”. That’s a lot of hits but how many could you name off the top of your head? Just “Rhumble” right? Don’t sweat it. I worked in record shops selling the damn things for the entirety of their pop career and I could only come up with two more than that – “Shout” and a cover of “Stepping Stone” made famous by The Monkees.

So what was “If I Give You My Number” like? Well it was somewhere on the spectrum of poor to shite clearly. It didn’t have the playground chant appeal of “Rhumble” but instead, in places, seemed like a poor attempt to rewrite “Jump” by Kris Kross. Given the what I always thought of as a manufactured confusion about which one was Ant and which one was Dec early in their TV career, were there signs of this being a genuine problem during their PJ & Duncan incarnation? Ant/PJ seemed to be cast as the one in a hat whilst Dec/Duncan was the one with the oh so mid 90s pair of curtains haircut. As Louis Balfour would say, “NICE”.

What better way to follow up two ex-Byker Grove stars rapping than with some bland Eurodance? As well as having a penchant for song titles which included the letter ‘U’ substituting for the word ‘you’ and the number ‘2’ for the word ‘to’ (“U Got 2 Know”, “U Got 2 Let The Music” and “U & Me”), Cappella now seemed to be branching out to corner the market in dance tracks with the word ‘Move’ in their title. “Move It Up” was their second hit of 1994 to follow this trend after “Move On Baby” earlier in the year. Look, I’m sorry but I really have had enough of Eurodance and I’m not sure I’ve got anything to say about Cappella…except…what’s the deal with the rapper guy sitting on a throne in this performance? The optics on it are rather jarring. A man sits in an elevated position on a symbol of power overlooking five women who seem to be cavorting about for his pleasure and entertainment whilst he appears displeased by their efforts. Who thought that was a good idea?

I’m wondering whether, by the mid 90s, Gloria Estefan was running out of ideas artistically speaking. I mean you could argue (if you were being extremely harsh) that she only ever had two anyway – the Latin flavoured, uptempo dance numbers (“Get On Your Feet”, “1-2-3”, “Rhythm Is Gonna Get You”) and the huge, schmaltzy ballads (“Anything For You”, “Don’t Wanna Lose You”, “Coming Out Of The Dark”). As I say, if you were being really harsh. However, by 1994 her last three albums had been a Greatest Hits, a Spanish language collection and a Christmas album. To complete the set, Gloria chose to record an album of cover versions, the ultimate sign that the creative well has run dry.

However, “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me” would prove to be a wise move by Gloria peaking at No 5 in the UK and selling 300,000 copies over here and 2 million in the US. Featuring covers of songs by the likes of Neil Sedaka, Elton John and Carole King. And Vicki Sue Robinson. Who? Well, she was an American actress and singer who’s biggest hit was the disco staple “Turn The Beat Around”. A Top 10 hit Stateside and on the track listing for many a disco compilation, it was never actually a hit in the UK. Gloria’s version would correct that when it peaked at No 21.

Before the next act, and in anticipation off the new No 1, we get a message from Take That from Belfast where they are on tour. It’s fairly inane stuff only made even noticeable by the fact that Robbie Williams sits with his back to camera for most of it presumably to make him look interesting…oh and to show off the fact that he’s had the figure ‘1’ shaved into the back of his head. How little did we know of the trauma to come for many a young teenage girl in just nine months time when Robbie would leave the band.

Right, this is all very odd. A record by Snap! that I don’t actually mind. “Welcome To Tomorrow (Are You Ready?)” wasn’t an in your face, bass pumping, klaxon blaring dance anthem like “The Power” but a lilting, whimsical tune that was actually melodic and almost charming. How had this happened? Well, yeah, obviously they’d gotten rid of rapper Turbo B. That seemed to be the crucial factor in the transformation. Like Cappella before them, Snap! seemed to be in the midst of a song title fetish that dictated that every single they released had to include some brackets somewhere. The single before this was called “Do You See The Light (Looking For)” and the one after it “The First The Last Eternity (Till The End)”. What was the point of them? Was it the Robbie Williams effect, trying to make them seem more exotic? There have been many an example of this practice down the years but perhaps two of the most irritating are “I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)” by George Michael and Aretha Franklin and “(Don’t You) Forget About Me” by Simple Minds. Just WHY?

Oh come on now! I believe this is the fourth appearance on the show by Lisa Loeb And Nine Stories with “Stay (I Missed You)” – BRACKETS! – which seems a bit over the top for a song that peaked at No 6. I mean it was in the Top 20 for six weeks, the Top 20 for nine and the Top 40 as a whole for thirteen so it had some legs I guess but four times on the show?! One was a live by satellite performance, one was the video and the other two were in the studio of which this one is just a repeat of the first time. Curiously, Goodier introduces it as “still a Top 10 record” which suggests it’s falling down the chart maybe? There’s no caption for it detailing its chart position so just what number was it at?

* Checks chart rundown*

So it was at No 8. Now given that the record stayed at No 8 for three weeks, it could be a non mover. I’ll check. Wait there…

*Checks chart for this week*

Yep. This was its second week of those three so definitely a non-mover. Historically, TOTP had a policy of only featuring records going up the chart plus the No 1. I can’t recall what the rule was about non-movers but clearly they were deemed still valid in 1994 by head producer Ric Blaxill. Surely this must be the last time on the show for this one though. Lisa, Go (I won’t miss you). BRACKETS!

A future No 1 incoming now as we get the video for Pato Banton and his cover of “Baby Come Back”. I should say Pato Banton featuring Ali and Robin Campbell of UB40 of course. As this will be No 1 soon enough, I think I’ll just leave these chart stats here for this post:

Topped UK singles chart for 4 weeks
Finished the year as the fourth best selling single of 1994 in the UK
Spent 10 weeks inside the Top 10
Spent 4 months on the Top 40
Actually started going back up the charts in week 15 of its chart life

Despite working in record shops for virtually the whole of the 90s, I quite often get tripped up in these reviews by songs or acts I’ve either erased from my memory banks or who had completely passed me by at the time. The next artist is an example of the latter circumstance but watching them back now, how on earth did I miss this uneven paving stone?

Apparently, 2wo Third3 (terrible, terrible name) were the brainchild of pop impresario/manager Tom Watkins whose artist roster also includes Pet Shop Boys and Bros in the 80s and East 17 in the 90s. His new creation were an openly gay four piece pop group – sort of like Bronski Beat but without the credibility and with a much cheesier sound. You’ll notice only three members on stage here though as the fourth member was the non-performing songwriter Richard Stannard who was nicknamed Biff and is represented by the cartoon character displayed behind the band. Well, East 17 had that dog logo – it must have been a thing with Watkins. Also a thing with him was style over content. 2wo Third3 was all about image and promotion – London design firm Form were employed to produce the group’s record sleeves and promotional material which included yellow rubber gloves (check the single glove the lead singer is wearing) and Biff plasters being sent out to fans and promoters. To help get their name (terrible as it was) out there, they supported East 17 on their 1994 world tour (of course they did).

All this promotion finally worked when, after their first two singles failed to crack the Top 40, they finally crowbarred their way in with “I Want The World”. I mean, it’s catchy and all and I’m guessing it went down a storm in gay clubs but it was never going to be anything more than a disposable, here today gone tomorrow pop tune. There is something captivating about their TOTP performance though. I’m not sure if it’s the Biff logo or the way the two keyboard players double up as dancers by deserting their instruments and coming to the front of the stage to bust some moves. Or is it the lead singer’s customised stool that allows him to tower above the studio audience? How very Julian Cope of him!

“I Want The World” peaked at No 20 whilst a follow up “I Want To Be Alone” (make your mind up!) made it to No 29 and that was it. An album was recorded but never released. Biff went on to write mega-hits for Spice Girls and 5ive (another terrible name) whilst the lead singer reappeared in 2007 as 4th Child (what was it with numbers in their names!). As for the other two, one went into music publishing and the other went back to being a plumber. Well, pop songs are all very well but who are you going to call when your toilet won’t flush eh?

https://youtu.be/SsoHUaxyAe4

The biggest name of the night makes an appearance now. Despite his huge success as part of The Police and a solo career that had delivered four massive selling albums (including two No 1s), when it came to singles, Sting was an underperformer – less sting, more minor skin irritation. Up to this point he’d never had a single even make the Top 10 let alone top the charts but “When We Dance” would finally provide him with one by peaking at No 9.

This was one of two new songs written to help promote a Greatest Hits album. “Fields Of Gold: The Best Of Sting 1984-1994” collected the singles from those four solo albums into a handy one stop shop and it was a big seller too. Triple platinum over here, double platinum in the US; it was official – Sting could shift albums. Those pesky singles though. Until “When We Dance”, his highest charting song was “Russians” which made No 12 in 1985 (I’m not counting his part in that trio with Bryan Adams and Rod Stewart on “All For Love” which made No 2). Even singles that still get played on the radio today and which you immediately associate with him like “If You Love Somebody Set Them Free” only made No 26.

Anyway, he finally got his Top 10 solo hit with “When We Dance” but I can think of loads of other Sting songs that are more deserving than this soporific, generic ballad. “Fortress Around Your Heart”, “Love Is The Seventh Wave”, “We’ll Be Together”…all more better tracks in my opinion. Mr Sumner had already done a very slow paced song with the word ‘dance’ in the title back in 1988 on his “…Nothing Like The Sun” album called “They Dance Alone”. Seems Sting liked a slow dance number.

Coincidentally, he collaborated the following year with the aforementioned Pato Banton on a cover of “Spirits In The Material World” for the Ace Ventura soundtrack. Inevitably with such a bad idea, it was awful. Sting obviously liked that sort of reggae hook up though as he would infamously make an album with Shaggy in 2018. He got away with it too – it went to No 9 in the charts.

https://youtu.be/MkTtKV04uKE

And so to the new No 1 courtesy of Take That and we get an exclusive live performance of “Sure” from what I presume is their concert in Belfast from where they did their live message earlier in the show. Curiously though, it sounds and feels like a dress rehearsal – although we can see an audience there, we can’t hear them much. Maybe they were turned down in the mix by the sound people.

P.S. To say I was worried I wouldn’t have much to write about a fairly uninspiring line up, I seem to have written quite a bit. Go me!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	PJ & Duncan	If I Give You My Number	Of course not
2	Cappella	Move It up	Never happening
3	Gloria Estefan	Turn The Beat Around	Nope
4	Snap!	Welcome To Tomorrow (Are You Ready?)	Pleasant tune but no
5	Lisa Loeb And Nine Stories	Stay (I Missed You)	I did not
6	Pato Banton	Baby Come Back	Nah
7	2wo Third3	I Want The World	No
8	Sting	When We Dance	Another no
9	Take That	Sure	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/m001m6qq/top-of-the-pops-13101994

TOTP 29 SEP 1994

Posted on May 31, 2023 by 80stastic

I haven’t revisited what was going on with me personally back then in these posts for a while so (and I know this is of minuscule interest to anybody but me) let’s correct that. Two days after this TOTP aired we moved flat. Me and my wife had been in our tiny South Manchester flat for nearly four years and had been happy there. So why move? Well, our landlord let it be known that he had a bigger flat becoming available and we thought we could do with a bit more space and best of all, it was only two doors down! Yes, we were moving from Flat 4, No 47 to Flat 2, No 43 on the same street! This was great as it meant there was no need to incur removal van costs. However, it didn’t eliminate the need to put everything in boxes the same as any other move and that’s a job nobody looks forward to. We asked some friends from out of town to come to stay in the new place meaning that they could also help with carrying the boxes. My mate Robin’s taxi turned up just as the last box went in. Brilliant timing! We weren’t the only ones moving on around this time. On the same day this TOTP went out, Chris Evans presented The Big Breakfast for the very last time after two years. The times they were a-changin’…

…unless you were 2 Unlimited of course. Three years on from their debut hit, they were still clogging up the charts with their brand of repetitive Eurodance beats. The standard criticism of the Dutch duo was that all their material sounded the same and that you would feel like you’d heard it all before. Well, in the case of “No One” that was literally true. It had already been on TOTP back in the Summer on the show that was broadcast on 16th June. Back then it was featured within the album chart slot as their album “Real Things” had just been released and gone to No 1. So what did I say about it in my review of that show?

*checks TOTP Rewind archive*

Well, I referred to the frightening prospect of it being on the show again as I mentioned that it would be released as a single eventually and lo and behold, my prediction came true. I also said that, despite all my earlier talk of their sound never deviating from their original concept, this one did sound slightly different, not quite having the usual 2 Unlimited ‘bpm urgency’. Which it doesn’t. Was that an improvement then? Not really. I stand by my earlier review. Every word of it.

Huge tune incoming though not necessarily a big seller in the UK. After the lilting melodies of “Linger” and the perfectly crafted, jangly pop of “Dreams”, I was completely wrong footed by The Cranberries’ next release “Zombie”. A densely heavy slice of grunge rock that wasn’t a million miles away from “Creep” by Radiohead, it included an almost pained vocal from Dolores O’Riordan. ‘Pained’ is probably an apt word as the song was written as a visceral outpouring from Dolores in reaction to the tragic events of the IRA bombings in Warrington in 1993. The band’s record label Island got cold feet about releasing the track as a single fearing a song about The Troubles would be too controversial and that would affect airplay and its chances of commercial success. However, it had gone down well with audiences when played live in its early form as “In Your Head” and Dolores would not be deterred. She was right too. Although it would only make No 14 over here, it was huge around the rest of the world going to No 1 in seven countries. The album it came from – “No Need To Argue” – was huge too racking up 17 million sales worldwide. The Cranberries were officially a big deal.

A future chart topper now as the trend for reggae-fied versions of classic oldies continues apace. “Baby Come Back” was originally a No 1 hit in 1968 for the ethnically diverse group The Equals who included a young Eddy Grant in their ranks. A cover version of it 26 years later came courtesy of Pato Banton who I’d never heard of but who’d worked with The Beat in the early 80s and had guested on the 1985 UB40 album “Baggariddim”. Oh yes, there was a connection with UB40 just as there had been for Bitty McLean and his chart career. That connection became even more apparent when Ali and Robin Campbell performed on “Baby Come Back” alongside Banton. They even had a credit on the single’s cover.

By the way, Pato was nothing to do with another, much more objectionable Banton – the Jamaican Dancehall artist Buju – who held some vile homophobic views in the 90s that he aired in his song “Boom Bye Bye”. It turns out that the name ‘Banton’ is a Jamaican slang term for someone who is a respected storyteller.

Anyway returning to “Baby Come Back”, the combination of the Campbell brothers vocals on the chorus and Pato’s toasted verses proved irresistible to record buyers and the single would go to No 1 for 4 weeks ending the year as the UK’s fourth best selling single of the year. As we’ll be seeing it plenty more in future episodes I’ll leave it there for now.

After the real thing earlier, here come an act whom I saw recently online described as the ‘2 Unlimited of ragga’ which seemed pretty on the money. Reel 2 Real featuring The Mad Stuntman (they even had a figure 2 in their name like Ray and Anita!) were onto their third hit of a very thin source material in “Can You Feel It?”. This wasn’t just money for old rope but money for pieces of string too short to be useful. Basically a man (The Mad Stuntman presumably) toasting while a woman occasionally sings “Can you feel it baby?”. Just awful. Total crud. Somehow it managed to scramble up the charts to No 13. What was wrong with people back in 1994?!

Now here’s a curious thing. A performance on TOTP that on the face of it seems to be not instigated by the need to promote something. “You Really Got Me” was The Kinks’ first hit and first No 1 in 1964. So why were the band performing the song on TOTP in 1994? Well, the official line was to commemorate the song’s 30th anniversary and that was it. How often though had this sort of event happened though? Never that I can recall. The Kinks (well, Ray and Dave Davies essentially) just appear slap bang in the middle of the show – there isn’t even any caption allocated to them about career sales or anything. Ray did do the message to camera bit at the top of the show but he just told us how TOTP was going to rock us to the bone. Checking their discography, they’d had a Greatest Hits album out in 1993 (“The Definitive Collection”) which was rereleased in 1996 with a TV ad campaign but this TOTP appearance falls between these two releases so it can’t be that can it?

*checks discography again*

Oh hang on. They released a live album four days after this TOTP aired and it was called “To The Bone”. That’s what Ray was referring to in his rather cryptic message at the start of the show! And…published two weeks before this appearance was Ray’s autobiography called X–Ray which explains his off script lines during the performance about having “seen the X-Ray”. And….hadn’t the BBC just launched TOTP2 featuring clips from the archive so maybe this performance was to (indirectly) push that show? All makes a bit more sense now.

The performance is half in black and white presumably to try and create a feeling of 1964 before it reverts to colour during Dave’s guitar solo. Not sure it works really to be honest. However, I do like the way that Ray treats it as a proper live gig by encouraging some audience participation with his goading question “Are you listening to me?”.

Right, what’s this? Well, it’s Eurodance behemoth Snap! but you’d be forgiven for not recognising them. Firstly, they’ve got a new singer called Summer (real name Paula Brown) but then they had previous in that department having already been through vocalists Penny Ford, Thea Austin and Niki Haris by this point. Rapper Turbo B was long gone by this stage. Secondly, and perhaps more to the point, their new single “Welcome To Tomorrow (Are You Ready?)” didn’t sound like them. It’s a much poppier almost lilting sound than something like “The Power” or “Rhythm Is A Dancer” which made their names on the club dancefloors before crossing over massively into the mainstream charts. This felt like they had purposely made a record that could just go straight to daytime radio.

The space age sci-fi video that we see here apparently took three months to make. Some of the spacecraft in it look a bit Blake’s 7 to me but then that’s probably unfair as I’m looking at it through 2023 eyes. Back in 1994, this probably looked, if not mind blowing, then very impressive. “Welcome To Tomorrow (Are You Ready?)” would peak at No 6 but they would only have one more UK Top 40 hit subsequently.

East 17 were never as big as they were in 1994. A double platinum album and four hit singles including the Christmas No 1? Nice work if you can get it! “Steam”, despite being the title track of said album, was the smallest of those hits but the fact that it peaked at No 7 shows how big the others were. After the lighter sound of previous single “Around The World”, this was a return to the sound that made their name – pop/rap with a bit of streetwise savvy heavy in the mix. Watching this performance back though, it all seems faintly ludicrous. They’ve all had skinhead haircuts (presumably to big up those street credentials) but the outfits they’ve got on kind of work against that. What exactly are they wearing? A leather hoody with leather baggy trousers and boots? Sorry lads, you just look silly. At least the staging of the performance was easy. A song called “Steam”? Just have a few jets of the stuff going off behind them occasionally. My old history teacher Mr Cooper who used to overly emphasise the word ‘steam’ when talking about steam power would have approved. STEAM power lads!

Now to a man who is surely only behind Keith Richards in the ‘How is he not dead yet?’ stakes. I remember the Shane MacGowan And The Popes era of the ex-Pogues frontman’s career but I couldn’t tell you about any of their material. And I certainly don’t recall the Johnny Depp connection! Listening to “This Woman’s Got Me Drinking” though, it’s as if Shane was attempting his version of Motörhead’s “Ace Of Spades”. It’s all snarled vocals aside a strident, propelling one chord riff but doesn’t quite pull it off for me. Would it have been a coup to get Johnny Depp in the studio at this time? Well, he’d been in films like Cry–Baby, Edward Scissorhands and What’s Eating Gilbert Grape by this point in his career so he was certainly a name but surely wasn’t as notorious and divisive a figure as he is today. I must admit to not really thinking of him as a musician but he’s contributed to works by the likes of Oasis, Iggy Pop, Aerosmith and Jeff Beck as well as Shane MacGowan.

It’s another week at the top for Whigfield, Now would you categorise “Saturday Night” as a novelty record? I think I could almost be persuaded. It’s the dance that went with it that’s tipping me over. Like “Macarena” by Los Del Río or “Gangnam Style” by PSY. Or maybe I’m being too harsh. After all, Whigfield did have more hits than just this one hit – five in all including a further couple of Top 10s so they were more of a pop act than just a song. Their final hit was an almost unforgivable cover of Wham!’s “Last Christmas” though so I think any credit they may have had is completely wiped out.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	2 Unlimited	No One	Never
2	The Cranberries	Zombie	No
3	Pat Banton with Ali and Robin Campbell	Baby Come Back	Negative
4	Reel 2 Real featuring The Mad Stuntman	Can You Feel It?	As if
5	The Kinks	You Really Got Me	Not released as a single in 1994 but I must have it on something
6	Snap!	Welcome To Tomorrow (Are You Ready?)	Nah
7	East 17	Steam	No but I had t a promo copy of the album from work. Sadly it had talky bits in between the tracks from Mark Goodier
8	Shane MacGowan And The Popes	This Woman’s Got Me Drinking	I did not
9	Whigfield	Saturday Night	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/m001m15z/top-of-the-pops-29091994

TOTP 10 JUN 1993

Posted on September 3, 2022 by 80stastic

June 1993 saw the demise of two big names in the world of comedy – one a performer and one a TV show. The former was comedian Les Dawson who died on the same day this TOTP aired aged just 62. The latter was US sitcom Cheers which ended this year after 275 episodes over 11 seasons. Channel 4 broadcast the final three shows over the weekend following this TOTP. Both had a musical element to them. Dawson included his wonky piano playing in his act whilst Cheers had one of the greatest theme tunes of all time…

Let’s see if any of the tunes on this TOTP are anywhere near as good as Gary Portnoy’s famous song…

Certainly not this one! As I said in the last post when confronted by Eurodance merchant Haddaway opening the show, I’d totally had enough of that particular genre of music by this point. This time it’s the turn of Snap! to be the first act on with their new single “Do You See The Light (Looking For)”. The TOTP producers often seemed to top the show’s running order with a dance act. In recent weeks we’ve had Stereo MCs, Felix and 2 Unlimited in addition to Haddaway. I guess it made sense to try and begin proceedings with a bang. The year zero revamp hadn’t quite let go of the party atmosphere era of Michael Hurll. Having said that, the performance here of Snap! featuring Niki Harris seems to suggest a soirée rather than a massive rave-up. I have to say that as objectionable as his views were, the group seemed to lose something when rapper Turbo B left. The performance here seems very lacklustre. Maybe if the set hadn’t been so sparse it might have sparked things into life a bit. And why do the backing singers resemble water nymphs?

This track was taken from “The Madman’s Return” album and the album version of it is quite different with vocals by Thea Austin instead of Niki Harris, a rap by the aforementioned Turbo B and even a (slightly) different title in “See The Light”. The single version peaked at No 10 and No 14 in 2002 when it was remixed and rereleased.

Spin Doctors are still going up the charts? Checking its stats, “Two Princes” remained on the chart for 18 weeks so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s a pretty nifty tune all said and done and there was a brief moment in time when the band seemed to be the next big thing. Parent album “Pocketful Of Kryptonite” went to No 2 and achieved platinum sales in Europe and yet somehow it all seemed to stall and fall away on both sides of the Atlantic.

If I’m honest, the follow up singles just weren’t as good. “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong” and “Jimmy Olsen’s Blues” just didn’t capture the imagination in the same way as “Two Princes” although in the case of the latter, in a three way race of Superman themed singles, they definitely finish above Laurie Anderson and Black Lace.

“Two Princes” peaked at No 3 in the UK.

A proper pop moment next as TOTP brings us the return of Pet Shop Boys. Neil and Chris had been away for only 18 months or so but their last release had been their first official Best Of album “Discography” which on reflection felt like a line in the sand drawing to a close the first part of their career. What would the first material of their next phase be like? Well, not too dissimilar to their previous work to be fair. “Can You Forgive Her” didn’t feel like a massive departure from what had gone before but then Neil Tennant’s voice is so distinctive that it overrides sometimes any potential musical deviation on their behalf. Not always of course. For example, something like “Jealousy” or “Se A Vida É” sound nothing like “West End Girls” but in the case of “Can You Forgive Her”, it didn’t seem, to me anyway, like a radical new sound. Not that it wasn’t any good either though. It had a strident feel to it, enabled by a punchy chorus that demanded to be heard. And heard it was as it gave the duo their first Top 10 hit in two years after their previous three singles all failed to make that achievement.

Somehow though it always feels overshadowed by the second single to be lifted from parent album “Very” which was the enormous hit that was the cover of Village People’s “Go West”. Initial copies of the album came in an orange CD jewel case featuring raised bumps which resembled Lego. In those days, the Our Price chain I worked for didn’t use security tagging and so the CDs we sold weren’t ‘live’ on the shelves as it were. The actual CDs were filed away behind the counter so the cases were empty. However, the manager of the store I was working in when the album came out thought the Lego case so nickable that we kept those behind the counter as well and had a dummy case on display that used the inner back sleeve to say what it was. Genius! Except it was a pain in the arse to put together when selling it to a customer and we also had a few people ask if our dummy sleeve was somehow a different version of the album. It would be another five years before I worked in an Our Price that displayed CDs live.

Anyway, back to the show and this performance really does give us the pop moment I referred to earlier. There’s so much to unpack here. The over exaggerated pointy dunce hats, Neil Tennant in a high chair, the cricket bat wielding space cadet backing dancers, a huge egg on stage for no reason but most of all there was Chris Lowe. The perennially motionless man moved more in that one performance than in all his previous ones added together. What had got into him? There were even what passed for dance moves! Maybe I was wrong. Perhaps this really was a different Pet Shop Boys to what had gone before.

1993 really was the year ragga/dancehall took over the charts. After Shaggy, Shabba and Snow came the ludicrously named Chaka Demus And Pliers. Opening themselves up to all sorts of tool related jibes, this pair of toasters joined forces in 1991 and released “Murder She Wrote” the following year in America to great acclaim. The follow up was “Tease Me” and the hordes lapped it up sending it to No 3 in the UK Top 40. The lyrics were fairly clear about the song’s subject matter with references to ‘reaching climax’ and its title of course. There’s also that shout out line which seemed to encapsulate the whole movement – “Number One In The World”. I’m sure that seemed to feature on every song of this type after that.

Chaka Demus and Pliers have bought all their mates with them to the TOTP studio for a jolly up whilst the camera man seemed very intent on giving us multiple views of the gyrating female backing dancers. Ahem. We’ll also be seeing lots more of CD and P before 1993 is out.

And the fascination with all things erotic thriller continues. I’m guessing Indecent Proposal must have been performing well at the box office to generate this much of a profile. It’s another outing for “Ordinary Love” by Sade which was featured heavily in the film but was not actually on the soundtrack. After last week’s glimpse of the mermaid promo video, we get a live by satellite performance from New York this time. Sade Adu looks stunning as ever but it’s the two guitarists in the background who have caught my eye. They spend the first half of the performance not even bothering to mime playing their instruments but doing the nerd shuffle together whilst clicking their fingers in unison. It doesn’t really seem appropriate for an artist as sophisticated as Sade. Bet they got a bollocking when the cameras were turned off.

Therapy? were enjoying a huge breakthrough year in 1993. After the “Shortsharpshock EP” featuring lead track “Screamager” made the Irish rockers bona fide Top 10 artists in March, the follow up was also an EP. “Face The Strange” featured four tracks of which “Turn” was chosen to promote it. Clearly the EP’s title is a David Bowie reference being a lyric from his song “Changes”. I learned recently that I know someone who met Bowie and not just met but took him out for a drink around about 1972 just as he was launching his Ziggy Stardust era. I know! There’s a few Bowie super fans that I know who would be blown away by my friend’s recollections. What’s that? The Therapy? song? Oh, I didn’t like it much. Sorry.

The Breakers are their usual eclectic/bonkers mix of artists starting with the evergreen Cliff Richard. Despite being 52 at the time and having had his first hit 25 years ago, Cliff was showing no signs of slowing down in 1993. In fact, the decade was going pretty well for him so far. He’d already clocked up a No 1 in “Saviour’s Day” and four other Top 10 hits. Also having a fine old time of it around now was Maxi Priest who’d had a hit twice with Shabba Ranks (albeit with the same song in both cases) and who’d supplied the ‘Shabba!’ sample for the massive selling “Mr Loverman” single. To add to his collection of chart connections came “Human Work Of Art”. You see, Maxi had released this as a single from his “Bonafide” album three years prior but it had failed to chart.

It was recycled for Cliff’s 1993 album called…erm…”The Album” and this time made No 24. It sounds every inch a Cliff record and you’d be hard pressed to guess at its reggae-fied earlier incarnation. It’s also utterly awful under his guardianship. Yes, it’s a polished production but then you can polish a turd of course.

I can’t find the official video online so here’s it being performed on Surprise Surprise.

From the despair of another banal Cliff record to…where? Well, fortunately it’s Manic Street Preachers with their new single “From Despair To Where” (ahem). OK, firstly weren’t they have meant to have split up by now? Wasn’t that their mission statement to make one blow your socks off, anarchistic album then dissolve the band? Clearly that was just bravado then. What they actually did was to record second album “Gold Against The Soul” which I liked enough to buy but which the fan base has always dissed as the worst album in their back catalogue. I’m sure I heard an interview with James Dean Bradfield once where he was asked to rank the band’s albums in order of merit and even he put it bottom of the list.

Maybe debut “Generation Terrorists” had raised the bar and expectations too high but the music press gave it mixed reviews at best. Maybe fan favourite and third album “The Holy Bible” would have been a more acceptable choice with its themes of human suffering and bleakness. Was “Gold Against The Soul” seen as too radio friendly, too (gulp) corporate rock? It sounded alright to my ears with the lead single ticking all my aural boxes. It swoops and soars but bites as well with lines like ‘there’s nothing nice in my head’. It had all of that and yet wasn’t even the best track on the album for me. I liked this version of the band a lot but then I’m not a paid up member of the Manics army who could shoot my opinion down in flames I’m sure.

What I’m not sure about is the video which is basically some moody shots of the band (Richie looks especially cool) intertwined with some sepia tinted clips which seem to suggest a sci-fi /horror film but it’s all a bit blurry to make a clear judgement although that look like an alien autopsy in the thumbnail below.

The Manics of course did do a TV show theme tune when they covered “Suicide Is Painless” – the theme tune from M*A*S*H. Better than the theme to Cheers? It’s a tough call but yes possibly.

The Sister Sledge revival bandwagon continues apace with a rerelease of their 1984 hit “Thinking Of You”. Remixed as the (RAMP Radio Mix), it was the last of three singles taken from the Greatest Hits compilation “The Very Best Of Sister Sledge 1973-93” following “We Are Family” and “Lost In Music”. It would peak at No 17 just six places lower than its 1984 counterpart. However the song dated back to 1979 when it was a track on the “We Are Family” album and issued as the B-side to the initial release of “Lost In Music”.

Reading that paragraph back it seems like the group made a 40+ year career based around just three songs that have been recycled over and over again. Lead singer Kathy Sledge even did her own cover version of “Thinking Of You” with house duo Aristofreeks in 2015. OK look, I know there’s also “He’s The Greatest Dancer” and “Frankie” in their repertoire but the former is very similar to the “Family/Lost/Thinking” trilogy and the latter is one of the worst recordings of all time (and I’ve just had to listen to Cliff Richard’s “Human Work Of Art”). I doubt even the Sledge sisters want to be remembered for that one.

Sister Sledge have only released one more single since this. And guess what? It was a rerelease of “We Are Family” in 2004 which made No 93 on our charts.

Who? The Time Frequency? Sounds like a phrase Dr Who might say. Have we seen this lot before? Can’t remember now. So many of these dance acts about. Anyway, “The Ultimate High” was a track off their “Power Zone EP” and sounds very much like a knock off version of “Insanity” by Oceanic to me but then, as I’ve said many times before, I’m no dance music aficionado.

The Time Frequency were from Scotland so I wonder if they knew fellow Scottish dance acts Primal Scream and The Shamen or is that a bit like an American, who on meeting someone from London, asks them if they know their cousin who lives in Notting Hill?

Lisa Stansfield? Again? It can’t be! She seems to be on every week at the moment. Given the high level of exposure it got, I’m surprised that “In All The Right Places” didn’t get higher than its No 8 peak. She’s back in the studio this time and has gone full on Louise Brooks with her haircut. No messing about like the other week with that half hearted Brett Anderson-esque wedge style. The way the stage has been set up with her first name and first name only in lights gives it a feel of a residency at Las Vegas. In fact, I could just imagine Liza Minnelli up there belting this one out.

Lisa will be back in October with her “So Natural” album and single.

UB40 have made it to the top spot deposing Ace Of Base in the process. Were they on tour at this time as it’s the video for “(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With You” yet again this week? I’m guessing that the director got the band to perform emerging into a tight corridor to link in with the themes of claustrophobia and paranoia that the film it was taken from (Sliver) clearly was based around. Ironically, a few years down the line, the band fractured into two different identities due to internal arguments and there’s no way that Ali and Robin Campbell would ever be in such close proximity to each other like that again.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Snap!	Do You See The Light (Looking For)	Never happening
2	Spin Doctors	Two Princes	Liked it, didn’t buy it
3	Pet Shop Boys	Can You Forgive Her	No but I have it on their Pop Art Best Of
4	Chaka Demus And Pliers	Tease Me	As if
5	Sade	No Ordinary Love	Nope
6	Therapy?	Face The Strange EP	Nah
7	Cliff Richard	Human Work Of Art	Of course not
8	Manic Street Preachers	From Despair To Where	No but I bought the album
9	Sister Sledge	Thinking Of You	No
10	The Time Frequency	Power Zone EP	Not likely
11	Lisa Stansfield	In All The Right Places	Negative
12	UB40	(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With 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/m001bdx3/top-of-the-pops-10061993

TOTP 21 JAN 1993

Posted on June 15, 2022 by 80stastic

There’s a new president in the White House as the day before this TOTP aired, Bill Clinton was sworn in as the 42nd POTUS. I can’t really think about Clinton without this coming to mind…

And then this of course…

Politicians lying. Fast forward thirty odd years and literally nothing has changed. If anything, it’s got worse. And that’ll do for the intro this time. I’ve done a few lengthy ones lately so I’m due a more succinct start to a post.

We start the show with yet another 70s disco revival. After Boney M and their recent megamix single and Greatest Hits album returned them to the charts for the first time in well over a decade, now strode Sister Sledge straight into the Top 10. What was going on?

The last time we saw the sisters in the UK charts was eight years previous with a No 1 hit that was, for me, one of the worst hits of…well…ever. I refer of course to the execrable “Frankie”, a song so bad that it didn’t just stink the place out but dissolved its foundations with its foul stench. After that inexplicable chart topper, nothing, zip, nada. And then this comeback with a remix of 1979 hit and their signature tune “We Are Family”. Entitled the ‘Sure Is Pure Remix’, this is was to promote, like the aforementioned Boney M, a Greatest Hits compilation simply called “The Very Best Of Sister Sledge 1973-93”. Well, I guess you couldn’t blame their record label for wanting a piece of the retro action but this wasn’t the first time that there’d been a Sister Sledge revival. Back in 1984, Chic remixes of “Lost In Music” and “We Are Family” had graced the Top 40 to the tune of Nos 4 and 33 respectively yet here they were back again for another go. It seems you really can’t keep a good tune down and “We Are Family” is a good tune no doubt. The 1993 version peaked at No 5 and inevitably led to a follow up which was a re-release of, yes of course, “Lost In Music”. A bit less obviously there was a final rerelease of their 1984 hit “Thinking Of You” which would give the group their third hit single of the year.

As for the performance here, the first thing that I noticed is that there’s only three of the group on stage immediately rendering untrue the lyrics “I got all my sisters with me”. I’ve tried to work out who is there and who is missing. Kathy is definitely doing the lead vocals and I think that’s Kim and Debbie up there with her meaning it’s Joni who was missing (I think). Was it Joni who did most of the singing on “Frankie”? Sadly Joni passed away in 2017 but the group is still going via the family’s next generation as the sisters’ kids are now involved. Their website welcomes visitors with the intro:

Welcome ”FAM”, to the official Sister Sledge website! Keep it real, keep it “SLEDGENDARY®”!

They’ve copyrighted the word ‘sledgendary’. Excellent!

https://youtu.be/FXCh52YR9l8

It’s the 40-11 chart rundown next over the top of the video for Faith No More’s cover of “Easy” by the Commodores or “I’m Easy” as they have inexplicably taken it upon themselves to retitle it. The band are on record as saying that even though their version is very faithful, the video featuring some transvestites shows that they were ‘up to something’ in their decision to record it and that it was all very tongue in cheek. Was it the case then that they were trying to subvert and expose the mechanisms of the music industry by releasing the song and were in fact some sort of US version of The KLF?! I’m not sure I get nor am buying this.

“I’m Easy” peaked at No 3 in the UK but was only a minor hit in the US where it stuck at No 58. Cultural differences and all that.

Here’s a thing. I would never have thought that there was a connection between UK blue eyed soul merchants Go West and US West Coast rapper 2Pac but there is and it’s this song called “What You Won’t Do For Love”. Nothing to do with Meatloaf and his similar sounding single that would be the year’s best seller, this was actually a cover version (another one) of a 1978 track written by US singer-song writer Bobby Caldwell.

The 2Pac connection is courtesy of it being sampled for posthumous single “Do For Love” whist Go West recorded it for their “Indian Summer” album.

Peter Cox and Richard Drummie were on a bit of a roll come 1993. This was their third Top 20 hit on the bounce after “King Of Wishful Thinking” and “Faithful”. Who could have predicted that when the hits had dried up in the late 80s? I’m surprised it was a hit though as the duo’s version is a real plodder and sounds lumpen next to the original. To be honest I’m more drawn to their backing band than the song. There’s a sax player who looks like Eric Catchpole from Lovejoy and a guy on keyboards who resembles Just Good Friends actor and “Dancing With The Captain” hitmaker Paul Nicholas.

Go West saw out 1993 with two more UK hits both taken from their Best Of collection “Aces And Kings”. Their cover (another one!) of “The Tracks Of My Tears” by The Miracles reached No 16 whilst a re-release of debut hit “We Close Our Eyes” just scraped in at No 40. The band gave never returned to the UK charts since.

https://youtu.be/ipLKucGoT9Y

Snap! are waiting on the next stage to perform their hit “Exterminate!”. They were really keen on the use of exclamation marks weren’t they? I say ‘they’ but this seems to be mostly being promoted as a Niki Haris single if the on screen graphics and host Mark Franklin’s intro are anything to go by. She has had quite the career though. As well as her time with Snap!, she’s toured extensively with Madonna and collaborated with the likes of Anita Baker, Prince, Ray Charles, Tom Jones and Luther Vandross to name but a few. That Billie Holiday tribute thing that Franklin mentions though, well I struggled to find much online about that at all. Was it a film, TV special, album, concert? I found a listing on the BFI database but only scant details about it. Did it ever happen? Maybe it was exterminated? I’ll get me coat.

Yay the Breakers! This is where I have to comment on a load of songs some of which we may only ever get to see/hear for 30 seconds or so. Seems like a good deal. We start with a song for Bill Clinton – “Dogs Of Lust” by The The. Just as I have previously posted about XTC and Prefab Sprout, The The really don’t get the commercial success their catalogue deserves. Not in terms of the charts anyway and with TOTP being a show predominantly based around the Top 40, we rarely got to see them on our screens. I say ‘them’ but I mean Matt Johnson as the band really are basically a vehicle for his creativity.

This single was his first chart hit since 1989’s “The Beat(en) Generation” and only his third ever at the time. It feels wrong to say that “Dogs Of Lust” was typical The The fare as if the word ‘typical’ could ever be applied to Matt Johnson but it was in the respect that it was as uncompromising, startling and in your face a track as everything he does always is. The opening harmonica riff which becomes a repeating refrain is reminiscent of the theme tune from The Old Grey Whistle Test and came courtesy of everyone’s favourite in demand collaborator Johnny Marr.

The track was the lead single from the album “Dusk” which, in a chart statistic that seeks to undermine my earlier claims about lack of commercial success, peaked at No 2. It produced three hit singles in all though none were bigger than “Dogs Of Lust” and its No 25 chart high.

Matt’s next two albums achieved very modest sales and he busied himself with creating film soundtracks as the new millennium dawned though he has recently released a No live album of his comeback gig at the Royal Albert Hall.

I’d totally forgotten that there was a fourth single release from Del Amitri’s “Change Everything” album despite it being the second biggest of the lot with a chart peak of No 20. The title of this one is almost a single by The Jam (“When You’re Young”) and very nearly a Bucks Fizz hit (“When We Were Young”) but “When You Were Young” it was and a pleasant little ditty it was too if a little formulaic.

There had been a gap of five months or so since their last single “Just Like A Man” but that was a marketing strategy decision apparently as “When You Were Young” was kept back to avoid the Xmas rush. I think the plan worked.

Alice In Chains? To quote Roy Chubby Brown, “Who The F**k Is Alice?”. Well, they were one of those grunge bands of course that were meant to flood the UK music scene in the wake of Nirvana but which never really materialised. “Would?” was actually from the soundtrack to the film Singles which I loved but which my friend Robin who I saw it with hated. In essence, it was your basic romantic comedy/ drama but set in Seattle against the backdrop of the grunge movement. Following the love lives of two couples and one single person, its soundtrack featured big grunge hitters like Soundgarden, Pearl Jam and of course Alice In Chains as well as alternative rockers like Paul Westerberg and The Smashing Pumpkins. I’m pretty sure I even gave it a play on the shop stereo of the Rochdale Our Price I was working in. “Would?” is a heavy sound that wouldn’t normally have floated my boat but then I had liked “Alive” by Pearl Jam so maybe my tastes were changing back then.

Alice In Chains would rack up a string of minor hits in the UK during the 90s though none as big as “Would?” which peaked at No 19. They also had songs feature on two other films, Arnie’s Last Action Hero and slacker comedy Clerks. Oh, and the reason Robin hated Singles? There’s a character called Steve in it who is a town planner but who used to be a DJ. In a scene in his flat with new girlfriend Linda, they’re perusing his record collection and the vinyl is in PVC sleeves. Even his punk records. This disgusted Robin so much he barely paid any attention to the rest of the film.

A lot of the dance anthems that have featured on these TOTP repeats have failed to ring any bells with me but I do recall “Open Your Mind” by U.S.U.R.A. This piece of Italian techno sampled “New Gold Dream (81–82–83–84)” by Simple Minds and was a dance smash around Europe including over here where it peaked at No 7. I even recall that it was on the very hip Deconstruction Records label because it had that generic red and yellow single cover with a band looping a ‘d’ and ‘c’ together.

The face morphing video caused a bit of a stir not for its effects – it was no “Black And White” – but because of the faces chosen which included Joe McCarthy, Benito Mussolini, Richard Nixon, Ian Paisley, Ronald Reagan, Josef Stalin, Margaret Thatcher and Mary Whitehouse. Interestingly no Bill Clinton though.

Now to a very underrated band with a song that’s actually a bit of a banger in a very understated way. The Beloved had come to popular attention in late ‘89/early ‘90 with the hit singles “The Sun Rising” and “Hello” and an album “Happiness” which gained positive reviews for its fusion of house and pop music. Fast forward three years and the band had been through a seismic shift with founding member Steve Waddington having left the fold. Remaining original member Jon Marsh replaced him with his wife Helena. Nothing like keeping it in the family eh?

This new line up returned in 1993 with “Sweet Harmony” the lead single from new album “Conscience”. It was still that combination of dance beats and a pop structure on which they’d made their name but this time that sound had been refined right down to the most precise of details. This was so slick that it worked as a club anthem and as a great pop song as substantiated by its Top 10 chart placing. Clearly the TOTP producers didn’t quite know what to do with this genre bending hit as exemplified by that classic default strategy of flooding the stage with dry ice.

However, it wasn’t their appearance on the show that everyone was talking about but rather the single’s accompanying promo video. You know, the nudity one. Yes, the staging of a naked Jon Marsh surrounded by similarly nude women (infamously including then unknown but future TV presenter Tess Daly) was meant to promote the idea of human unity but instead got the likes of the aforementioned Mary Whitehouse outraged at the indecency.

There were at least two people who did like it though…

What was it this week with acts who felt the need to turn their names into faux acronyms. After U.S.U.R.A. earlier, we now have T.H.E. S.O.U.L. S.Y.S.T.E.M. Didn’t these people realise I’d be writing a blog thirty years later and have to type this nonsense out?!

After being a Breaker last week, this Clivillés and Cole project were in the studio seven days on to perform “It’s Gonna Be A Lovely Day”. Yes, that’s TV’s Michelle Visage up there with the Nosferatu talons and she’s giving me some heavy PM Dawn / “Set Adrift On Memory Bliss” vibes with her rapping style.

Taken from the soundtrack to The Bodyguard, it was already at its No 17 peak which was 13 places lower than the chart high achieved by a Ben Liebrand remix of the Bill Withers original back in 1988.

Now I knew there were at least two singles taken from Def Leppard’s “Adrenalize” album in the odious “Let’s Get Rocked” and “Make Love Like A Man” but I had no idea that it had gifted the world six! “Heaven Is” was the fourth of those and lead singer Joe Elliott is on record as saying the song was ‘more Queen than Queen’ and that the backing vocals sounded like The Beach Boys. Hmm. Let’s have another listen then…

*3 minutes 37 seconds later*

…nah, that’s just the same old Def Leppard shite.

“Heaven Is” peaked at No 13.

Is this week eight at the top for Whitney Houston and “I Will Always Love You”? I’m losing count now. I’m also running out of things to say about it so instead, here’s Dolly Parton’s original…

…and Whitney’s version for comparison…

*So which is best?

*It’s Dolly. Obviously.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Sister Sledge	We Are Family (Sure Is Pure Remix)	Nope
2	Faith No More	I’m Easy	No
3	Go West	What You Won’t Do For Love	I did not
4	Snap!	Exterminate!	Nah
5	The The	Dogs Of Lust	No but I maybe should have
6	Del Amitri	When You Were Young	Not the single but it’s on my Best Of of theirs that I have
7	Alice In Chains	Would?	Negative
8	U.S.U.R.A.	Open Your Mind	Remembered it, didn’t buy it
9	The Beloved	Sweet Harmony	See 5 above
10	T.H.E. S.O.U.L. S.Y.S.T.E.M.	It’s Gonna Be A Lovely Day	And no
11	Def Leppard	Heaven Is	Not this – no!
12	Whitney Houston	I Will Always Love You	She’ll never beat Dolly for me

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/m00183ds/top-of-the-pops-21011993

TOTP 07 JAN 1993

Posted on June 7, 2022 by 80stastic

1992 has bitten the dust and to celebrate the dawning of 1993, there are a glut of new songs on the first TOTP of the new year. Traditionally a time when singles don’t have to sell that many copies in the post Xmas sales slump to bag a Top 40 placing, let’s see if we can spot any examples of that here….

Could this be a contender? Now admittedly there was a time when Jesus Jones were one of the hottest properties on planet pop but that was back in 1991 and we all know that the old adage about a week being a long time in politics can also apply to the music industry. Would they still have an audience nearly two years on? Well possibly but one big and committed enough to send their new single “The Devil You Know” straight into the Top 20?

This was the lead single from third album “Perverse” which was one of the first albums ever to be recorded entirely on computer and the concept behind it according to rock journalist Stephen Thomas Erlewine was “to make techno palatable for the pop masses”. A worthy ambition or a pointless pursuit? The music press of the time couldn’t make their minds up and reviews were mixed. The album has been revisited more positively retrospectively so maybe Mike Edwards and co were just ahead of their time?

As for the single itself, I think I can hear the sound they were trying to meld but I’m not sure that it was any good. There’s an Eastern influence to it at the beginning (an Iranian instrument apparently) and a bit of a panel beating techno riff where the chorus should be. All a bit of a mess really. The single went to No 10 and I’m stating for the record that chart peak would not have been achieved at any other time of the year.

Having just been pipped to the best selling single of the year title late doors by Whitney Houston, Snap! have followed up “Rhythm Is A Dancer” with their ode to the daleks “Exterminate!”. Not as gigantic sounding a tune as its predecessor, it was hardly understated either though. There some Enigma “Sadeness” vibes thrown in the mix but the biggest change is the omission of rapper Turbo B from proceedings. I’m not sure of the exact timeline but he left the Snap! family around this time and so it was left to ex-Madonna backing singer Niki Haris to do the vocals and be the public face of the whole project. Given “Exterminate!” achieved an ultimate chart peak of No 2, you’d have to say she did a pretty decent job. And yet, asked to name a song by Snap!, how many of us would opt for it? “Exterminate!” you say? By Snap!? Like Kajagoogoo having hits without Limahl, it just doesn’t compute.

Something else that didn’t compute was this next performance by a band making their TOTP debut. More specifically it was their look that didn’t make any sense.

The Frank And Walters (not Frank And The Walters Tony Dortie!) hailed from Cork, Ireland and “After All” would turn out to be their only UK Top 40 hit when it peaked at No 11. A couple of EPs got them noticed by the Go! Discs label who released their debut album “Trains, Boats And Planes” from which “After All” was taken.

I liked “After All”. It was quirky, catchy and blazed its own little trail for unlikely pop stars. Listening back to it now, it seems to have a sliver of “Sit Down” by James about it. However, it did seem to divide opinion. I once worked with someone who absolutely detested it though I could never quite work out why.

So getting back to their image, my use of the word ‘unlikely’ doesn’t rally cover what was happening in front of our eyes with this performance. Bright orange roll necks and hideously patterned trousers?! Really?! Here’s singer Paul Linehan (courtesy of @TOTPFacts) with some more detail:

Paul Linehan on this #TOTP performance. “We bought the polo necks in a charity shop on Castle Street [Cork] and we got the trousers in Leaders on North Main Street – I think they were there since the ’70s." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 3, 2022

And the hair? Here’s Paul again:

“My mam did my hair. I had tried to get the same cut in the barbers, but he couldn’t do it. My mam had a bowl that fitted my head perfectly and she just cut around it.” #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 3, 2022

None of the above explains why though? Were they influenced by the Trevor and Simon ‘Singing Corner’ characters from Going Live? Or were they the influencers? Was Mike Flowers watching this show and taking hairstyle notes for launching his tilt at the charts with that bizarre cover of “Wonderwall” in 1995?

The Franks came close to a second hit when follow up single, the wonderfully titled “Fashion Crisis Hits New York” stalled at No 42. A gap of five years until their next album was never going to be good for maintaining momentum and the charts would never make their acquaintance again though they have continued to release material with their last album coming in 2016.

https://youtu.be/4_Hjw7bcA5k

After that portal into a possible parallel world where the charts weren’t full of nasty, homogeneous dance hits, that wormhole is firmly shut by the arrival of next act Slipstreem and their hateful single “We Are Raving”. A rave version of “Sailing”?! What in the name of Rod’s beard? Who were these people and just what the f**k was going on here? Actually, I couldn’t care less who they were and I know what was going on. This was cashing in pure and simple. Jumping on a bandwagon and then bastardising it for a shit hit and a quick buck.

And what a dog’s dinner of a performance to promote it. There’s the obligatory two guys on keyboards because hey! This is a dance hit you know. Then there’s two dancers in wet suits (obviously) and the ‘singer’ in a de rigueur puffa jacket. And then there’s the other two. A Captain Birdseye lookalike is behind a ship’s wheel bedecked with a tartan scarf but for any viewers who hadn’t quite cottoned onto the Rod Stewart connection there was the shittest Rod lookalike you’ve ever seen stumbling about the stage ramming the point home. He’s definitely not wearing it well.

“We Are Raving” peaked at No 18.

After that unedifying spectacle, it’s time to chill out, with some come down music and that must be the first time rockers Little Angels have been described as such. Let’s face it, they’re hardly Röyksopp are they? We do, however, find them in reflective mood at least with new single “Womankind” which would prove to be their biggest ever hit when it peaked at No 12.

Taken from their No 1 album “Jam”, it’s a decent rock ballad and singer Toby Jepson has some pipes on him for sure. I could imagine it being used to soundtrack some dramatic scene in a big Hollywood blockbuster. They’ve even got some orchestra strings thrown into the mix to give it a big, epic feel. Plus, I always quite liked the phrase “desperate proclaimer” in the lyrics. Yeah, not a bad effort all round.

Are you kidding me? FIVE Breakers?! This better not be how it’s going to be for the whole of 1993! There had better be some decent tunes amongst them then. We start with…ah…a decent tune from Prefab Sprout. How can anyone not love Paddy McAloon? As the 2018 song he wrote for the aforementioned Rod Stewart “Who Designed The Snowflake” says in its lyrics, he’s a genius work. So many great songs and yet, like XTC who I referenced in my review of 1992, so little commercial success.

“Life Of Surprises” was a new track taken from the previous year’s Best Of album of almost the same name and its peak of No 24 meant it became only the band’s fifth ever Top 40 hit. Indeed, in their whole career they only had six all told. Compare that to, oh I don’t know, Snap! who were on earlier who had fourteen UK Top 40 entries. More than double! Where’s the justice?

That Best Of album actually supplied three of their six hits as new tracks “Sound Of Crying” and “If You Don’t Love Me” had earlier achieved chart highs of Nos 23 and 33 respectively. “Life Of Surprises” was actually an older track from fourth studio album “Protest Songs” from 1989 and had already been released once as the B -side to “From Langley Park To Memphis” single “Nightingales”. It’s typical McAloon fare with a fine melody allied with Paddy’s almost whispered vocals. Lovely stuff.

Paddy is still writing and recording with his most recent release being 2019’s “I Trawl The Megahertz”. He suffers from tinnitus which makes his output even more remarkable and has grown a massive Gandalf like beard in later life, far removed from his clean cut image in this video.

Hasn’t this one been out before? I’m sure “Love See No Colour” by The Farm has already been a hit once hasn’t it?

*checks internet*

OK, so not a hit (it peaked at No 58) but it had been released 12 months previously. Why was it given another promotional push? Well, I’m guessing that sales of their second album of the same name had been a massive disappointment after their debut “Spartacus” had been a No 1. After they’d finally got a hit single out of it by resorting to a cover of The Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me”, record company Sony must have wanted to consolidate on that bit of success.

Their solution was to get the band to re-record “Love See No Colour” with an emphasis on a synth sound and gospel feel. They even commissioned a new video to help promote it. None of their strategies really worked though as the single got no higher than No 35. Sales of the album didn’t improve and the band were dropped. Quite a fall from their “All Together Now” peak, a 2.0 version of which they were presumably trying to recreate by re-recording “Love See No Colour”.

You wait for ages for one band from Cork to have a hit and then two turn up at once! Yes, unbelievable as it seems, The Sultans Of Ping FC, like The Frank And Walters earlier in the show, were also from Cork. It’s not quite up there with that bizarre phenomenon of The Wonder Stuff, Pop Will Eat Itself and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin all hailing from Stourbridge in the West Midlands as Cork is three times the size population wise but it’s still quite a thing. There was a third Cork band around at this time called Stump who achieved a minor chart placing with the gloriously eccentric single “Charlton Heston” but for now it was all about The Ping.

Having released a trio of singles on independent label Divine Records during 1992 (including the marvellous “Where’s Me Jumper”), the band had been picked up by Epic through which their debut album “Casual Sex In The Cineplex” was released. Trailing it was the single “You Talk Too Much” which had much more of a punk vibe than their fellow Corkonians The Franks and their simultaneous hit single.

Around this time I was visiting my mate Robin in London and wandering around Piccadilly Circus we arrived at the Virgin Records store just in time to catch a p.a. and set by the band. Robin has reminded me that there were some hecklers in the audience and the lead singer came back with “we’re No 27 in the charts. Have you ever been in the charts?”. Excellent.

The album included the track “Give Him A Ball (And A Yard Of Grass)” which was inspired by a remark from his Brian Clough when talking about brilliant Nottingham Forest winger John Robertson. Here’s his quote in full:

John Robertson was a very unattractive young man. If one day I was feeling a bit off colour, I would sit next to him. I was bloody Errol Flynn compared to him. But give him a yard of grass and he was an artist. The Picasso of our game.

The legendary Brian Clough there. Still sadly missed. As for The Sultans Of Ping FC, they went through a few name alterations dropping the FC, then removing the Ping part before finally restoring it to Sultans Of Ping in 2005.

Another cover version now but an unlikely one. The decision process behind Sunscreem‘s choosing of a 1980 Marianne Faithful single that flopped takes some fathoming. “Broken English” was the title track from her comeback album after years of health and addiction problems. It is widely regarded as her ‘definitive recording’ and Faithfull herself described it as her “masterpiece”. I was surprised to find out then that it bombed in the charts peaking at No 57. The title track from it sank without trace. I have to admit to not knowing it at all so I gave it a whirl…

Hmm. It doesn’t (Sun)scream techno anthem to me I have to say. The Essex groovers version adds a few interesting squiggles in the background but I can’t imagine it being that easy to dance to but then I wasn’t spending much time in the clubs around then. It would become the band’s highest charting hit when it settled at No 13 and they would follow it up with a rerelease of early single “Pressure.

The final Breaker is a bit confusing. In my head, Arrested Development followed their huge hit “People Everyday” with another big seller called “Mr. Wendal” so what was this track “Revolution” all about? Well, both tracks were released as a double A-side. “Mr. Wendal” was from their “3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life Of…” album whilst “Revolution” was from the soundtrack to the Spike Lee directed biopic Malcolm X starring Denzel Washington. In the US they were released as separate singles but in Europe they were doubled up. I have zero recall of “Revolution” but “Mr. Wendal” was a tune. Hope we get to see that in future TOTP repeats.

A real taster next of the direction the charts would be going in this year although in truth, Apache Indian was actually ploughing his own furrow. Real name Steven Kapur, this guy grew up in the multicultural metropolis that was Birmingham in the early 80s listening to reggae and dancehall music. Creating a stage name for himself, Steven set about fusing those influences with the cultural sounds of his own Indian background. That fusion of ragga and Bhangra drew positive reactions from audiences of both genres and so bhangra ragamuffin was born or bhangramuffin as it became known.

Picked up by the legendary Island Records, Apache Indian recorded his debut album “No Reservations” in Jamaica’s Tuff Gong studios and from it came the single “Arranged Marriage”. The controversial track dared to take on the normally taboo subject of its title and provoked negative criticism from some of the Indian community. This guy was no ordinary pop star and was determined to do things his own way.

The performance here is great and nothing like we’d really seen before. There were no sitars à la Monsoon and “Ever So Lonely” from the early 80s. “Arranged Marriage” would make No 16 and was nominated for an Ivor Novello award for Best Contemporary Song. However, Apache Indian will surely be best remembered for his later single “Boom Shack -A- Lak” which took him to the Top 5.

In the Story Of 1993 BBC documentary, Kapur opened up about his experiences of this year and he explained that he was good buddies with Shaggy, one of the year’s other big reggae fusion/dancehall movers alongside Shabba Ranks and Snow. The charts they were a-changin’..,

https://youtu.be/HealqMJzu_M

From someone brand new to one of the biggest artists in the world. Paul McCartney hadn’t released any new material in the 90s so far but delivered on his fanbase’s hopes of a new song with “Hope Of Deliverance”. Taken from his ninth solo studio album “Off The Ground”, it was hardly the stuff of legend. Yes it was bright, breezy and positive but it was also the wrong side of predictable and ever so slightly annoying.

The album achieved gold status but didn’t furnish any further hit singles (“Hope Of Deliverance” peaked at No 18) and surely can’t be any Macca fan’s favourite album of his? This phase of his career very much reminds me of his mid 80s era when his “Press To Play” album was commercially and critically received in much the same way and the singles from it were only minor hits. He would return four years later with “Flaming Pie” which got his best reviews since 1982’s “Tug Of War”.

https://youtu.be/eSokJcERbuY

If we were thinking that Whitney Houston’s reign at the top would be over when the Xmas decorations were put away for another year then we were completely and utterly mistaken. Any of us under that illusion hadn’t factored in that the film “I Will Always Love You” was taken from, The Bodyguard, wasn’t released in the UK until Boxing Day therefore instantly giving the single another impetus of sales. Whitney’s run at No 1 still had plenty of legs left yet.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Jesus Jones	The Devil You Know	Nah
2	Snap!	Exterminate!	Nope
3	The Frank And Walters	After All	Liked it, didn’t buy it
4	Slipstreem	We Are Raving	NO!!!
5	Little Angels	Womankind	No but I had a promo copy of their album
6	Prefab Sprout	Life Of Surprises	No but I had the Best Of album it was taken from
7	The Farm	Love See No Colour	Nope, neither time it was released
8	The Sultans Of Ping FC	You Talk Too Much	See 3 above
9	Sunscreem	Broken English	No
10	Arrested Development	Revolution	No my wife had the album though
11	Apache Indian	Arranged Marriage	Interesting though it was, no
12	Paul McCartney	Hope Of Deliverance	Very weak – no
13	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/m0017wtw/top-of-the-pops-07011993

TOTP 10 SEP 1992

Posted on March 30, 2022 by 80stastic

It’s a rare consecutive TOTP after weeks of skipping shows due to the Adrian Rose issue. I think we might be getting to the end of his 14 episodes that we are having to miss. We’re exactly a third of the way through September of 1992 and the biggest album release of the week is “The Best Of Belinda Volume 1” by, unsurprisingly, Belinda Carlisle. Singles wise, the two new releases doing the briskest trade are probably Bob Marley’s “Iron Lion Zion” and “Theme From M.A.S.H (Suicide Is Painless)” by Manic Street Preachers.

As for me, I’m pretty sure I’d have started my new post as Assistant Manager of the Our Price store in Rochdale by now. I got off the bus that first morning and went into the first newsagents I saw to ask where the shop actually was. Once I found it, I realised how much smaller it was than the two trading floor store I’d left behind in Manchester. So small in fact that they had sale stock on display in cardboard boxes shoved under the racking. Behind the scenes there was a small processing area and staff kitchen but quite a large, cavernous stock room that wasn’t really used other than as a dumping ground for various unsold stock that had accumulated over the years. Nobody spent much time in there. The staff consisted of Adrian the manager who was about to leave for Virgin, Emma and Rachel both of whom I’d worked with briefly at Manchester and Phil who was also about to leave the company for pastures new. And then there was newbie me. It was a time of significant change for the store.

I spent much of that first morning serving customers on my own whilst the regulars sorted out the new releases upstairs. However, as I didn’t know where anything was filed I kept having to buzz them to help me out. I probably didn’t make the best first impression. Presumably the product I sold that first morning would have included some of the songs on this TOTP. Let’s see if I remember…

Opening the show are a band who were very much billed as the anti-Take That and a rivalry was developed (or at least created by the press) between the two that brought back memories of Duran Duran vs Spandau Ballet from the 80s. East 17 were the brainchild of former Pet Shop Boys manager Tom Watkins who came up with the genius idea of launching this tougher, more street wise version of Take That after song writer Tony Mortimer was offered a recording contract on the condition that he form a band around himself as a vehicle to sell the songs. Taking their name from the postcode district of their hometown Walthamstow (after which they then named their debut album), they scored an immediate hit with first single “House Of Love”. Mortimer’s version of a rave anthem, I thought this sounded great. Think of the twee, cynically put together hits Take That started their career with and then listen to this. There’s no comparison. It put me in mind of the chart battle between Girls Aloud and One True Voice that same out of the Popstars: The Rivals TV show in 2002. The former’s single “Sound Of The Underground” was so superior to the latter’s…I can’t even remember what it was called it was so forgettable…it was almost embarrassing.

For a while these boys from Walthamstow traded blows with their nemesis and matched them punch for punch. They even bagged themselves a No 1 (a Xmas chart topper no less). Ultimately though they would lose the pop war and imploded after singer Brian Harvey encouraged drug taking on a late night radio interview. The ramifications included both Mortimer and Harvey leaving the group and returning multiple times and a change of band name. A number of tabloid headlines including the frankly bizarre incident of Harvey being run over by his own car after eating too many jacket potatoes damaged the band’s reputation beyond redemption. Currently they perform as a trio with only one original member (Terry Coldwell) in their ranks.

Back in 1992 though, they were fresh faced lads who looked like they could just as likely be working in McDonalds as performing on TOTP. Somehow though, instead of dying on their arses in this frankly ludicrous performance (what the hell was the washing line all about?) it all somehow just worked. Instead of being laughed off stage, we took them on face value as proper pop stars. Things were just starting to get interesting in the boy band stakes.

I’d totally forgotten that The Christians were still having chart hits this far into their career. It had been over five years since they burst onto the scene with their eponymous debut album (the biggest selling debut album in their label Island Records’ history) but here they were still in the Top 40 and still on TOTP in the Autumn of 1992. Listening to “What’s In A Word” it sounds vaguely familiar though I couldn’t have told you how it went before reacquainting myself with it. Didn’t their last chart hit feature ‘word’ in the title?

*checks The Christians discography *

I was right! “Words” made No 18 over Xmas/ New Year in 1989/90. They seemed to be as fixated on the subject of the lexicon as Martin Fry. I bet they were elated when that bloke invented Wordle.

Anyway, it’s a nice enough tune though hardly outstanding which may explain its lowly peak of No 33. Lead singer Garry Christian feels the needs to hold a drum stick throughout this performance that comes live from Paris for no obvious reason. Meanwhile, it seems Henry Priestman was still with the band at this point as I’m pretty sure that’s him on keyboards. I saw him as a solo artist live at Beverley Folk Festival in 2010. He was great. Barbara Dickson was also there and I stood next to her at one point watching the worst game of football I’ve ever seen on TV (England 0-0 Algeria in the World Cup). She was tiny.

The Christians, like East 17, still exist today (albeit not in their original form) and released a single in December 2021 called “Naz Don’t Cry” in support of the recently released Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe who had been detained in Israel since 2016.

Here’s a question. If you’ve made your name by covering other people’s songs, is the decision to call yourselves Undercover genius or incredibly lame? I’m going for the latter. The ‘drum and bass’ version of “Baker Street” as host Tony Dortie ridiculously describes it is up to No 3 so another trip to the TOTP studio is in order for the band. Vocalist John Matthews looks like he should be playing in midfield for Newcastle United (I think it’s the slight resemblance to Gazza) but he’s actually a massive Arsenal fan. Look at this interaction with a Spurs fan on Twitter when this TOTP repeat aired:

Not as bad as your trophy cabinet sunshine! #Spursy 😂👋👋👋
— John Matthews (@UNDERCOVER_JM) March 25, 2022

Ha! Talking of fans, someone who wasn’t a fan of Undercover at all was the man responsible for “Baker Street” Gerry Rafferty. According to Wikipedia, he had this to say about it:

“Dreadful- totally banal. A sad sign of the times”

Presumably he was happy to pick up the writer’s cheque their version brought in though that Tony Dortie refers to in his intro which was for £1.5 million! Like East 17 and The Christians before them, a version of Undercover featuring John Matthews are still a going concern today.

Freddie Jackson hadn’t been seen in the UK charts for six years before he turned up rather randomly with a cover of Billy Paul’s “Me And Mrs Jones”. Taken from his album “Time For Love”, this could be the most pointless cover version of all time. Firstly, he gives a completely straight take on it hardly deviating from the original at all. Secondly, he was never going to rival Billy Paul’s original. I’m putting this out there – I suspect some chart rigging was afoot getting this into the Top 40. Even if there was, it wasn’t that successful as it only made No 32 and the album bombed just about everywhere.

One of my favourite albums of 1992 was “Welcome To Wherever You Are” by INXS. The eighth album by the Aussie rockers was meant to be a rejection of the more polished studio sound that they had perfected on previous album “X” with an emphasis on a rawer sound. To my ears though it still had plenty of hooks to draw me in and includes one of the great album segues from opening track, the Eastern sounding “Questions”, into the album’s lead single “Heaven Sent”. We haven’t seen the latter on TOTP – I’m not sure why. It only made No 31 on the chart so it could be that it never made the cut at all or maybe it was in the Breakers on a show that we skipped because of the whole Adrian Rose debacle? Happily, second single “Baby Don’t Cry” has made it onto the show and it’s an unashamedly bold and out there stadium rock anthem with an exuberant, singalong chorus. Apparently it was recorded with the 60 piece Australian Concert Orchestra – so much for that raw sound the band was supposedly going for.

I thought this was going to be a massive hit but it stalled at No 20 and wasn’t even released in America. The album debuted at No 1 here making INXS the first Australian act to have a UK chart topper since AC/DC with “Back In Black” in 1980. However, that success was not repeated in the US and the album marked a decline in their commercial fortunes over there. The decision not to tour the album was probably not the correct one in hindsight.

Back in the studio we find Del Amitri who are in the midst of probably their most commercially successful period of their career. Their “Change Everything” album had been as high as No 2 in the charts and it would furnish them with four hit singles which all made the Top 30. “Just Like A Man” was the third of those and though I rather dismissed it as ‘just another Del Amitri song’ at the time, it’s actually a pretty decent tune. Do they get enough credit for their back catalogue? I’m not sure they do. My perception is that they’re somehow not seen as cutting-edge enough, not quite the real deal, perhaps even too…comfy? Also, for all that I said about the success they were having at this time, they never had one Top 10 single in this country. They’re not alone in that of course. Goth rockers The Mission clocked up 12 Top 40 singles without ever getting any higher than No 11. I guess they were more album than singles bands. “Just Like A Man” peaked at No 25.

Four Breakers now but we’ve seen three of them before as ‘exclusive’ performances/videos. To quote Ian Dury, “what a waste”. First up is Sinéad O’Connor with “Success Has Made A Failure Of Our Home”. This was the lead single from her covers album “Am I Not Your Girl?” which I don’t think I’ve ever heard properly. Looking at the track listing, there a few songs I know like “Secret Love” (Doris Day), “Love Letters” ( Ketty Lester/ Elvis /Alison Moyet) and of course “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina” from Evita. The latter was released as the second single from the album and I would have thought it was a safe bet for another chart hit given that it is surely better known than its predecessor. After all, it had been a No 1 for Julie Covington in 1976. Sinéad’s version didn’t even make the Top 40. Four years later, Madonna did what Sinéad couldn’t and had a massive No 3 hit with it over Xmas 1996 but then she was starring as Eva Perón in Alan Parker’s film version of Evita so a hit was almost guaranteed. “Success Has Made A Failure Of Our Home” peaked at No 18.

Even the only Breaker we haven’t seen on the show before we actually have. What am I going on about? I mean it’s a rerelease of a song that was a hit back in 1985. “How Soon Is Now?” was the latest element of WEA’s release strategy for their newly acquired back catalogue of The Smiths. Possibly the greatest song in their canon, it’s certainly one of their most well known. Johnny Marr himself describes it as their “most enduring record”. It was originally released as the B-side to “William, It Was Really Nothing” alongside “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want” which surely must make it the best B-side of a record ever.

The 1992 rerelease peaked at No 26, eight places higher than its 1985 outing. Maybe it benefited from a younger audience knowing it from it being sampled in Soho’s hit “Hippychick” of just one year earlier. The band detested the promo video for the song which was made by their US label Sire and which Morrissey described as “degrading”. I wonder what he thought of this one made for Psychedelic Furs spin off project Love Spit Love’s cover of it for TV series Charmed and movie The Craft?

Oh come on now! How many times have I had to find something to write about yet another Michael Jackson video recently?! OK, well there is a school of thought that says the video for “Jam” was the inspiration for the 1996 film Space Jam starring Michael Jordan. Is that likely? Well, Jordan was in the “Jam” promo in which he teaches Jacko to play basketball while in Space Jam MJ teaches some Looney Tunes characters to shoot some hoops to win a b/ball match against invading aliens so there might be something in it I suppose.

The final Breaker is “Rest In Peace” by Extreme. The video for this one really should have been prefaced with a warning about flashing lights. If the stop motion sequence of two neighbours fighting over a TV set didn’t induce queasiness then the band performing against that flickering black and white backdrop would surely bring on a migraine. It’s a real sensory overload. It was also litigious as it copied rather too closely the 1952 anti-war film Neighbours by Norman McLaren and the band got sued but settled out of court. “Rest In Peace” peaked at No 13.

Time for another ‘exclusive’ now as we see yet another return of Boy George, this time with a cover of the sixties hit “Crying Game” So was this the third time George had been on the comeback trail? After Culture Club imploded in the mid 80s, George had fashioned himself a swift and initially very successful solo career with a No 1 single with his take on Ken Boothe’s “Everything I Own”. Three more smaller hits followed but the album “Sold” didn’t sell well and he disappeared from the charts for four years. He reappeared in 1991 under the pseudonym Jesus Loves You and the gloriously quirky “Bow Down Mister”. Again the parent album (“The Martyr Mantras”) failed to shift many units and another George revival had finished almost as quickly as it had started. You couldn’t keep a good Boy down and George was back on TOTP once more.

His rendition of “The Crying Game” was recorded for the soundtrack of the film of the same name, a thriller starring Stephen Rea set against the backdrop of of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The real pull of the film though was the plot twist which I won’t reveal for those who have never watched it but which was seen as very controversial at the time. Maybe it would be today but no way am I getting into that subject on here.

I didn’t mind George’s version – he seemed like a good choice to sing it to me (not that he was serenading me personally Romeo And Juliet style you understand). Was this the start of him always being seen in public with a hat on? He’s permanently got some design of chapeau on his bonce these days. Actually, he always wore a hat when he was with Culture Club didn’t he? Am I talking bollocks again?

That’s it! I knew there must be a reason. When I said earlier that Undercover vocalist John Matthews looks like he should be playing in midfield for Newcastle United because he looked a bit like Gazza, there was a memory lurking in my mind that was the trigger for my observation. I couldn’t put my finger on it before but I have it now. Do you remember The Comic Strip Presents… The Crying Game? It came out in 1992 like the Stephen Rea film but it was a football based tale of a young English player called Roy Brush (clearly a parody of Paul ‘daft as a brush’ Gascoigne aka Gazza) with the world literally at his feet after scoring an important goal for England. He is also gay and a tabloid paper tries to out him. Keith Allen stars as Brush and at one point in the story he records a single – yep you guessed it – a cover of “The Crying Game” (Gazza’s tears and all that). He even appears on TOTP and is introduced by Mark Franklin! Go to 11.45 in the YouTube video below:

After all that excitement, the No 1 brings us back to earth rather than takes us to a peak as it’s Snap! yet again with “Rhythm Is A Dancer”. I think this is the last week though. Don’t worry though! They’ll be back before the year is out with another big hit and another line up change. You lucky people you!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	East 17	House Of Love	No but my wife had the album Walthamstow.
2	The Christians	What’s In A Word	Nope
3	Undercover	Baker Street	Nah
4	Freddie Jackson	Me And Mrs Jones	Definitely not
5	INXS	Baby Don’t Cry	No but I bought their album Welcome To Wherever You Are
6	Del Amitri	Just Like A Man	No but I have their Best Of with it on
7	Sinéad O’Connor	Success Has Made A Failure Of Our Home	No
8	The Smiths	How Soon Is Now	No but I have Hatful Of Hollow with it on
9	Michael Jackson	Jam	I did not
10	Extreme	Rest In Peace	Nah
11	Boy George	The Crying Game	Didn’t mind it, didn’t buy it
12	Snap!	Rhythm Is A Dancer	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/m0015nq2/top-of-the-pops-10091992

TOTP 03 SEP 1992

Posted on March 26, 2022 by 80stastic

We’ve moved into September 1992 here at TOTP Rewind and Summer is officially over. We’ve had the last hurrah of the August Bank Holiday and the Olympics in Barcelona have been and gone. The new football season is well under way. The two biggest album releases of the week are “Tourism” by Roxette and, with quite some fanfare, Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells II”. None of this is what is occupying my mind though for I am about to embark upon a new stage in my work life. I mentioned the other week when discussing big football transfers of the day that I had my own transfer looming. Well, now it was here – I had a job promotion for the first time in my life! The last time I had been picked out for a role of higher responsibility was when I was made deputy head boy at my junior school. Fast forward 14 years and my time had come around once more as I was offered the job of Assistant Manager at the Our Price store in Rochdale.

I’d been working as a sales assistant in the store in Market Street, Manchester for nearly two years by this point and was quite happily ticking along not really thinking of moving up the ladder as it were. Then one day the Area Manager came into the shop and asked to speak to me in the manager’s office. With slight trepidation I entered the room and she told me of the vacancy and that she wanted me to fill it. Apparently the usual reaction to the offer of promotion was to say thank you very much and snatch the company’s hand off. I did something different – I asked for some time to think about it. I think the Area Manager was a bit wrong footed by my less than enthusiastic reaction but agreed to my request and I was given a few days grace. Why did I hesitate? The commute mainly but I think I’d been considering whether staying in retail was still my best option two years on. In the end, as I didn’t have any other choice on the table, I took the promotion. It would prove to be a pivotal decision that shaped my working life until the end of the decade.

I can’t remember the exact time I started in Rochdale but it was in September so a lot of the songs from around now really remind me of that time. I’m pretty sure I’d been back to my hometown of Worcester for a visit over the August Bank Holiday and caught Alien 3 at the cinema whilst there and that was just before the Rochdale era. It was hard leaving the shop in Manchester because it was all I had known and I’m not great with change but off I went on the 7.00 am bus from Piccadilly Gardens that first day not even knowing exactly where the shop in Rochdale was. I recall that I’d recently had a very severe, short haircut just before. I think I’d been influenced by the barnet of Roy Keane who was one of the hottest properties in English football at the time. It really was all change.

There was a huge change also in tonight’s opening act as we see the return of Bananarama but now they were a duo. After Siobhan Fahey left the group in 1988, she was replaced by Jacquie O’Sullivan. Three years later, with Jacquie still being referred to as ‘the new girl’ in the press and feeling like a paid employee rather than an equal member of the trio, she up and left. Instead of just recruiting another third person, Keren and Sara decided to continue with just the two of them. The first material in this new beginning was the single “Movin’ On”.

Renewing a rather tempestuous relationship with producers Mike Stock and Pete Waterman (deliberate omission of Matt Aitken who wasn’t involved), it was a calling card for the rest of the new album “Please Yourself”. Waterman’s vision for the album was ‘ABBA-Banana’ – a collection of songs in the style of the Swedish supergroup updated with a 90s sound. He didn’t get it right initially as the album bombed or at least he hadn’t hit upon the right vehicle for the songs. People didn’t seem ready to accept an ABBA’d up slimmed down Bananarama but by the end of the decade the record buying public were quite happy about some of the same songs being peddled by two guys and three gals boot scootin’ their way to glory. I talk, of course, of Steps who recorded “Movin’ On” for their second album whilst their cover of “Last Thing On My Mind” (the second Bananas single from “Please Yourself”) was a Top 10 hit for them.

So why did Steps succeed where the Nanas failed? After all, weren’t we in the throes of an ABBA revival in ‘92? Erasure had recently been at No 1 with their “Abba-esque EP” whilst only this month Polygram would release the “Abba Gold: Greatest Hits” compilation which would sell 5.61 million copies in the UK alone making it the second best selling album here of all time behind Queen’s “Greatest Hits”. We were Abba mad all over again yet the Bananarama Swedish reinvention failed to convince the record buying public. Maybe we couldn’t accept a duo version of the group after a decade of being used to three of them racking up the hits? Or could it just be that (whisper it) they’d come to the end of the road? It had been a great run that surely couldn’t have been predicted all those years ago when they first hit the charts alongside Fun Boy Three.

The performance here certainly bares no resemblance to those early, chaotic days. Where there was once home made, tomboy chic and DIY dance steps were sleek, evening dresses and synchronised arm movements. It didn’t look like that much fun to be honest.

“Movin’ On” peaked at No 24 whilst the album “Please Yourself” made a paltry No 46. It would be another 27 years before they would return to the album chart Top 40.

One of the biggest (and most notorious) tunes of the whole year next. “Ebeneezer Goode” may well be to The Shamen what “Merry Xmas Everybody” is to Slade – a cash cow but also an albatross around their neck. The infamy surrounding the track was so high profile that the question of whether the song itself was any good(e) seemed to get lost in the furore. The idea that a pop song was encouraging drug use was distinctly unpalatable back then and there were numerous calls for it to be banned (presumably Mary Whitehouse was at the front of the queue of those with objections to it). You don’t need me to recount the whole tale of ecstasy references contained within it though the band themselves, whilst not denying said references, also say it wasn’t quite as clear cut as just encouraging ravers to get off their tits. Here’s @TOTPFacts:

Colin Angus: "It was intended to be celebratory and cautionary, like holding up a distorting mirror to rave culture." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) March 25, 2022

For what it’s worth, I think the track works – though I wasn’t much of a fan back in the day – not least because the band understood it had the potential to be controversial and made it work for them by making it instantly memorable and most importantly quotable. Lyrics like “Naughty naughty, very naughty”, “Has anyone got any Vera’s?” and “Got any salmon? Sorted” must have been repeated up and down the country especially in school playgrounds which only increased its notoriety. For this TOTP performance Mr C changes that last line to “Got any underlay?”. Here’s the man himself on that, again, courtesy of @TOTPFacts:

Mr C: "When we went on Top Of The Pops, I changed the line "Got any salmon?" to "Got any underlay?" and people said, "That's not in the song! Drug reference!…" #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) March 25, 2022

"I was asked about it on Radio 1 by Mark Goodier, and said that salmon was rhyming slang for salmon and trout – snout, cigarettes – a legal drug that has killed thousands, so I'd changed it. He said, 'So what's 'underlay'?' I said it was a gratuitous rug reference." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) March 25, 2022

A fine example of the art of winding people up there. The performance starts with a small clip of the promo video which features Scottish comedian Jerry Sadowitz as the titular Ebeneezer who gives a maniacal turn that is only rivalled in my mind by Reece Shearmith’s Papa Lazarou in The League Of Gentlemen.

“Ebeneezer Goode” will be No 1 soon enough.

https://youtu.be/vukqGn68wug?si=pPFk3zPa6GpFYlpp

Despite it being September 1992, we now get a plug for the next Eurovision Song Contest which won’t take place until May 1993. The reason for this incredibly early heads up was that we’d already chosen the artist who would represent the UK and she was, by happy circumstance, on the show tonight. The career of Sonia, for she was the chosen one, had degenerated into a string of cover versions by the early 90s – three of her last four hits had been covers – but her record company Arista had seen the uplift of success that Eurovision could bring with that year’s contestant Michael Ball. He hadn’t even won the contest and yet his album released off the back of it had gone to No 1. Arista pinned their hopes on lightning striking twice when their charge was picked to take the baton from Ball. I say picked but I’m assuming that there were some negotiations between Arista and the Eurovision committee.

That was all months off yet though so in the meantime, to keep Sonia in the public’s thoughts, here was…yes, another cover version. This time it was Heatwave’s “Boogie Nights” which, in my humble opinion, has one of the best intros ever.

However, Sonia’s version does away with that completely and just goes into the track full pelt like a Nadine Dorries rant and does away with any of its subtlety. It doesn’t get any better after that; in fact the whole thing is just an exercise in how not to do a cover version. It’s got that horrible, genetic 90s house beat and then they’ve arsed about with the chorus so when Sonia gets to the line ‘always the best in town’ a “Ride On Time” vocal effect comes in on ‘always’. Awful, awful and indeed awful. Sonia does her best to sell it with an energetic performance as ever but it’s beyond redemption.

Nine months later, she would compete at Eurovision and emulate Michael Ball’s runner up position. It was a different story with her album though. Whilst Ball topped the charts Sonia dropped the ball when hers peaked at No 32.

Is there a doctor in the house? The good news is that there is, the bad news is that it’s Dr. Alban. Apparently this guy was a proper doctor (of dentistry) who passed his exams and opened a practice before turning to music full time. From what I can make out “It’s My Life” was one of those holiday hits that UK tourists had heard on the continent and made popular back in Blighty on their return. No wonder it was dreadful then. Wikipedia describes Dr. Alban’s music as “Eurodance/hip hop reggae in a dancehall style”. Hmm. Covering a few bases there. Maybe there was something in it though. Was Dr. Alban an early adopter of a musical movement that would hit a peak the following year when The Three S’s (Shaggy, Snow and Shanna Ranks) dominated the charts? Or am I just talking bollocks?

Of course, you can’t mention Dr. Alban without mentioning that Tampax advert. You know that one with the roller skating woman and the beach football scene that’s soundtracked by “It’s My Life”? You know, this one…

I have to say that the doctor delivers a completely lacklustre rapping performance here. Talk about half-hearted. I think I’ve only ever seen one less enthusiastic rapper in my life…

One last thing. What links Dr.Alban and Sonia? No, not that they’re on the same TOTP together. Not that, obviously. No, it’s the Eurovision Song Contest. Twenty-one years after Sonia did her bit for the UK, Dr. Alban teamed up with someone called Jessica Folcker (yes I had to check that spelling) to take part in the Swedish equivalent of A Song For Europe for the right to represent his native country in the 2014 competition. He came fifth.

The Breakers now starting with some American glam metal and you know what? I couldn’t give less of a toss about the seemingly endless conveyor belt of bands peddling this stuff like W.A.S.P. and Mötley Crüe and this lot – Skid Row. From what I can ascertain this was a double A-side featuring their debut single “Youth Gone Wild” with “Delivering The Goods”, their cover of a Judas Priest track. It all seems to have been in aid of promoting their album “B-Side Ourselves” (see what they did there?), an EP of covers the majority of which had all been on the B-side of previous singles. Erm…so what was the point of it all then? I suppose it’s only like Oasis’s “The Masterplan” compilation album which collected together their B-sides and additional tracks that had featured on their singles but had not appeared on any studio albums but still.

“Youth Gone Wild / Delivering The Goods” peaked at No 22 and was their last UK Top 40 hit. Hurray!

It seems ABBA really were inescapable in 1992! Here they are again with a re-release of “Dancing Queen” to promote that “Abba Gold: Greatest Hits” I mentioned earlier. Released by Polygram who had acquired the rights to the group’s back catalogue, it has become one of the biggest selling albums of all time. To heighten the impact of its release, all previous ABBA compilations were deleted which presumably included one that we had in my family home when I was growing up. You know the one with Björn and Agnetha sat on a park bench on the cover? Yeah, that one.

“ABBA Gold” was a phenomenon of marketing and sales. It has been certified 20 x platinum in the UK alone and has sold 30 million copies worldwide. It seemed to sell itself without the need of a single to promote it but I guess if you really wanted to pick one to do so then “Dancing Queen” was a logical choice. Perhaps their best known song – I say perhaps because there are so many that could take that accolade – it had been a No 1 on its original release in 1976. The 1992 rerelease made a respectable No 16.

The marketing strategy for “ABBA Gold” was so successful that Polygram (or it might have changed its name to Universal by then) attempted to repeat the trick when it set its sights on The Carpenters whose “Carpenters Gold: Greatest Hits” even had the same cover design as the Swedish superstars album.

Richard Marx had two hits in 1992? He had three actually but I only knew the big one “Hazard”. The follow up was “Take This Heart” which even after listening to it didn’t ring any bells with me. After the dark but bewitching story telling of its predecessor, Marx returned to his safe space of soft rock ballad with this one. It’s pretty unremarkable stuff to my ears but pleasant in a bland sort of way.

The video sees Marx getting to indulge in his sporting fantasy of scoring a home run in the World Series for his beloved baseball team the Chicago Cubs with the plot twist being it was all a dream. I wrote a story in English class when I was about 12 where the ending was that it had all been a dream and I got marks knocked off for that being a lame idea. My teacher would definitely have knocked marks off Marx for that video.

“Take This Heart” peaked at No 13.

The final Breaker is a song that reminds me very much of starting at the Rochdale shop. You know how some songs (whether you like or loathe them) just remind you of a time without actually being linked to a specific memory? Yeah, that.

It had been nearly a whole year since Brian May had been in the Top 10 with “Driven By You” but when he did finally get around to releasing a follow up it wasn’t with a new song but one that he’d had up his sleeves for a few years by that point.”Too Much Love Will Kill You” had been written by May for inclusion on Queen’s 1989 album “The Miracle” but a band decision that all songs for it must be group compositions and not individually written meant it didn’t make the cut for legal reasons. It was recorded though with Freddie Mercury on vocals and finally released on their 1995 album “Made In Heaven”.

Before all that though, Bri’s original ended up on his solo album “Back To The Light” and it gave him his second consecutive Top 10 hit when released as a single. It actually performed better than the Queen version which peaked at No 15 when given its own release in 1996. Which version did I prefer? Probably May’s if I really had to choose as it hasn’t got the powerful hysteria lurking in Freddie’s vocals which I don’t think this particular track benefits from.

The video with Brian looking straight down the camera lens at us with that curly mop of hair is giving me heavy David Essex Stardust vibes – the bit where he performs his rock opera “Dea Sancta”:

Another song that really reminds me of starting at Rochdale now, primarily because we sold loads of it. We first saw Lionel Richie perform “My Destiny” on the show back in June as an ‘exclusive’ to promote his “Back To Front” Best Of album. It was one of three new tracks released as singles. The first was “Do It To Me” which didn’t set the charts alight and peaked at No 33. “My Destiny” was a different story. Perfect daytime radio fodder, it received airplay by the bucketload and secured it a place in the Top 10. A third single “Love, Oh Love” failed to crack the Top 40 at all.

If you’ve been watching ITV’s Saturday night show Starstruck – a reinvention of Stars In Their Eyes for the 2020s – you will be familiar with the format that sees three music artist impersonators perform as their hero in a group before the winning group is whittled down to one overall winner. Last Saturday saw three guys take to the stage as Lionel Richie. Yes, that’s right they were ‘once, twice, three times a Lionel’. I’ll get my coat.

What the Hell is this? Well, clearly it’s a horrible noise but who was responsible for it? They were called U96 and their track “Das Boot” was a techno cover version of the theme tune to a German film/TV mini series of the same name about the crew of a U-boat. I got a bit confused when I saw the running order for this episode and noticed the name U96. I was expecting some British jazz-rap until I realised that was Us3 I was thinking of and their hit “Cantaloop” from 1993. This right load of techno bollocks was a huge hit all around Europe although the UK was notably a little less receptive with it just grazing the Top 20 at No 18.

The TOTP producers have gone all out with their graphics for this one with the initial part of the performance viewed as if through a periscope before ultimately resorting to some dry ice to try and hide the fact that it’s just some blokes in keyboards up there on stage.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen Das Boot though I do have a memory of Iain Lee screaming “Das Boot” on early noughties Channel 4 breakfast show RI:SE because fellow presenter Kate Lawler was wearing some knee high boots one morning. I need to have a word with myself about my cultural references don’t I?

P.S. What links Sonia, Dr. Alban and U96? Yep, it’s Eurovision again! Here’s @TOTPFacts with the details:

U96 mainman Alex Christensen went on to represent Germany at the Eurovision Song Contest in 2009, as half of combo Alex Swings Oscar Sings! "Miss Kiss Kiss Bang" finished in 20th place. https://t.co/GfdFoLd7HY #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) March 25, 2022

Another live satellite link up now as we find Sinéad O’Connor in New York. The interview beforehand between her and host Mark Franklin is a hard watch as Sinéad is clearly not in the mood for a chat. Mark took to Twitter to defend himself against the not very pleasant criticism he received for his part in what went down explaining that the whole interview had lasted three minutes and had been edited down for transmission. If what we saw was the best bit it does make you wonder what was in the rest of it.

As for the music, Sinéad is performing “Success Has Made A Failure Of Our Home” from her third album “Am I Not Your Girl?”, a collection of cover versions including this single originally recorded by country singer Loretta Lynn. We’ve seen a few artists in recent shows backed by either a small string section (Vanessa Williams) or a few brass players (Jimmy Nail / KWS) but Sinéad blows them all out of the water with what looks like a whole orchestra with her. It makes quite an impressive sight and an even more impressive sound.

This is the standout track and performance for me on the show tonight. Whatever you say about Sinéad, she can deliver a song. People did have a lot to say about her exactly one month on from this TOTP when Sinéad appeared on Saturday Night Live to promote “Am I Not Your Girl”. She sang “Success Has Made A Failure Of Our Home” and was scheduled to also perform “Scarlet Ribbons” but changed it to “War” by Bob Marley on the live show which she intended as a protest against sexual abuse of children in the Catholic Church. That wasn’t enough controversy for Sinéad though so she whipped out a photo of Pope John Paul II and, looking straight down the camera, tore it up whilst saying “Fight the real enemy”. Cue an explosion of outrage. The NBC network received 4,400 calls of complaint none of which stopped O’Connor’s accusations being proved ultimately true. NBC have never rebroadcast the show as it originally aired much in the same way that the infamous Sex Pistols/ Bill Grundy interview was banned for many years.

Snap! remain on top of the pile with “Rhythm Is A Dancer” and yet again it’s the promo video that we are served up. Why haven’t they been in the studio as yet? Could it be because Turbo B was in dispute with the act’s management and left before the next single “Exterminate!” was released? Also departing after “Rhythm Is A Dancer” was vocalist Thea Austin who’d only just joined the group. And I thought Sugababes held the monopoly on the revolving door approach to band membership.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Bananarama	Movin’ On	Nope
2	The Shamen	Ebeneezer Goode	I didn’t as it goes
3	Sonia	Boogie Nights	Never!
4	Dr. Alban	It’s My Life	As if
5	Skid Row	Youth Gone Wild / Delivering The Goods	Hell no!
6	ABBA	Dancing Queen	Not the single but we’ve all got Abba Gold haven’t we?
7	Richard Marx	Take This Heart	No thanks
8	Brian May	Too Much Love Will Kill You	I did not
9	Lionel Richie	My Destiny	Nah
10	U96	Das Boot	Das Boot!! No
11	Sinéad O’Connor	Success Has Made A Failure Of Our Home	No
12	Snap!	Rhythm Is A Dancer	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/m0015nq0/top-of-the-pops-03091992

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 13 APR 1995

Disclaimer

TOTP 30 MAR 1995

Disclaimer

TOTP 27 OCT 1994

Disclaimer

TOTP 13 OCT 1994

Disclaimer

TOTP 29 SEP 1994

Disclaimer

TOTP 10 JUN 1993

Disclaimer

TOTP 21 JAN 1993

Disclaimer

TOTP 07 JAN 1993

Disclaimer

TOTP 10 SEP 1992

Disclaimer

TOTP 03 SEP 1992

Disclaimer