This list marks a true milestone for me. This is TOTP Rewind post No 700! Yes, if you combine all the 80s and 90s shows reviews together, the total is 700. How did I get here and more importantly, was it worth it? Well, I’ll leave the second part of that question to anybody who’s taken the time to read any of the previous 699 posts to answer. As for ‘how did I get here?’ (you’ve got “Once In A Lifetime” by Talking Heads running through your mind now haven’t you?), I’ll tell you. It’s taken me nearly nine years of watching, considering and writing to get me to 700. NINE YEARS! I must be either someone who’s very dedicated to a cause or a complete narcissist.

To mark the occasion, the gods of pop music nostalgia have plotted to provide me with one of the worst running orders in TOTP history but before we get to all that, we have a brand new presenter making their debut on the show in the form of Kate Thornton. A journalist initially (she was the youngest ever editor of Smash Hits magazine aged just 21), she made the transition to TV via ITV current affairs programme Straight Up and is widely credited as the person who placed “Candle In The Wind” centre stage as part of the national grieving process for the death of Princess Diana. Apparently, her bosses wanted some music to soundtrack a photo tribute piece for Diana and Thornton was tasked with sourcing something appropriate. As the news broke on a Sunday, the record library was shut and so Kate was left with whatever she had in her car. A copy of Elton John’s Greatest Hits was on the stereo and the rest is literally history. Big history. The BBC came calling and a place in the TOTP presenter roster was offered. I like that the producers made some attempt at humour by introducing her with a skit as if she’d been pulled out of the studio audience at random to replace a poorly Jayne Middlemiss. Maybe she had, though clearly not in the manner presented. She gives a very confident and assured performance on her debut and would become the host of X Factor in 2004. I never quite understood why she was replaced by Dermot O’Leary. I believe she’s to be found on Greatest Hits Radio these days along with all the other BBC presenters deemed not hip enough anymore like Ken Bruce and Simon Mayo although to be fair, I’m not sure if either of those two were ever hip.

Anyway, we start with a new face with a shiny, new hit from a famous family. Before 1998, the phrase ‘Eagle Eyes’ would have conjured up memories of Action Man toys from my childhood but Eagle-Eye Cherry (his actual real name!) came along to change all that.

The son of American jazz artist Don Cherry and Swedish designer Moki Cherry and the half brother of Neneh Cherry, he had early career intentions to be an actor and enrolled in the High School Of Performing Arts in New York (Fame and all that) being in the same class as Jennifer Aniston. However, he would ultimately choose music as his first passion and returned to his home of Stockholm to write his debut album “Desireless”. His instincts paid off when the album sold four million copies around the world, spearheaded by lead single and opening track “Save Tonight”. Irresistible for daytime radio controllers, it’s actually quite a simple song based around the well established and familiar chord progression of Am-F-C-G that is the backbone of many a huge hit including “Hey Jude”, “Wonderwall” and “Imagine”. It’s slick and smooth though with a vocal from Cherry that has enough interest in it to keep the listener’s attention. Great things were predicted for Eagle-Eye – my wife was enamoured enough to buy “Desireless” and see him live at the Manchester Academy – but the old diminishing returns and changing tastes seem to do for him and the hits had all but dried up come the new millennium. He still recording new material though with his last album released in 2023.

Sticking with the eagle theme come Hanson whose latest hit “Thinking Of You” includes the lyric “Fly with the wings of an eagle” running throughout its length. The fifth and final single taken from their “Middle Of Nowhere” album, listening back to it, you could understand why it hadn’t appeared earlier in the release schedule. The album’s lead single had been the No 1 “MMMBop” and, to paraphrase Kate Thornton in her intro, whether you found it adorable or downright irritating, you couldn’t deny it was insanely catchy. Sadly for “Thinking Of You”, it was no “MMMBop” despite its clear aspirations to be so. However, it was MMBop-lite which sounds like a diet version of a fizzy drink but you get my drift. It seems to have all the component parts but it doesn’t have that killer hook. It’s like an early demo of their most famous song before they’d worked it into shape as the pop mega-hit it became. “Thinking Of You” would be the band’s last hit of the 90s (though they’d have three more into the new decade).

As with Hanson before them, after a couple of years of hits, Space were coming to the end of their time as Top 40 stars. Conversely, this, their penultimate hit, was called “Begin Again”. Another track lifted from their Top 3 album “Tin Planet”, it would peak at No 21, their smallest ever chart hit. Now, I’ve championed Space a bit in previous posts and my wife had their first album “Spiders” but by this point, their quirky flavoured schtick was starting to grate a bit. That eerie sound that they’d cultivated which had initially charmed was becoming predictable. “Begin Again” was another track with swooping strings and a almost mariachi feel to it with singer Tommy Scott banging on about being a man who would kill for love whilst giving his usual wild-eyed stare to the camera. Give it a rest Tommy! After leaving their label Gut Records, the band released their music to the fanbase via their website until they split in 2005. However, they did ‘begin again’ in 2011 and are still a recording and touring entity to this day.

Here’s another link back to Hanson with another boy band. 911 were on to their seventh (of ten) consecutive Top 10 hits with “How Do You Want Me To Love You” which sounds impressive but was it really? Of those ten hits, they all debuted in their peak position in week one and none of them stayed inside the Top 10 for more than two weeks. Clearly their fan base were spending their pocket money to purchase the singles as soon as they were released when they would have been heavily discounted as well to create a high entry point but when the contributing factors of fanbase and discounting were taken away, there was no substance to sustain their chart lives. This one was a prime example. Week one in at No 10, week two dropped to No 35, week three out of the Top 40 altogether. Yes, they did have a No 2 and a No 1 hit but both were cover versions of well known songs so that diminishes those achievements in my book rather. They had three albums that peaked at Nos 13, 10 and 8 selling enough copies for one gold and two silver discs. Is that impressive? Mildly at a push I’d say. Away from the numbers (as Paul Weller once sang), this was a drippy, insipid pop ballad that was forgotten as soon as the last note sounded.

Oh come on! We’ve already had two boy bands and now a third?! And this one, as Kate Thornton tells us in her intro, has toured with 911. So hang on, they were the support act for a group that themselves were almost completely lacking in any discernible merit but who topped the bill ahead of them? Have I got that right? OK so what we’re saying is that Ultra were a poor man’s 911?! Dear Lord. Can you get any worse than that?! After scoring a hit with debut single “Say You Do”, these no marks were back with a follow up called “Say It Once”. Heavens! They couldn’t even come up with two song titles that didn’t crib off each other! This is really poor stuff to mark my 700th post. The bad news is that they had a further two hits after this. Say it ain’t so.

For Pete’s sake! No, for my sake and my 700th post! This is no way to mark the occasion – Hanson, 911, Ultra and now Aaron Carter?! You’ve got to be kidding me?! This guy was the little brother of Nick Carter from the Backstreet Boys and he was just ten years old at the time of this broadcast. By comparison, the youngest Hanson brother was 12. Had we seen anything like this since Little Jimmy Osmond tormented us with “Long Hair Lover From Liverpool” in 1972? I can’t think of a similar act. What on earth was this all about and why was it happening? I’m guessing it was the most cynical act by the little blighter’s record company to cash in on the popularity of the Backstreet Boys but was it really that blunt? Well, he did support his big brother’s band on tour so maybe it was.

Apparently he’d already had three UK hit singles by this point so did we mercifully miss them or have I reviewed them and completely obliterated them from my memory banks? For the record, the fourth hit was a scandalous cover of “Surfin’ USA” by The Beach Boys. Watching the performance of it here just feels wrong. Not as bad as when Channel 4 aired the Minipops series in 1983 which was not just a dodgy idea but one of the most heinous concepts ever conceived and executed but still wrong. Oh, and the intro with Jo Whiley was absolute cringe. Why?! As is sadly often the way when fame comes to someone so young, Carter would have a traumatic and tragically short life dying in 2022 aged just 34 by accidental drowning in a bath following the taking of Xanax and difluoroethane.

TOTP Executive Producer Chris Cowey has finally relented and has allowed a video to feature on the show. Apparently, this was the first promo shown since 1st May 1998 after eight weeks of studio only appearances. I’m not sure why he introduced the policy in the first place nor why he made an exception for the Beastie Boys but in the case of the latter, I’m guessing Cowey couldn’t ignore the return of one of the biggest names in rap especially as their single crashed into the Top 5. I’ve said this before but just about everyone I ever worked with in Our Price over a 10 year period loved the Beastie Boys. Not the “(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party)” version but the more mature and achingly cool era of the band exemplified by “Paul’s Boutique”*, the eccentricity of “Check Your Head” and the eclectic nature of “Ill Communication”. Accordingly, when “Hello Nasty” came out in 1998 after a four year gap, it was a big deal for many of my colleagues.

“Intergalactic” was its lead single and it came out swinging with a big sound and a video that seemed epic at the time but maybe isn’t viewed as that through 2025 eyes. A tribute to the Japanese Kaiju genre of films (Godzilla and the like) and featuring a giant robot battling an octopus-headed creature (?), it won the 1999 Best Hip Hop Video at the MTV Video Music Awards. The battle scenes between the robot and the octopus thing remind me of the Power Rangers franchise which I had to endure watching when my son was a young boy and it was one of the oddest TV series I think I’ve ever seen. How it ran for 30 years is beyond me. Whatever the merits or drawbacks of the video, and certainly after the crime against music that was NYCC’s brutally bad cover version of “Fight For Your Right” earlier in 1998, it was good to have the real thing back.

*Here’s another link back to Hanson. “Thinking Of You” that was on the show earlier was produced by the Dust Brothers (Michael Simpson and John King) whose other credits include “Paul’s Boutique”.

Baddiel, Skinner and the Lightning Seeds are No 1 for a third week but any chance of the England football team winning the World Cup crown disappeared in dramatic fashion three days before this TOTP aired. They crashed out on penalties to Argentina in the Round of 16 after having had David Beckham sent off for petulantly lashing out at Diego Simeone whilst lay on the floor. For a while, Beckham was public enemy No 1 with even an effigy of him and a noose tied to a lamppost making headlines. With England out, there would be the inevitable drop off in sales of “3 Lions ‘98”. However, it would return to the charts eight times over the years when a football tournament has been played. The nation’s wait for a follow up to 1966 and all that continues however…

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/m002jy45/top-of-the-pops-03071998?seriesId=unsliced