UB40

TOTP 09 OCT 1998

In a truncated show (I think the Fawlty Towers repeats issue was at play again), there’s only seven hits being offered up to the viewing audience but only one of those has been seen before which is last week’s No 1. Our host is Kate Thornton who tells us in her top of the show intro that there’s “a slice of the riviera thrown in for free”. What can she mean? We’ll find out in due course but we start with Ace Of Base who, five years on from their debut hit and No 1 record “All That She Wants”, were still pestering us with their tinny sounding brand of reggae-lite Eurodance. After the sickly sweet but ultimately pointless entity that was their last single “Life Is A Flower”, they were back with a cover version of a Bananarama track. Get that – Bananarama and not fellow Swedes ABBA with whom numerous and completely illegitimate comparisons had been made. “Cruel Summer” was the song chosen supposedly at the demand of their record company. Maybe they thought Steps* had already cornered the market with ABBA soundalikes?

*Steps had themselves had a hit with a cover version of a Bananarama track earlier in 1998. “Last Thing On My Mind” made No 71 in 1992 for the Nanas whereas Steps took it to No 6.

Now this particular song has had quite the prolonged life. Originally a No 8 hit for Bananarama in 1983, it also went Top 10 in America the following year after it was included in the hit movie The Karate Kid. Five years on from that it was remixed and rereleased making it to No 19 in the UK charts. Then came this insipid version from Ace Of Base but get this – they didn’t inflict it upon the world once but three times! A bilingual second version with French boy band Alliage was recorded specifically for the French market and then in 2009, an eight track strong EP of remixes from Rico Bernasconi was released in Germany. Mein gott! Now that is cruel! Mercifully, we only get about 2:15 of the 3:30 total length of the track in this performance presumably as the show had more pressing matters in the Riviera…

…and suddenly were on the beach at Cannes with Jamie Theakston! What the…?! No lead up to it, no proper explanation – Theakston says something about being there for the television festival – and where’s Kate Thornton disappeared to? The camera angle doesn’t impart the sense of glamour and decadence that you’d expect with the French Riviera – it’s just the screen filled with Theakston’s slappable face until we get an aerial shot to show that it’s definitely Cannes beach although it doesn’t look that impressive, just a few palm trees and a tiny stage set up in a corner next to what seems to be a jetty. It’s hardly making the splash that executive producer Chris Cowey must have intended.

So who is the artist in Cannes for this ‘exclusive’ performance? Why it’s Billie of course who is giving us a preview of her second single “Girlfriend”, the follow up to her debut hit “Because We Want To”. Within a week it would follow its predecessor to the top of the charts thereby emulating this week’s No 1 artist B*Witched by having her first two singles not just go to the top but debut there. Pure and simple pop artists were clearly in vogue at this time. Also just like B*Witched, Billie’s second release wasn’t as immediate as her first but I guess it did the job of more than consolidating on that initial success. It does seem a bit basic though and it’s puerile chorus about asking someone if they have a girlfriend doesn’t really sustain but then it was probably perfect for her teenage girl fan base. After all, Billie herself had only just turned 16 a couple of weeks before this TOTP aired. Then we’re back to Theakston who does a link into the next artist back in the studio. So why was he in Cannes anyway? Maybe he was trying to get away from the trauma of having split up with his then girlfriend Natalie Appleton from All Saints? Billie’s song probably didn’t help. Oh, that’s what that exchange between Theakston and Robbie Williams was about the other week when the former introduced the latter onto the TOTP stage and they seemed to be arguing about who had the best girlfriend – Williams was dating Nicole Appleton at the time.

That artist that Theakston links back to in the studio is Bryan Adams who seems to be doing his best impression of Oasis with his new single “On A Day Like Today”. From the acoustic intro to the drenching of strings in the mix, it has a suspicious whiff of “Wonderwall” about it before it eventually goes full soft rock anthem at its climax. It really was a bit of an elephant in the room which was quite apt as the parent album’s cover featured Adams and an elephant’s trunk. After a run of medium sized hits during the mid 90s (including “On A Day Like Today” which peaked at No 13), the end of the decade and the new millennium would herald a string of bigger singles for Bryan. A duet with Mel C made the Top 3 which was followed by two unlikely hits (including a No 1 no less) with ambient/trance DJ Chicane. None of which sounded like Oasis.

After her successful duet with Monica on “The Boy Is Mine”, Brandy is on collab duty again for the follow up, this time with rapper Mase on the track “Top Of The World”. As we’ve seen previously when there’s a rapper/R&B artist get together, the former isn’t available in the studio so his contributions are supplied via the official video on a big screen at the back of the stage behind Brandy. As with her previous hit, the UK record buying public loved this and sent it to No 2 with sales of 200,000 copies. Me? You won’t be surprised to know that:

(a) I don’t remember it

(b) I don’t like it now that I’ve heard it

These types of R&B tracks do nothing for me. I just can’t seem to find any sort of foothold in them that I can grab hold of, no ‘in’ that I can squeeze through to maintain my interest. If I’d been in the studio audience for this performance, Brandy exhorting the assembled crowd to “Come on, sing along if you know the words” would have had zero effect on me not least because she then just sings “sittin’ on top of the world” repeatedly which is basically the title of the song but for the words “sittin’ on”. Even the least observant of us could surely have remembered/known two extra words?!

What on earth is this?! Well, it’s four young people on stage singing Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me” in an urban style badly that’s what it is but it could be an audition for Britain’s Got Talent*. This is just horrible. The people behind it were called 4 The Cause although the real culprits of responsibility would have been their record label I suppose for putting this garbage out. Hailing from Illinois originally but having relocated to Germany, they suddenly found themselves successful with this rubbish across Europe and so tried to repeat the trick with more covers of “Ain’t No Sunshine” by Bill Withers and “Everytime You Go Away” by Hall & Oates but thankfully neither hit pay dirt.

*Tellingly, they got a record contract after winning the Apollo Style talent contest at school in 1995.

Blimey! UB40 were still having hits in 1998? Yes, they were and they were still residents of the UK’s Top 40 as late as 2005 but “Come Back Darling” would be their final Top 10 hit ever. Despite having no doubt reviewed some of them in this blog, I couldn’t have named any of their hits in the 90s after their No 1 cover of “(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With You”. There were a few though, most of them from their last big selling album “Promises And Lies”. Their next studio album “Guns In The Ghetto” had disappointed commercially and so the band resorted to their reliable fall back position of releasing another volume of their “Labour Of Love” project. The first volume in 1983 and the second from 1990 had both been hugely successful and so I guess it made sense to go there again and “Come Back Darling” was the lead single from it. I have to admit to not knowing the original by Johnny Osbourne and The Sensations but I can only hope it’s better than this dreary, snooze-fest that UB40 dished up. Honestly, I couldn’t make it through to the end of this one – that’s how dull it was. It did strike me though, looking at the band up there on stage, how sad it is that this line up is completely and irreversibly fractured. Brian Travers and Astro have both passed away whilst the split between brothers Robin and Ali Campbell created a fissure so large that there are two versions of the band in existence with seemingly little hope of the two entities being reunified.

B*Witched are No 1 for a second week with “Rollercoaster” bringing to an end a run of six consecutive different chart toppers in six weeks. I mentioned earlier when discussing Billie that pure pop acts were order of the day in 1998 but it’s a claim which stands up when you consider some of the year’s biggest singles artists include Steps, Five, Aqua, Cleopatra and 911 as well as the already established pop big hitters like Boyzone and the Spice Girls. As if to crystallise that sentiment, four of them would appear on a single celebrating the ultimate in pop royalty ABBA with the medley single “Thank ABBA For The Music” that would go to No 4 six months later. Pop was most definitely back.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Ace Of Base	Cruel Summer	Never
2	Billie	Girlfriend	Nah
3	Bryan Adams	On A Day Like Today	I did not
4	Brandy / Mase	Top Of The World	Nope
5	4 The Cause	Stand By Me	Dear me no
6	UB40	Come Back Darling	Negative
7	B*Witched	Rollercoaster	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/m002m4hn/top-of-the-pops-09101998

TOTP 29 AUG 1997

Posted on March 31 by 80stastic

We’ve nearly got to that point in the 90s when one the decade’s most historic events took place – the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Two days after this TOTP aired, reports started to emerge that she had been involved in a car crash in Paris before her death, aged just 36, was confirmed. It really is one of those seismic incidents which anchors you in time. I’m guessing we can all remember where we were when the story broke. I myself was in my flat in Manchester doing not very much at all (well it was a Sunday) but from the moment news came in of what had happened, the coverage was wall-to-wall. Normal life seemed to be put on hold. Now, I should say straight out that I’m not a fan of the monarchy and don’t believe in the institution but I could appreciate that this was a tragedy especially for her two young children. What I couldn’t understand though was the reaction of the general public which seemed to be frenzied hysteria – vast swathes of the population seemed to lose all sense of proportion. There were stories of people missing funerals of family and friends to go to London to watch the funeral procession on its way to Westminster Abbey. Coverage of the funeral showed people wailing uncontrollably and hurling bunches of flowers at the coffin. I just didn’t understand nor agree with, what seemed to me, to be these disproportionate displays.

The day of the funeral on 6th September saw everything close in the morning as a mark of respect and so that the nation could watch the funeral. The Our Price store where I worked dutifully complied. We opened in the afternoon and the very first bloke who came in walked straight up to the counter and said “Have you got that song that Elton John sang at the funeral?”. In today’s digital world, that wouldn’t have seemed like an unreasonable request but back in 1997, it was a ludicrous question. I was flabbergasted. How did he think we would have copies of a single in stock of a song that had just been performed for the first time ever about an hour before. At this point, it hadn’t even been decided that it would be made available to the general public via a single release. I should be clear that the guy was asking for that version of the song specifically performed at the funeral and not just the original “Candle In The Wind” recording. Even if he’d have been happy with the original, we might have had it on a Greatest Hits but that would have been it. In 2025, a song from an event of such public interest could be made available on a streaming platform instantly but in 1997, the world just didn’t work like that. Ultimately, the song was released as a single about a week later but that’s a discussion for a future post. Right now, let’s sit back and watch TOTP as if in a more innocent time before Diana’s death.

Jayne Middlemiss is our host again and executive producer Chris Cowey is still wedded to the idea of incorporating a model of the figure 1 into the show’s opening to enforce the idea that it is still the No 1 music show on TV. This week, a glammed up Jayne in full evening dress walks on as the model No 1 drops to the floor behind her. No, you’re right it doesn’t really work does it? The opening artist is Jon Bon Jovi who continues the royal theme to this post with his single “Queen Of New Orleans”. The second track released from his “Destination Anywhere” album, like its predecessor “Midnight In Chelsea”, it was co-written with Dave Stewart of Eurythmics. A solo album by the man behind Bon Jovi was never going to be a huge departure from the sound that made him and his band global stars but “Queen Of New Orleans” is no “Livin’ On A Prayer”. It’s got a laid back feel to it with Jon growling his way through the lyrics whilst some rock guitars squall and squeal away in the background. Ah yes, those lyrics. It’s hard to believe that two men with the amount of hits to their names as Bon Jovi and Stewart could have come up with such useless words. For example:

“Me and Leigh met Summer of ‘95, in a burgundy dress looking finer than a French wine“

Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: David Allan Stewart / Jon Bon Jovi
Queen Of New Orleans lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group

Really? Burgundy and French wine in a line together? Talk about cheesy (thank God they didn’t!). Then there’s this:

“That night I made a move, man I felt hard, when I put my hands in her cookie jar”

Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: David Allan Stewart / Jon Bon Jovi
Queen Of New Orleans lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group

Oh please! Viz’s Finbarr Saunders would have baulked at that. And finally, in a blinding piece of self knowledge, we have this:

“She said baby our love’s just like your songs, the beat ain’t bad but the words are all wrong”

Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: David Allan Stewart / Jon Bon Jovi
Queen Of New Orleans lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group

Ha! Apart from appearing on a few charity singles, Jon Bon Jovi has yet to return to his solo career.

Shola Ama had nine UK Top 40 hits in total but apart from her cover of Randy Crawford’s “You Might Need Somebody”, I couldn’t have told you the names of any of them without checking her discography first. It turns out that this one – “You’re The One I Love” – would be her highest charting when it peaked at No 3. This was actually a rerelease of her debut single which stalled at No 85 in 1996. Her album “Much Love” came out on the Monday after this TOTP and would go to No 6 eventually selling 100,000 copies. Shola was big news and never bigger than when she won a BRIT award for Beat British Female and two MOBOs for Best Newcomer and Best R&B act. And then…well, it all went a bit flat. A follow up album appeared in 1999 but it was a commercial failure peaking at No 92. Shola would remain within the music business even featuring on a Top 10 hit in 2004 for The Pirates. However, it maybe wasn’t the career she might have imagined she would have after her success filled start.

As for “You’re The One I Love”, it’s a very serviceable R&B/soul hit the type of which was very prominent at this time but does it linger long in the memory? Not mine I’m afraid. Apparently, Shola’s son is a big name music producer called Mekhi or prollymac or something – he’s one of those ‘Nepo Babies’ which is what the kids are saying these days but I wouldn’t know about that or Mekhi/prollymac. In fact, I struggled to find anything to say about his Mum.

Who’s this? Conner Reeves? Do I know this guy? Let me think….Reeves…Reeves….I know Hollywood actor Keanu Reeves obviously and Country legend Jim Reeves. Hell, I even remember 80s footballer Kevin Reeves but Conner (with an ‘e’ not an ‘o’) Reeves? Nope, I’ve got nothing. What’s his hit called? “My Father’s Son”? That kind of sounds familiar but am I getting confused with that song by Mike + The Mechanics about a son’s regret over an unresolved conflict with their now deceased father – “The Living Years”. Actually, didn’t the bloke who had a hit with that song called “Jessie” do one called “My Father’s Son”?

*checks internet and cross references*

That’s him. Joshua Kadison and yes he did but that’s not this song. It’s all very confusing.

Anyway, Conner Reeves’ song was his debut hit of five (five!) in total and apparently big things were predicted for him but I’m not sure why on the strength of “My Father’s Son” as it’s a bit of a plodder. How would I describe his sound? Well, Wikipedia categorises it as blue-eyed soul which is as good a description as any I guess. As for his image, he’s giving me serious Gilbert O’Sullivan vibes with that cap. Did he always wear it? Was it his USP? He looks like a bit of a knacker to be honest. In short, I’m not sold. In fact, I’d go as far as to say I’d rather have “Son Of My Father” than “My Father’s Son”…

Hmm. The running order for this particular show isn’t turning out to be the best. Now we’ve got UB40 but it’s not the UB40 of their classic early 80s hits. No, the 1997 version of the band had certainly seen better days and was probably past its sell by date. They hadn’t released a new studio album for four years and had filled that gap with a Best Of Volume 2. “Tell Me Is It True” was their first release of any nature for two years and was initially from the soundtrack to the movie Speed 2: Cruise Control though it would later turn up on their album “Guns In The Ghetto”. As Jayne Middlemiss hints at in her intro, the band actually had a cameo appearance in the film but I didn’t know that until now as I’ve never seen it. I loved the original Speed starring the aforementioned Keanu Reeves (I love it when a post comes together) but he wasn’t in the sequel and it got bad reviews so I gave it a miss. There were a few supposed blockbuster movies out that Summer that didn’t really land – Event Horizon and The Fifth Element were two others. I actually fell asleep in the latter though I was talking to someone at work the other day who loves it.

Anyway, that’s all besides the point. What is the point? The music of course so was “Tell Me Is It True” any good? Well, having listened back to it, it was actually better than I expected. The verses echoed back to those glory days of their prime although the chorus was a bit of a letdown. Also a letdown was the reaction to the “Guns In The Ghetto” album so the band returned to that reliable sales generator the “Labour Of Love” project with Volume III released in 1998. The new millennium would see the band splinter acrimoniously but that’s a whole other story/film/documentary…

And yet another artist who I don’t know at all despite having been in full time employment in a record shop at the time of her biggest hit. The name Tina Moore does resonate with me but only because that’s the name of the wife of the 1966 World Cup winning England captain Bobby Moore. Tina Moore the singer? My memory bank is as empty as a MAGA supporter’s head. For the record, she had two UK chart hits with “Never Gonna Let You Go” the first and biggest of them. Now if it sounds a bit like Rosie Gaines that’s possibly because it was on the flip side of white label copies of “Closer Than Close” but it wasn’t picked up for an official release like its partner. When it finally was, it was this ‘Bump-N-Go’ remix by Kelly G (an associate of Chicago house legend Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley no less) that did the trick sending the track to No 7. I assume the “chicka-boom” comment by Middlemiss in her intro was a reference to the noise of the track’s two-step backing track was it? Look, I don’t know what I’m talking about do I? I’m clearly winging it here!

And so to a band whose name I do recall but I would struggle to tell you any of their songs let alone how they sounded. Symposium were ‘the best live band in Britain’ according to the Melody Maker’s front page in late March 1997. I obviously never saw them live but judging by this TOTP appearance, I’ve got a fair idea of what one of their gigs would have been like. “They’re noisy, they’re wild, they’re anarchic” Jayne Middlemiss tells us in her intro which I’m sure fitted perfectly with how the band’s label would have wanted them to be described but were they? Certainly their song “Fairweather Friend” had lots of pop punk energy but was it anything we hadn’t heard before? Green Day springs to mind. Maybe if I’d have been the same age as the band (18 or so) I’d have found them as entertaining as the even younger studio audience clearly did. Once again, I have to question the lack of security here – there’s a semi-mosh pit going on down the front and then, breaking a longstanding taboo, one of the band stage dives into the audience! Naturally, after such antics, there’s then a stage invasion just as we’ve seen recently with Oasis and to a lesser extent Stereophonics recently. What was going on here?!

“Fairweather Friend” would be Symposium’s biggest hit of three peaking at No 25. By 2000, the perennial problem of ‘musical differences’ would do for the band though they reformed for occasional gigs in 2022. By the way, they surely have two of the most tongue-twister type named members in their line up since Big Country drummer Mark ‘Unpronounceable Name’ Brzezicki – try saying Wojtek Godzisz and Hagop Tchaparian three times in a row.

What was executive producer Chris Cowey thinking of with this running order? After stage-diving and stage invasions with Symposium, the next act in the studio is Chumbawamba! All those youngsters in the studio audience needed calming down not given another track to get their adrenaline pumping! “Tubthumping” was definitely the latter! Thankfully, the first couple of rows of the audience seem to have settled into a rather nerdy ‘dance’ of bending over when singer Dunstan Bruce sings “I get knocked down” and raising their arms when he sings “but I get up again” before shaking their fist rather limply to “You’re never gonna keep me down”. Ah to be young again – actually, they’ll all be in their mid-40s now! Oh, and talking of unusual band member names, Chumbawamba had Danbert Nobacon and Alice Nutter in their ranks but obviously they were made up.

It’s a third week at the top for “Men In Black” and once again we have a superimposed Will Smith introducing the video. I think it worked OK once but I fear overexposure had caused the magic dust to disperse too far by this point. The same couldn’t be said for the single itself which continued to see off all opposition to remain at No 1 for this chart and the following week’s. However, we would all be saturated by the news of a car crash in Paris in the days to come after this TOTP was broadcast.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Jon Bon Jovi	Queen Of New Orleans	No
2	Shola Ama	You’re The One I Love	Negative
3	Conner Reeves	My Father’s Son	I did not
4	UB40	Tell Me Is It True	No and that’s the truth
5	Tina Moore	Never Gonna Let You Go	Nope
6	Symposium	Fairweather Friend	Nah
7	Chumbawamba	Tubthumping	YES!
8	Will Smith	Men In Black	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/m00293qd/top-of-the-pops-29081997?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 02 NOV 1995

Posted on March 30, 2024 by 80stastic

Woah! We’re into November in these 1995 TOTP repeats – that year is nearly over already! Not that I would have been thinking like that working in a record shop with the hectic festive trading period looming. I did ten Christmases with Our Price and they seemed to get progressively harder with the passing of every year. Maybe it was just the ageing process (I was 22 when I did my first and in my early 30s at the time of the last one) that meant I found them more and more tiring. Or maybe it was that the company expected us to get through them on less and less staff each year whilst simultaneously beating last year’s sales. I’d felt energised by the hustle and bustle of my very first Christmas but that feeling had dissipated over the years and coming to work had lost its sense of fun.

Presenting this TOTP though was a man who looked like he’d had loads of fun during his career as the lead singer of Madness what with all those wacky videos throughout the early part of the 80s. Whilst the band were on one of their hiatuses, Suggs undertook an initially successful solo career in this year keeping his profile high and affording him this ‘golden mic’ opportunity and what an opportunity! He got to host the show that had Madonna on it in person in the studio for the first time in eleven years! Suggs used this chance to hone his presenting skills and went on to secure the job of host on…oh yeah…Channel 5’s karaoke show Night Fever. Oh dear. Unbelievably, that show didn’t ruin his TV career and he went on to present shows including Salvage Squad, Inside Out and Disappearing London which won three Royal Television Society awards including one for himself as ‘Presenter of the Year’. Wow! Literally a few of days ago, I was listening to Gary Davies’s Sounds of the 80s show on Radio 2 and he announced that he was being joined by Suggs as co-host next week. I then saw him on The Jonathan Ross Show performing with Madness their new single “Round We Go”. All this proves that you can’t keep a good man down.

Right, that’s quite the lengthy intro so let’s get to the music and we start with a great tune. Echobelly were really hitting their stride by this point in their career with new single “King Of The Kerb” the second hit from their Top 5 album “On”. With this, “Great Things” and “Insomniac” (from their debut album “Everyone’s Got One”), the band had come up with a really strong trio of tracks. I wasn’t the only one who thought that – Madonna had shown an interest in signing the band to her Maverick label. Do you think they had a chat about it in the green room after this show? They ultimately didn’t sign due to their existing contractual arrangements and it was a change in said arrangements that would derail the band’s career. Having signed to Rhythm King with their records released on offshoot label Fauve, when the former’s distribution deal with Sony subsidiary Epic came to an end in 1996, a new deal was signed with Arista Records of the BMG group. This had the effect of Rhythm King being essentially shut down and subsumed by Arista. The band had reservations about the change of label and decided to stay with Epic. The contractual wrangling and singer Sonya Madan’s health problems (a potentially fatal thyroid issue) meant a third album “Lustra” wasn’t released for another two years by which point the band’s shine (and indeed that of Britpop) had lost its…well…lustre. The album only made No 47 in the charts. Echobelly have had various lengthy hiatuses since but are still a going concern and indeed are on tour later this year.

Talking of commercial declines, here’s another band who were starting down the other side of their own particular hill of success. MN8 began the year with a bang and a No 2 record in “I’ve Got A Little Something For You” and followed it up with two other Top 10 hits. By the time of fourth single “Baby It’s You” though, their chart positions were more of a knoll than a mountain. And rightly so by my reckoning. Although that first hit was annoying, it was catchy. This though, well it was just bland R&B styled pop wasn’t it? Its peak of No 22 could perhaps be explained away as the natural state for a fourth single from an album that had been out for six months as could the No 25 peak of its fifth “Pathway To The Moon”. However, when the lead single from the second album could only get to No 15 the following year, the alarm bells must have been ringing. That second album – “Freaky” – was a complete sales fail peaking at No 114. There has been no new material released by MN8 since though supposedly there have been talks over the years about a reunion.

Next, another showing of the video for “Heaven For Everyone” by Queen. The promo features footage from the films A Trip To The Moon, The Impossible Voyage and The Eclipse: Courtship of the Sun and Moon all by French filmmaker Georges Méliès. This wasn’t the first time that the band had used this technique – the video for 1984’s “Radio Ga Ga” incorporated images from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Perhaps not surprising as they were both made by the same director, David Mallett. However, this isn’t the one that’s shown here. A second video directed by Simon Pummell was included on the VHS release of Made In Heaven: The Films featuring performance artist Stelarc operating a robotic hand.

The Monday after this TOTP aired, the album “Made In Heaven” was released. It went straight to the top of the charts and despite only being available for two months was the 7th best selling album in the UK in 1995. The power and pull of Freddie Mercury was still very much alive after four years after his death.

It’s another performance of “Thunder” by East 17 now as they’ve landed in the charts at No 4 following their ‘exclusive’ appearance two weeks ago. Although they were hardly down the dumper at this point, for me at least, this period of the career was less than impressive. I’d liked their early singles – “Deep” was a great song- whilst you couldn’t help but take note of their scoring the previous year’s Christmas No 1. By the time of third album “Up All Night” though, the formula seemed to be failing. Sure they were still having hits and the album sold well but it did half the amount predecessor “Steam” had done. In a sure fire move that the wobbles had set in with record label London Records, their next album release was a Greatest Hits collection. Just fourteen months on from this TOTP, Brian Harvey (who looks a bit like Phil Mitchell in this performance if you squint) would give that radio interview and the band would start to implode. By the way, had they been giving fashion advice to MN8? Those big jackets looked very East 17.

P.S. The Walthamstow outfit’s erstwhile rivals Take That would release a single in 2009 called “Up All Night”. What are the chances eh?

And another band who have been on the show in recent weeks! This time it’s UB40 with their hit “Until My Dying Day” taken from their “Best Of Volume Two” album. Admittedly it’s not just second studio appearance as this time they are live by satellite from Brooklyn in the shadow of its famous bridge. As a location, it’s a step up from the university car park that Diana King performed in the other week but it’s still not great. For one thing, hasn’t this location been used by other artists before (or perhaps from the Manhattan side of the bridge?). Secondly, it’s not quite the shot of a tree we got during that Diana King performance but we do get a couple of views of just the bridge without the band on camera at all. Now some might say less of UB40 filling your TV screen was a good thing but it does seem rather odd in retrospect. These ‘satellite’ performances were really outstaying their welcome by this point.

Here’s yet another song I don’t remember at all but in my defence, there’s a good reason for that – it wasn’t a hit in the UK. Yes, it’s one of those rare occasions when the TOTP producers decided to give an ‘exclusive’ slot to a single that would fail to break into our Top 40. On reflection, giving such a platform to “Rock Steady” by Bryan Adams and Bonnie Raitt seems a strange decision. Sure Bry had become a units shifting behemoth in the 90s due to that Robin Hood song and indeed, had been at No 4 in the UK earlier in the year with “Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman” from the Don Juan DeMarco soundtrack. But Bonnie? A huge star in the States no doubt but over here, she’d only ever had one minor hit single when “You” made No 31 in 1994. In my head, she was the sort of artist whose albums would be featured in the Recommended Releases section in Our Price – not a hot enough record to guarantee sales but maybe a few could be squeezed out of it if it was discounted for a couple of weeks. The UK just didn’t really get her fusion of country/blues/rock. Look at these contrasting chart positions:

Album	Year	US Chart Peak	UK Chart Peak
Nick Of Time	1989	1	51
Luck Of The Draw	1991	2	38
Longing In Their Hearts	1994	1	26

“Rock Steady” was taken from Bonnie’s first live album “Road Tested” – yep, a live album. For an artist who had failed to set the UK charts alight with her studio albums, the idea that a live album would suddenly reverse that trend seemed an audacious strategy by her record label. Predictably, it did nothing over here.

Having spent a lot of words decrying Bonnie’s appearance on the show, I should say that my wife quite likes her. Well, she likes one of her songs to be more accurate. “Something To Talk About” featured on the soundtrack to the 1995 film of the same name starring Dennis Quaid, Julia Roberts and Kyra Sedgwick. One last thing to note here is that in his intro, Suggs depicts the duet as a ‘battle of the larynxes’ and pits Bonnie versus Bryan with a “ding ding round one” remark. Now isn’t that reminiscent of the aforementioned Night Fever show he would go on to host?

Suggs goes old skool for his next link by donning a bowler hat and sporting an umbrella – all classic props from the ‘nutty boys’ video heyday. It seems though that there may have been some sartorial collusion with the next act who are McAlmont & Butler with vocalist David matching Suggs in the chapeau department. Whatever this duo released after the towering epic that was debut single “Yes” it was destined not to match its magnificence. So it was with “You Do”. That’s not to say it wasn’t a good song – it was, it is but inevitably it felt a bit after the Lord Mayor’s show.

Their album “The Sound Of…McAlmont & Butler” appeared in late November though it was really just the two aforementioned hits and all the extra tracks from their CD singles which may explain its minor chart peak position of No 33. By then, the duo had parted ways anyway. An interview in the NME given by McAlmont about the lack of substance to his relationship with Butler plus some unfounded accusations of his homophobia hastened the split. Both pursued solo projects (Bernard’s debut album “People Move On” is a personal favourite) before a reunion in 2002 ushered in second album “Bring It Back”. Another prolonged sabbatical then occurred before the duo toured together in 2015.

And so to the big, nay HUGE exclusive performance. With her first appearance on the show in person for eleven years it’s….Madonna! I’m pretty sure this would have created some headlines back in the day. Not seen in the TOTP studio since that performance of “Like A Virgin” with that pink wig, Madonna suddenly found the time to be in the country to promote her latest single “You’ll See”. A new track written for her ballads collection “Something To Remember”, it’s a mature, emotionally charged love song who that Madge delivers competently which I think was the point of the whole project – to get people talking about her as a recording artist again , as a singer with an actual voice rather than the controversy courting, media baiting spectacle she had become. To that end, she appears here decidedly grown up in a dressed down yet stylish all black outfit and a classic, soft hairstyle. No gimmicks, no button pushing flashes of flesh – just a woman, her voice and a song to sing. And it works, though I have to say listening back to it now that it almost seems like a rehash of her 1986 ballad “Live To Tell”. It would return Madonna to the UK Top 5 whilst the album sold 10 million copies worldwide.

In 2024, is Madonna still relevant? I’m sure she still has a huge, global fanbase but is she as big a deal these days as a Taylor Swift (announced just yesterday as a billionaire!), a Miley Cyrus or even a countrified Beyoncé? I’m not sure. I think I would wish for her a more demure tail end of her career. All that Madame X stuff seemed a bit desperate. Madonna became one of the most famous people on the planet but even she’ll see that you can’t hold back the march of time.

Coolio and L.V. remain at No 1 with “Gangsta’s Paradise”. This record really was a phenomenon sales wise. Over two million copies sold in the UK alone, it would be our second best selling single of the year (only the bizarre Robson & Jerome craze prevented it from being top of the pile). Despite only being No 1 here for two weeks, it would spend the next five weeks either at No 2 or No 3. There was no quick descent down the charts for this monster. So how come it only got those two weeks at the top here? *SPOILER ALERT* Bloody Robson & Jerome again wasn’t it! Their single “I Believe” knocked it off the top spot and remained there for four weeks. Add that to their version of “Unchained Melody” (the aforementioned best selling single in the UK of 1995) and they had quite a lot to answer for this year.

Back to “Gangsta’s Paradise” though and its presence in the film Dangerous Minds meant that the movie’s soundtrack was also a massive seller topping the American album chart and going triple platinum. Despite it no longer being the UK No 1, we’ll be seeing it on TOTP twice more in the repeats to come. Like I said before, it was an absolute phenomenon.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Echobelly	King Of The Kerb	No but I had a Best of with it on
2	MN8	Baby It’s You	Never
3	Queen	Heaven For Everyone	Negative
4	East 17	Thunder	Nope
5	UB40	Until My Dying Day	No
6	Bryan Adams and Bonnie Raitt	Rock Steady	Nah
7	McAlmont & Butler	You Do	No I didn’t but I had their album
8	Madonna	You’ll See	I did not
9	Coolio / L.V.	Gangsta’s Paradise	I was one of the few that didn’t

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/m001xhz8/top-of-the-pops-02111995?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 26 OCT 1995

Posted on March 27, 2024 by 80stastic

After four consecutive shows of not having to suffer the frankly insufferable Simon Mayo as host, the smug one is back and this time he’s brought his mates with him. Yes, lingering around the studio for this TOTP is Chris Evans and his breakfast show crew but more of them later. The last time he was on, Mayo did that whole ‘Rhymin’ Simon’ schtick which was just intolerable. We don’t have that this time at least but he does start with some line that relates to a news story about a supermarket sandwich not being fresh. What that news story was actually about I have no idea but if you asked Mayo today what it was about I bet he would know. He’s the sort of bloke who’d have a spreadsheet of all the times he was on the show, what his links were and a laughter rating system as to how funny he was.

Anyway, let’s get to it with the music. 1995 was the year of rereleases with those afforded another chance becoming a much bigger hit second time around. However, the recipients of this exercise were generally dance tracks – The Lightning Seeds were most definitely and defiantly pop and none more so than the tracks on their “Jollification” album. This one – “Lucky You” – was initially the lead single from the album when released in August of 1994 but somehow missed the Top 40 when it peaked at No 43. Three hit singles and 14 months later it was made available again and this time made it all the way to No 15 becoming the album’s second highest charting single in the process. “Lucky You” is such a model example of a pop song that you would think it had been created in a laboratory. Crafted and perfected to within an inch of its life, it was ideal for daytime radio. The Lightning Seeds were my go to band on a Saturday afternoon in the Our Price store I worked in at the time if we needed to shove something on in a hurry as the last CD had finished playing. As a consequence, many of my colleagues hated The Lightning Seeds with a passion.

Ian Broudie has always maintained pretty much the same look throughout his career – mop(top) of hair, goatee beard and shades permanently attached. Only the flecks of grey these days indicate the passing of any time. As much as he knows how to write a good pop tune, I’ve never been overly convinced about his voice which isn’t the biggest you’ve ever heard. He wrote “Lucky You” with Terry Hall and it would suit the sadly deceased singer’s voice better I think. I much prefer Hall’s version of “Sense” which he also co-wrote with Broudie.

In direct contrast to Ian Broudie comes Meatloaf and his massive voice. In this week’s chart, he found himself in a four way tussle for the coveted No 1 spot. His new single “I’d Lie For You (And That’s The Truth)” was up against another new release from Coolio whilst the previous week’s No1 and No 2 from Simply Red and Def Leppard respectively were both performing well. In the final sales count, Meatloaf would just fall short of repeating the feat of “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)” by entering the Top 40 at No 2. It was still quite the achievement though for an artist who had only had one UK Top 10 hit prior to the biggest selling single of 1993 and confirmed how much the success of the “Bat Out Of Hell II: Back Into Hell” project had done to revive Meatloaf’s career and profile.

Oof! What on earth is this? Well, obviously it’s a horrible remix of one of the classic pop singles of all time. The more pertinent question is why? After The Human League made a successful if rather unexpected return to the charts earlier in 1995 with the album “Octopus” and its hit singles “Tell Me When” and “One Man In My Heart”, their previous record label Virgin decided to cash in on their ex-artist by rereleasing their first Greatest Hits album from 1988 which had gone double platinum in the UK. In a clever piece of negotiation with the band’s new label East West, they managed to licence the aforementioned “Tell Me When” and a new song entitled “Stay With Me Tonight” to be included on the album’s track listing thereby ensuring it lent it a veneer of authority and comprehensiveness.

A third track was added to the album which was a remix of “Don’t You Want Me (Remixes)” by Snap! and it was this abomination that was chucked out into the shops to promote the collection. Maybe it’s just that people of a certain age who were around at the time of its original 1981 release (like me) have an emotional attachment to it (especially as it was also that year’s Christmas No 1) that we find it hard to accept any deviation from its true form. Or, perhaps more obviously, the 1995 remix was a just piece of worthless shit and that’s why we hate it. There was certainly no love for it on social media when this TOTP repeat aired on BBC4 recently. The 1995 remix somehow got to No 16 in the charts but as for who was buying it, I can only assume completist super fans or the tone deaf.

Next we have perhaps the ultimate rerelease of the whole decade let alone 1995. I say rerelease but it’s actually a remix of a 1994 single that originally only made No 69 on the chart. By 1995, despite critical acclaim and being eight albums into their career, Everything But The Girl had only ever had three Top 40 singles of which two were cover versions. All that changed with “Missing”. Originally a lo-fi electronic dance single from their “Amplified Heart” album, the duo’s American record label suggested that it be reworked by the legendary remixer Todd Terry to be played in New York clubs. His beefed up house beats treatment of the track combined with Tracey Thorn’s enchanting, ethereal vocals and the killer line “like the deserts miss the rain” propelled the song into becoming a monster hit of epic proportions all around the world. In the UK it peaked at No 3 but even more impressively, it spent 14 (!) weeks inside the Top 10. Look at these chart positions:

8 – 6 – 6 – 4 – 3 – 3 – 4 – 4 – 5 – 5 – 5 – 4 – 5 – 8

How’s that for consistency?! It would sell over a million copies here whilst in America it got all the way to No 2 after a 28 weeks climb to get there. It would spend a then record breaking 55 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100. These were unbelievable stats – this is Everything But The Girl we’re talking about! They were hardly a gargantuan unit shifting monster. As much as I’d always liked them, I would never have predicted that they could sell this many records but then “Missing” was no ordinary song. It had that much sought after but rarely achieved quality of being able to crossover into lots of different markets. Punters who would never have listened to a dance track let alone buy one were queuing up at the local record shop to purchase a copy. The track transcended its supposed status as a song of the pop charts to become a part of the cultural tapestry. Tracey Thorn herself has said that “Missing” has been played at funerals and memorial services. Given its chart run detailed above and that we’ll likely be seeing EBTG a fair few times over the forthcoming repeats, I think I’ll leave it there for now.

Watching this next video, I’ve realised that I really don’t know that much about The Smashing Pumpkins. Sure, I know the titles of their first three albums and I could recognise their covers from having sold them to punters whilst working in record stores throughout the 90s. What they actually sounded like though? I wouldn’t be so sure. I know their hit “Tonight, Tonight” which I like but that’s pretty much the extent of my knowledge of their back catalogue. Take this single for example. “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” was the lead single from third album “Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness” and reached No 20 on the UK Top 40 and yet I’m not sure I’ve ever heard it before. How is this possible if I worked in a record shop you ask? Sadly, the stereotype of leaning on the counter all day, brew in hand listening to all the cool and groovy new sounds and being rude to any customers who attempted to ask you anything wasn’t true at all. Sometimes you were so busy that if I’d been asked at gunpoint to tell you what had been played on the shop sound system that day, I couldn’t have.

So now I’ve heard “Bullet With Butterfly Wings”, what is my considered opinion of it? Well, it’s OK I guess. An interesting chorus but it seems to take forever to get to it with the verses being as dull as. I wasn’t that keen on Billy Corgan’s voice either. Give me this instead by the Mock Turtles for a song about butterfly wings any day of the week…

“Ain’t Nobody” by Rufus and Chaka Khan is such an enduring song. 40 years old now and it is still a staple of radio playlists whether you’re Radio 2 or Retro Soul Radio. It’s a remarkable legacy for a song that was a big hit but not one of the biggest sellers of all time. It made the UK Top 10 in 1984 and No 22 in the US though it did top the R&B charts over there as well. Its long lasting nature is perhaps partly due to how many times it has been covered by other artists. “Ain’t Nobody” has been recorded by Jaki Graham, LL Cool J, Mary J. Blige, Natasha Bedingfield and as an interpolation with the Human League’s “Being Boiled” by Richard X vs Liberty X as “Being Nobody”.

And then there’s this version by Diana King. Needing a follow up to her mega selling hit “Shy Guy”, she (or her record label possibly) went for that tried and trusted strategy of releasing a cover version of a well known song. And it worked – sort of. It reached No 13 in the UK and made No 4 on the US Dance Club Play chart but it was nowhere near the seller that “Shy Guy” was. Perhaps deservedly so in my opinion. It seems fairly ordinary to my ears despite Diana trying to put a ragga tweak in there early on by randomly shouting out “Have Mercy!” in the intro. There then follows a fairly faithful rendition of the original but with a horrible, tinny sounding backing which loses all the smooth groove of the original. The whole performance is not helped by the location for this satellite exclusive which appears to have been filmed in the car park of Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. Yep, a car park. Diana is joined by two guys in flasher macks one of whom looks like he’s going to have a piss in a flower bed when he turns his back to the camera. At one point there’s a shot which is a close up of a tree because it has a small street sign which says ‘Top Of The Pops’ on it. A close up of a tree! This was a real low for these satellite performances. Bon Jovi at Niagara Falls this was not! Sadly, I can’t find the clip on YouTube though. Diana would have one more UK hit two years later with another cover version (this time of ”I Say A Little Prayer”) before the hits ran out completely.

The aforementioned Chris Evans finally appears on camera for this next link though mercifully he says nothing choosing instead to eat from a packet of crisps. Instead, Simon Mayo ignores Evans (presumably this was cooked up by the pair beforehand) and instead introduces the Radio 1 Breakfast Show newsreader Tina Ritchie to do the link. Ritchie does her job well enough despite Mayo doing a gyrating movement opposite her while she speaks. He seems to lower himself down her body while she speaks (though that may be the camera angle) as if he’s lap dancing for her. It’s a truly sickening sight. Why was he allowed to do it?! Horrible man.

UB40 is the act that Tina Ritchie introduces with a song I have zero recollection of. “Until My Dying Day” was released to promote the band’s second Best Of album snappily titled “The Best Of UB40 – Volume Two” which collected all their hits from 1988 to 1995. The first volume had gone six times platinum in the UK but its follow up did nowhere near the same business despite including their 1993 No 1 “(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With You”. Its sales can’t have been helped by “Until My Dying Day” which, dearie me, is dreary to the point of being soporific. @TOTPFacts says that the track was originally written for the soundtrack of the James Bond film Goldeneye. That can’t be right can it? Goldeneye? UB40’s song is more like Jap’s Eye!

Wait, wasn’t Cher on the show and in the studio last week? She bloody was you know! As if to distinguish between the two appearances, she’s come in fancy dress as Elvis this week seeing as her hit – “Walking In Memphis” – is all about him (sort of).

It’s an attempt to do something different I guess but she doesn’t really look like Elvis, rather a tired stereotype of a 50s Teddy Boy. It’s all a bit silly and Cher’s dance moves don’t add any authenticity at all. Maybe I’m missing the point and should just accept it as a bit of fun but I can’t get past the fact that Annie Lennox beat Cher to this look by a good 12 years and did it so much better…

And so to another new No 1 and this one has gone straight into pole position in week one making it the ninth single to do so up to this point in 1995 and the third on the bounce following Shaggy and Simply Red before it. Coolio was the winner of that aforementioned four way chart tussle with his “Gangsta’s Paradise” song. I say Coolio but I should also give props to his oppo LV who was also formerly credited on the track. This was an absolute monster of a record and similar to “Missing” earlier in the post, stayed on the UK Top 40 for what seemed like an eternity. Two weeks at No 1 but then three at No 2, two at No 3 and a further five inside the Top 10 on top of that.

Famously interpolated (there’s that word again) with Stevie Wonder’s “Pastime Paradise”, it was also featured heavily in the hit film Dangerous Minds starring Michelle Pfeiffer. Also like “Missing”, it was a huge crossover hit with record buyers who wouldn’t normally listen to rap music purchasing the single. It also garnered airplay support from radio stations that wouldn’t normally touch rap with a barge pole. In a 2020 poll by digital publication The Pudding, “Gangsta’s Paradise” was one of the most recognisable 90s songs amongst Millennials and Generation Z’ers.

I’m wondering now if our appetite for the song hadn’t been whetted by the film Pulp Fiction. The opening line “As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death” from Psalm 23:4 is very reminiscent off this scene courtesy of Samuel L. Jackson whilst the whole film, like the song, is about gangsters…

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	The Lightning Seeds	Lucky You	Not the single but I think I may have had the Jollification album at some point
2	Meatloaf	I’d Lie For You (And That’s The Truth)	Definitely not
3	The Human League	Don’t You Want Me (Remixes)	Love the original but not that remixed shite!
4	Everything But The Girl	Missing	No but I must have it on something surely?
5	The Smashing Pumpkins	Bullet With Butterfly Wings	Negative
6	Diana King	Ain’t Nobody	Nah
7	UB40	Until My Dying Day	Nope
8	Cher	Walking In Memphis	I did not
9	Coolio / LV	Gangsta’s Paradise	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/m001x9fl/top-of-the-pops-26101995?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 09 DEC 1993

Posted on December 7, 2022 by 80stastic

In the last post I made a claim that the No 1 was a bit of an anticlimax on the grounds that it followed the biggest boy band around who performed in the studio against a backdrop of 3D images (ooh!). By comparison, the No 1 was in its seventh week at the top and we were surely all getting a bit fed up of its video. It doesn’t seem right though does it? TOTP was always a chart based show highlighting which songs were the most popular in a chronological way via the chart countdown. Despite the use of such a linear tool, the implication is that the excitement heightens as we get to the nation’s favourite song. But what if said record doesn’t deserve such a reception? I realise this leaves me open to accusations of musical snobbery but if the No 1 is so heinous, what’s the plan? The question is especially relevant to this particular TOTP as, like a Tory minister doubling down on a failed economic policy, the ending of this show has two terrible songs.

Having said all of the above, the start of the show is pretty ropey as well. Bad Boys Inc were one of the many awful boy bands that appeared in the wake of Take That during the 90s. The whole thing reeked of cynicism with no more of a bigger example than this slushy ballad aimed at the Christmas market. After, two uptempo pop singles had made them bona fide chart stars (albeit in quite a minor way), they took that well worn path of releasing a slowie as their third single to, you know, showcase their diversity. The fact that it was shoved out into the marketplace as Christmas approached was surely just coincidence no? “Walking On Air” (note the similarity of title to established festive tune “Walking In The Air” from The Snowman) was ghastly whilst the performance here (I can’t find it in YouTube as nobody seems interested in recording it for posterity) is just as dire. The lead singer out front forever putting his hand to his heart to show his sincerity backed by three twirling, sliding goons all performing on a bed of dry ice. What a shower!

Disregarding the Bee Gees, I haven’t heard such high pitched vocals since Modern Romance did their ballad “Walking In The Rain” a decade earlier. What is it with ballads and the word ‘walking’? “Walking In Air”, “Walking In The Rain”, “Walking In Memphis” and of course who could forget George Michael’s ‘guilty feet’ in “Careless Whisper”. The record buying public showed their lack of affection for Bad Boys Inc with their own feet by walking past their local record shop and therefore not buying their single. It peaked at No 24.

Now here’s a very old track (even in 1993) which was suddenly and maybe surprisingly a very big hit. Sudden because it’s gone straight into the chart at No 5 and surprising because when it was first released in 1981 it did nothing at all sales wise. There is a reason for its explosion of popularity though and as usual it’s to do with record company promotional activities. “Controversy” was the title track from Prince’s fourth studio album and by 1993 he’d added another ten to that number so why was it plucked for single release at this point in his career? To advertise a Best Of album of course. “The Hits 1”, “The Hits 2” and “The Hits / The B sides” was a triple headed beast of a release documenting The Purple One’s best/most well known/biggest (delete as applicable) songs so far. Previous single “Peach” was released in the October to promote the set but that was a brand new composition I think. To give the Best Ofs an extra push for Christmas, another single was required and “Controversy” was selected for the job. Did I know this track? Don’t think I did. I only cottoned onto Prince from about 1983 when conversely “1999” was in the charts the first time around. Did I like it? Not that much. Was I surprised that it was such a big hit? Yes I was. As with “Peach” though, the two CD singles contained hits that weren’t included on the Hits albums plus there was a William Orbit remix of “The Future” so maybe that was it?

We’re back to this trend of the TOTP hosts telling us that an artist should have been on the show but can’t be because they’re ill/indisposed etc. I asked the other week why they bothered with this practice as they could have just shown the video without saying anything and we wouldn’t have known any better. This week, they’ve doubled down like…ah I’ve been here before haven’t I? They have made a complete spectacle of this issue though with Gabrielle. According to presenter Mark Franklin she can’t perform in the studio tonight and the reason is…Well, let’s ask Gabrielle herself because she’s in the actual studio! What?! Mark asks her if she’s OK and Gabrielle days “Not at the moment because I’ve got flu”. Got flu?! Got flu?! Why aren’t you in bed Gabrielle?! This is madness! Look, when I’ve had flu I’ve had to crawl to the bathroom if I needed the loo on my hands and knees. The idea that I could have got myself into a TV studio and been interviewed in front of a TV audience of millions is just unconscionable. I don’t wish to doubt her but really?!

Anyway, enough of the health issues, what about the music? Well, I’m guessing that Gabrielle’s record label were ever so slightly uncomfortable at this point. After the euphoria of a No 1 single with her debut single “Dreams”, might they have been expecting a bigger follow up hit than the No 9 that the unfortunately entitled “Going Nowhere” supplied? If so, then a lot must have been riding on “I Wish”. Sadly, it wasn’t really up to the task being a fairly average piece of soul/pop and it peaked at No 26. Maybe it just got lost in the Christmas rush. Gabrielle would recover to bag a further eight Top 10 hits including No 1 “Rise” in 2000. Seems like Gabrielle’s wish came true.

The Bee Gees are up to No 6 in an unexpected tilt at the Christmas No 1 spot with “For Whom The Bell Tolls”. To mark the event we get a live by satellite performance from New York. As with the vast majority of these satellite specials, it’s a total let down. Maybe I’m viewing them through 2022 eyes and in 1993 it may have been a major event but I can’t help but think it’s totally lame. A completely uneventful run through of the song performed underneath Brooklyn Bridge is interlaced with some totally non related shots of ice skating at the Rockefeller Center. And that’s it. Yes, it’s a cinematic backdrop I guess with the Statue of Liberty visible in the background and a helicopter comes into view at one point but I was more fascinated by who the fourth Bee Gee was up there with Barry, Maurice and Robin.

There’s an easy line to be written here about the next artist and the title of her latest single but I’m not that obvious. All I’ll say is that 1993 is surely a year that Dina Carroll would never forget. Five hit singles and an album that was the highest selling debut by a British female artist in UK chart history at the time? It was the stuff of dreams. The last of those five hits was “The Perfect Year” which was from the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Sunset Boulevard. It seemed a bit of an anomaly to me at the time. Firstly, it wasn’t on the aforementioned album (“So Close”) which confused and upset a few punters in the Our Price store I was working in and wouldn’t appear on an album until Dina’s sophomore effort “Only Human” appeared a whole three years later.

Secondly, the schedule for its release had clearly been set to cash in on the Christmas holidays market with the lyrics even referencing New Year’s Eve but it was hampered by the extended success of previous single “Don’t Be A Stranger”. So well received had it been that it was still in the Top 10 and outsold “The Perfect Year” on the latter’s first week of release. Clearly, record label A&M would not have wanted her previous hit to be splitting sales of her new one but because of the latter’s Christmas theme, they couldn’t keep it back any later. Dina having two simultaneous hits added to the customer confusion in store:

Customer: Do you have the Dina Carroll single?

Me: Which one? There’s two

Customer: The one that’s in the charts

Me: They both are

Customer: The one that’s a big ballad

Me: They both are

Customer: Well, I’ll get her album then I’m covered

Me: Her album doesn’t have both singles on it

Customer: Are you having a laugh?

Me: Not really, no

Dina’s performance here is very professional but then she’d had plenty of practice at being on TOTP that year. It felt like she was on the show every other week. Her black and white outfit is very effective against the Wintery backdrop though those impractical, oversized sleeves must have been a nightmare at the dinner table. Also, why did they feel the need to insert some clips (presumably) from the video while Dina was singing? They looked so incongruous. Children running across a field and then staring at the camera motionless – why? Then there’s the old fella. The expression he had on his face reminded me of something and it’s this. My sadly departed mother-in-law used to work as a receptionist in a doctor’s surgery and would sometimes bring home freebies from the pharmaceutical companies like mugs. She had one that was just an old man grinning on it. The first time I saw it I couldn’t understand why anyone would have that image on a mug and then I turned it around and saw the drug it was advertising – it was a brand of laxative. Aaah…

“The Perfect Year” had to settle for a chart peak of No 5, two places lower than “Don’t Be A Stranger”.

https://youtu.be/oIwVk6aFuek

Four Breakers now starting with UB40 whose single “Bring Me Your Cup” I don’t recall at all. It was the third track lifted from their “Promises And Lies” album and listening to it now, it’s actually a lot better than I was expecting. It starts out very understated but forms an unexpected ear worm very quickly with its lilting rhythm allied to Ali Campbell’s soothing vocals. Should probably have been a bigger hit than No 24 but then the album had been out for over four months by then so maybe it was to be expected. Not a bad effort though.

In amongst the endless diet of Eurodance bollocks that 1993 served up there were the occasional morsels of unexpected taste. Songs that would appear for no apparent reason and then the artist would pretty much disappear again. Off the top of my head I’m thinking Spin Doctors, The Frank and Walters and this lot – Blind Melon. These US psychedelic rockers reminded me of fellow countrymen Jellyfish who similarly are known in this country for one hit and not much else despite there being so much more to them. Blind Melon’s contribution to the story of 1993 was “No Rain”, a hippy, trippy, winsome tune with some Beatles influences thrown in for good measure. It sounded like an antidote to some of the god awfulness populating the charts and yet again a complete outlier.

Helping to promote the song was the video featuring the ‘bee girl’, a tap dancer in a bee costume and large glasses who gets laughed off stage and then spends the rest of the film trying to dance for anyone who will let her. She eventually finds an unlikely outlet for her routine – a field of similarly dressed people all dancing together. The girl playing the character would become a bit of a star, hobnobbing with the likes of Madonna at the MTV awards before having a career as an actress appearing in two episodes of US medical drama ER. Blind Melon themselves would have two further very minor UK chart hits before disbanding in 1999. They have reformed a couple of times since despite the drugs overdose death of vocalist Shannon Hoon.

Name a Pet Shop Boys single released in 1993? “Go West” right? Has to be. No? “Can You Forgive Her” then? Still not the one you’re thinking of? “I Wouldn’t Normally Do This Kind Of Thing” – well, no I don’t habitually spend hours trying to remember the titles of Pet Shop Boys singles but…oh, of course! That was the third track released from their “Very” album and in many ways is the quintessential PSB song. Eccentric title? Check! Swirly synth back beat? Check! Gloriously catchy, camp melody? Check! Typically deadpan vocals from Neil Tennant? Check! This was what they did best. Sadly, I think it got caught up in the Christmas rush and didn’t even make the Top 10, peaking at No 13.

The kaleidoscopic video features Chris and Neil in daft wigs that make the former look like Mike Flowers of Mike Flowers Pops (two years before anybody knew who he was) and the latter like Louis Balfour, host of The Fast Show’s Jazz Club. Nice!

The final Breaker comes from “the most successful rap group of 1993” according to host Mark Franklin. Were Cypress Hill that big?

*checks their bio*

Seems they were. The band have sold 20 million albums worldwide and in 1993 their second album “Black Sunday” went straight into the US charts at No 1 selling 261,000 copies in its first week. Their eponymous debut album was also still on the charts at the same time and they became the first hip hop artist to have two albums in the Top 10 simultaneously.

From “Black Sunday” came this third single “I Ain’t Goin’ Out Like That”. I’d liked the House Of Pain sounding “Insane In The Brain” (who couldn’t?) but by this one I’d probably lost interest. Maybe I had a beef with them as the album was one of those that always needed a temporary inlay card to display it otherwise the real CD cover would get nicked especially as the booklet contained 19 facts about the history of hemp and the positive attributes of cannabis. The middle class, white kids in Altrincham where I was working loved all of that stuff and especially those T-shirts and posters with the image of an alien on them with a massive reefer blazing up bearing the legend ‘Take me to your dealer’. Laughed their arses off at that every time.

“I Ain’t Goin’ Out Like That” peaked at No 15.

We have arrived at the first of those two terrible songs that end the show. By 1993, Cliff Richard was absolutely synonymous with Christmas. Not only had he claimed the festive No 1 twice since 1988 (thrice if you count his contribution to Band Aid II) but he seemed to have a tilt at it every year. “We Should Be Together” was his offering in 1991 peaking at No 10 and “I Still Believe In You” was strategically released in late November the following year to try and capture those Christmas sales making it to No 7. Come 1993 and Cliff was chancing his arm once more with “Healing Love”. Not a specifically Christmas themed song for once, it was actually the last of five singles released from his “The Album”…erm…album. It was co-written by Nik Kershaw who knows his way around a decent pop tune but this definitely wasn’t one of them. It’s not just that it’s a sluggish, turgid, completely unexceptional tune but the lyrics are dreadful. Really hackneyed stuff about losing the battle but winning the war and how about this for a line a seven year old could have written…

“Now I can see that you’re feeling sad…”

Come on! For this performance, Cliff has turned up in a jacket and tie and looks like he’s got his schedule wrong and was expecting to be on Wogan and not TOTP. As ever, he’s brought with him that guy from the aforementioned Modern Romance as one of his backing singers who’s been with him since “Mistletoe And Wine”.

“Healing Love” never hit a sniff at topping the charts peaking at No 19 but Cliff never really gave up on his quest for another Christmas No 1. The following year, he teamed up with his old pal Phil Everly for a double A-side of “All I Have To Do Is Dream” and a remix of his old hit “Miss You Nights” but it topped out at No 14. He couldn’t have come any closer in 1999 with the divisive “The Millennium Prayer” which actually went to No 1 and was still top of the pile with just one week to go before being toppled by Westlife. Undeterred, he went again in 2003 (“Santa’s List” – No 5) and 2006 (“21st Century Christmas” – No 2) and this year he has released a Christmas album. Cliff was 82 in October. You have to admire his longevity if not his music.

Just…just…f*****g WHY?! What were people thinking?! Oh, yeah. Of course. There was no thinking happening at all. A complete lack of brain activity. How else can you explain this total failure of any sense of taste on such a widespread scale? This monumental aberration. Nothing about “Mr Blobby” by Mr Blobby deserved anything but our complete contempt. So why was it f*****g No 1? Were 5 year olds (or their parents) buying it? When The Teletubbies became a phenomenon a few years later with the pre school population and released a record, I could just about understand parents doing just that but Mr Blobby wasn’t quite the same type of character. His beginnings weren’t on children’s TV but an early evening light entertainment show presumably not being watched by toddlers so who was his single appealing to? It certainly wasn’t funny and neither was its accompanying video which featured a number of celebrity cameos. Obviously, Edmonds was there being responsible for the whole debacle but there’s also a very young looking Jeremy Clarkson as Mr Blobby’s limo driver, Carole Vorderman, Wayne Sleep and bizarrely ex-footballer and pundit Garth Crooks. Mr Blobby is seen in various scenes where he inevitably falls over destroying everything in his path which includes parodies of four well known recent pop promos – “Addicted To Love” by Robert Palmer, “Rhythm Is A Dancer” by Snap!, “I Can’t Dance” by Genesis and “Stay” by Shakespear’s Sister. The last one particularly grinds my gears for the pure reason that it uses actual footage of the original in the parody – why? We all knew which video it was lampooning when the camera switched to the lookalike Marcella Detroit so why try and install some credibility by using images of the real one? I don’t know why this especially offends me but it does. Anyway, this madness will all be over soon as Take That will be top of the charts next week and surely also the Christmas No 1 won’t it? Won’t it?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Bad Boys Inc	Walking On Air	Of course not
2	Prince	Controversy	No
3	Gabrielle	I Wish	Nope
4	Bee Gees	For Whom The Bell Tolls	I did not
5	Dina Carroll	The Perfect Year	Nah
6	UB40	Bring Me Your Cup	Negative
7	Blind Melon	No Rain	No but maybe should have
8	Pet Shop Boys	I Wouldn’t Normally Do This Kind Of Thing	No but I assume it’s on their Pop Art Best Of which I have
9	Cypress Hill	I Ain’t Goin’ Out Like That	It’s another no
10	Cliff Richard	Healing Love	Never happening
11	Mr Blobby	Mr Blobby	What do you think?

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001frnn/top-of-the-pops-09121993

TOTP 19 AUG 1993

Posted on October 5, 2022 by 80stastic

After weeks of cramming twelve or even thirteen acts into the show’s running order, the TOTP producers have taken pity on my sorry ass and given me just ten to review for this episode and four of those have been on before. This is music to my ears as I’m running behind schedule in banging these posts out.

We start with a band not seen on the show since the 80s I’m guessing whose appearance here would be a valedictory one as far as TOTP was concerned. The Pogues had been in a state of flux for most of the decade before 1993 turned up a hit for them out of the blue. After Shane MacGowan was fired in 1991 for finally breaking the patience of the rest of the band after one too many binge drinking sessions, Joe Strummer stepped in to take over on vocals before founding member Spider Stacy took on the job full time. They released a cover of “Honky Tonk Wonen” by the Rolling Stones the following year but it failed to make the Top 40. I recall my huge Pogues fan Our Price manager at the time playing the single as soon as it came out of the delivery box on the morning of release and then being very disappointed approximately three and a half minutes later.

Spider Stacy was still in post as the band reconvened to record the “Waiting For Herb” album from which “Tuesday Morning” was the lead single. It’s a decent tune and knocks spots off most of its chart contemporaries but with the greatest will in the world, it’s no “Sally MacLennane” and Spider is no Shane.

The Pogues split in 1996 before reuniting j 2001 and disbanding for the final time in 2014.

As with one of the shows the other week, TOTP is suddenly taken over by UB40 and associates as first we get the video for their latest single “Higher Ground” which accompanies the 40-11 chart rundown and then we get their mate Bitty McLean in the studio. I’m not sure if I’m surprised or not by the chart statistic that “Higher Ground” is their first Top 10 hit written by themselves since the appropriately entitled “Sing Our Own Song” in 1986. Well, they did do a lot of cover versions you know.

The video is pretty dull stuff with the band performing against some sort of industrial wasteland intercut with clips of amongst other things a trapeze artist (higher ground?). As with most UB40 promos, the whole thing seems to be carried by Ali Campbell’s cheeky grin.

On with the nitty gritty and that little ditty from Bitty. Now I thought that Bitty Mclean‘s “It Keeps Rainin’ (Tears From My Eyes)” was a bit shitty (OK I’ll stop now!) but plenty disagreed with me as he was up to No 3 on his way to a peak of No 2. It was also a massive hit globally going to No 1 in the Netherlands and New Zealand where it topped the charts for seven weeks. Bitty’s dance moves were something to behold. He swayed and staggered about waving his arms as if drunk and looking like he might topple backwards at any moment. Very Shane MacGowan.

Despite his seven UK Top 40 hits, I wonder if anyone really remembers Bitty these days or has his nickname been usurped by this recurring sketch from Little Britain?

What do you get if you combine London Boys’ dance moves and Peter Andre’s sense of style? This confident looking bloke apparently who is fronting an act called Aftershock and their single “Slave To The Vibe”. I have zero recollection of either Mr. Aftershock (whoever he was) or his track but then he’s not helped in his quest for immortality by the work of the TOTP cameraman. He makes a right hash of filming his dance moves that surely would have sealed his place in musical posterity had he actually managed to capture them. Sadly, he manages to focus on everything but the front man and even when he does turn the camera on him, a studio audience member’s head totally obscures the shot! I can’t find a clip of the performance so you’ll have to take my word for it.

Apparently it was on the soundtrack to erotic thriller Sliver alongside the aforementioned UB40’s “(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With You” but I’ve never seen that so there’s another reason I don’t remember it.

https://youtu.be/rSSzRv3lBvQ

Just the two Breakers this week (which explains the reduced amount of acts in the show). I’m guessing there was just a lack of new entries / high climbing records this week? Anyway, the first Breaker is basically a mini- episode of Rock Family Trees. The Breeders began life as an outlet for the writings of Pixies bassist Kim Deal who was unsatisfied with the direction of the band. Whilst touring with Throwing Muses, she got their guitarist Tanya Donnelly on board with the project and they produced a demo which got them a deal with 4AD Records to whom both their current bands were already signed.

Debut album “Pod” was not commercially successful but did receive the kudos of being named by Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain as one of his favourite records ever. An EP called “Safari” was then recorded before Donelly departed the project to form Belly who were also signed to 4AD and who would hit with their single “Feed The Tree”. Deal recruited her sister Kelley to replace Donelly even though she couldn’t actually play guitar at that point and they recorded the album “Last Splash” from which “Cannonball” was the lead single.

A staple of every indie nightclub DJ’s record box, I myself even cut some rug to it at Fifth Avenue in Manchester occasionally. Its blistering, staccato rhythms and distorted vocals imbued it with a full-force power that felt like it could peel the skin off your face. A truly breathtaking record in every sense. The best ever record to only achieve a peak of No 40? Quite possibly.

One of the biggest selling singles of the year in America next. Mariah Carey had always been a sales phenomenon in the US with her first five singles all going to No 1 over there. This side of the pond, we were a bit more lukewarm in our reception. The highest position achieved by any of those singles in the UK was No 9. History was to repeat itself with the release of “Dreamlover”, the lead single from her third studio album “Music Box”. Yet another No 1 in America, it would top out at No 9 over here.

It was perfect for daytime radio – light but not lightweight, bouncy but not bumpy, it also saw Mariah ease off on that (in)famous vocal range. It also allowed her to pursue her interest in hip-hop via the employment of producer Dave Hall who had worked on Mary J. Bilge’s “What’s The 411?” album. The fluffy, feel-good video was a perfect visual vehicle for the track and I always picture Mariah in her checked shirt cavorting about in a field of hay when I hear the track but that’s enough of that!

Could this be the final time we see Tasmin Archer on TOTP? Quite possibly. A superstar in the making with her No 1 “Sleeping Satellite” less than a year before, she had already been relegated to an also ran come August 1993. “Arienne” was the fourth hit from her debut album “Great Expectations” but was also the worst performing as each release peaked lower down the charts than its predecessor. I always thought this was a more obvious follow up to “Sleeping Satellite” than actual second single “In Your Care” and had record company EMI gone that route then surely it would have landed higher than its No 30 peak here.

I quite liked it but maybe that was due to its similarities to “Carrie Anne” by the marvellous Hollies – Tasmin totally nicks their phrasing for her song. Taking of that name, have you ever met anyone called Arienne before? You’re doing well if you have. Between 1880 and 2020, only 428 babies were named Arienne in the US making it the 18,714th most popular name of all time. As for Tasmin, she would return to the UK Top 40 one more time when her “Shipbuilding” EP of Elvis Costello covers just sneaked in during 1994.

To Miami Beach now for a satellite link up with the Bee Gees who are in the charts with their “Paying The Price Of Love” single. The more I listen to this one, the more excruciating it sounds. Unlike Mariah Carey who toned down her high pitched vocals for “Dreamlover”, Barry Gibb has turned the falsetto-meter up to a spine tingling, Spinal Tap-esque 11. I’m sure there were bits of it that only our dog could hear. And those outfits they were wearing! The Bee Gees made very little sense sartorially or sonically outside of the disco era.

WHO?! You may well ask. Their/his (?) name was Sinclair and the song was “Ain’t No Casanova” and that’s about all their is to know about this whole minuscule footnote of chart history. There’s very little else out there online. As with Tasmin Archer borrowing heavily from The Hollies for her hit “Arienne”, so Sinclair seemed to have revisited a previous chart hit for inspiration. Remember “Casanova” by Levert from 1987? The very first line of that song is ‘I ain’t much on Casanova’. I mean come on!

Sinclair’s record plugger must have either done a hell of a job or just got lucky to get a slot on TOTP when the record had only entered the chart at No 37. In any other week it surely would have been a Breaker? The appearance helped it to a peak of No 28 and then…nothing. Probably for the best.

Another week at the top for Freddie Mercury and “Living On My Own” and yet another artist on the show that had a remarkable vocal after Mariah Carey and Barry Gibb. Who had the biggest vocal range though? Well, Classic FM published an article this year where they compared the voices of artists from Prince to Pavarotti and Bowie to Bocelli. Freddie Mercury comes in with an impressive 4 octave F2 to E6 range with Barry Gibb just behind him on 3.4 but Mariah Carey topped them all being able to go from F2 to G7, a span of 5 octaves. Ouch! Cease is the word!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	The Pogues	Tuesday Morning	Nope
2	UB40	Higher Ground	No
3	Bitty McLean	“It Keeps Rainin’ (Tears From My Eyes)”	Never
4	Aftershock	Slave To The Vibe	Not my vibe at all
5	The Breeders	Cannonball	I must have it on something surely
6	Mariah Carey	Dreamlover	Nah
7	Tasmin Archer	Arienne	I did not
8	Bee Gees	Paying The Price Of Love	Wasn’t ever happening
9	Sinclair	Ain’t No Casanova	Negative
10	Freddie Mercury	Living On My Own	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/m001cjqx/top-of-the-pops-19081993

TOTP 05 AUG 1993

Posted on September 28, 2022 by 80stastic

I started the previous post talking about the poor state of the BBC’s musical output in 1993 and the landscape altering changes that were coming to both Radio 1 and TOTP. Well, one of them has just happened ahead of schedule. Radio 1 DJ and pretty much the embodiment of the comedy characters Smashie and Nicey Dave Lee Travis resigned on air three days after this TOTP aired. Apparently he was due to leave the station in ten weeks time anyway when his contract ran out but so irate was the ‘Hairy Cornflake’ about what was going on in the corridors of power at the station that he chose to have his own little private or rather very public moment of venting.

“…and I really want to put the record straight at this point and I thought you ought to know – changes are being made here which go against my principles and I just cannot agree with them”
“Profile: Dave Lee Travis”. Aircheck Tracker. Archived from the original on 22 October 2009. Retrieved 13 November 2008.

DLT was referring to the changes being ushered in by new controller in waiting Matthew Bannister that would lead to a massive overhaul of the station and its presenters. Simon Bates, Gary Davies, Alan Freeman, Bob Harris and Paul Gambaccini would follow him out of the door soon after. Eventually even Steve Wright whom Bannister had put on the breakfast show slot would resign* ushering in the era of the self styled saviour of Radio 1 Chris Evans. Heaven help us.

*Writing this coincidentally on the day of Steve Wright’s last ever afternoon show on Radio 2

TOTP would undergo its own major transformation a few months on from the comings and goings at Radio 1 but for the moment it was business as usual. Let’s see who was doing the rounds this week…

Well, there’s Juliet Roberts opening the show with her single “Caught In The Middle” for starters. Long before this hit, Juliet had a gig on a TV show called Rockschool. Nothing to do with Jack Black, it was a BBC programme that ran for four years and showed viewers techniques for making rock and pop music using guitar, keyboards, bass, drums etc.

I don’t remember this at all but by the comments against some of the clips on YouTube, the 80s kids loved it. It did have some pretty big names appear on the show such as Gary Moore, Vince Clarke, The Communards and Midge Ure. The presenters were pretty wooden but they were good musicians. Guitarist Deirdre Cartwright in the thumbnail below had been in a band called Painted Lady who would go on to become Girlschool. Play the opening song in the clip below. It sounds like prog-poppers It Bites who knew their way around a tune or two…

The clip below features Juliet (1:56) talking about singing styles. She also co-hosted a Channel 4 show called Solid Soul that was basically a retooling of America’s Soul Train.

All that work in front of the camera should have made her TOTP appearance here a doddle. She looks pretty confident for sure and nice to see an almost totally female backing band behind her (I think the drummer is a bloke). The 1993 trend of the tall hat started by Linda Perry of 4 Non Blondes carries on with Juliet’s choice of headgear. Top (hat) stuff.

What on earth is going on here?! Daniel O’Donnell on TOTP?! At a time when Matthew Bannister was lurking the corridors of Radio 1 on a dinosaur hunt to turn the station back to its original raison d’être of being for ‘young listeners’, what was the natural successor to Val Doonican doing on the BBC’s prime time pop music show?! Bizarre doesn’t begin to cover it. Even host Mark Franklin sounds surprised when he introduces him.

Look, I know Daniel O’Donnell has a massively loyal fan base who swear by him and he wasn’t doing any harm by giving them what they wanted to hear but in terms of the symbiosis between the BBC’s two main musical arms, it seemed like an outlier at best. To put it into context, it wouldn’t be long before Radio 1 Head of Production Trevor Dann would ban Status Quo records from being played on the station.

“Whatever Happened To Old Fashioned Love” was only O’Donnell’s fourth single release and he would only ever release eighteen in a fourteen year period fifteen of which would make the UK Top 40. Albums were a different matter altogether. Check out these numbers:

Studio albums: 38
Compilation albums: 13
Live albums: 4

Wow! That’s a lot of Daniel O’Donnell! Big props by the way to the floor managers for this show for getting the studio audience to scream at Daniel as if he was a member of Take That.

The Madonna video for “Rain” again?! This is the third time in four weeks! And it was a non-mover this week (albeit within the Top 10)! Overkill much? It would get no higher despite all this exposure. I said in a recent post that you only had to look at the fact that all five singles from the “Erotica” album made the Top 10 in the UK as evidence that she was still current, popular and relevant at this time. However, what I didn’t say was that four of them (the four consecutive releases after the title track) failed to make the Top 5, the first time that had ever happened. She wouldn’t have another No 1 record until “Frozen” five years later.

One place higher than Madonna we find Urban Cookie Collective with “The Key The Secret” and unlike her Madgesty, they are on the up. Their ride up the charts so far has been as follows:

40 – 29 – 20 – 11 – 6

They would rise to No 2 the following week where they would stay for two weeks kept off the top spot by Freddie Mercury. It would then spend the next three weeks inside the Top 10 and a further three inside the Top 40 before finally dropping out.

The other day the tweet below appeared on my timeline:

Mental note to oneself – when in office don’t randomly pipe up ‘I’ve got the secret’ when someone says, ‘I’ve got the key.’ It leads to confused looks and questions about what secret you know. Not everyone has song lyrics from 1993 still playing in their head.
— Lucy Mitchell (@LucyMitchAuth) September 27, 2022

The replies to Lucy’s tweet showed that there were loads of us with similar lines from songs that we pull out automatically given the correct prompt. Mine and my wife’s include “(Hey You) The Rock Steady Crew” by Rock Steady Crew and “Fresh” by Kool And The Gang. Within the replies to Lucy’s tweet, someone managed to get in another 1993 reference:

At a wedding once and a bridesmaid stands to do a reading entitled ‘What is Love?’ To which my husband whispers ‘baby don’t hurt me’ I don’t think our row heard any of the reading
— Bronagh (@BristowBronagh) September 28, 2022

The well worn tale of soap star to pop idol has another chapter. How many had already made that transformation by August 1993? Well, off the top of my head there’s Kylie and Jason obviously, Kylie’s sister Dannii, Craig McLachlan, Stefan Dennis (!) and that’s just from Neighbours. If we look closer to home, we find perhaps where this whole phenomenon began with another resident of the aforementioned Albert Square. Seven years prior to this, Anita Dobson took “Anyone Can Fall In Love” into the Top 5 starting a flurry of EastEnders chancing their arms as pop sensations. Nick Berry, Letitia Dean and Paul Medford, Sophie Lawrence all had hits of varying size whilst there were also some feeble failures from the likes of Tom Watt and Peter Dean. None of them though seemed to have the credibility that Michelle Gayle had.

She’d been on our screens as Hattie Tavernier for over three years by this point but left Albert Square to pursue a pop career full time. Her debut single was “Looking Up” and it was no crappy cover version designed to deliver a one-off hit. I could imagine someone like Dina Carroll, Kim Appleby or even Louise post Eternal performing it. An uplifting, catchy chorus aligned with a well placed one word sample (‘Rejoice!’), it sounded current and relevant and well…on the money for 1993. Michelle herself displays no signs of imposter syndrome in her confident TOTP turn but then this wasn’t her debut musical performance…

https://youtu.be/e1e9mDIar0I

Go to 18:25

Fresh ‘n’ Fly there wrekkin’ the mike (PSYCHE!). “Looking Up” made No 11 (not quite the Top 3 that host Mark Franklin predicted then) and its success was enough to convince Michelle and her label RCA that she should quit EastEnders to be a full time pop star. She would go on to have seven Top 40 hits (including her most well known tune “Sweetness”) and recorded two albums before leaving RCA to sign with EMI where she was the victim of an artist rostering reshuffle and never released any recordings with them. She has returned to music periodically with a second place finish in 2003’s Reborn In The USA retro music contest and even had a go at Eurovision in 2008.

They’ve dropped the number of Breakers from five to four this week (thank god!) and we start with a collaboration between two artists at either end of the alphabet. Aswad and Yazz were at school together Mark Franklin tells us and they looked each other up again to record a cover of Ace’s 1975 hit “How Long”. We’ve seen the cover version as career revitaliser strategy countless times before but both Aswad and Yazz’s fortunes certainly needed a tonic in 1993. Neither had managed a hit in three years and in the case of Yazz especiall, her career was a mess. After the huge success of “The Only Way Is Up” and the “Wanted” album at the end of the 80s, she’d record two albums for two different labels neither of which was released. “How Long” was the lead single from her third LP attempt that did see the light of day but “One On One” disappeared without trace leaving only that Ace cover to remind us of Yazz’s name. It would be her final chart hit when it peaked at No 31. Aswad though would score a Top 5 hit with “Shine” the following year. They were in the news for tragic reasons recently when founding member Drummie Zeb died aged just 62.

Next a huge dance hit from The Goodmen or is it The Good Men or is it Chocolate Puma or even Zki & Dobre? Confused? Well, these were just a few of the names that Dutch DJ and production duo René ter Horst and Gaston Steenkist went by. Not names that roll off the tongue naturally – that may explain the aliases. If their real names aren’t familiar then their tune “Give It Up” surely is to anybody frequenting the club scene around this time as it was huge. An African rhythm combined with that regimented drum sound was ubiquitous and led to it being a global hit especially in the US where it topped the dance chart. So massive was it that it crossed over into the mainstream and became a No 5 hit on the UK Top 40. Given its success, it’s rather surprising that it was never shown on TOTP again. Maybe they didn’t know what to do with it. Its impact led to it being sampled two years later by Simply Red for their No 1 hit “Fairground” but let’s not go there eh?

https://youtu.be/s3YGonwsQuI

Talking of No 1 records, here comes a future one courtesy of Culture Beat and “Mr Vain”. This lot were yet more Eurodance chart botherers and as they will be chart toppers shortly, I’ll keep my comments about them in this brief Breakers appearance…well…brief. Here’s a nice little bit of pop trivia for now though. “Mr Vain” was the first record to got o No 1 in the UK that wasn’t released on 7’’ vinyl.

Bon Jovi complete this week’s Breakers with the fourth single from their “Keep The Faith” album. Was “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” just a rewrite of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”? Bit harsh but then the band have incorporated the Stones song into their composition when performing it live so there must be some similarities structure wise. The black and white promo video features a number of scenes clearly meant as a tribute to / stolen directly from A Hard Day’s Night and also Jim Morrison’s grave in Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris. I went there once and there are some incredible figures from history buried within it. Chopin, Edith Piaf, Marcel Proust, Oscar Wilde…and yet all anybody seemed interested in was the singer of The Doors. I saw many hand made signs saying ‘This way to Jim’ and at his actual grave, someone had laid not flowers but a nicely rolled joint. It’s what he would have wanted.

“I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” peaked at No 17.

This week’s live by satellite performance is by UB40 and comes from the Garden State Arts Centre, New Jersey. It’s another pointless exercise as the only camera angle we get is of the band performing “Higher Ground” on a two level stage. Completely dull. Also completely dull was their song which was the second single from the “Promises And Lies” album.

This was a very commercially successful time for UB40. As Mark Franklin says, they’d just had a No 1 single in “(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With You” and the album was also a chart topper. By my reckoning, this was also the last really successful era of the band. There had been a few during their career – the heady days of their politically powerful first hits like “One In Ten”, their covers period of “Labour Of Love” and “Red Red Wine”, the chart topping collaboration with Chrissie Hynde on “I’ve Got You Babe” and then this 1993 spell. “Higher Ground” was a bit of a stinker though.

This episode of TOTP became ‘The UB40 Show’ by be end of it with Ali Campbell introducing the next act who was actually one of their mates. Bitty McLean was a tape operator at the band’s recording studio originally – the reggae Rick Astley then – before being promoted to co-producer and engineer for them. He even provided backing vocals for some of the “Promises And Lies” album. His debut single was a cover of a 1961 Fats Domino tune “It Keeps Rainin” which he retitled “It Keeps Rainin’ (Tears From My Eyes)” presumably much to the annoyance of the TOTP graphics team.

I hated this as it was just more evidence to me of what a terrible year for music 1993 was turning out to be. Plastic reggae with a ragga style shout out at the start of it just to jump on that bandwagon. Horrible. As always, I was in the minority and the record soared to No 2 in the charts. Bitty would have a total of seven UK Top 40 hits.

A fourth and final week at the top of the heap for Take That with “Pray”. They needn’t have worried though as it was the first of eight No 1 singles in the first part of their career. They will be back in a few weeks with “Relight My Fire” accompanied by the dreadful Lulu.

dsfghjk

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Juliet Roberts	Caught In The Middle	Nope
2	Daniel O’Donnell	Whatever Happened To Old Fashioned Love	As if
3	Madonna	Rain	No
4	Urban Cookie Collective	The Key The Secret	I did not
5	Michelle Gayle	Looking Up	Negative
6	Aswad and Yazz	How Long	Nah
7	The Goodmen	Give It Up	No thanks
8	Culture Beat	Mr Vain	Never happening
9	Bon Jovi	I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead	No but I had a promo copy of the Keep The Faith album
10	UB40	Higher Ground	I did not
11	Bitty McLean	It Keeps Rainin’ (Tears From My Eyes)	Just awful – no
12	Take That	Pray	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/m001c94b/top-of-the-pops-05081993

TOTP 17 JUN 1993

Posted on September 8, 2022 by 80stastic

It’s mid June 1993 and the big news story on this particular day was that Manchester United bought Nottingham Forest midfielder Roy Keane for a then record £3.75 million. And yes, you’re right this is meant to be a music blog so here’s a Roy Keane inspired ditty…

This Morrissey single never made the Top 40 and so this TOTP performance was never broadcast until a viewers vote got it played on retro show TOTP2 in 2003. Mozza would often change the lyrics to “never seen a keener midfielder” when performing it live and the track was played over the closing credits of Keane’s 2002 documentary As I See It.

Right, that’s the 1993 news done. On with the show and we start with, as per usual, a high tempo dance track courtesy this time of The Time Frequency and a track from their “The Power Zone EP” called “Ultimate High”. This all feels a bit 1991 if not 1989 with a definite whiff of Italian House about it. On first glance I actually thought there might be a Germanic influence as it looked like one of the obligatory anonymous blokes at the back on keyboards was dressed like a member of Kraftwerk circa “The Man Machine” era but he’s actually just wearing a red jacket over a black T-shirt.

I’m kind of intrigued as to why they called themselves The Time Frequency and not just Time Frequency. The addition of the definite article seems incongruous somehow. Time Frequency seems to fit better for a dance music project to my mind. I wonder if the band naming process went something like the scene in 1991 film The Commitments? In a discussion about what the band should be called, manager Jimmy Rabbitte, in response to suggestions like ‘Free Beer’ (always draws a big crowd) and ‘A Flock Of Budgies’ says:

We have to be “the” something. All the great sixties bands were “The Somethings”

Looking at this performance from The Time Frequency, I don’t think they look half as much fun as The Commitments…

When I think of 1993, I don’t immediately bring to mind a disco revival but there was one in amongst all the Eurodance nonsense. We’ve already seen Boney M (or at least a version of them) back in the charts and in a week or so Gloria Gaynor will go Top 5 with a remix of “I Will Survive”. And then there’s Sister Sledge who are into their third hit of the year with a remix of “Thinking Of You”. I was just 16 years old awaiting my ‘O’ Level results when it was first a hit in the Summer of 1984. Nine years later and I’m a married man working in a record shop in Rochdale.

I’m not sure I had that sort of perspective at the time though. It was probably just another single to be sold to the punters. I never minded this though either in 1984 or 1993. And what’s a true test of a good song? If it can be covered in a completely different style by an artist outside of the originator’s genre of course. I present Paul Weller…

Did someone mention Eurodance? Yes, I did of course but that doesn’t mean I wanted to hear any and certainly not from this bloke. For some reason, in my head, Haddaway has become the pin up boy for all the musical shite that 1993 threw our way with his song “What Is Love” being the biggest, stinking turd in the toilet bowl. I’m sure he’s a nice guy but I just hated this. Hadaway and shite!

Bizarrely, just like Cliff Richard who was a Breaker on the show last week, Haddaway’s album was also just called “The Album” meaning there were two albums on the album chart at the same time called “The Album”. Got that? Good.

The circular spotlights in this performance look familiar. Oh yeah, the Mysterons. That’s it…

From Captain Scarlet to Dr Who now as we find good, old Sting doing this week’s live by satellite performance (from Pittsburgh) which features what appears to be the opening titles of the Jon Pertwee era doctor on the walls in the background.

https://youtu.be/1OV64UUxICY

Anyway, it looks like, after weeks of coming close, we have arrived at the actual most boring satellite performance in TOTP history. There is literally nothing going on here (if you discount the Dr Who lighting) with Sting sat down throughout whilst he sings “Fields Of Gold”, the third single taken from his “Ten Summoner’s Tales” album. So unenthusiastic is Sting about the whole prospect of performing that he hasn’t even learned the words to the song as he appears to have a lyric sheet in his hand. He just sits steadfast and motionless on his chair with a wry smile on his face as if he’s in on some band in joke or has just farted and knows it’s going to be a bad one that will linger. Or maybe this was some sort of preparation for a bout of tantric sex that he is infamous for. Meanwhile, the only other camera shots we get are of the guitarist fingering the strings of his instrument. Hmm. Maybe it is something to do with tantric sex? After all, look what the man himself says of the song courtesy of @TOTPFacts:

Sting on the lyrics of "Fields Of Gold": "In England, our house [in Wiltshire] is surrounded by barley fields, and in the summer it's fascinating to watch the wind moving over the shimmering surface like waves on an ocean of gold." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) September 2, 2022

"There's something inherently sexy about this sight, something primal, as if the wind were making love to the barley. Lovers have made promises here, I'm sure, their bonds strengthened by the comforting cycle of the seasons." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) September 2, 2022

The song itself tends to divide opinion. As this TOTP repeat aired, Twitter comments ranged from “brilliant song” to “absolute shite”. I don’t mind it I have to say and it took on a whole new lease of life when the now departed Eva Cassidy did a version of it which was played on the radio extensively by Terry Wogan. Though never released as a single in the UK, Cassidy’s posthumous career was based largely around this song and “Over The Rainbow” which saw her compilation album “Songbird” go to No 1 in the UK in 1998.

Sting’s original peaked at No 16.

One of the biggest hits of the year now from a complete newbie. I’d be lying if I said I’d heard the original Tracy Chapman sampling promo of “Dreams” by Gabrielle before the official release sans sample came out on Go! Beat in 1993 but there was one and here it is…

Apparently it was played in the clubs a lot around ‘91/‘92 but I was not really frequenting clubs much at the time on account of being permanently brassic. It must have reached quite a few people though as when the officially sanctioned (some may say sanitised) version came out, pre-demand was so high that it entered the chart at No 2, the highest position ever at the time for a previously uncharted act*.

*That record would be broken just a year later when Whigfield went straight to No 1 with “Saturday Night”.

Who was Gabrielle though? This was the second time in under a year that a young, female singer appeared from nowhere to score a huge smash hit following Tasmin Archer in 1992. Well, she was Louise Gabrielle Bobb and she hailed from Hackney, London. She’d had the condition ptosis causing the drooping of the upper eyelid since childhood hence the eye patch she wore in all her public appearances and performances. I can’t remember what the general reaction to the eyepatch was at the time, whether people saw it as an affectation or not but it certainly added an element of intrigue to her. Where Tasmin Archer had her ‘Who Is Tasmin Archer?’ poster campaign to raise her profile, Gabrielle had her eyepatch.

The thing about “Dreams” that I never understood for years was what the words to the second line of the chorus were. It was almost unintelligible. Thankfully, the world is digital these days and so a quick Google reveals them to be:

Look at me babe, I’m with you

Hmm. Bit of an anticlimax that.

Right I’m really behind with these TOTP reviews so let’s whip through these Breakers starting with Kingmaker. This lot should have been a lot bigger than they were and indeed looked they would be for a while but record company interference did for them. Their legacy was a back catalogue that was been given a deserved revisit in the form of 5 CD box set “Everything Changed” courtesy of reissue specialist label Cherry Red a couple of years ago. This single, “Queen Jane”, was the follow up to “10 Years Asleep” and would make No 29 in the charts.

Now I’m writing this a few days after the Queen passed away which has resulted in all the TV schedules being rearranged to accommodate coverage of the aftermath and also to ensure nothing deemed inappropriate at this time is broadcast. What has this got to do with Kingmaker? Well, there’s their band name for a start. Could well be deemed to be in bad taste. Then there’s the case of their 1992 single “Armchair Anarchist” with its lyrics about bombing the House of Lords was deemed too insensitive for daytime radio and failed to make the charts. Fast forward thirty years and I’m wondering that if the Queen had died a week earlier, would this edition of TOTP have been allowed to be broadcast? Look at these lyrics in “Queen Jane”:

A funny thing happened on the way to here, the headlines read like the end was near for Queen Jane

They say your vacant face, helps the tourist trade, If they could see you in your leisure time, well!

Queen Jane, you’ve got everything to die for

Considering that radio stations are currently tying themselves up in knots over coming up with sombre pop songs to play, I’m pretty sure “Queen Jane” wouldn’t make the cut.

What I remember about Brian May and the early 90s is as follows:

“Driven By You” and that Ford car advert
Freddie Mercury’s death and the memorial concert
“Too Much Live Will Kill You”

What I don’t remember is a song called “Resurrection” with legendary rock drummer Cozy Powell. From the few seconds it’s afforded as a Breaker, I have no wish to get to know the song better as it sounds like a dreadful noise.

I’m sure I say this every time Thunder are on the show but they have a remarkable singles chart record. Eighteen Top 40 singles points to incredible consistency and yet none of them got any higher than No 18. I guess they had a sizeable, loyal fanbase but never managed to crossover with a huge single like, say, Extreme did with “More Than Words”. This single “Like A Satellite” is a case in point. The fourth and final track to be lifted from their “Laughing On Judgement Day”, it peaked at No 25.

This year’s Eurovision winner next and in 1993 it was Ireland’s Niamh Kavanagh with “In Your Eyes”. This was the first time that a winning song in the contest had featured on the UK chart since 1987 when Johnny Logan made No 2 with “Hold Me Now”. Ireland was in the middle of a run of three consecutive Eurovision wins between ‘92 and ‘94 (they also won it in ‘96) but the unlikely truth is that the United Kingdom has won the contest more recently than Ireland.

Niamh had some musical chops though having performed as lead and backing vocalist on the soundtrack to the film – and I genuinely didn’t know this when I referenced it earlier – The Commitments! “In Your Eyes” though is nothing like any of the soul songs found in that film. It’s a straight up, big ballad that sounds like it could have been a hit for Gloria Estefan. Predictably it was No 1 in Ireland and peaked at No 24 in the UK.

1993 was pretty good to Terence Trent D’Arby. He’d recovered from the false step that was sophomore album “Neither Fish Nor Flesh” to comeback with a Top 10 LP in “Symphony Or Damn” and four Top 20 hit singles. “Delicate” was the second of them and was a duet with Des’ree who’s only chart entry to that point had been her Top 20 hit “Feel So High” from the previous year. An (ahem) delicate ballad, it showcased the diversity of TTD’s talent. Whether you liked him or not, the guy could sing and write a decent tune. Featuring a groovy, Eastern sounding melody, it was a nice antidote to all that Eurodance nonsense.

The careers of Terence and Des’ree went in opposite directions after this coming together. The former would release his “Vibrator” album in 1995 which failed to consolidate on the success of “Symphony Or Damn” and he would not release another for six years before ultimately changing his name to Sananda Matreiya. Des’ree would go on to sell a million copies in the US of her 1994 album “I Ain’t Movin’” and achieved a No 1 record in Europe (and No 8 in the UK) in “Life” in 1998.

Despite working in a record shop at this time, there have been a substantial number of singles from this year that I have nothing down for in my memory banks. Here’s another one – “I Can See Clearly” by Deborah Harry. Nothing to do with Johnny Nash, this track was the lead single from Harry’s fourth (and so far final) solo album “Debravation” and was written by legendary record producer Arthur Baker. All of those solo albums followed a pattern in that each produced just the one hit which in every case was the lead single. For the completists out there the others were:

1981 – “Backfired” from “KooKoo”

1986 – “French Kissin In The USA” from “Rockbird”

1989 – “ I Want That Man” from “Def, Dumb & Blonde”

I have to say that I don’t know “Backfired” but “I Can See Cleary” doesn’t match up to the other two songs for me. All very unremarkable. What is remarkable is this performance and I’m not talking about the lead singer of Blondie having brown hair. I haven’t checked but is this the first time an artist has appeared on TOTP with a magician? Perhaps a more pertinent question would be why did Debbie (sorry Deborah!) feel the need to do it? The guy doing the magic tricks is surely the most incongruous addition to an act since Howard Jones’s dancing mime Jed in 1983?! It all looks so lame. First he makes a candle appear then disappear, then a pair of glasses (presumably to help Debbie – Deborah damn it! – see clearly) then a flaming torch and finally he sets fire to a flower. All very underwhelming. Now if he’d have changed her hair colour from brown back to blonde on stage, I would have been impressed.

“I Can See Clearly” peaked at No 23 but she reactivated Blondie in 1999 notching up a No 1 record with “Maria”.

UB40 remain at No 1 with “(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With You” but they surely must have been looking over their collective shoulders at Gabrielle gatecrashing the charts at No 2. They would have been right to as this would prove to be their last week at the top of the pile. It was a different story in the US where it was No 1 for seven weeks. Parent album “Promises And Lies” also went to the top of the charts and was the seventh best selling album of the year in the UK. The band would never be as big again. Only twice have they revisited the Top 10 of the singles chart since (follow up “Higher Ground” made No 8 whilst 1998’s “Come Back Darling” just snuck in at No 10). The band splintered in 2008 when Ali Campbell left to form his own version of the group with fellow departees Mickey Virtue and Astro. Rumours abounded that ‘Mr Ubiquitous 1993’ Maxi Priest was to replace Ali Campbell but in the end it was his brother Duncan Campbell who stepped into that role. Tragedy struck the UB40 family in 2021 with both founding members Brian Travers and Astro passing away.

Ghj

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	The Time Frequency	The Power Zone EP	Never happening
2	Sister Sledge	Thinking of You (RAMP Radio Mix)	Nope
3	Haddaway	What Is Love	I say again, ‘Headway and shite!’
4	Sting	Fields Of Gold	No
5	Gabrielle	Dreams	Nah
6	Kingmaker	Queen Jane	I did not
7	Brian May and Cozy Powell	Resurrection	Resurrection?! It should have been buried deep in the ground never to be heard of again! That’s a no by the way.
8	Thunder	Like A Satellite	Negative
9	Niamh Kavanagh	In Your Eyes	Not likely
10	Terence Trent D’Arby and Des’ree	Delicate	Nice tune but no
11	Deborah Harry	I Can See Clearly	No it was crap
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/m001bm8s/top-of-the-pops-17061993

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 03 JUN 1993

Posted on August 31, 2022 by 80stastic

In a recent post I made a reference to the ex-footballer Chris Waddle who had just been voted the 1993 sports writers’ Player of the Year. As this is a music blog, I obviously had to mention Waddle’s almost surreal attempt at pop superstardom in 1987. I even inserted a clip of him performing on TOTP. Unfortunately that seemed to cause the misapprehension amongst some that I was mixing up my TOTP years. As such, I need to be careful in this intro as I am going to talk about his partner in crime, Glenn Hoddle. You see, the day after this TOTP aired, Glenn was appointed as the new manager of my beloved Chelsea. Back in 1993, this was big news for Chelsea fans. Growing up, I’d seen my team managed by a succession of useless gaffers like Ken Shellito, Danny Blanchflower and Geoff Hurst. The latest incumbent Ian Porterfield had been similarly challenged. Hoddle, by contrast, was in demand after taking unfashionable Swindon Town into the Premier League. Plus, he brought some glamour with him. At 36 years of age, he was young for a manager and of course he had been a pop star (of sorts) in the 80s. Let’s see if there’s anyone in this show who can hold a light to Glenn in his “Diamond Lights” pomp…

…oh God no! Not him! I knew it must be coming as it’s one of the big hits of 1993 but I always, always hated it. I talk of Haddaway and his Eurodance song “What Is Love”. This guy was like a German Sydney Youngblood in that both served in the forces before deciding they’d give this pop star lark a go – Haddaway was in the Navy (you can sail the seven seas) and Youngblood the US Army. His debut single was pretty much No 1 in every country in Europe apart from the UK where he had to be satisfied with a No 2. Yes, it was catchy but all those Eurodance hits were catchy – it didn’t guarantee any measure of quality though. It’s not even that Haddaway couldn’t sing as the guy clearly had some pipes on him. It’s just that there seems to be a never ending conveyor belt of this sort of stuff this year and even by early June I was sick of it all. Yes, I guess it’s got a bit more soul to it than something like “No Limit” but that stabbing synth riff used to make my skin crawl.

The other reason I couldn’t take Haddaway seriously was that, having spent three years in Sunderland as a student, hearing his name immediately sent the synapses in my brain firing to arrive at the North East phrase of ‘hadaway n’ shite’ – a proclamation of negativity or disbelief to put it politely.

Look, if I want a song called “What Is Love” there’s one right here which is infinitely more preferable to me…

Isn’t this No 1 yet? Must surely be next week then. UB40’s version of “(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With You” has exploded sales wise – we were shifting loads of it in the Our Price store in Rochdale where I was working – though I was never quite sure why. It just sounded so clunky and mechanical and…well…ham-fisted in its production. All the charm of the song seemed to have been sucked out of it. Nothing wrong with putting a completely different spin on a song of course but it felt like they put as much love into it as they would have writing a shopping list. Compare their laborious take on the song with this joyous version from 1986 by Lick The Tins…

I know the UB40 version was on the soundtrack to the film Sliver but surely that wasn’t responsible for its popularity was it? I’ve never seen the film but it was an erotic thriller so surely didn’t have that mainstream appeal of something like Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves and we all know what that film did for Bryan Adams. Surely the age rating it would have been given would have precluded some potential record buyers from even getting into the cinema? I’m guessing that the promo video for the single is based around CCTV scenes featured in the movie some of which clearly indicate that Sharon Stone’s character has gone further than just crossing her legs as per her Fatal Attraction character. I’m no prude but I’m surprised the BBC didn’t edit them out.

Right here comes Jamiroquai to “Blow Your Mind” except that this track was hardly going to do that. It’s just a watered down version of their first hit “Too Young To Die” isn’t it? A jam session that’s been told it’s a song and believed the messenger. Jay Kay just scats his way through it with a lot of Fast Show jazz club free-styling – the wearing of his trademark silly hat doesn’t convince. Neither does the staging of this performance. Why has the stage been made to look like someone’s living room? There’s two sofas with members of the band sat precariously on arms and a backrest (that’s the sort of thing I’d tell my child off about) plus a fruit bowl on a coffee table possibly featuring plastic fruit. Why? How is that a depiction of blowing your mind? Just nonsense.

“Blow Your Mind” peaked at No 12, a chart position so high that it is the only thing that is mind blowing about the whole release.

Now, host Tony Dortie informs us that the next artist should have been performing live in the studio but she’s unwell so we have to make do with the video for “Lords Of The New Church” by Tasmin Archer. On reflection, surely this track should have been the follow up to her No 1 smash “Sleeping Satellite” rather than the excellent but commercially challenged “In Your Care”? It’s much more up tempo and certainly more radio friendly and, according to Tasmin herself, was written about a new breed of politicians in the early 90s and definitely not the 80s post punk band of the same name.

All of the above theory though is debunked by the chart position the single attained – a lowly high of No 26, ten places lower even than its predecessor. Was Tasmin losing her audience already at this point? If so, could it have been halted if the release order of “In Your Care” and “Lords Of The New Church” had been reversed? We’ll never know but what is a fact is that she suffered from a case of diminished returns when it came to her five hit singles whose chart peaks were:

1 – 16 – 26 – 30 – 40

I’m not sure what’s going on in the video which seems to revolve around a man in a gold lame suit and a Stetson hat travelling through Nevada on his way to Las Vegas. Perhaps a studio performance from Tasmin might have sold the record more. When you consider that she was scheduled to do just that but couldn’t due to ill health, was that single event a sliding doors moment in her career? Yeah, I’m probably reading too much into that aren’t I?

Here come this week’s Breakers starting with Sade and their (Sade are a band not a singer remember) single “No Ordinary Love”. A little bit of a chart curio this one. I’d forgotten this but this was actually the second time it had been a Top 40 hit in under a year. How so? Well, originally released as the lead single to fourth album “Love Deluxe”, it had peaked at No 26. Sade had even performed it in the TOTP studio. However, subsequent singles from the album had failed to chart and sales of the album were less than its predecessor. In fact, much like Tasmin Archer, Sade had suffered from diminished returns as well but with their albums. “Love Deluxe” sold half of what third album “Stronger Than Pride” sold which in turn sold half of sophomore album “Promise”. All of them performed less well than the iconic debut “Diamond Life”.

As such, were Epic Records in a panic about their artist’s commercial value and that’s why they rereleased a single that had proven to be popular (albeit in a small way)? Maybe but it seems more of a case of opportunism as the rerelease* was surely due to the inclusion of the song in the film Indecent Proposal. Yes, if a song was in a film in 1993 it was more than likely to be an erotic thriller and probably this one. Strangely though, despite featuring in the actual film proper, it didn’t make it onto the official soundtrack. Maybe that’s why the promo video doesn’t include any clips from the film in it – probably some complicated licensing issues. Ah yes, the promo video that sees Sade Adu as a mermaid. Hmm. I wonder what angle the director was going for?

The rereleased “No Ordinary Love” peaked at No 14.

*When is a re-release actually a re-entry? Apparently the 1993 version had the same track listing and catalogue number as its 1992 counterpart.

And talking of Indecent Proposal…here’s a song that is on the official soundtrack to the film. We saw Lisa Stansfield on the show in person last week performing “In All The Right Places” and that exposure has helped propel it into the charts at No 13. As she’s in the Breakers section, it’s the video this time which does include scenes from the film. As I mentioned last week, rumours persisted at the time that Lisa had been offered the Demi Moore role in the film. Whether she was or not, what is true is that she did finally get to appear in a film some six years later when she starred in musical comedy Swing opposite Hugo Speer. I’ve never seen it but it gets decent reviews online so it might be worth a watch plus she recorded most of the music for it.

So who remembers this? “Three Little Pigs” by Green Jellÿ? Yeah, I know. You’ve tried to forget it. I really wasn’t excited by the concept of a comedy rock band from America I have to say but that’s what this lot were having been around since 1981. One of their early songs was called “I’ve Got Poo-Poo On My Shoe” so we shouldn’t have been surprised by this god awful retelling of the Three Little Pigs fairytale. They had form.

The musicianship is intentionally bad (that’s part of the joke you see) whilst much was made of the ‘hilarious’ stop motion clay animation video. It was hardly original though was it? We’d already seen this sort of parody single back in the 80s from the likes of Weird Al Yankovic and The Firm, the latter of which had also used the same video technique to great effect on their No 1 single “Star Trekkin’”. I didn’t get why this was so popular (the single went Top 5) unless it was kids buying it thinking they were being rebellious.

They followed this up with a cover of “Anarchy In The UK” that they interlaced with references to The Flintstones. Again, not original as The Screaming Blue Messiahs beat them to it by about five years with their “I Wanna Be A Flintstone” hit.

Ah, some proper music now or as host Tony Dortie describes it “some solid musical nourishment” courtesy of A–ha who are back with new single “Dark Is The Night”. Nothing to do with the Shakatak single of the same name, this was the trio’s first UK Top 40 hit since “Crying In The Rain” three years before and was the lead single from their fifth studio album “Memorial Beach”.

By 1993, A-ha’s days of being teen pin-ups were well behind them but then they’d never really pursued that anyway. It was kind of a byproduct of their Scandinavian good looks. However, they definitely seemed determined to shed that image with a song like “Dark Is The Night” which is such a more mature sound than something like “Touchy” or “Take On Me”. I liked it but not too many others seemed to. Its chart trajectory petered out at No 19 whilst the album got no higher than No 17 and produced no further hits. The commercial failure of the project convinced the band to take a seven year hiatus before returning with the “Minor Earth, Major Sky” album.

That means that this could well be the last time we see A-ha on TOTP which also means one final chance for me to indulge in an activity I had been doing since I was 17 and which I was still doing in 1993 despite it being my 25th birthday three days after this TOTP aired. I am, of course, referring to ‘Morton Harket hair watch’. My fascination with Morton’s barnet had been with me through A Levels, Polytechnic and even getting married. My aim – to get my hair to look like his. Here he seems to have grown it and let it flop with no product aided quiff to be seen. Surely I could achieve that?! Sadly, even if I could, my complete lack of cheekbones meant I would never pull off the Morten look convincingly.

https://youtu.be/Whk9qSC3D-Y

As the Tory party leadership contest draws to a close and we stand at the dawn of a new PM, what better act to mark the event than P.M. Dawn?! You think I’m done with the crappy puns? Hell no! It seems now that it is “More Than Likely” that Liz Truss will be the next UK Prime Minister. Heaven help us all. OK, now I’m done – back to the matter at hand. This was the very last of six UK Top 40 hits for both artists concerned here P.M. Dawn and Boy George though this one only just made it peaking at No 40 despite this TOTP appearance at Disneyworld no less. It’s not quite as bonkers as New Order on the set of Baywatch on Venice Beach but it’s up there. It’s a decidedly odd vista, the two of them togged up in completely inappropriate clothes for the weather, sat down metres apart for the whole performance with the Disney castle towering above them in the background. @TOTPFacts has the story behind the location:

This PM Dawn/Boy George performance in Disneyworld apparently took place during a layover on George's flight from London to Buenos Aires for his first South American tour. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) August 26, 2022

The song itself is another gorgeous P.M. Dawn melody which suits Boy George’s vocals perfectly. It really should have been a bigger hit. I had a promo copy of parent album “The Bliss Album…?” which includes a rather wonderful version of “Norwegian Wood” by The Beatles:

It all ended tragically for the original line up of the group. DJ Minitemix was accused of sexually assaulting a 14 year old relative and was subsequently fired from the band whilst Prince Be died of renal disease in 2016.

This is starting to feel like overkill now as we get the third song on the show from the film Indecent Proposal and a fourth from an erotic thriller if you include UB40’s from Sliver. A Breaker last week, Bryan Ferry is in the studio this week (with everyone’s trusty sidekick bass player alongside, the ubiquitous Gail Ann Dorsey) to perform “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow”. As with P.M. Dawn and Boy George earlier, this would be Bryan’s final UK chart single although he would continue to have big selling albums.

As usual, Bryan is effortlessly cool but it all looks a bit too comfy and predictable for me. The reaction he provoked with his debut TOTP appearance in 1972 with Roxy Music performing “Virginia Plain” is a million miles away from what he’s doing here. Maybe it’s unfair to compare them. Maybe.

https://youtu.be/qx9jD87obTA

I’m not sure that I ever knew until now that “All That She Wants” hitmakers Ace Of Base were a family group (well almost). Three of the four members were siblings – they’re basically the Swedish Corrs. It got me thinking about other famous family bands. There’s Oasis obviously plus the Campbell clan of UB40 (pre and post their splintering). The Beach Boys featured three brothers and a cousin and then of course there’s The Osmonds and The Jackson 5. How about Kings Of Leon or the Bee Gees? There’s been a few. Where do Ace Of Base rate in this list? For me, they’re below The Partridge Family* and they weren’t even a real family! I’d almost even have Glenn and Chris before them. Almost.

*Yes, I know Shirley Jones was David Cassidy’s stepmother.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Haddaway	What Is Love	Hadaway and shite!
2	UB40	(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With You	Nah
3	Jamiroquai	Blow Your Mind	No but my wife had the album
4	Tasmin Archer	Lords Of The New Church	Nope
5	Sade	No Ordinary Love	Negative
6	Lisa Stansfield	In All The Right Places	No
7	Green Jellÿ	Three Little Pigs	Pigshit – no
8	A-ha	Dark Is The Night	No but I have it on a Best Of CD
9	P.M. Dawn / Boy George	More Than Likely	No but I had a promo copy of the album
10	Bryan Ferry	Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow	I did not
11	Ace Of Base	All That She Wants	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/m001bdx1/top-of-the-pops-03061993

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 09 OCT 1998

Disclaimer

TOTP 29 AUG 1997

Disclaimer

TOTP 02 NOV 1995

Disclaimer

TOTP 26 OCT 1995

Disclaimer

TOTP 09 DEC 1993

Disclaimer

TOTP 19 AUG 1993

Disclaimer

TOTP 17 JUN 1993

Disclaimer

TOTP 10 JUN 1993

Disclaimer

TOTP 03 JUN 1993

Disclaimer