It’s 1990 at last – the beginning of a new decade and unlike the beginning of the current new decade (which less face it couldn’t have gone much worse), the world isn’t looking in too bad a shape. The divisive Berlin Wall has tumbled, the Cold War was coming to an end and in a few short weeks Nelson Mandela would be released from incarceration after 27 years. It’s not all good news though as on New Year’s Day the character of Mr Bean makes his TV debut.

Musically, the charts were still being infiltrated by various strands of European house music from acts such as Technotronic (Belgium), Snap (Germany) and Twenty 4 Seven (Holland). These new kids on the block were joined by erm…New Kids On The Block who racked up seven Top 10 singles including a No 1 plus a No 1 album. Sheesh! There was also room for some golden oldies with Phil Collins having the best selling album of the year closely followed by Madonna and Elton John who both had greatest hits albums out. The list of No 1 singles for the year mercifully had some half decent stuff in it for once (The Beautiful South, Sinéad O’Connor, Beats International) plus of course the best football song ever (ever!) from New Order. Sadly it also included some enormous turds from Bombalurina. Partners In Kryme and Vanilla Ice and that’s not even mentioning the Xmas turkey that was the festive chart topper from Cliff Richard. A mixed bag indeed then.

And me? Alas- oh shit I sound like Boris Johnson – erm…sadly, I was unemployed (again) as 1990 broke having finished my temporary stint as sales assistant / stand in Santa in Debenhams over Xmas. I was back in my parents house with no money, no job and separated geographically from my girlfriend once more. It wasn’t a great start to the year nor decade to be fair. My period of unemployment would last five months until I was reunited not only with the world of work but also my girlfriend as I secured a temporary position at Kingston Communications back in Hull. By the time that had finished as the Summer turned to Autumn, we had decided to get married and relocate to Manchester where neither of us had ever lived before nor had a permanent job. A bold move I guess but we were young and fearless and all those other things that middle aged has robbed me of so…. off we went to Manc land where I had got myself a temporary job over Xmas at Our Price Music. They would be my employer for the rest of the decade….

Disclaimer

OK – here’s the thing – the TOTP episodes are only available on iPlayer for a limited amount of time so the link to the programme below only works for about another month so you’ll have to work fast if you want to see what the BBC made of 1990.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000n18n/top-of-the-pops-the-story-of-1990

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC.