Wet Wet Wet

TOTP 28 SEP 1995

The last couple of shows have been very poor quality-wise for me – too many anonymous or fly-by-night dance acts and, in the case of one particular standards drop (on many levels) a loathsome novelty record. Well, tonight’s episode sees a definite upturn in the calibre of tunes but…there’s also a tendency for very established acts and mainly those of a rock persuasion. Bon Jovi, Def Leppard and Meatloaf are all on the show tonight as are Wet Wet Wet and Simply Red. Was this what the kids wanted from the UK’s most watched music programme? Or did they want to see and hear more from the Britpop scene that was dominating the musical landscape? Well, it would seem that the TOTP producers were aware of the need to strike a balance. The show had always been structured around the Top 40 singles chart so that needed to be reflected and so, in the case of Simply Red for example, they were always going to be featured as this week’s No 1 record. However, there are also what could be considered Britpop artists on tonight so you can’t say that the genre wasn’t represented.

In a further effort to promote TOTP as being on trend, the chosen presenters this week are Steve Lamacq and Jo Whiley. The pair presented The Evening Session on Radio 1 together from 1993 to 1997 with its emphasis on indie and non mainstream music. Indeed, Lamacq seemed to me like the natural successor in waiting to John Peel whilst Whiley…hmm…well, I never really warmed to Jo Whiley. I didn’t think she had much credibility somehow. She seemed to me like she’d just found herself in the right place at the right time and got to where she was rather fortuitously. That’s probably completely unfair of me and I find myself on very dangerous ground by highlighting my misgivings about the female member of the presenting duo but I can assure you I have no such agenda. I just didn’t buy into Jo’s “I love all of this music” persona. In later years, she moved to Radio 2 and seemed as comfortable introducing the likes of Billy Joel as Billy Joe Armstrong (of Green Day fame). I’ve never found her convincing when she’s hosted at the Glastonbury Festival either. However, her work highlighting the struggles of her sister Frances, who has learning difficulties and diabetes, during the COVID pandemic and the need for her and anybody of a similar status to be a priority to be vaccinated led to the shaping of government policy. I had to reassess my opinion on Jo and I find myself being much more disposed to her these days.

Anyway, we start with one of those Britpoppers in Cast. I quite liked this lot, having seen John Power’s original band The La’s live twice, I guess I was always going to. I dutifully bought their debut single “Finetime” and I’m surprised I didn’t buy the follow up “Alright” which was just as good. Jangly, 60s influenced pop with a 90s twist – yep, sign me up. Although it only reached No 13 in the charts, it was enough of a hit to maintain the band’s momentum and ushered in a run of six successive Top 10 singles. As with Supergrass before them, clearly being a Britpop band and having a hit called “Alright” was a more than ‘alright’ strategy for continuing success.

I love the energy and style of drummer Keith O’Neill in this performance which I don’t think we’d seen the like of in the TOTP studio since Talk Talk’s Lee Harriss powered his way through “Life’s What You Make It” a decade earlier. One final thing, I’m pretty sure the lads in Cast didn’t pronounce their band name as ‘Carst’ Jo Whiley!

A marked strand of the whole Britpop movement was the concept of a band that was fronted by a distinctive female singer. I’m thinking Sleeper, Elastica and Echobelly. Add to that list Garbage. The TOTP caption said that the singer was from Edinburgh with the rest of the band from Madison, US. Whilst that is factually correct, to me it illustrated a laziness on the part of the researchers. That singer was Shirley Manson who had started her musical career as backing vocalist and keyboard player in the marvellous but mostly ignored Scottish rockers Goodbye Mr Mackenzie. The band’s label decided that Shirley had star quality and wanted to launch her as a solo artist. A side project under the name of Angelfish fronted by Manson was put into action and one of their videos came to the attention of the three members of Garbage (one of whom was Butch Vig who had produced Nirvana’s iconic “Nevermind” album). An invitation was sent by Garbage to audition for their band and despite initial reactions not being especially positive, Shirley got the gig. Debut single “Vow” received airplay from the aforementioned John Peel and tonight’s co-host Steve Lamacq (which explains why he introduced them as “the excellent Garbage”). The limited release of “Vow” meant that it wasn’t a big commercial hit but by the time of third single “Only Happy When It Rains”, the momentum of and buzz about the band was enough to propel it into the UK Top 40.

Whilst I liked and appreciated those other indie bands that had women lead singers, Garbage’s sound was much more rock and somehow bigger than their contemporaries to me. I guess that was always going to be the case bearing in mind that Nirvana connection. This track was a great example of the band’s style which would bring them huge success and a long career. Their debut eponymous album would sell 4 million copies worldwide and go double platinum here in the UK propelled by subsequent hit singles “Queer”, “Stupid Girl” and “Milk”. The pink, feather boa adorned Mike stand in this performance is presumably a nod to the album’s cover artwork. The band are still going strong with their most recent album released in 2021 whilst they also announced their first tour for five years with dates confirmed for later this year.

The most interesting thing about this next song by Wet Wet Wet is what Jo Whiley points out in her intro – that its video shows us that Marti Pellow has had his hair radically recut. Gone are the luscious long locks that he’s been sporting since about 1992 and that were certainly still in place for previous single “Don’t Want To Forgive Me Now”, replaced by a much shorter (some might say sensible) style. And once you’ve taken that on board, you can effectively switch off watching the rest of the video as the song is soporific. “Somewhere Somehow” sounds to me like a slowed down version of their 1988 hit “Temptation” with a country tinge added to it. Pellow adds a “Love Is All Around” -esque ‘Hey!’ shout into it during the middle eight to try and liven it up but nothing could shake awake this snore fest. Not sure what the woman wandering around with Angel wings attached to her was all about but it probably wasn’t the best idea for her to be walking near a cliff edge – what if a gust of wind had got under those wings!

Was this a new section on the show? The ‘Acoustic Exclusive’ slot or had it just been made up for The Pretenders? After the success of their last studio album “Last Of The Independents” which had given the band their first UK Top 10 single for eight years in “Stand By You”, their record company Warners clearly wanted to keep the band’s profile raised. Rather than waiting for the next studio album to be delivered (which wouldn’t be for another five years), a live, televised performance showcasing the band in acoustic mode formed their next release. Recorded at the Jacob Street Studios in London and accompanied by the Duke Quartet, “The Isle Of View” album was clearly based on the MTV Unplugged concept which was popular in the 90s and featured artists such as Eric Clapton and Nirvana. Its title was a pun on the words ‘I Love You’, a practice no doubt inspired by the film This Is Spinal Tap. You know that bit where the band claim they once played a jazz/blues festival on the Isle Of Lucy? No such place existed and it was a play on words of the title of the US 1950s sitcom I Love Lucy starring Lucille Ball. Apparently, fans of the film didn’t initially pick up on the joke and I didn’t pick up on the reference when my mate Robin bought me a T-shirt with ‘Isle Of Lucy’ emblazoned on it and I love that film! Bah!

Chrissie Hynde performs “Kid” for this TOTP which would end up being released as a single retitled as “Kid ‘95 live” though it would only make No 73 in the charts. The acoustic version is a revelation which lays bare how amazing Chrissie’s voice is (as if it needed pointing out any further). The verse almost sounds like “Unchained Melody” done in this way. Not sure what her red evening gloves were all about though.

It wasn’t the first time that “Kid” had been performed in a stripped back style though. Check out this from Everything But The Girl from 1985…

The pursuit of ever more unusual locations for Bon Jovi to perform on TOTP continues. After Niagara Falls for “Always” and an American Football stadium for “Someday I’ll Be Saturday Night”, we get a runway at an airport in Dallas for “Something For The Pain”. I’m not sure I’m buying Jo Whiley’s explanation as to how this came about – they were just about to get on a plane when the phone call came in from TOTP – as this looks very staged to me – they’ve even got TOTP logos handy for display.

However, watching this back, it wasn’t the location that struck me as odd as much as the very un -Bon Jovi looking bass player they had performing with them. Who the heck was that guy?! Well, I think his name is Hugh McDonald and he was the replacement for Alec John Such who left the band in 1994 after not taking too kindly to his bass playing being criticised by Jon Bon Jovi supposedly. McDonald would tour and record with the band for 21 years before finally being made an official member in 2016. That’s quite the probationary period! Such sadly died in 2022 from a heart attack aged 70. As for the song, it was a pretty standard Jovi composition – a jaunty, little rock number that they probably could have knocked out waiting for that plane to take off.

Is this another new slot? An ‘exclusive performance’? Not just an ‘exclusive’ and certainly not a ‘satellite performance’ but an ‘exclusive performance’. What gives? Well, it appears to be something created bespoke for the next artist who are TLC. According to Jo Whiley, the TOTP family had been waiting for a long time to get the trio on the show (was this their first time in the studio then?) and fortunately they must have been in the country. Unfortunately, they didn’t have a hit single that was rising in the charts to justify an appearance according to TOTP law, so the show producers shoehorned them in anyway, I’m guessing. To give TLC something to perform, a “Hits Medley” was dreamed up comprising “Creep” / “Waterfalls” / “Diggin’ On You” the last of which hadn’t actually been released and wouldn’t be until October. This makes me wonder why they didn’t just perform the final track as an ‘exclusive’ preview of said single? Why the need for a medley? It all seems a bit odd. Nothing wrong with the tracks or performance of course, just that the thinking behind them didn’t seem in alignment with the show’s traditional concept of reflecting what was popular in the UK singles charts. I guess though that the show had changed over the years (and we’d seen plenty in the 90s what with the ‘year zero’ reset and the replacement of Stanley Appel with Ric Blaxill as the show’s executive producer). Maybe this was just another one.

In the whole cannon of Britpop bands, there was perhaps none more Britpop than Menswear. For those who denigrated the movement, they were such an easy target. “They’re not a real band are they?” or “They’re a music press construct” or ultimately “Who do they think they are?”. I get all that and yet I still liked them and this single – “Stardust” – is a banger!

In some ways, they were like the Britpop equivalent of Spandau Ballet. A band who emerged out of a short lived, uniquely British music movement and who were the pin up boys and face of said movement. Gary Kemp is on record as saying that the New Romantics needed a group to rally around that were theirs rather than clinging to Bowie and Roxy Music and Spandau were in the right place at the right time. Menswear kind of performed a similar role – where Spandau were talked about because of their cultish wardrobe in their early days (all kilts, highland sashes and deer stalker hats) so Menswear took inspiration from their name and went for an image influenced by the classic mod look. Melody Maker ran a cover story that labelled them as “the best-dressed new band in Britain”. Indeed, check out Jo Whiley’s sartorial comments in her intro.

Then there’s the bidding war parallels. Spandau became hugely sought after by record labels after a highly publicised early gig aboard the cruiser HMS Belfast. Fifteen years later, Menswear played their debut gig at a club called Smashing on Regent Street which kick started a ruck amongst labels desperate to sign the next big thing. They eventually signed with London Records on an unheard of contract offering the band 18.5% gross revenues. They then signed a publishing deal worth £500,000 despite only having a repertoire of seven songs at the time. However, where the two bands diverge is that Spandau managed to adapt and outgrow the New Romantic scene once it had run out of steam to become bona fide, mainstream pop stars whereas Menswear couldn’t escape the Britpop tag after that movement petered out and they imploded with band infighting and a second album that was only released in Japan. They literally just came to a full stop.

Back in 1995 though, they were where it was at for all the groovy, young Britpoppers. I wasn’t particularly young at the time (I was 27) and had never been groovy but I could still appreciate “Stardust” for the tune it was. It fair gallops along driven by Matt Everett’s on point drumming with Johnny Dean’s affected vocals being punctuated by lots of “ba, ba baaas’ backing vocals. Yes, the piano outro could be accused of plagiarism from “Gimme Shelter” by the Rolling Stones but I didn’t care. The aforementioned Dean trod a thin line between swagger and being a dick in this performance with his dramatic, angular posing but I think he just gets away with it. Even The Who-like set destroying nonsense at the end didn’t put me off nor Dean’s silly styling out of having to omit the word ‘fucker’ from the lyrics – at least it gave Jo Whiley a nice line in her intro describing them as “groovy little muckers”. I’m definitely warming to her you know.

From groovy muckers to legends of rock (Steve Lamacq’s words not mine). Def Leppard seemed to be following in the career footsteps of Bon Jovi who were on earlier. The New Jersey outfit had come to a crossroads and decided a new direction was needed. Drawing a line under what had gone before, (including sacking their bass player) they released a Best Of album in 1994 called “Crossroads” (geddit?) before releasing an album that was supposedly darker in its themes than what had gone before but which was critically acclaimed in “These Days”.

Def Leppard were similarly assessing their options. Without an album of new material since “Adrenalize” in 1992, they found themselves in a dark place. Divorce, ill health, arrests for spousal abuse and assault and the death of guitarist Steve Clark meant the band were intent on writing some songs that were more from personal experience and mature than their standard “Let’s Get Rocked” rubbish. Also like The Jovi, they had a line up change following Clark’s passing with the addition of new guitarist Vivian Campbell. Perhaps more significantly though, sixth studio album “Slang” would be the first since 1980 without the involvement of producer Robert John ‘Mutt’ Lange.

Before that though, they put down their own marker to delineate their career in Greatest Hits collection “Vault”. To promote it was a new song, a rock ballad called “When Love And Hate Collide”. Possibly not renowned for their slow songs, they had a hit with at least one to my knowledge – “Love Bites” in 1988. However, this new track seemed more epic. It sounds like it was written to order for a blockbuster movie. In fact, it sounds like a template for Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing” which was written for the sci-if disaster film Armageddon.

I always quite liked the name of that Best Of – “Vault” sort of implied that there were sacred treasures inside though whether that meaning should apply to Def Leppard’s back catalogue rather depends on your opinion of the band I guess. My mate Steve who’s from Bolton swears that they were huge there in the 80s. Hmm. There’s a show on Sky Arts called Guy Garvey: From The Vaults which is a veritable treasure trove of fabulous musical clips taken from the archives of shows like The Tube, Razzmatazz, So It Goes and Tiswas. Based around a specific year and curated by Garvey, it’s a little gem of a programme and if the word ‘vault’ is good enough for Guy Garvey, it’s good enough for me.

Simply Red are this week’s new No 1 with “Fairground” which knocks Shaggy off the top spot after just one week. It remains the band’s only chart topping single to date. My first impressions on hearing it went along the lines of “Hang on, he’s just nicked that beat from “Give It Up” by The Goodmen. What a swizz!” OK, I maybe didn’t say ‘swizz’ but my point remains. It seemed to me like Hucknall was just jumping on the dance bandwagon in an attempt to remain relevant. After all, it had been four years since the last album, the all conquering “Stars”. However, lots of people didn’t seem to mind the sample and bought it in enough quantities for it to spend four weeks at the chart summit. At least we don’t get that clip with him wearing his PVC outfit like we got last week. Whoever advised him to don that costume really weren’t ’good men’ and should have told him to ‘give it up’.

The play out video is “I’d Lie For You (And That’s The Truth)” by Meatloaf. After the gargantuan success of the “Bat Out Of Hell II: Back Into Hell” album and “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)” single, delivering a follow up was always going to be an almost impossible task. “Welcome To The Neighbourhood” was no flop but it couldn’t hope to match the sales of its predecessor. Like Def Leppard before him, the Meat also had a change of producer and some may argue that was the reason for not being able to replicate the success of “Bat Out Of Hell II”. Meatloaf without Jim Steinman was like Ant without Dec (or the other way round as happened in 2018) – it just wasn’t right.

Having said all that, “I’d Lie For You (And That’s The Truth)” sounded right out of the Steinman playbook. Epic sounding rock ballad, huge production, paradoxical title – all the ingredients associated with the legendary writer and producer were there. And yet, it didn’t perform as well commercially. I mean, a UK No 2 was damn good going for a guy who had been nowhere near the top of the charts for years pre- “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)” but in America it only got to No 13. A sizeable hit sure but nowhere near being a No 1 record. It was a similar story with the album. Big sales but dwarfed by those of its predecessor.

In an unlikely turn of events I’m going to reference Spandau Ballet again in a post about pop music in 1995. Having made a connection between them and Menswear earlier, I’m jumping the shark now and relating them to Meatloaf. Gary Kemp said in a 2000 BBC documentary about the band that nobody else could play their songs and that you could get a new guitarist or singer even but really people just wanted to see the five original members performing on stage. Maybe it was a similar theme with Meatloaf and Steinman? That the former’s audience mostly wanted him and Steinman together?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Cast	Alright	No but easily could have
2	Garbage	Only Happy When It Rains	See 1 above
3	Wet Wet Wet	Somewhere Somehow	No
4	The Pretenders	Kid ‘95 live	Nope
5	Bon Jovi	Something For The Pain	I did not
6	TLC	Hits Medley	N/A
7	Menswear	Stardust	Call the police! Where’s my copy of this?!
8	Def Leppard	When Love And Hate Collide	Nah
9	Simply Red	Fairground	Never
10	Meatloaf	I’d Lie For You (And That’s The Truth)	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/m001wkgl/top-of-the-pops-28091995?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 15 JUN 1995

Posted on November 28 by 80stastic

As I begin writing this post, it turns out that today (29th November) is the 40th anniversary of the release of the first ever Now That’s What I Call Music album. Unbelievably, the series that started in 1983 is still going strong in 2023 with Now 116 having just come out. I bought that first album way back when but it would prove to be the first and last Now album I would ever purchase. I wonder why I stopped my allegiance to the series so suddenly? I recall being quite excited about that first album as it did something no other compilation album had ever done before – it was a joint venture between two of the UK’s biggest record labels EMI and Virgin meaning the amount of singles available to be licensed to appear on it was much bigger than at any time before. Plus, they were the original songs not some dodgy knock off covers that appeared on those awful Top Of The Pops compilation albums from the 70s. Incidentally, Mark Goodier had a T-shirt on in one of the BBC4 repeats the other week that was advertising the Top Of The Pops compilation album that got launched in 1995.

Anyway, back to that first Now album and why I never bought another of them after that one. Did I think maybe they were a bit naff and not cool enough? After all, not all the songs on them would have earned any street cred points at school. That first one had the likes of Bonnie Tyler, New Edition and Peabo Bryson & Roberta Flack on it. It’s possible. The next time a Now album appeared on my radar was when my wife bought Now 13 around 1988. Then, in the 90s, I would see them on a regular basis as I was working at Our Price by then and selling them for a living. I remember in 1991 there being a big fuss about the landmark of Now 20 being reached. Incidentally, at one point around 1995, they thought about doing away with the numbers scheme as there was a fear that as the volume numbers got bigger and bigger, it would make the series seem outdated as no compilation series had ever gone on for that long. Anyway, I was still at Our Price (just) to help sell some of the 2.3 million copies that the best selling volume in the series (46) shifted in 1999. I’m getting ahead of myself though. I wonder how many of the songs featured in this TOTP made it onto a Now album?

By the way, tonight’s host is Michelle Gayle in the ‘golden mic’ slot which I guess was a canny choice by executive producer Ric Blaxill seeing as she brought with her both the glamour of being a pop star and the technical craft of being an actress so she could handle a few scripted lines whilst presenting.

Tonight’s opening act are Wet Wet Wet who are in the studio to promote their latest single “Don’t Want To Forgive Me Now”. However, we’ve seen them do this one on the show before as, back in April, they performed the song in the album chart slot to promote their album “Picture This”. As such, I’ve already reviewed this track so what am I supposed to say about it now? Well, there was a reaction of astonishment online to Marti Pellow’s suit, specifically that it consists of a split pattern between stripes and checks (or is it spots?). Even I, about as anti-fashion as it comes and almost allergic to buying clothes, knows that’s a fashion faux pas. It’s like putting tomato ketchup on a Sunday roast; you just don’t do it.

Chart peak: No 7

Now album? Yes – Now 31

Oh no! Not these two jokers again! In a year that included Robson & Jerome, it’s quite the feat to be possibly the worst chart act of 1995. I couldn’t stand The Outhere Brothers with their child-like call and response nonsense and the fact that they wrote filthy lyrics but were quite prepared to peddle a heavily edited and sanitised version of them so as to pursue mainstream success. At least have the courage of your convictions! After “Don’t Stop (Wiggle Wiggle)” went to No 1 earlier in the year, the duo weren’t prepared to be one hit wonders and repeated the trick with follow up “Boom Boom Boom” by inexplicably convincing the UK record buying public to buy another of their moronic tracks in enough quantities to make it a second chart topper.

Enough of those two pricks though. Id rather discuss how the word ‘boom’ historically figures heavily in pop music culture. Look at all these songs that include the word (or variants of it) in their title:

Boom! Shake The Room – DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince
Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom!! – Vengaboys
Boom-Shack-A-Lak – Apache Indian
Boom Boom – John Lee Hooker
Boombastic – Shaggy
Sonic Boom Boy – Westworld

Then, of course, there’s The Boomtown Rats and for the fans of obscure 80s bands (like me) there’s Boom Boom Room. I guess it’s such a great word ‘boom’. Onomatopoeia at its finest.

Chart peak: No 1

Now album? Yes – Now 31

A second outing now for the video to “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me” by U2. Now I always quite liked this song. It seemed a good fit for an superhero action movie; all swooping and soaring and dramatic. Plenty of others agreed with me as it was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song. However, it also had its fair share of detractors which resulted in a nomination for a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Original Song. It won neither so maybe they cancel each other out?

Aside from “Miss Sarajevo” from the “Passengers” side project, U2 wouldn’t release another single until “Discothèque” in 1997 which was another divisive song but then if you have a lead singer like Bono, you’re always going to divide opinion.

Chart peak: No 2

Now album? Yes – Now 32

Still with Bitty McLean? Yep, a whole two years on from his debut and biggest hit single “It Keeps Rainin’ (Tears From My Eyes)”, UB40’s former sound engineer was still cranking out medium sized chart hits most of which seemed to be reggae’d up versions of classic pop songs. This particular one was his take on “We’ve Only Just Begun” by The Carpenters. He’d previously done “Dedicated To The One I Love” made famous by The Mamas & The Papas and indeed that first hit was originally recorded by Fats Domino. Did he write any of his own stuff? A quick check of the track listing for his first album “Just To Let You Know…” reveals that he wrote three out of the eleven tracks on there. Hmm. Not that many then. Poor old Bitty can’t do right for doing wrong by me though. I criticise him for not writing his own stuff but I also don’t like his cover versions. This one is just drivel and would prove to be his final UK Top 40 hit. Still, he did know how to rock a super slick suit. Marti Pellow take note.

Chart peak: No 23

Now album? No

From a killer suit to a killer tune. Perhaps the most unlikely comeback of 1995 belonged to Edwyn Collins, a man without a UK hit single since 1983 when his ex-band Orange Juice reached the Top 10 with their one and only Top 40 entry “Rip It Up”. The band split in 1985 after being unable to consolidate on that success so Edwyn went solo and despite releasing a couple of albums and a handful of singles, nobody was really listening. All of that changed with “A Girl Like You” from third album “Gorgeous George”. Originally released on November 1994, it became a massive hit in just about every territory on the planet except here where it stalled at No 42. Huge airplay support saw it given a rerelease in the UK in the Summer of 1995. A shimmering, slinky, retro sounding pop song that you could have easily believed came from the soundtrack to a super cool 60s spy movie set in Paris, it finally broke the UK’s collective resistance when it went Top 5.

Having read both the account of Edwyn’s double cerebral haemorrhage in 2005 by his wife Grace Maxwell and a book detailing the history and adventures of Postcard Records, I have to conclude that Edwyn’s had quite the life and is a man of superb character and resilience. He looks great in this performance and yes that is a ex-Sex Pistol Paul Cook up there on drums as he played on the record.

Chart peak: No 4

Now album? Yes – Now 31

Before we get to the next act, we have an interloper in the studio but no need to worry, it’s not a protester with a cause but rather Louise from Eternal who surprises Michelle Gayle with a gold disc presented for sales of the latter’s debut album. Michelle seems genuinely surprised at this turn of events but retains her cool sufficiently to introduce the next act.

As with Bitty McLean earlier, here’s another artist that I’m amazed was still bothering the chart compilers in 1995. After her debut album made huge waves around the world and especially in the US, Paula Abdul went away for a couple of years and pulled off a follow up with second album “Spellbound” including the hits “Rush Rush” and “Vibeology”. Expecting her to complete a second comeback a lengthier four years on looked a forlorn hope but she managed to (sort of). Third album “Head Over Heels” would achieve gold status but those sales were drastically down on 1991’s “Spellbound” (three times platinum) and 1989’s “Forever Your Girl” (seven times platinum). Lead single “My Love Is For Real” sounded like Paula had been paying a bit too much attention to Kylie’s recent comeback hit of her own “Confide In Me” what with its Eastern influences and all. As with Bitty McLean, this would prove to be Paula’s last UK Top 40 hit.

Chart peak: No 28

Now album? No

I quite often rely on chart statistics in this blog to make a point or sometimes (whisper it!) pad the posts out a bit. They can be a barometer of what was happening in the charts but sometimes they don’t always tell the whole story I feel. Look at East 17 for example. I think there’s a decent argument that the band reached the pinnacle of their career with their Christmas No 1 “Stay Another Day” and that inevitably it was a slow descent from that point on. And yet…they had nine more hits after that chart topper of which six went Top 10 including two No 2s and a No 3. However, can you name any of them? Even looking at their discography, the only one that means anything to me is the single they did with Gabrielle. For me, their golden era was 1992-94. Everything past that I kind of struggle with. “Hold My Body Tight” is a case in point. There’s really not much to it at all. Lightweight doesn’t really cover it. It was the last single to be released from their “Steam” album and it did kind of feel (and sound) like an afterthought.

Chart peak: No 12

Now album? Yes – Now 31

Robson & Jerome are still at No 1 with “Unchained Melody / (There’ll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs Of Dover”. At this point, there was talk of it becoming the biggest selling single in the UK ever but in the end such chatter was well wide of the mark. As it stands, it’s No 15 in the all time list though there’s two songs ahead of it that hadn’t been released yet in 1995.

Chart peak: No 1

Now album? No

And so to that exclusive screening of the video for “Scream” by Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson that Michelle Gayle has been bigging up all show. So was it worth the wait for this $6 million promo? Ah, I don’t know. All of these huge, blockbuster videos from past eras are always constrained by the technology that existed at the time they were made. In 1995, it looked impossibly slick and right at the cutting edge of what was possible. The black and white film, Janet’s dark make up making her look otherworldly and a spacecraft themed plot with image morphing special effects all combined well but watching it back in 2023, it doesn’t seem as impressive as my son’s FIFA computer game. It did receive eleven MTV Video Music Award nominations in 1995 – more than any other video had ever received – if that helps answer the question.

Chart peak: No 3

Now album? No

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Wet Wet Wet	Don’t Want To Forgive Me Now	No
2	The Outhere Brothers	Boom Boom Boom	As if
3	U2	Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me	Liked it, didn’t buy it
4	Bitty McLean	We’ve Only Just Begun	Nah
5	Edwyn Collins	A Girl Like You	Surely I did? No? Bah!
6	Paula Abdul	My Love Is For Real	Negative
7	East 17	Hold My Body Tight	I did not
8	Robson & Jerome	Unchained Melody / (There’ll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs Of Dover	Never happening
9	Michael Jackson / Janet Jackson	Scream	Nope

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/m001snq0/top-of-the-pops-15061995

TOTP 20 APR 1995

Posted on November 2 by 80stastic

Those big BBC changes keep on coming in 1995. The day after this TOTP aired, both Bruno Brookes and Steve Wright presented their final shows on Radio 1. Brookes, of course, had hosted his last TOTP just the other week; Wright hadn’t been near the corporation’s flagship pop music show for years. Dear old Uncle Steve probably felt hard done by having been shunted from his natural habitat of Radio 1 afternoons to the Breakfast Show by new controller Matthew Bannister in the January of the previous year. The new time slot hadn’t worked out and the Monday after Wright’s departure, the era of Chris Evans commenced.

Whatever your opinion of Mr Evans, there’s no denying he created some noise around himself and his show. The first time I became aware of him was in 1992 when he presented a Sunday afternoon show on Radio 1 called Too Much Gravy and he genuinely sounded like a breath of fresh air. He had a feature where he asked listeners to suggest songs that were really long and really short in length as I recall. Later that year he would break into TV with The Big Breakfast and his fame (some may say infamy) was assured. Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush would follow (made by Evans’ own production company) before the call came from Matthew Bannister to renew his relationship with Radio 1. His breakfast show would add 600,000 new listeners possibly due to the controversy it created with innuendo-laden features and the regular questioning of a female member of his team called Holly Samos about her sex life. Over the next couple of years, Evans would become one of the biggest celebrities around aided by the rise of ‘lad culture’ and his Channel 4 show TFI Friday. This post isn’t about blowing smoke up Chris Evans’ arse though so on with the music and we start with Pato Banton and Ranking Roger and their duet “Bubbling Hot”.

Now, if like me you’re wondering why this sounds so familiar even though you weren’t aware that it even existed until it was featured on these TOTP repeats, then here’s @TOTPFacts with the reason why:

“Bubbling Hot” pinches a melody from Dave & Ansel Collins’s classic 1971 track “Double Barrel”: https://t.co/p5kVXVuuC9 #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) October 27, 2023

Roger, of course, is probably best known for his time as a member of The Beat though there is much more to his musical legacy including a band who never had a UK Top 40 hit though they did achieve some success in America. General Public were kind of a punk /ska supergroup comprising a line up of ex-members of The Specials, The Clash, Dexys Midnight Runners and the aforementioned The Beat’s Dave Wakeling and Ranking Roger. Though ignored at home, three of their songs would make it into film soundtracks resulting in hits on the US charts. The John Hughes pictures Weird Science, Sixteen Candles and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off plus the Alicia Silverstone starring Clueless all feature General Public tracks of which this is probably my favourite:

Wakeling and Roger reactivated General Public in 1995 and would score another US hit from another film soundtrack (this time Threesome) with a version of the Staple Singers’ “I’ll Take You There”. Sadly, Ranking Roger died of cancer in 2019 aged just 56.

Next up we have *checks notes* ah yes, some Eurodance. Of course we do. You couldn’t sodding avoid this soulless genre back then. Corona are this week’s exponent of the genre’s paucity of passion with their single “Baby Baby”. There are few if any redeeming features on display here. Even the singer isn’t the actual singer. Echoing Black Box’s vocalist deception, the woman fronting the whole sham here – Olga Maria de Souza – was just that, a front. The voice on the track belongs to someone called Jenny B. In fact, despite being the public face of the act throughout the 90s and beyond, Souza didn’t actually lay down her own vocals on any Corona recording until 2005! We’re talking Boris Johnson levels of building a career based on nothing but smoke and mirrors here. “Baby Baby” would somehow become a No 5 hit. The more I hear, the less I understand.

A genuinely arresting song now that would make you stop in your tracks the first time you heard it. Portishead had firmly been announced by the music press as the movement leaders of trip hop by this point though this wasn’t an image that the band themselves wished to promote. After “Glory Box” had made them bona fide Top 40 stars earlier in the year, a rerelease of their debut single “Sour Times” was deemed sensible and what a sound decision it proved to be.

After making No 57 in August of 1994, it would peak at No 13 second time around. Many a descriptor has been used to identify Portishead’s sound in general but on this track in particular, words like ‘haunting’, ‘melancholy’ and ‘cinematic’ are certainly not wide of the mark. That last one certainly rings true. “Sour Times” features a speeded up sample from a track from film composer Lalo Schifrin’s album “More Mission: Impossible”. Not only that but the video features footage from a short film made by the band themselves! I had no idea such a thing existed! Said film is called To Kill A Dead Man and a still from it formed the cover of their “Dummy” album. The theme from the film was an extra track on the CD single of “Sour Times” and gives off some serious 60s spy film vibes…

Of course, Portishead weren’t the first band to make their own feature film. ABC came out with Mantrap in 1983 and, like To Kill A Dead Man, it was a spy caper and had its own theme tune called “Theme From Mantrap”.

After that rather spine tingling interlude, we’re back to the cruddy, generic dance music. I say generic but there was something that set Real McCoy apart from their peers and that was that for some reason their particular brand of Eurodance crossed over to America. They had two No 3 hits over there with “Another Night” and “Run Away” not though with this one, “Love & Devotion”. Yes, I know the TOTP caption says “3rd UK hit and 2nd US Top 20 hit” but as far as I can tell, this isn’t true. This track wasn’t released as a single in America.

Anyway, so what was it about the Real McCoy version of Eurodance that succeeded over the pond where the genre generally didn’t prove to be popular? I think I may have said in a previous post whilst commenting on another of their hits that there seemed to be more of a classic pop song structure to their output than some of their contemporaries so was that a factor? Bizarrely, in the case of “Love & Devotion”, I could probably understand if that had been a major hit in the US (it wasn’t released there remember) as it has more than a passing resemblance to Ace Of Base whose Euro-infused cod reggae sound provided them with a No 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. I’ll say it again, the more I hear the less I understand.

When it comes to songs from films, Portishead, despite having their own short film to their name, had some way to go to catch the soundtrack master Bryan Adams. The Groover From Vancouver’ first had one of his songs featured in a film in 1983 when “Heaven” appeared in the largely unknown A Night In Heaven and by 2002 he had written a whole soundtrack album by himself for the animated western Spirit: Stallion Of The Cimarron but it was the 90s when he bestrode the genre mammoth like. Starting with that Robin Hood song, he followed it up by being part of a trio with Sting and Rod Stewart on “All For Love” from The Three Musketeers and then came “Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman?” from Don Juan DeMarco. Yet another ballad (all his film songs seemed to be of the love variety), the flamenco guitar gave it a differential to the others but for me it was always a bit of a damp squib. Sorry Bry but I’ve never really loved this song. Not one bit.

It’s the ‘album’ slot now but as is commonwith this feature, what we actually get is a very long preview of the artist’s next single. Wet Wet Wet’s latest album “Picture This” (as the TOTP caption says) was No 1 and had already sold 340,000 copies (it would go on to shift 900,000 units) so I guess it made sense to have the top selling artist on the show. The track they perform here is “Don’t Want To Forgive Me Now” which would end up being their next single when it was released in June. It’s an accomplished, well produced pop song but a little to formulaic and obvious for me. It would peak at No 7 when finally released.

If the track itself didn’t really intrigue me, I was struck by something about the performance of it, namely that bass player Graeme Clark and keyboardist Neil Mitchell have swapped places and instruments. Was that just some sort of band in joke or did they perhaps want to have a laugh by messing with the usual set up? Neither looks convincing in their new role. Neil hardly moves his fingers at all along the bass neck whilst Graeme literally bashes around on the keys like he was Bamm-Bamm from The Flintstones. It got me thinking though about other occasions in the show’s history where a classic band line up has been subverted. Later in the year we would get the classic Oasis performance of “Roll With It” when Noel and Liam exchanged places and didn’t Jimmy Somerville and Sarah Jane Morris mine each other’s vocal parts when performing “Don’t Leave Me This Way”? I think they did. Must be something about songs that begin with the word ‘Don’t’.

Ah, it’s Björk. Always a difficult review for me. I used to think I didn’t like Björk because she can’t sing. Then I came to the realisation that she can sing but I just don’t like her voice. Then I surprised myself when rewatching these BBC4 TOTP repeats by actually appreciating and even liking some of her material like “Venus As A Boy” and “Big Time Sensuality”. So how do I approach and revisit “Army Of Me”, the lead single of her second album “Post”? Well, I’m afraid this one doesn’t work for me. Too menacing, brooding and industrial sounding for my delicate pop sensibilities. However, even I couldn’t resist the charms of her version of “It’s Oh So Quiet” when she scored a massive hit with it over the Xmas period.

Björk is back on the show in a future repeat alongside Skunk Anansie to perform a remix of “Army Of Me”. Maybe I’ll like that version better. By the way, this was yet another song that featured on a film soundtrack – the big screen adaptation of the comic book character Tank Girl. The collection of songs was assembled by Courtney Love and included tracks by her own band Hole (of course) and the aforementioned Portishead. This is fast turning into a film soundtrack special!

Or is it a Eurovision special? With the song contest just three weeks away, the BBC was ramping up its promotion of the annual event. The UK’s official entry Love City Groove will be along shortly but right now it’s an act that came third to them in the selection competition A Song For Europe. Deuce had already had a No 11 hit with “Call It Love” earlier in the year but their Eurovision attempt “I Need You” would go one better giving them their biggest ever hit. Having listened back to this rather nasty slice of Eurodance, I can understand why it didn’t win. Deuce were like a second rate Steps prototype and nobody needed that in their lives.

Despite being well beaten at A Song For Europe by Love City Groove, Deuce did pip their victors in one chart battle – they made it to the Top 10 first. Whilst the rappers were at No 17 this week, Deuce went straight in at No 10. LCG would eventually supersede that feat by peaking at No 7 after Eurovision had aired.

Take That remain at No 1 for a third week with “Back For Good”. The black and white video of the band mooching about in the rain in slow motion in front of some classic American cars became almost iconic, perhaps because it was the last to feature Robbie Williams in the band’s first incarnation. A still from it would form the cover for their 2005 Best Of “Never Forget – The Ultimate Collection”.

And so to Love City Groove. Tacked onto the end of the show as an additional tenth track (most shows of this period had featured nine), this looked like a clear case of hype building for Eurovision by the BBC. I guess in this week in particular they could make the case that its inclusion was merited as it was the highest climber on the chart leaping from No 26 to No 17. My guess is that this won’t be the last TOTP appearance for “Love City Groove”.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Pato Banton and Ranking Roger	Bubbling Hot	Nah
2	Corona	Baby Baby	NO!
3	Portishead	Sour Times	No but my wife had the album
4	Real McCoy	Love & Devotion	Negative
5	Bryan Adams	Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman?	Nope
6	Wet Wet Wet	Don’t Want To Forgive Me Now	I did not
7	Björk	Army Of Me	It’s a no
8	Deuce	I Need You	But I don’t need you or your record
9	Take That	Back For Good	No but my wife did
10	Love City Groove	Love City Groove	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/m001rrzj/top-of-the-pops-20041995

TOTP 23 MAR 1995

Posted on October 17 by 80stastic

Ah crap! It’s been a good run but it’s finally come to an end. Simon ‘Smug’ Mayo is back hosting TOTP! He says later in this show that he hasn’t been on presenting duties since the previous October. I haven’t checked to see if that’s true but regardless, I’d have gladly never seen the w****r anchoring the show again. He always seemed to me to treat it as his own personal promotional vehicle, making it all about him with his annoying, cryptic one liners and ridiculous tailoring.

He starts off by saying that there’s no public flogging on tonight’s show. What?! Was this something to do with the sentencing of Eric Cantona for his kung fu style assault of a Crystal Palace fan which took place on the very same day this TOTP went out? Eric got 14 days in prison pending an appeal which he subsequently won and saw his sentence reduced to 120 hours of community service. So, not exactly a public flogging then Simon.

With the first example of Mayo’s inane drivel dispensed with, it’s time for the opening act who is Sean Maguire. He was the ex-EastEnders and Grange Hill actor who had decided that he was wasting his time with all that TV work and what the world really needed was to bear witness to his singing talents while he ‘testified’* on stage. So far, he’d made a decent stab at the transformation with a couple of middling sized hits the previous year and now he was back with his third single “Suddenly”. Nothing to do with the Billy Ocean hit of the same name, this was just more pop-by-numbers stuff designed to appeal to the teen market with an instrumental break written in to allow for the obligatory dance routine to be included. I mean, it’s a catchy little ditty but it’s hardly a pop music masterpiece. Even so, it had more longevity than Sean’s fashion gimmick which saw him with a top tied around his waist even though he was wearing a jacket over his singlet. Why did he need the jacket if he was too warm to wear the top? This didn’t make any sense at all. Maybe it was de rigueur fashion accessorising in 1995? We’ll certainly see more examples of it later on in the show.

Mayo really is a prick. In his second intro, he makes a reference to Peter Tatchell, the human and gay rights campaigner when announcing Tin Tin Out as the next artist. Why? Well, I think that he was referring to a current news story about Tatchell’s involvement with the direct action group OutRage! who ran a campaign to out 20 MPs who publicly supported anti-gay legislation whilst secretly living gay personal lives. One such MP was Sir James Kilfedder who died of a heart attack three days before this TOTP was broadcast just as the Belfast Telegraph ran a story that he was one of the politicians targeted. A sensitive story you would think. Not to Mayo. That’s source material for a cheap line while he presents a pop music programme. Tin Tin Out? Geddit? Like I said, a prick.

Anyway, back to the music and Tin Tin Out were an electronic music duo who mixed hits for some of the biggest names like Erasure and Pet Shop Boys but they also had a sideline in hits under their own name. “Always (Something There To Remind Me)” was their second such hit peaking at No 14. A version of the Bacharach and David song that Sandie Shaw took to the top of the charts in 1964, it was a cover in the loosest sense of the word. Basically they took the song’s distinctive melody, added a house beat to it and roped in vocalist Vanessa Contenay-Quinones of the duo Espiritu to sing (rather badly here I would add) the song’s title repeatedly. It sounds horrible to my ears. Perhaps to offset this infernal racket, there are four half naked backing dancers (with their tops tied around their waists as per Sean Maguire) making the female members of the audience react as if it were The Chippendales they were watching.

Tin Tin Out would find further success later in the decade with covers of The Sundays (“Here’s Where The Story Ends”) and Edie Brickell (“What I Am”). The latter was with ex-Spice Girl Emma Bunton which was released on the same day as Gerri Halliwell’s “Lift Me Up” causing a chart battle to see who would be No 1. In the end, Ginger won out over Baby.

By the way, if I wanted a cover of “Always (Something There To Remind Me)” – which I did apparently in 1983 as I bought this single – then there’s always this…

I may have succumbed to some ropey old synth pop version of a 60s classic in 1983 but there was no way I was falling for this next load of old tosh twelve years later. I know we’ve seen many an act bag themselves a huge hit and basically just repeat the song with a few tweaks for the follow up over the years but this by Rednex really was scandalous. After the horror that was their No 1 single “Cotton Eye Joe”, they almost literally put out the same record again for their next one. As a result, “Old Pop In An Oak” was every bit as dreadful as its predecessor. Despite not making the Top 10, enough poor saps bought it in sufficient quantities to send it to No 12. What the hell happened people?!

In 1993, Duran Duran pulled off the seemingly impossible by escaping the from the box the public had put them in labelled ‘They used to be famous in the 80s’ and coming up with a hit single that put them back into the Top 10 for the first time in four years with “Ordinary World”. Not only that but its parent album was a million seller in the US and went gold in the UK. They were back and had momentum on their side. What they did with that momentum was tantamount to commercial and artistic suicide. Whose idea was it to record an album of cover versions? Or perhaps the question should be ‘whose idea was it to record an album of those cover versions?’.

Take the lead single from the “Thank You” album for example. Wasn’t Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day” seen as sacrosanct at the time? What were they boys thinking? However, the phrase ‘at the time’ really should have been in italics for it has been covered by many an artist since and I don’t remember the same amount of cries of heresy as were reserved for the Duran boys? Indeed, just three months after this, Kirsty MacColl released her own version with Evan Dando of The Lemonheads to promote her Best Of album “Galore” and I’m pretty sure there weren’t any cries of “Heresy!” from anyone. By 1997, just about every big name in the music business had covered it (sort of). A BBC promotional video to showcase their musical diversity featuring the likes of David Bowie, Elton John, Bono, Heather Small, Brett Anderson of Suede, Tom Jones, Gabrielle, Evan Dando (again!) and perhaps most memorably Dr John (“such a poyfick day”) was absolutely fêted by the public; so much so that it was released as a single and went to No 1 for three weeks. All of this leads me to believe that it was more about who was doing the cover version and it was a case of everybody else = good, Duran Duran = bad.

Or maybe it wasn’t even about this track? After all, Lou Reed is on record as saying the Duran version was the best recording of any of his songs. Was it the other covers on “Thank You” that offended so? Taking on songs by Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello and Iggy Pop was ill judged but to navigate “White Lines (Don’t Don’t Do It)” by Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel and Public Enemy’s “911 Is A Joke” was clinically insane. The readers of Q magazine were so incensed that in a 2006 poll, they voted “Thank You” the worst album of all time. So was it that bad? Well, I’ve often found myself on the wrong side of popular opinion and I did buy a couple of Duran Duran albums in the 80s but on the whole, even I would say it was a not a clever career move. As so it proved. After the critical backlash “Thank You” received, the band floundered. Follow up album “Medazzaland” didn’t even get released in Europe with the record buying public seemingly only interested in their past glories – a Best Of collection called “Greatest” made No 4 when released in 1998. It would take a reunion of the classic line up in 2004 to return them towards the top of the charts when the “Astronaut” album made No 3.

Talking of the classic line up, that’s Roger Taylor on drums in this TOTP performance which took me by surprise as he hadn’t had anything to do with the band since leaving in 1986. Apparently he played on three tracks for the “Thank You” album and appeared in the video for “Perfect Day”. Meanwhile, bassist John Taylor seems to have taken leave of his fashion senses – a checked shirt matched with stripey trousers?!

Next a band who in many ways replaced Duran Duran in the affections of the teen market as the boys from Birmingham’s popularity dwindled in the late 80s. Wet Wet Wet were on a commercial high come the mid 90s. They’d had that single in 1994 at No 1 for fifteen weeks and now were back with a new hit in the Top 10. Of course, also like Duran Duran, they’d suffered their own decline in approval around 1989-1991 but that was all behind them now.

Following the biggest selling single of the year though was no easy task and “Julia Says” predictably couldn’t get anywhere near the sales of “Love Is All Around”. A high of No 3 was nothing to be sniffed at though even if the track itself wasn’t their strongest by a mile and it did help propel parent album “Picture This” to No 1 and a million sales. The hits kept coming until the end of the decade when Marti Pellow left the band to deal with his addiction issues. Wet Wet Wet are still a going concern but only just. Graeme Clark is the only remaining member of the original four piece line up though they have just announced a co-headlining tour with perennials of the nostalgia circuit Go West.

A case next of an appearance on TOTP not helping the sales of a single. “Original” by Leftfield featuring Tony Halliday was a new entry on the chart this week at No 18 but it would fall to No 35 seven days later despite the exposure of this performance. To be fair, the sound of the track didn’t exactly lend itself to a turn on TV. Its dark, dubby rhythms allied to Halliday’s almost deadpan vocals weren’t a perfect match for the medium of TV. Not that it isn’t a good track – it is but it acts almost as a visual downer in amongst the scream-inducing likes of Sean Maguire and Wet Wet Wet. Yes, there are some shrieks from the studio audience at times during “Original” but I get the impression they were falsely manufactured by the prompting of a floor manager.

Leftfield were, of course, influential production team Neil Barnes and Paul Daley who’d already had a hit under their own steam when they collaborated with John Lydon on the hypnotic “Open Up” in 1994. Toni Halliday was the lead singer with shoe gazing / dance beat hybrid Curve who’d had a handful of minor hit singles and two moderately successful albums to this point but whose legacy was to open the doors for the likes of Garbage to stride through. The album “Original” came from was the Mercury Prize nominated “Leftism” which is widely regarded as a milestone moment in dance music. Listening to this track now, it sounds very like Portishead to me whose album “Dummy” beat “Leftism” to the aforementioned Mercury Prize in 1995.

Next another band who like Wet Wet Wet are trying to follow up the biggest hit of their career. East 17 may not have had the best selling single of the year like the Wets but they did have the Christmas No 1 with all the sales that brings with it. Surely they couldn’t bag another chart topper with their next release? The short answer is no they couldn’t but they did keep their record of consecutive Top 10 hits going with “Let It Rain” taking the tally to five.

After the balladry of “Stay Another Day”, it was back to the sound on which they made their name – a hard-hitting, quick house beats dance floor-filler with a shouty yet catchy chorus. Its intro has Tony Mortimer going all Prince-like in “Let’s Go Crazy” mode, preaching from the pulpit before the beats hit about corridors of creation and colliding comets. Actually, he sounds a bit like Gary Clail of On-U Sound fame.

I’d have to say that apart from that intro, it’s not one of their most memorable tunes, not quite the banger it wants to be. Talking of which, Terry Coldwell (the bloke in the singlet on the left in this performance and only remaining original member still with the group) was in the news recently when he participated in a Counties Radio competition where presenter Justin Dealey would ask people in the street to sing a song and if he judged it good enough, he would buy them a hot dog as a reward. Snappily entitled ‘Sing a banger for a banger’, Coldwell rocked up and sang “Stay Another Day” but was denied his prize on account of sounding too authentic!

Mayo’s back with his crappy jokes now as he name checks the boxer Chris Eubank. As far as I understand it, by saying that Chris’s favourite song was “Hypnotised” by Simple Minds, he was referring to the fact that Eubank had recently lost his WBO super middleweight title to Steve Collins who had employed a guru to help him prepare mentally for the fight leading the press to believe that Collins was hypnotised for the bout. As Eubanks entered the ring before the fight, Collins sat in his corner motionless with headphones on, giving more credence to the rumour. None of this backstory makes Mayo’s quip funny though. Look mate, you’re just there to introduce the acts not perform a stand up routine. Just do your job.

Anyway, this was the second and last single from the “Good News From The Next World” album and it wasn’t very good. Not only was it completely soporific but I’m sure they’d used that bridge part before in a previous hit. In short, poor on quality and lethargic of effort. Must do better.

By the way, what was going on with guitarist Charlie Burchill?! Back in 1984, I’d desperately coveted his look but he just looks weird here. Horrible hair and a jacket that looks like he’d borrowed it from a pearly king. And I thought John Taylor’s wardrobe was suss.

The Comic Relief single “Love Can Build A Bridge” by Cher, Neneh Cherry, Chrissie Hynde and Eric Clapton has, rather predictably, brought an end to Celine Dion’s run at No 1 and to quote Captain Sensible’s 1982 hit “Wot”, ain’t I glad. Beware though. This respite will only last a week before a new menace takes residence in the top spot…

Just before the credits roll, there’s a plug for the BBC’s A Song for Europe show to pick this year’s UK Eurovision entry. It seemed quite an elongated process. There was a Top of the Pops Song for Europe Special show that Mayo mentions where each of the competing songs was showcased but that wasn’t the point where the winner was chosen. No, there was another programme a week later where that decision was made by a public vote. Each artist also had a celebrity champion advocating for them. Some of the entrants were well known – Londonbeat for example (who sounded dreadful in the clip at the end of this TOTP) plus recent chart stars Deuce and Samantha Fox fronting Sox. The rest of them I have no idea about except the actual winner of course who were Love City Groove who trounced everybody with over 140,000 votes. The artist placed second got 81,000 by comparison. Things didn’t work out for Love City Groove on the big day but that’s a story for another post.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Sean Maguire	Suddenly	As if
2	Tin Tin Out featuring Espiritu	Always (Something There To Remind Me)	No
3	Rednex	Old Pop In An Oak	Hell no!
4	Duran Duran	Perfect Day	Nope
5	Wet Wet Wet	Julia Says	Nah
6	Leftfield featuring Tony Halliday	Original	No but my wife might have had the album I think
7	East 17	Let It Rain	Negative
8	Simple Minds	Hypnotised	I did not
9	Cher, Neneh Cherry, Chrissie Hynde and Eric Clapton	Love Can Build A Bridge	Not even for charity

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/m001rb00/top-of-the-pops-23031995

TOTP 09 MAR 1995

Posted on October 11 by 80stastic

We’re well into March 1995 with these TOTP repeats and I’m pretty sure that work wise back then, I was firmly ensconced back at the Our Price store in Stockport following the closure of the shop in Market Street, Manchester. I say ‘back’ as I’d spent a couple of months there in the Autumn of 1993. It hadn’t gone well and I’d been glad to get out of there but now I was on my way back after spending the whole of 1994 in Manchester. I would spend the next four years there. It had its ups and downs but on the whole it would turn out to be a much better experience.

Right at the start of my time there, an album by the first artist on tonight’s show was released which would stay with me until the present day. Its lead single would provide the band with their biggest commercial success but it would also prove to be completely divisive in terms of its appeal. Some may even argue that it did them more harm than good in terms of credibility. The Boo Radleys had been in existence since 1988 but were largely unknown to the great British public despite their 1993 album “Giant Steps” being voted album of the year by NME readers. All that was to change in 1995 with the release of their fourth album “Wake Up!” and its lead single “Wake Up Boo!”. Beloved of breakfast DJs up and down the land (especially Radio 1’s Chris Evans who had a jingle made for his show based on it), it’s an almost perfect example of the bright, bouncy, exuberant pop song. It was impossible to ignore so in your face was it as it dragged you kicking and screaming from your bed and demanded that you face the new day in front of you. It was everywhere and yet that ubiquity worked against it. Some people couldn’t (and still to this day can’t) stand it. Perhaps for the existing fanbase it felt like a betrayal and that the band had sold out and for the wider general public, was it that the track was just a bit too much for the innate misery of the national identity?

For my part, I liked the way it raced along and combined some lush harmonising with perky brass parts. However, it wasn’t that No 9 hit which made me invest in the album. I much preferred the follow up single “Find The Answer Within” which, having been the catalyst for me to purchase “Wake Up!”, led me to other gems within its twelve tracks like “Twinside” and “Wilder”. I stand by the album and still listen to it nearly 30 years later. For once, I was in sync with the rest of the record buying public as it went to No 1 and briefly The Boo Radleys were the bomb.

Inevitably though, they got shoved in the box labelled Britpop despite rejecting such associations (did anybody ever admit to being a Britpop band?) and as the movement floundered so did their commercial fortunes. Subsequent album “C’mon Kids” was perceived as a deliberate attempt to dismantle their pop star / hitmaker status (an accusation the band deny) but it is certainly true that the sound of it was less commercial than its predecessor. The writing was on the wall by the release of their sixth studio album “Kingsize” in 1998 which peaked at No 62 in the charts and they disbanded not long after. Almost miraculously, they resurfaced in 2022 with new material though without chief songwriter Martin Carr within their ranks.

And back to the crap. I really am sick of these brainless Eurodance hits. I mean 2 Unlimited pushed me to my limits (ahem) but at least their songs were originals. Applying the Eurodance formula to existing songs was really taking the piss. Presumably the perpetrators of this musical crime did it to extend the shelf life of the genre in case the punters were tiring of it? We had already strayed into this area with the likes of Rage covering Bryan Adams in 1992 and more recently the Hi-NRG treatment of “Total Eclipse Of The Heart” by Nicki French but this next act would take it to another level. Clock would…erm…clock up thirteen UK Top 40 hits in total of which at least half were cover versions starting with this – Harold Faltermeyer’s “Axel F”. The original made No 2 in 1985 and was, of course, from the soundtrack to the film Beverly Hills Cop and was an instrumental track. The 1995 version though had a rapper and female vocalist tacked onto it in the way of that established Eurodance model. Now I was never much of a fan of the original – in fact I found it quite annoying – but this…THIS! Well, it was every shade of shit. Why did anybody need this in their life?! Apparently lots of people did as it went Top 10 in the UK. To be fair, I could also have lived without the original having ever existed either. Its appearance in the chart meant there were two 90s danced up cover versions of 80s instrumental hits in the Top 10 concurrently alongside Perfecto Allstarz and “Reach Up (Papa’s Got A Brand New Pigbag)”.

As for the performance here, presumably the dancers in police uniforms and the CHiPs style motorcycle that tonight’s host Mark Goodier rather ludicrously sits astride in his intro are to tie in with the Eddie Murphy film but it’s all rather unnecessary and silly. And why was the rapper dressed as a circus ringmaster? If we thought this was bad though, it was literally a musical masterpiece compared to what Crazy Frog inflicted on us ten years later.

It’s another dance tune next (of course it is) but this one’s a definite upgrade on Clock. Bucketheads was a side project by Kenny “Dope” Gonzalez, one half of the classic house music Masters at Work production team. Taking Chicago’s “Streetplayer” as his source material Kenny came up with “The Bomb! (These Sounds Fall into My Mind)”, a fusion of house, disco and funk that had been causing a stir in nightclubs for six months before it got a proper release on the Positiva label. That buzz would translate into sales sending it to No 5 in the UK charts.

You know, I’ve always dismissed Chicago as that band who produced all those sickly ballads like “If You Leave Me Now,” “You’re the Inspiration,” “Hard To Say I’m Sorry” and “Hard Habit To Break” which were, to my ears, all essentially the same song. However, there is so much more to them than I ever realised. They’ve been going for 55 years, have released 26 studio albums, sold 100 million records, have been inducted into The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame and have a list of band members past and present that would rival The Fall. Then there’s the music. They’ve tried everything from jazz-rock to funk to soul to those adult contemporary hits. There’s even a documentary about them called The Last Band On Stage – apparently they were pretty much the last artist to play a live gig on the planet as Covid shut the world down in March 2020.

Anyway, back to Bucketheads and the video shown here was directed by one Guy Ritchie three years before he became famous for Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels. As for the name Bucketheads, was it anything to do with the satirical political candidate Lord Buckethead who stood in the 1987 and 1992 General Elections? The film maker Todd Durham created the character in 1984 for the sci-fi comedy film Hyperspace and when he claimed ownership of Buckethead following the 2017 General Election, the character was renamed as Count Binface by the comedian Jonathan Harvey who was the current incumbent. I guess the idea just fell into his mind.

Enough with the dance tunes! Give us something else! Well, you couldn’t get more of a contrast from Clock and Bucketheads than the moment Radiohead transformed from shoe-gazing one hit wonders into colossal, stadium-filling art rockers. After the indie disco favourite “Creep” had gone Top 10 in 1983, Radiohead had come under pressure from EMI to repeat the trick. What they did instead was so much more than just another isolated crossover hit. Sophomore album “The Bends” would come to be seen as a game-changer, redefining the parameters of rock music and it wasn’t hard to understand why. Compared to the likes of Oasis (whose lad rock charms I had been easily swayed by), it was a much more layered, complex and involved record. The first time I heard it played on the shop stereo, I knew I was listening to something special, something that demanded more exploration, something…well…just more. It was one of the few albums that I’ve ever bought that I felt I had little choice in. It had to be purchased. As with The Boo Radleys earlier, “The Bends” is an album that has stayed with me ever since and which has not diminished over the years.

There’s another reason for linking Radiohead and The Boo Radleys (I do love a bit of synchronicity) and that’s in the Charles Bukowski T-shirt Thom Yorke is wearing. The American writer and poet had died exactly one year ago to the day that this TOTP was broadcast which presumably was why Thom was wearing the T-shirt. So what’s this got to do with The Boo Radleys? Well, their album “Wake Up” has a track on it called “Charles Bukowski Is Dead”. Sometimes this shit just writes itself.

Anyway, “High And Dry” was the second single from “The Bends” (after “My Iron Lung” in the Autumn of 1994) and was a double A-side with “Planet Telex” (the opening song on the album) and its almost achingly beautiful. Originally recorded as a demo in 1993 and almost incredulously dismissed as being too Rod Stewart (!), it has been described as being responsible for the careers of the likes of Coldplay and Travis. I’ll leave you to decide if that’s a good thing or not.

One more thing, they say a song’s quality can be judged by its ability to be covered in a style that is completely different to its original form. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Radiohead as done by ABC. Who needs AI?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Having an artist do an ‘exclusive’ performance of a single yet to be released only to have them back on the show the following week once it’s entered the charts isn’t working for me. Take Faith No More for example. They were on just last week performing “Digging The Grave” and I struggled to find anything to say about it then. Now I’ve got to go through exactly the same torment again this week? They could have at least shown the video to give me something different to go at.

Look, I’ve got nothing so not for the first time I’m going to leave it to Beavis and Butthead…”They just look and sound like everyone else”.

Genuine music icon time now as the venerable Stevie Wonder is on the show. Now while I can totally appreciate why TOTP Executive Producer Ric Blaxill would have jumped at the chance to get such a legendary name on the show, it really does feel like a case of shoehorning going on here. Yes, Stevie had an album due out (“Conversation Peace”) but it wasn’t actually available in the shops for another two weeks. The lead single from it (“For Your Love”) had peaked and was going down the charts so he couldn’t really perform that. The solution was to get Stevie to sing a track from the album called “Tomorrow Robins Will Sing” (it would eventually be released as the second single).

Now I love Stevie’s 60s, 70s and early 80s stuff as much as the next person but most of his material from “I Just Called To Say I Love You” onwards was of variable quality at best. I have to say that the song performed here really wasn’t up to much. A reggae flavoured number that saw Stevie unwisely indulge in some sort of faux rapping in the verses. And here’s my point. Yes, he is a legendary name and yes it was an exclusive to have him in the studio in person (his last performance appearance was in 1974 promoting “Living For The City”) but was there really that much buzz and anticipation about a new Stevie Wonder album in 1995? I’m not sure. “Conversation Peace” did go Top 10 in the UK but it’s hardly regarded as a classic is it?

In amongst the proliferation of R&B artists that the 90s gave us, I always feel that Des’ree gets overlooked somewhat. I’m not sure why as she has the sales/streams and awards to not be but perhaps it has something to do with the fact that of her six UK Top 40 hits, three of them were courtesy of the same song. “You Gotta Be” was first released in April 1994 peaking at No 20. So why the rerelease nearly a whole year later? It was down to its stellar performance in America where it made No 5 on the Billboard Hot 100. And why was it a hit over there? Well, because it was used to soundtrack an advertising campaign for the ABC network magazine programme Good Morning America thereby raising its profile significantly. The UK rerelease saw the single peak at No 14 but it was its third outing in 1999 when it gained its biggest success with it finally made the Top 10. That final release was again due to its use in an advert, this time to promote the Ford Focus car. “You Gotta Be” also won an Ivor Novello for Best Contemporary Song whilst Des’ree herself won a BRIT Award for Best Female Solo Artist. Outperforming all three of those releases though was her 1998 single “Life” which got to No 8 despite it including a lyric that was voted the worst ever in a pop song in a 2007 BBC poll. You know the one – where Des’ree sings that she doesn’t want to see a ghost and would rather have a piece of toast? Yeah, that one. She also duetted with Terence Trent D’Arby on his 1993 hit single “Delicate”.

So why do I think she’s over looked? Well, she never had a massive selling album, at least not in the UK though her 1994 collection “I Ain’t Movin'” sold a million copies in the US. I also think the two years between that release and her debut “Mind Adventures” and its attendant hit single “Feel So High” in 1992 meant she lost a bit of momentum. In that time, the likes of Gabrielle, Dina Carroll appeared on the scene to step into her vacant shoes. Hell, even EastEnders actress Michelle Gayle got in on the act. Did Des’ree just get crowded out of that particular musical genre? Actually, listening back to “You Gotta Be”, it does have more than a hint of Gabrielle’s “Dreams” to it. Did Des’ree see which way the wind was blowing and decide to follow suit?

One person who didn’t overlook Des’ree was my wife who is a primary school teacher. When she was teaching a music unit one year, she decided that there wasn’t enough R&B / soul music represented on the module and so added “You Gotta Be” to it. Apparently her class loved the song and would sing along to it when she found a video on YouTube with the lyrics included. I’m not sure how many pupils my wife had in her class but I’m guessing it wasn’t as many as Des’ree had in a world record breaking event for charity in 2008 when she led 600,000 children in singing the same song simultaneously at the O2 Arena. The song was, of course, “You Gotta Be”.

Now, was it too soon for the return of Wet Wet Wet after their fifteen week stint at No 1 with “Love Is All Around” the previous year? In fact, how do you follow up a hit that big? Is it even possible to achieve such sales with consecutive releases? Erm, no is the short answer though “Julia Says” was no flop either peaking at No 3. Trailing the band’s fourth studio album “Picture This” (though “Love Is All Around” was tacked onto it as the last track), it seemed a rather safe choice by Marti and the gang to be honest. Despite being melodic and tuneful, it was hardly breaking any new ground. The exact opposite in fact as I’m sure I can detect traces of “Strawberry Fields Forever” era Beatles in there at one point. Still Pellow sells it well to the delight of the screaming studio audience (as Mark Goodier says, the band always got a good reaction whenever they were on TOTP).

Ah yes, those fans. I have a memory of Wet Wet Wet fans being a bit of a pain when “Julia Says” came out, a bit precious about when exactly would it be available in the shop to buy. Not Numanoid levels of annoying – Gary Numan’s fans were always ringing up and arguing the toss about release dates – but still the wrong side of polite I would say. They, at least, far from having had enough of Wet Wet Wet, couldn’t get enough of them.

Celine Dion is not finished with the No 1 spot yet as she clocks up a sixth week there with “Think Twice”. In desperation of having to say something about this song yet again, I decided to have a gander at the lyrics. Written by Andy Hill and ex-King Crimson lyricist Pete Sinfield (who also wrote “The Land Of Make Believe” for Bucks Fizz), the words are really not very good. Like, at all. Rhyming ‘dice’ with ‘twice’? I took a guitar class a few years back and we were tasked with writing a song of our own to perform in front of everyone else. I came up with some crap based around life as a board game which included a lyric about rolling the dice. I was almost embarrassed to sing it. Celine clearly had no such qualms.

“Think Twice” also includes these lines:

Babe, I know it ain’t easy when your soul cries out for higher ground
‘Cause when you’re halfway up, you’re always halfway down
Writer/s: Andrew Gerard Hill, Peter John Sinfield
Publisher: Songtrust Ave, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Universal Music Publishing Group
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

What was the inspiration for that? The Grand Old Duke of York nursery rhyme?! Thankfully, we’ve only one more week of this crud to go.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	The Boo Radleys	Wake Up Boo!	No the single but I bought the album
2	Clock	Axel F	NO!
3	Bucketheads	The Bomb! (These Sounds Fall into My Mind)	Nope
4	Radiohead	High And Dry / Planet Telex	See 1 above
5	Faith No More	Digging The Grave	I did not
6	Stevie Wonder	Tomorrow Robins Will Sing	Negative
7	Des’ree	You Gotta Be	Nah
8	Wet Wet Wet	Julia Says	No
9	Celine Dion	Think Twice	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/m001r3g6/top-of-the-pops-09031995

TOTP 08 SEP 1994

Posted on May 22 by 80stastic

Well, this is a curious thing. Tonight’s ‘golden mic’ presenters are from a band that couldn’t be more 90s but a lot of the acts they introduce are from or have associations with the 80s. Yes, following Take That’s Mark and Robbie earlier in the year, East 17 are in the hot seat tonight and as with their arch rivals, the two members of the group chosen for the gig are probably the two most popular. I’m talking about Brian Harvey and Tony Mortimer but then can you imagine the other two geezers in the band doing it?!

Opening the show tonight are Blondie who you could argue went back to the 70s but they did have three consecutive No 1 singles in 1980 so they certainly count as a name from the 80s. Now there’s a few questions to be answered here. For a start, what were they doing in the charts in 1994? I thought Blondie’s 90s resurrection was much later in the decade.

*checks their discography*

Yeah, I was right. “Maria” wasn’t No 1 until 1999. So what gives here then? Well, it was to do with yet another compilation album. Despite there being two Blondie Best Ofs and a remix album in existence already by 1994 with “The Complete Picture” being as recently as 1991, Chrysalis/EMI decided what the world needed was another remix collection. “Beautiful: The Remix Album” was the what we got and it was trailed by a number of remixed, rereleased tracks that all made the UK Top 20 but as I say, I don’t remember any of this. The first one was “Atomic (Remix)” which made it to No 19.

OK, so the second question is “where we’re the rest of the band?” because there’s only Debbie Harry up there on stage all on her lonesome. Well, they were nowhere to be seen because they’d split in 1982 and Debbie had embarked on a subsequent solo career. So it seems that the band weren’t reforming then it was just a marketing stunt to promote the album. I wonder whether Debbie was already contractually obliged or if Chrysalis had to pay her a decent wedge for this promotional work? I hope it was the latter as the performance here does nothing but tarnish her fine legacy. Why is she dressed like it’s a come as Shirley Bassey themed party? Then there’s her vocal (which is the third question that needs answering) as there’s something screwy going on with it. Is she miming or at least singing along with a vocal backing track because it really doesn’t seem like she’s singing live? The whole thing is a mess and an undignified one at that.

Now it would appear that my theme of 80s acts on a 1994 TOTP show has fallen at the second hurdle with Corona, a most typical example of the Eurodance genre that dominated the charts in the early to mid 90s. I’m nothing if not tenuous though and so I make the connection to the 80s via the name of their debut and surely best remembered hit “Rhythm Of The Night”. Anyone else recall DeBarge? They were like an American version of Five Star (who themselves were a Tupperware take on The Jacksons) being a group made up of family members who had one (and just one) hit in the UK in 1985 with a calypso flavoured dance track called…yep…”Rhythm Of The Night”. A sickeningly upbeat number it made it to No 4 over here and No 3 in the US.

With the 80s theme dealt with, what about Corona then. Well, their song “Rhythm Of The Night” was considered by many to be an absolute banger and almost definitive example of Eurodance and it was certainly popular peaking at No 2 in the UK. As was an almost obligatory turn of events with Eurodance artists, the woman we see here fronting the act (one Olga Souza) wasn’t the person who supplied the vocals on the record. That was Giovanna Bersola who suffered from stage fright and so could only sing within the confines of the recording studio. Talking of confined spaces, when the world went into lockdown in 2020 due to the pandemic, the group received an unexpected profile boost on account of sharing their name with the group of viruses that caused COVID-19. Various memes arose from this association leading Olga to comment on it thus:

“I have seen a lot of memes. We are all alarmed right now. This kind of news surely brings us a lot of anxiety, because we don’t know how to deal with [the virus] yet. It would be a lot better if the world was infected by the song instead of that dangerous virus.”
“Cantora Corona desabafa após ser associada ao Coronavírus” [Singer Corona speaks out after being associated with Coronavirus]. RD1 (in Portuguese). 8 February 2020. Archived from the original on 27 March 2020. Retrieved 14 March 2020.

I’m guessing Olga would rather be remembered as per US American internet news and entertainment company Buzzfeed who ranked “Rhythm Of The Night” as No 2 in their ‘101 Greatest Dance Songs Of The 90s’ list.

Next a band who may have had their most successful period commercially in the 90s but they definitely started in the 80s and that’s a good enough link to my theme for this post for me. By September 1994 though, The Wonderstuff were actually no more having announced a split in June in a fan club newsletter. They’d even performed live for the final time in July so what were they doing in the charts again? Well, their label Polydor had decided to cash in one last time on their recently liquidated asset by releasing a Best Of album – the wonderfully titled “If The Beatles Had Read Hunter…The Singles” – and a single was required to promote it. With a decision that would unintentionally help out this post 29 years later, Polydor chose 1987 track “Unbearable”. Bingo! Another 80s connection! Originally released as their debut single, it failed to chart back then but would make No 16 seven years later and deservedly so as it’s a quality tune with its distinctive, rat-a-tat chorus “Ididn’tlikeyouverymuchwhenImetyou” spewed out by Miles Hunt a real winner.

The Wonderstuff’s story didn’t end in 1994 though as they reformed in 2000 and have played live and released new material since then amidst various line up changes with Hunt the only constant.

N.B. In a curious pop footnote, in their final foray into the Top 40, the Stuffies were joined in the chart this week by fellow Stourbridge grebos Pop Will Eat Itself who were having their own final hit with “Everything’s Cool”. Nice.

You can’t get more 80s than “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” by Cyndi Lauper can you? This wasn’t quite the same song though. Re-recorded with a reggae lilt (as was the overriding style of the time) and retitled “Hey Now (Girls Just Want To Have Fun)”, it was released to promote her Best Of “Twelve Deadly Cyns…And Then Some” (another great title like The Wonderstuff before her). The album was a big hit rather surprisingly peaking at No 2 and going double platinum in the UK. I say surprisingly because I wouldn’t have thought that there would have been that much appetite for Cyndi in 1994 but what did/do I know? The single also prospered peaking at No 4 just two places lower than the 1984 original.

Now whatever you think about Cyndi’s voice (and I don’t mind it), you’d have to admit it’s distinctive (some may even say unique). Sometimes it can grate – her vocals on “We Are The World” by USA For Africa are the musical equivalent of tearing polystyrene – but she does a good enough job here. We should probably give her credit for reworking an old hit as well – it would have been easy to have just rereleased the original. I think she has the look of Columbia from The Rocky Horror Picture Show here and talking of Columbia…

Making just their third appearance on TOTP but already celebrating going straight in at No 1 on the chart with debut album “Definitely Maybe” are Oasis. At the time it was the fastest selling debut in UK chart history and, of course, featured a track called “Columbia”. To commemorate this achievement, they’ve been invited on the show to play a song from the album and they’ve gone for its opener “Rock ‘N’ Roll Star”. And what an opener! More of a statement than a song, it bristles with energy and drive. It was never released as a single (except as a radio single to American stations) but it easily could have been and it is so recognisable that maybe some people would be surprised to learn that it wasn’t.

The fact that the album went straight to No 1 and was selling so quickly was irrefutable confirmation that something special was occurring – a phenomenon no less. It all seemed to happen so effortlessly and at such speed that it couldn’t be anything less. After just three singles of which only one made the Top 10 to suddenly this…it was extraordinary. Or was it? I’m sure Noel Gallagher is quoted somewhere as saying that they wanted to be the biggest band in the country and they just went out and did it and it was easy; words to that effect anyway. Oasis we’re here to stay and for the rest of the decade (and beyond).

OK, so I can’t make any viable links from Oasis to the 80s but we’re back on theme with the next band whose imperial phase was definitely in that decade. Not that Pet Shop Boys didn’t continue to have consistent and significant commercial success into the 90s as they certainly did but they didn’t have any No 1 singles throughout the whole decade whereas they achieved four in the 80s including three within five releases. Fast forward to 1994 and Neil and Chris were just coming to the end of the “Very” project with “Yesterday When I Was Mad” being the fifth and final single released from the album. Now I do like Pet Shop Boys and went to see them live almost 12 months ago exactly but this track is not one of my favourites of theirs. It’s almost as if they forgot to put a tune in there. Also, I’d had enough of the Howard Greenhalgh CGI videos by now (he’d directed every one for all five singles released from “Very”) although this one at least has a bit more of a human participation to it even if it is Neil Tennant in a straight jacket (the Chris Lowe lampshades are really too creepy though). We wouldn’t get any new material from the duo for 18 months though another remix album (“Disco 2”) appeared in the interim.

Kylie Minogue has had many incarnations but she started out in the 80s as a Stock, Aitken and Waterman pop princess so there’s my post theme ticked off. 1994 though was an important year for her as it saw her release her first material since leaving PWL and enter her ‘Dance Kylie’ phase. Signed to trendy label Deconstruction, home of M People and responsible for some huge house anthems by K-Klass and Bassheads, “Confide In Me” was chosen as her first post Hit Factory single. It was a good choice. Combining dance beats with a string section hook and a flavour of Eastern culture, it couldn’t have been further removed from what she had done before. When you consider her last single before this had been a cover of Kool & The Gang’s “Celebration” to promote her Greatest Hits collection, well…the contrast couldn’t be starker. “Confide In Me” oozed class and proposed Kylie as a serious artist not just a hit-making pop puppet. Credit should be given to the producers and song writers of the track Brothers In Rhythm for their vision of what a fusing of dance and pop could sound like. Critics adored it with gushing reviews whilst the record buying public embraced it by sending it to No 2. For Kylie though, it was proof that she would not just survive life after Stock, Aitken and Waterman but thrive within it.

Here’s another act who achieved huge success in the 80s though the hits certainly didn’t stop once 1989 tipped over into 1990. Bon Jovi began the decade with a huge album in “Keep The Faith” which sold 8 million copies worldwide and generated six hit singles. The promotion of the album via said singles and a world tour stretched from the album’s release in 1992 into 1994 and there would be a new album (“These Days”) in 1995. Despite that hectic schedule, record company Polygram decided that there couldn’t be any let up in the release of Bon Jovi product and so a Best Of album called “Crossroads” was put together. The performance of it would prove that Polygram knew a thing or two about sales – it went six times platinum in the UK and has sold 21 million copies globally. It was the best selling album in the UK in 1994.

To help promote “Crossroads”, the track “Always” was released. A huge, dramatic, swooping rock ballad, it would give the band their biggest ever UK hit when it peaked at No 2. Now it’s not like Bon Jovi had never done a slow song before – I’m thinking “Never Say Goodbye”, “I’ll Be There For You” and “Bed Of Roses” but “Always” seemed different somehow. Grander, more epic but probably most of all (to me anyway) more cynical – a definite move to capture a specific market. I may be wrong of course and they did do it well. Just my own opinion as ever.

We’re finally here. Week 15. The very last week of Wet Wet Wet’s reign at the top of the charts with “Love Is All Around”. The story behind its demise is well known. The band themselves insisted that the single be deleted as they were not enjoying the backlash they were getting from people completely fed up with the song (some radio stations reportedly banned it from their playlists). It was a bold move. Given its slow descent down the charts, it could perhaps have outlasted Bryan Adams who spent 16 weeks at the top with “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”. A rumour that copies would actually be recalled from record stores proved incorrect but it was no longer being pressed. There must have been significant amounts of it still in the shops though as it would spend weeks travelling down the charts rather than dropping stone like straight away. At the time, the only record to be deleted whilst at No 1 previously was “The Fly” by U2 but they had always been upfront beforehand about the limited time it would be available for. With “Love Is All Around” not being on any Wet Wet Wet album at the time of its deletion, some cynics took the view that it was a calculated attempt to force punters into buying the soundtrack album to Four Weddings And A Funeral which the Wets record company Phonogram also had the licence to but I’m not convinced by that theory.

And so the story of the second long running No 1 in a matter of three years comes to an end. Did it help or hinder Wet Wet Wet’s career ultimately? Did people actually like it or not? Can you bear to hear it on the radio again today, some 29 years after the event or is even that too soon? I guess what I’m asking is this…”Is your mind made up by the way that you feel?”

And so to the record that knocked the Wets off their perch. Incorrectly but understandably remembered as a one hit wonder, Whigfield was quite the sales phenomenon herself. The week after this TOTP aired, her single “Saturday Night” would crash into the UK charts at No 1 making her the first unknown artist to do so with their debut single (Gabrielle’s “Dreams” entered the chart at No 2 before going to No 1 in 1993). She followed that up by selling 220,000 copies in one week giving it the highest selling figures for a single in the UK since Band Aid and Wham!’s “Last Christmas” a decade earlier. It would spend four weeks as our No 1 and end the year as the UK’s second biggest selling single of 1994 behind “Love Is All Around”. The buzz around the song was huge and it was totally expected to top the chart eventually. Tiny and Brian even predict that Wet Wet Wet wouldn’t last another week because of Whigfield. They were right. And that will do for this post. Dee dee na na na…

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Blondie	Atomic (Remix)	No
2	Corona	Rhythm Of The Night	I did not
3	The Wonderstuff	Unbearable	Good tune but no
4	Cyndi Lauper	Hey Now (Girls Just Want To Have Fun)	Negative
5	Oasis	Rock ‘N’ Roll Star	I bought the album
6	Pet Shop Boys	Yesterday When I Was Mad	Nah
7	Kylie Minogue	Confide In Me	No but my wife did
8	Bon Jovi	Always	Nope
9	Wet Wet Wet	Love Is All Around	It’s another no
10	Whigfield	Saturday Night	And finally… 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/m001lst4/top-of-the-pops-08091994

TOTP 01 SEP 1994

Posted on May 18, 2023 by 80stastic

OK, before we get into the music, there’s a bit of housekeeping to take care of. Firstly, we’ve missed a whole episode which hasn’t happened for quite some time. Nothing to do with Operation Yewtree nor presenters who hadn’t signed the waiver for BBC4 to broadcast the repeats they featured in – no this was a matter of a technical nature. The tapes for the TOTP shown on 25 August 1994 held in the BBC archive were deemed to be not of broadcast quality and so we miss out on what was surely one of the more interesting guest presenters in Malcolm MacLaren. Despite being a bit of an arse I’m sure, I’ve always had a soft spot for Malcolm and could listen to his drivel for hours. At least he led an interesting life. I’ve checked the running order for that show and I don’t think we missed much. Many acts we’d already seen before including Red Dragon, Shampoo and unbelievably Let Loose again! We did however miss Dinosaur Jnr which might have been distracting at least plus the return of Kylie Minogue with her first new material since leaving PWL as she entered her ‘Dance Kylie’ phase. Oh well.

The other bit of housekeeping is regarding tonight’s host who we haven’t seen before. So who was / is Claire Sturgess? Well, she’s a voice over artist and DJ currently working on Absolute Radio where she’s been since 2015. Back in 1994 though, she was a Radio 1 DJ presenting the rock show on Sunday evenings. She would stay at the BBC until 1997 but only hosted TOTP one more time before being replaced by Lisa I’Anson.

Right, on with the tunes and we start with one that perhaps more than any other (with the possible exception of “Common People” by Pulp) has come to be associated (rightly or wrongly) with the Britpop movement. Think of “Parklife” (the song) by Blur and what comes to mind? Phil Daniels? Of course. The “vorsprung durch technik’ line? Yep. The iconic video with Damon in that tracksuit top camping it up whilst an ice cream van drives by. Without doubt. They’re all woven into the fabric of the time but sometimes I think we forget what a strange song “Parklife” really is. A track where all the verses are spoken in a cockney accent, a chorus that you could imagine Dick Van Dyke singing in one of those musicals he starred in and lyrics about brewer’s droop, dirty pigeons and habitual voyeurs. And yet it all hangs together perfectly to the point that we didn’t bat an eyelid when it was released but instead accepted it as another example of Blur’s pursuit to celebrate ‘Englishness’. Except it wasn’t. Here’s Graham Coxon courtesy of @TOTPFacts:

Graham Coxon on "Parklife": "A lot of people thought it was a celebration of Englishness, but it was actually very sarcastic. [It] wasn't about the working class, it was about the park class: dustbin men, pigeons, joggers – things we saw every day on the way to the studio." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) May 5, 2023

In this performance, Daniels is word perfect and Damon, relieved of the stress of doing all the heavy lifting vocals wise, seems to be enjoying his freedom to ham it up on stage more than usual. My personal memory of this song though would come three months later at Christmas. I was asked to co-coordinate the works Christmas do for all the Our Price shops in the area. I found a venue and we got one of the staff at the Piccadilly, Manchester store to do the DJ-ing (if you worked in a record shop there was always someone who was either in a band or a DJ on the staff). The manager I organised the shindig with (Rick) was a bit nervous on the actual night about whether people were having a good time or not and especially about the music being played. Our DJ put on “Girls & Boys” which seemed a safe choice but which only served to agitate Rick into shouting at him “Give ‘em Parklife Will, give ‘em Parklife!”. Such was the influence of Blur and that song in particular in 1994.

P.S. I think Will did indeed give ‘em “Parklife” at some point in the evening.

Oh great! Another soap star turned pop star. This time the actor is from EastEnders reviving bad memories of Nick ‘Wicksy’ Berry and Anita ‘Angie’ Dobson. Sean Maguire’s stay in the soap had been short (January to December 1993) but he had been a big hit with the audience (especially the teenage female section of it). It was almost inevitable then that he’d give the old pop star lark a go and here he was, eight months after leaving EastEnders, back on our screens on the BBC’s premier music show. Unbelievably, despite not being able to shift any meaningful amount of units of either of his two albums, he would rack up eight Top 40 singles over a three year period. The first of those was “Someone To Love” and it’s a decent slice of late summer pop which seems to have pinched a bit from Kool And The Gang’s “Celebration”. Maguire sells it well enough and there’s been less likely pop stars (Stefan Dennis anyone?) but I’m guessing that his record label couldn’t have envisaged another six hits after this one. They were all pretty consistent as well. Look at these chart positions:

14 – 27 – 18 – 22 – 16 – 12 – 14 – 27

They’re not too shabby for a soap actor turned pop star. Maguire played Irish wannabe footballer Aidan Brosnan in EastEnders. Hmm. A footballer called Maguire who went onto have a career as a singer. Man Utd’s Harry Maguire as a pop star anyone?

I referenced this record the other week but it wasn’t really pre-planned – it just sort of played out that way. I’m talking about “Endless Love” by Mariah Carey and Luther Vandross. I mentioned their version as the record that knocked Boyz II Men off the No 1 spot in New Zealand but I’d already referred to the Lionel Richie / Diana Ross 1981 original when stating that I hadn’t heard a song basically regurgitated as a different track as I believed Boyz II Men had done with “End Of The Road” and “I’ll Make Love To You” since Lionel Richie rewrote “Endless Love” as “Truly”. I’d actually forgotten that this duet existed until these TOTP repeats aired but exist it does so I’ll have to discuss it. It came from a whole album of covers recorded by Luther called, rather blandly, “Songs” which already had a Lionel Richie song on the track listing in “Hello” but Sony president Tommy Mottola and his then wife Mariah decided that they could boost the album’s chances of success by having her appear on it and so the cover of “Endless Love” came to be. It was a sound business strategy – Mariah was perhaps at the very peak of her popularity with her latest album “Music Box” achieving huge global sales and indeed her contribution helped “Songs” to platinum sales and a No 1 chart position in the UK alone. The single also performed well going to No 2 in America and No 3 here. For me though, it’s a very faithful reproduction and rather pointless and anodyne. I suppose there was a gap of 13 years between the release of the original and the cover so maybe it’s possible there were people out there who didn’t know the Richie / Ross version and so came to it as a brand new song? Or perhaps people did know it and were reminded how much they’d liked the original but in those days before streaming and Spotify, they couldn’t just get access to the song and so bought what was available, the Vandross / Carey remake? I don’t know. I’ve given up trying to work out how some of these songs managed to be hits – and I wrote a dissertation about it whilst a student at Poly.

Next we find Terrorvision having a very steady year of consolidating their success and building their fanbase as they are back on TOTP performing their fourth Top 40 hit of the year “Pretend Best Friend”. And when I say steady, I mean incredibly consistent. Look at these chart peaks for those four singles:

29 – 21 – 25 – 25

A fifth single was released before 1994 was out and it made it to No 24. Their first single of the following year peaked at No 22. Like I say, incredibly consistent. As for the song itself, I don’t recall it but it kind of sounds how I expected it to with Tony Wright launching into a high speed rap that is vaguely reminiscent of “Ant Rap” before the almost shouted chorus. There’s also a bit where it all slows down and Tony wields a megaphone which is all rather incongruous. Good song title though.

After the exclusive of a double live by satellite section in the show last week, head producer Ric Blaxill has gone in hard on the idea by repeating the ‘satellite segue’ (as they’ve named it) for this week. We start off in Philadelphia with a curiously dull performance by the aforementioned Boyz II Men of “I’ll Make Love To You”. Now, my knowledge of the geography of Philadelphia is mostly limited to the scene in Rocky where Sylvester Stallone runs up the 72 steps leading to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the iconic training scene. Luckily for me, I think that’s near to where this performance takes place with the mini stage erected in the Benjamin Franklin Parkway right in front of the Washington Monument. The whole set up seems to be adhering to Blaxill’s stated desire to get the live by satellite slots to feature well known landmarks that have nothing to do with the music per se but which are a step up from the performances in empty theatre halls we have seen previously. It’s all a bit odd though. The parkway has people wandering through it minding their own business or joggers doing their own version of the Rocky training regimen whilst four guys are singing “I’ll Make Love To You” whilst they pass by. Shouldn’t be allowed really.

The second part of the satellite segue stays in America but transports us to New York and specifically to The Bottom Line club in Greenwich Village where we find Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories. Now it might not be recognisable as a landmark like the Washington Monument before it but this venue was legendary in its own right. Owners Allan Pepper and Stanley Snadowsky put on a huge amount of musical talent in the 30 years the club was open including the likes of Prince, The Police, Benatar, Daryl Hall & John Oates, Miles Davis, Dolly Parton….and in the fall of 1994 Lisa Loeb. But who was she?

Well, for someone who is a one hit wonder in the UK (she managed a few more hits in the US), Lisa has quite the biography and discography – her Wikipedia entry is sizeable to say the least. She had been recording music and performing live since the late 80s but it was a friendship with neighbour and actor Ethan Hawke that gave Lisa her lucky break. Having met through the NYC theatre community, Hawke gave Loeb’s song “Stay (I Missed You)” to Ben Stiller who was directing the film Reality Bites that Hawke was starring in and he made the decision to use it over the end credits. The rest really is history. The track’s pretty, folk-infused pop melody proved irresistible to the American public who sent it to No 1 making Lisa and her band the first ever artist to top the chart there without being signed to a label.

Lisa looked a bit like Nana Mouskouri’s hipper younger sister but there was more to her than her trademark glasses. As well as being a musician, she also runs a number of businesses including one for fair trade coffee and, making use of that glasses association, the Lisa Loeb Eyewear Collection with each frame being named after one of her song titles. She’s also written children’s books and done some acting though one of her credits is for one of the worst films of all time – Hot Tub Time Machine 2. If you haven’t seen it and stumble across it whilst channel flipping then heed my advice – Don’t stay (you’ll be glad you missed it).

One of last week’s satellite segue acts are in the TOTP studio this week as Youssou N’Dour and Neneh Cherry move up to No 3 with “7 Seconds”. The staging of this one starts out simple yet effective with a single spotlight centred on first Youssou and then Neneh as each takes the vocal lead in turn. However, the production team can’t have been totally won over by the idea as by the time the first chorus comes around, they’re both floodlit and there’s a multi screen video installation behind them showing the official promo film that accompanied the single. Shame. I thought a more paired back, minimalist setting would work best for this particular track but the show disagreed and went for Youssou N’More.

It would take a braver man than me to start a political rant about this government’s despicable deportation to Rwanda scheme in a pop music blog but I am inevitably put in mind of it by the next song which is “Love Can Build A Bridge” by Children For Rwanda which was a charity single to raise money for Save The Children. If this all sounds familiar but not quite how you remember it then it’s quite possible you’re thinking of the version by Cher, Chrissie Hynde and the aforementioned Neneh Cherry that was released for Comic Relief just 6 months on from this and which went to No 1 for a week. Sadly for the Children For Rwanda single, it failed to sell nearly as well and peaked outside the Top 40.

We’ve reached week 14 of 15 (we missed week 13 due to the broadcast quality issue discussed earlier) for Wet Wet Wet’s reign at No 1 with “Love Is All Around” and whilst I’m really struggling to say anything of interest about it after so many appearances on the show, it seems like Ric Blaxill might be finding it difficult to keep us all interested as well. To shake things up a bit, he’s doubled down on the live by satellite feature and has the band beaming in from LA. This definitely falls into the category of performing in front of a world famous landmark with the Hollywood sign prominent in the background. The end is coming though. There’s only one more week and the story behind it’s demise will be discussed in the next post.

The play out song is “We Are The Pigs” by Suede. 1994 was a year of massive upheaval for the band most notably due to the departure of guitarist Bernard Butler who formally left their ranks on 8th July following tensions whilst recording sophomore album “Dog Man Star”. As if that wasn’t enough, difficult second album syndrome raised its ugly head. Not that the band didn’t make the album they wanted to; they did, but the direction they took confused critics and some of the fans after their electrifying eponymous debut. Many saw its grandiose soundscapes as pretentious and although it sold well enough, it was seen as a bit of a step backwards commercially in comparison to its predecessor. History has been kind to the album though and revisionism has it hailed as an under appreciated and misunderstood at the time classic. When the band played five nights at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in 2003 with each night dedicated to one of their studio albums, it was the tickets for the Dog Man Star show that sold the quickest.

As for its lead single, “We Are The Pigs” is certainly dark in nature and tone but it’s still a huge tune. There’s even a bit in it which sounds like that reverb sound in “Peter Gunn” by Diane Eddy and subsequently The Art Of Noise. Do you think that’s totally innocent or knowingly inserted?

The almost post apocalyptic video with burning crosses, cars afire and masked gangs roaming the streets puts me in mind of the climax of The Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes, the ending of which had to be reshot as audience reaction at test screenings deemed it to violent and pessimistic. Similarly, the promo for Suede’s single got little airplay due to it being banned for being too violent. This may have contributed to the track only making it to No 18 in the UK Top 40.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Blur	Parklife	Not the single but I had the album obviously
2	Sean Maguire	Someone To Love	No
3	Mariah Carey and Luther Vandross	Endless Love	Never happening
4	Terrorvision	Pretend Best Friend	Nope
5	Boyz II Men	I’ll Make Love To You	Nah
6	Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories	Stay (I Missed You)	Nice song but no
7	Youssou N’Dour and Neneh Cherry	7 Seconds	I did not
8	Children For Rwanda	Love Can Build A Bridge	Negative
9	Wet Wet Wet	Love Is All Around	Another no
10	Suede	We Are The Pigs	Could have done but 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/m001ln6m/top-of-the-pops-01091994

TOTP 18 AUG 1994

Posted on May 16, 2023 by 80stastic

We’re still in the long, hot Summer of 1994 and despite the singles chart feeling like it’s been stagnating for a while with a number of records hanging around for weeks on end, this particular TOTP only features three songs that have been on previously. It also has not one but two live by satellite performances. Well, there’s only so many times you can have Let Loose in the studio before you have to shake things up a bit! Having said all of that, we start with a tune that has definitely been on the show a couple of times before. China Black were at their chart peak this week with the rerelease of “Searching” finding its natural high of No 4.

Seeing as this was their biggest ever hit, I guess you could say that they were at the apex of their career arc. Or were they? Maybe a bigger achievement was being nominated for a Brit Award for Best British Single in 1995? Or being invited by Princess Diana to perform at one of her Aids Trust concerts at Wembley Stadium? It surely wasn’t losing to Hue and Cry in their heat of the ITV entertainment show Hit Me Baby One More Time in 2005? You remember that show which brought back former pop stars from the 70s, 80s and 90s to compete in essentially a talent contest? Sure you do. China Black performed “Searching” (obviously) and their cover version (each act had to do a cover version in addition to their own track) was “I Believe In A Thing Called Love” by The Darkness. They were up against the aforementioned Kane brothers, Sinitta, The Real Thing and Hazel O’Connor with Hue and Cry progressing to the final which was won by Shakin’ Stevens. I’m not selling it to you am I?

And this was the point when I relented and gave in to the inevitable. When it came to Oasis, I was officially ‘avin’ it. I’d dillied, dallied and wavered over their first two singles, unsure about whether to get on board or not but the first time I heard “Live Forever”, I knew any further resistance was futile. History would show that not everything they did was of the same standard and that their best by date had probably expired long before they did but in 1994 and in every year since, “Live Forever” was a tune. There was just something joyous and joyful about its melody whilst the lyrics, though minimal and basically just repeated throughout, sounded so positive. Maybe (perhaps even definitely) it was just what I needed to hear as I was having a difficult time at work, still struggling to adapt to the culture and clientele of the Our Price store in Piccadilly, Manchester. On reflection, it was the sound of a band showing what they were really capable of, what their one time nemesis and later pal Robbie Williams would sing as letting their wings unfold. Famously written by Noel as a f**k that retort to Nirvana’s song “I Hate Myself And Want To Die”, the line ‘we see things they’ll never see’ has almost become a part of the national lexicon though it was actually intended as a very personal lyric about laughing at an in joke with a friend.

I only recently discovered that Noel Gallagher based the song’s structure around the chord progression in “Shine A Light” by The Rolling Stones whilst listening to their “Exile On Main Street” album and yeah, I guess I can hear the similarities though the two tunes are hardly identical.

As for the performance here, some things have changed and some things have remained the same since the last time they were on the show. The presenter scheduling gods have allowed for them to be introduced by Bruno Brookes again (hopefully they got on better than the last time when he insisted on calling them an indie band) but this time drummer Tony McCarroll has been shifted to the much more traditional position at the back of the stage with Liam Gallagher replacing him up front and centre. Talking of McCarroll, the symbolic removing of him from the front of the stage wasn’t the only clue to his future fate associated with “Live Forever”. The UK promo video includes a scene where the rest of the band are burying him alive. Within eight months of this TOTP appearance he would be sacked from the band and replaced by Alan White. He was still in the band though when next single “Cigarettes And Alcohol” was released in the October. The fourth single from the “Definitely Maybe” album, it would be their biggest hit to date when it made No 7 eclipsing “Live Forever” which peaked at No 10. And it was at that point that there was no looking back for the band nor the rest of us. Strap in, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

Next a song that I don’t remember at all but which is very familiar on listening to it now. How is that possible? Well, the basis of this No 9 hit dance track “Eighteen Strings” is clearly the riff from “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana (a second song on the show inspired by the Seattle rockers following Oasis directly before them). However, it’s not an actual sample but more a very close approximation presumably because the artist – Tinman – didn’t have copyright clearance. This was the second dance track in a matter of weeks to be based on the grunge classic following Abigail’s take on it. I think I prefer the Tinman interpretation though I’m not a fan of either really. It turns out that the guy behind the project – one Paul Dakeyne – is from Hull where I have been living these last 20 years. As with his hit single from nearly 30 ago though, I’m not familiar with him.

Eternal are next who are still churning out the hits one year into their pop career. “So Good” was their fourth chart single on the spin but unlike its three predecessors, it failed to make the Top 10 peaking at No 13. There’s a reason for that I believe which is that, despite its title, it’s actually not that good. A distinctly average R&B pop song, it’s got an annoying sound effect squeak like air being pushed out of a small space that runs throughout it which tips it into the bracket of annoying for me. I’ve got a pair of shoes that make a similar noise every time I wear them. Curiously, Boyzone also released a single called “So Good” at a similar stage of their career and it was also a low point. Fortunately for both camps, both songs are largely forgotten with the perspective of nearly 30 years distance.

Louise Nurding would famously leave the group in 1995 bringing back memories of when Siobhan Fahey left Bananarama in 1988. In previous posts on my 80s TOTP blog, I’ve posited a theory that you could see signs of a split between Siobhan and Sarah/Keren in terms of the outfits she wore and her willingness to deviate from the group’s dance routines (loose as they were). However, I can’t see any such clues from Louise. They’re all on message with identical outfits and the dance steps are synchronised to the hilt. I’ll keep a watching brief on future performances though.

Time for that live by satellite segue now starting in the University of New Orleans where we find Soundgarden performing the only song of theirs that I could have named before, “Black Hole Sun”. Taken from their multi platinum album “Superunknown”, this would prove to be the band’s biggest ever UK hit when it peaked at No 13. I’m struck watching this in concert performance by the crowd surfing going on in the audience. I’ve never quite understood the appeal of this practice – it looks likely to cause personal injury and the thought of being upside down in a big crowd seems as scary as hell. Reading up on it though, it seems it can be used as the fastest way to transport gig goers in need of medical attention through the throng. My only experience of the phenomenon came in 1996 when I went to one of the Oasis concerts at Maine Road. Not that there were people crowd surfing but passing plastic glasses backwards over people’s heads was the best way of getting the crowd’s dinks to them from the bar.

Clearly wanting to make the most of having two satellite link up performances on the same show, Bruno Brookes does a voiceover segue in the style of an astronaut communicating with Mission Control. I’m not sure it works that well to be honest. Anyway, it leads us to New York where we join Youssou N’Dour and Neneh Cherry for a performance of their single “7 Seconds”. The single is finally into the Top 10 after being on the charts for 9 weeks on its way to a high of No 3. In total, it would spend a whopping 27 weeks inside the Top 75.

Youssou and Neneh perform against a set backdrop which has been made up to look like a New York street and it is giving me a mix of vibes including Singin’ In The Rain, the Skid Row neighbourhood from Little Shop of Horrors and Hoagy’s Alley from the Top Cat cartoon. As the caption says, the song is sung in three different languages – English, French and Wolof which is a language of Senegal, Mauritania and the Gambia though, to maintain the Hanna-Barbera cartoon link, sounds like how Penelope Pitstop used to pronounce “wolf”.

Just to hammer home the space satellite link up theme, Bruno Brookes appears in a spaceman outfit before introducing the next artist. Overkill much? Anyway, I (along with many others I would expect) had Sophie B. Hawkins down at the time as a one hit wonder. A damned catchy pop single in “Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover” in 1992 and then nothing Top 40 wise. Two years on and she was one of the last people I expected to see back in our charts but here she was with “Right Beside You”, the lead single from her second album “Whaler”. Neither that album nor her previous one “Tongues And Tails” pulled up any trees sales wise over here (both peaked at No 46) but her singles were a bit more durable. DIWIWYL looks like a mid table football team’s form guide when written like that but it stayed on our charts for 9 weeks peaking at No 14 whilst RBY did even better staying for 12 weeks and peaking at No 13.

Many a critic drew parallels with Madonna on hearing “Right Beside You” and whilst I can see similarities with the beach set black and white promo and Madge’s “Cherish” video, it sounds more like Belinda Carlisle to me – maybe a combination of “Mad About You” and “Circle In The Sand”? Sophie would only have two more minor hit singles though she is still a live draw and released her most recent album this year.

What are the chances? One R&B harmony group is in the charts all Summer and just as they appear to be running out of steam, the group that many compared them to in the first place return with a song that not only sounds similar to their chart peers but also the own massive No 1 from two years prior. I refer to Boyz II Men whose “End Of The Road” single spent 13 weeks at the top of the US charts in 1992 (and was also a No 1 here) and All 4 One whose “I Swear” also topped the US Billboard Hot 100 for 11 weeks (and spent 7 weeks at No 2 in the UK). With that single just starting to drop down our charts, Boyz II Men decide to reintroduce themselves with “I’ll Make Love To You”. I’d not heard an artist just decide to make the same record all over again quite so obviously since Lionel Richie rewrote “Endless Love” as “Truly”. Not only did it sound the same as “End Of The Road” but it replicated its chart success by going to No 1 in America for 14 weeks* (it topped out at No 5 over here).

*They would break their own record when their collaboration with Mariah Carey “One Sweet Day” was atop the US charts for 16 weeks! Talking of Mariah, it was another of her collaborations (this time with Luther Vandross) that knocked “I’ll Make Love To You” off the No 1 position in the New Zealand charts with their cover of…yep…the aforementioned “Endless Love”. Oh what a tangled web we weave.

This concept of a new artist making a genre of music that was popularised by another act shortly before them before the original protagonist returned to the charts puts me in mind if that time that sophisti-pop was represented in the Top 40 by Curiosity Killed The Cat with “Down To Earth” before The Blow Monkeys – who had hit 12 months before with “Digging Your Scene” – returned to the charts alongside Curiosity with “It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way”. And there endeth the lesson on recurring musical genres.

And talking of records being at the top of the charts for months, here’s our very own version Wet Wet Wet who have now been at No 1 for 12 weeks. I mean, what else can I say about “Love Is All Around”? It’s too early in its run to talk about how its demise came about so where does that leave me? How about what the band themselves made of the record’s success? Here’s Marti Pellow from an interview in The Guardian in 2021:

“I was in a cinema and the trailer came up for Four Weddings and a Funeral, and they played a bit of the song and a guy behind me went: ‘Ah, not that song again,’ and I turned round to him and said: ‘Imagine how I feel!’”

Simon Hattenstone: The G2 Interview Music, The Guardian, 29 March 2021

After not being one for a couple of weeks, we have the return of the play out song in the form of “Warriors” by Aswad. The follow up to Top 5 hit “Shine”, it would be their penultimate Top 40 entry when it peaked at No 33. Sadly, founding member Drummie Zeb died aged 62 in September 2022. Also in the obituaries is Stanley Appel who died this week and who was the producer responsible for the ‘Year Zero’ revamp of TOTP in 1991. RIP.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	China Black	Searching	No
2	Oasis	Live Forever	Not the single but I bought Definitely Maybe – didn’t we all?
3	Tinman	Eighteen Strings	Nah
4	Eternal	So Good	Nope
5	Soundgarden	Black Hole Sun	Negative
6	Youssou N’Dour and Neneh Cherry	7 Seconds	I did not
7	Sophie B. Hawkins	Right Beside You	Not for me
8	Boyz II Men	I’ll Make Love To You	Ooh no!
9	Wet Wet Wet	Love Is All Around	Another no
10	Aswad	Warriors	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/m001ln6k/top-of-the-pops-18081994

TOTP 10 AUG 1994

Posted on May 12, 2023 by 80stastic

This TOTP aired on a Wednesday rather than the normal Thursday due to the BBC’s coverage of the European Athletics Championships taking place in Helsinki. A couple of years later, the show was permanently shifted from a Thursday to a Friday night initially in a 7pm time slot before some idiot made the decision to move it to a 7.30 start time thereby putting it up against Coronation Street. What on earth was the thinking behind that decision? It’s as if someone was deliberately trying to kill the show off. Hmm. This was also a ‘live’ episode so be on alert because, as Commander Shore said on Stingray, “Anything can happen in the next half hour…”

Simon ‘Smug’ Mayo is tonight’s host and the first act he introduces are Red Dragon featuring Brian and Tony Gold with their hit single “Compliments On Your Kiss”. I went into the back story of this one the last time it was on the show so I don’t propose to go onto that all over again. Instead, I’d quite like to talk about this performance and more specifically the staging of it.

I can understand the naff, cardboard cut out palm trees as it’s a lilting, summery tune that conjures up images of sunny beaches and obviously the neon lips do tie in with the song title but is that meant to be a smouldering volcano in the background? What’s that all about? Oh, is it meant to be a dragon as in Red Dragon? It’s hard to see because of the dry ice pouring out of it but I really can’t detect much of a dragon shape in there. They really should have blown the props budget on something like this from Star Trek…

Now, here’s an immediate chance for the TOTP producers to redeem themselves props wise as The Brand New Heavies perform “Midnight At The Oasis”. So the clue is in the song title guys. What image comes to mind when you think of an oasis (that’s an oasis not Oasis as in the Gallagher brothers whose band were hardly household names at this point anyway)? Palm trees? A natural water source like a spring or well? That’s the classic take on it when people see mirages in the desert no? Easy. So we do have some palm trees or at least some vegetation (whether it’s fake or not) which is an upgrade on the cardboard version that Red Dragon got. There’s no water to be seen though but I guess Health & Safety would have put a stop to any of that with all those electrics about. However, what is not understandable is the pyramid towering large at the stage at the back. Why is that there? The pyramids have nothing to do with an oasis do they? That’s just really lazy.

As for the song, I would suggest that this is the band’s most well known (though not biggest) hit what with it being a cover of a song that had already been a hit in the UK. The original was by Maria Muldaur and peaked at No 21 in the UK in 1974. The Brand New Heavies’ version is a pretty faithful to its predecessor and was perfect daytime radio playlist fodder for that long, hot summer of 1994.

If it’s Simon Mayo in the presenter seat then we are bound to get an awful attempt at comedy from him at some point and it comes in his intro for Future Sound Of London – “which is almost certainly coughing, gasping and wheezing” he quips – what a card! Anyway, I remember there being a certain amount of fuss about these electronic dance pioneers and I definitely remember the rather striking artwork on the cover of their “Lifeforms” album though I couldn’t have told you what it sounded like at all. Listening back to the title track that was released as a single, there’s an awful lot going on in there; some trip-hop beats, some ambient stylings and an otherworldly vocal from Elizabeth Fraser of the Cocteau Twins. All a bit too overwhelming for my pop ear* though with the whole thing not helped by the visually overstimulating computer graphics video that seemed to be all the rage in this year (didn’t we see a similar type of thing from Pet Shop Boys for their “Liberation” single recently?). “Lifeforms” (the single) peaked at No 14 whilst its album counterpart made it to No 6.

*Sounds like Popeye’s long, lost cousin

Now I did attempt some humour in a recent post about the name of the next act but that doesn’t excuse Simon Mayo from doing the same here with his reference to Head & Shoulders. Away with you! Shampoo (for it is they) are on the show again to promote their single “Trouble” and I’m drawn to the fact that for the second time, their performance hardly involves any movement by the duo at all. They just sort of stand there, slightly crouched leaning into other for the duration. Were they not confident dancers or can’t you actually dance to their track? Judging by the efforts of the studio audience, it might be the latter.

The last time they were on, I talked about how they somehow carved out a little footnote for themselves in pop history despite only having a smattering of hit singles (of which this was the biggest). What I didn’t mention was that they invented ‘Girl Power’ before the Spice Girls took all the credit for it. Well, invented is probably a stretch but their final hit was called “Girl Power” and it charted one week before Sporty, Baby, Scary, Posh and Ginger’s debut “Wannabe”. To be fair though, although Geri Halliwell admitted in a 2016 interview that she pinched the phrase from Shampoo, Jacqui and Carrie themselves probably weren’t the original originators as Martin Fry once sang. Here’s @TOTPFacts with the details:

"Girl Power" was previously the title of a 1991 zine by US riot grrrl band Bikini Kill, which is presumably where Shampoo saw the phrase. Mel C: "It was very much in existence already. It was then Geri who shouted it during an early television interview and it stuck." #TOTP pic.twitter.com/MGeGawG3pU
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) April 21, 2023

“Trouble” was covered by Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine as the B-side to their 1995 single “The Young Offender’s Mum”.

Of the many sub genres of dance music that did the rounds in the 90s, surely one of the nastiest was Eurodance covers of rock and pop songs. We’d already had the likes of East Side Beat desecrating Christopher Cross’s “Ride Like The Wind” and Rage do a similar hatchet job on “Run To You” by Bryan Adams but by 1994 the timeline between the original track and the naff dance treatment was shortening. In the case of DJ Miko, the time elapsed was just one year from 4 Non Blondes taking “What’s Up” to No 2 and them releasing their vile version. What a truly awful record this was. A tacky, happy hardcore backing applied to an unconvincing rock vocal and…well, that was it really. DJ Miko wasn’t really a DJ nor in fact an actual person but an umbrella term for an Italian dance collective fronted by keyboardist Monier Quartararo Gagliardo featuring a number of studio vocalists with the whole thing going managed by Milan based record company Dig It International. The latter had quite an appropriate name as the whole sorry enterprise should have been buried at the conception stage with a clear instruction for the soil never to be disturbed.

Right, what’s Mayo on about now? Woodstock 2? When did that happen? Well, turns out he was right as this follow up festival to its legendary predecessor took place in Saugerties, New York (70 miles from the site of the 1969 original) on the weekend following this TOTP. I suppose he had to get that right as he was plugging Radio 1’s coverage of it. Anyway, billed as 2 More Days of Peace and Music, it was, by all accounts, poorly managed with the size of the crowd (estimates had it at 350,000) meaning security rules and policies surrounding alcohol etc were unenforceable. Tragically, three people died whilst attending the festival. As it was a three day event, the number of artists appearing was colossal including Metallica, Aerosmith, Green Day, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Bob Dylan, Peter Gabriel…I could go on but won’t. Look it all up for yourself on Wikipedia like I had to.

For a festival promoted as being about peace, there were certainly a lot of incidents that didn’t fit the vibe. The lead singer of Jackyl, under the influence of alcohol and drugs, took a chainsaw to a stool and fired a rifle in the air. Meanwhile, the large volume of rainfall created a huge mud bath on the site that resulted in the break out of mud fights between both Green Day and Primus and their audiences. Nine Inch Nails admitted to playing the festival purely for the appearance fee to offset the cost of their current tour – so much for peace and music then. A number of artists that had performed at the original Woodstock reappeared for the 1994 version including The Band, Santana, Crosby, Stills & Nash and the next artist on this TOTP – Joe Cocker.

Now my knowledge of Joe is limited to say the least. I know he was from Sheffield, that he had a very gravelly voice, that he had a No 1 with a cover of The Beatles’ “With A Little Help From My Friends” that was used as the theme tune to The Wonder Years, that he duetted with Jennifer Warnes on that song from An Officer And A Gentleman and…well, that he’s dead I suppose. I certainly don’t know about this song – “The Simple Things” – without looking it up online. It was taken from an album called “Have A Little Faith” and would reach No 17 but it seems very lacklustre to me and entirely forgettable. Sadly, Joe would die of lung cancer in 2014 having smoked 40 cigarettes a day until he quit in 1991.

The early to mid 90s saw a host of female soul singers* come to the fore. Juliet Roberts, Shara Nelson, Dina Carroll, N’Dea Davenport who we saw with The Brand New Heavies earlier…add to that list Carleen Anderson who, having found initial success with Young Disciples, carved out a solo career for herself. “True Spirit” was not only the title track from her album but the third hit single on the spin for her in 1994. It doesn’t do a lot for me though. Clearly she has a great voice but the track itself seems so sluggish and a bit to caught up in trying to display its soul credentials. I think that for each of those singles, Carleen has appeared on TOTP and every time, the show’s caption person has noted that she is the goddaughter of James Brown. Give it a rest! Despite what I said about all those female soul singers, anybody would think it’s a man’s man’s man’s world.

* Is that Caron Wheeler of Soul II Soul fame up there with Carleen on stage doing backing vocals? Yet another soul singer that came to prominence in the 90s!

No! It can’t be! Not again! Is this the fourth time Let Loose have been on the show performing “Crazy For You”?! What more am I supposed to say about this lot and their song? Look, here’s some stats for you OK? 16 weeks on the Top 40, 9 consecutive weeks inside the Top 10 and the 8th best selling single of the year. Enough? No? Well, despite all that success, they never really consolidated on it to become the next big teen group did they? Sure, six hit singles followed it including two further Top Tenners but could you name any of them? Well, I looked them up and I do recall the follow up “Seventeen” but of the rest of them, the only title I recognise is a cover of Bread’s “Make It With You”, a blatant attempt at career-reviving if ever I saw one. Still, to be remembered for one massive hit song is no mean achievement. How many of us out there can boast the same?

Well, if I was struggling for words for Let Loose, what more is there to be said about Wet Wet Wet and “Love Is All Around” after an 11th week at the top of the charts? Well, I’m not going to say anything but instead refer back to Simon Mayo’s intro for it in which he says that when it first went to No 1 “Jürgen Klinsmann was just a cheating German”. I knew it! I knew he wouldn’t be able to resist making a comment about how the striker had signed for his beloved Spurs! I said so in the last post when I made mention that he’d signed for them on the day that TOTP aired and that it was a good job it was Mark Goodier as that week’s host and not Mayo as the latter would definitely have gone on about it and here he is a week later doing just that. Not just smug but predictable as well then.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Red Dragon featuring Brian and Tony Gold	Compliments On Your Kiss	No
2	The Brand New Heavies	Midnight At The Oasis	No. but my wife had the album
3	Future Sound Of London	Lifeforms	Not for me thanks
4	Shampoo	Trouble	Nope
5	DJ Miko	What’s Up	Hell no!
6	Joe Cocker	The Simple Things	Nah
7	Carleen Anderson	True Spirit	Negative
8	Let Loose	Crazy For You	No but my wife did
9	Wet Wet Wet	Love Is All Around	I did not

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001ldp8/top-of-the-pops-10081994

TOTP 04 AUG 1994

Posted on May 8, 2023 by 80stastic

Due to BBC4’s relentless schedule of broadcasting two TOTP repeats a week (which is killing me by the way), we’ve already reached August of 1994. And we know what August means…the start of a new football season. On the very day this show aired, Spurs bought Jürgen Klinsmann from Monaco and despite playing for them for just one season, would become a fan favourite, rebuilding his reputation in England as being a ‘diver’ thanks to this celebration on his debut…

Thank God tonight’s presenter isn’t Spurs fan Simon ‘Smug’ Mayo or we’d have to suffer a whole show of him making endless ‘hilarious’ football references. Instead it’s Mark Goodier who I don’t think has ever even attempted to make a funny quip in his life. Looking at the running order for this show, it’s pretty underwhelming I have to say. So underwhelming that to try and big it up, Goodier announces as a future ‘highlight’ that Status Quo will be making their 100th appearance on the show. TOTP seemed to have a weakness for and reliance on The Quo when it came to creating a buzz about the show. In the first show of the ‘year zero’ revamp, they had them on to perform “Let’s Work Together” as a track from their latest album which seemed counter productive to an attempt to relaunch the show for a younger audience. That tie between the BBC and the band was severed though in 1996 when Radio 1 blacklisted their single “Fun Fun Fun” (a collaboration with The Beach Boys) on the grounds that they were repositioning themselves as a youth station and Status Quo were…well, no longer the status quo. The band took it badly and launched an unsuccessful legal action for a judicial review of the ban on their records. In 1994 though, they were still seen as a draw by the Beeb and they’ll be along soon enough.

If Messrs Rossi, Parfitt et al would find themselves in a metaphorical boxing ring with Radio 1, we start the show in an actual boxing ring as Maxx have decided to perform their new single in one. The follow up to No 4 hit “Get-A-Way”, “No More (I Can’t Stand It)” was more of the same, in other words a huge steaming pile of Eurodance dung. Has there ever been a more apt song title? So why the boxing ring? I’ve no idea but the track certainly doesn’t deliver a knockout punch. As it’s nearly 30 years ago, there’s still some sexual stereotyping going on with the boxers being men and the women on stage (apart from singer Linda Meek) are styled as ring girls announcing what round it is. Actually, is that still how it works in 2023? I know that the profile of women boxing is much higher these days but are ring girls still a thing? I’m not a big fight fan. Definitely still a thing are Maxx who reactivated in 2016 after initially folding in 1995, although Linda Meek now goes by the name of Elyse G Rogers and rapper Gary Bokoe has been replaced by someone called Twitch.

Right, I’m calling it. This must be the very last appearance on TOTP by Level 42. Not only is “Love In A Peaceful World” their very last UK Top 40 hit (it made No 31) but the band broke up in the October of this year and didn’t reform until the new millennium and didn’t release any new material until September 2006, two months after the last ever TOTP aired. I think that’s a cast-iron defence of my opening statement. Despite metamorphosing from Britfunk pioneers into a mega-hit making machine, the band have often been pigeonholed as vapid and bland. I have to admit to liking a handful of their songs – “Hot Water” is a great track – but I’ve never been tempted to actually buy any of their stuff.

Looking at their career in terms of a story arc though, a decent documentary could be made of it. A group of friends from the Isle of Wight relocate to the big smoke where one of them learns the bass and becomes one of the world’s most renowned bass guitarists. They start playing a brand of jazz funk fusion attracting record company interest before a change of musical direction towards pop brings huge mainstream success. Alas, the march of time catches up with them and they find themselves marginalised in the musical landscape. Add to that relationship breakdowns within the band causing line up changes (over 20 people have been band members at some point over the years) and finally tragedy with a founding member committing suicide and it’s quite a tale.

As a valedictory single, “Love In A Peaceful World” isn’t the worst way to bow out. A pleasant tune with an admirable message, I could imagine it being used in a rom com film to great effect. Sadly, and as an indication of where the band were, it only got to No 31. They remain, however, active within and a big draw of the live circuit.

Right who’s next? Ce Ce Peniston with a song that isn’t “Finally”? Eh? Yes, well she did have more than the one hit – in fact, she had seven of which “Hit By Love” was the sixth. I think most of us would struggle to name more than “Finally” though wouldn’t we? What? “We Got A Love Thang”? Oh yeah. It made the Top 10. Surely no more than that though? Sorry? “Somebody Else’s Guy”? That’s Jocelyn Brown’s big hit! Say again? Ce Ce Peniston had equally as big a hit with it in 1997 to promote her Best Of album? Oh come on! Nobody associates that song with her! “Hit By Love” sounds like a rewrite of “Finally” to me, trying to recreate that winning formula but not quite getting there. A bit like in Breaking Bad when Todd takes over the production of the blue crystal meth and can’t get the content as pure as Walter White. Erm…anyway, Ce Ce doesn’t need a methamphetamine hit as she is high on love according to her song but the biggest chart high she could achieve with it was No 33. Unlike Roxy Music, love was not the drug for her.

And so to Status Quo who are in the studio for the 100th time with a little ditty called “I Didn’t Mean It”. I don’t remember this one at all and have to admit that my expectations for it were low. It was the lead single from their 21st studio album “Thirsty Work” and was written by one John David, a Welsh producer, songwriter and musician who had performed with some big names like Springsteen, Clapton and Sting and written for the likes of Cliff Richard, Shakin’ Stevens, Alvin Stardust and Samantha Fox. Hmm. I’m noticing a slight disparity between the calibre of artists he performed with and those he wrote for but never mind. He also worked with Dave Edmunds which is not surprising as “I Didn’t Mean It” has a flavour of Edmunds about it or maybe Nick Lowe with some honky tonk piano to the fore. Now I like both Edmunds and Lowe so I’m probably doing them a disservice by associating them with this track which isn’t really worthy of their name. It’s all very predictable and what I would have expected Status Quo to have been churning out at this time. It seems very anachronistic compared to their chart peers at the time. Maybe they should have seen the BBC bust up writing on the wall.

The cover of the single is more interesting than the song with images of famous people that maybe had regrets about what they had done (I didn’t mean it -geddit?) so there’s Ken Dodd (tax evasion court case – acquitted) Diego Maradona (‘Hand of God’ goal – cheated ) Lester Piggott (tax fraud case – guilty), Richard Nixon (Watergate scandal – resigned) Robert Maxwell (Mirror Group Pension Fund scandal – fraudulent misappropriation), Mike Tyson (rape conviction – guilty) Graham Taylor (failed to get England to World Cup in USA) and Ben Johnson (disqualified for doping in 1988 Olympics and stripped of gold medal). The inclusion of some of those names seems a little ill judged, especially Mike Tyson and Robert Maxwell given the damage they did to people’s lives. Sadly for Status Quo, Radio 1 did mean it when it came to not playing their records any more when 1996 rolled around.

Another diminutive dance diva who’s probably best known for just one song next. After Ce Ce Peniston earlier comes Rozalla who is surely best known for her “Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good)” hit from 1991 but who was still knocking about the charts three years later with this track “This Time I Found Love”, the second single from her “Look No Further” album. I haven’t got that much to say about this one – not really my bag but I will comment on the solo male dancer up there with Rozalla. I’m not sure that he really adds anything to the performance with his Marcel Marceau routine. In short, he looks like a prat. While we’re at it, did the two keyboard players need to be there either? Couldn’t Rozalla have just done her turn on her own? Maybe some rules about musician unions were at play. “This Time I Found Love” peaked at No 33.

What the hell are Whitesnake doing on TOTP in 1994 with a song from 1987?! It’s no great mystery really. “Is This Love” was rereleased to promote a Greatest Hits album that was presumably to plug a gap in the band’s career – they hadn’t had a studio album out since 1989. The Greatest Hits package was a reasonable success peaking at No 4 and going gold in the UK. It essentially covered their final three albums of the 80s but curiously didn’t include the two singles from 1984’s “Slide It In” that were actual UK Top 40 hits – “Guilty Of Love” and “Give Me More Time” though the former did feature in a 2022 reissue of the album.

I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again – the intro to “Is This Love” always catches me out as it sounds like the start of Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ On A Prayer”. That slowly rising synth fade in is almost exactly the same in both. The 1994 rerelease of “Is This Love” made No 25 (it peaked at No 9 in 1987) and was Whitesnake’s final UK Top 40 entry. Oh, one final thing, why isn’t there a question mark at the end of the song title? Bugs the hell out of me!

It’s PJ & Duncan next with “Let’s Get Ready To Rhumble”. Although this is probably their most well known tune, the duo clocked up an impressive thirteen Top 40 hits in the UK before the end of the 90s with eleven of them peaking between Nos 16 and 10. The last four were released under the names Ant & Dec. They would return to the charts twice more, once in 2002 with the official England World Cup song “We’re On The Ball” (No 3) and again in 2013 when “Let’s Get Ready To Rhumble” was rereleased and went to No 1 with sales being donated to the charity ChildLine.

Of course, these two weren’t the only pop band to come out of the children’s TV series Byker Grove. There was also Byker Groove (clever) featuring Donna Air, Jayni Hoy and Vicky Taylor who got to No 48 with “Love Your Sexy…!!”. Two years later, they returned without Taylor and rebranded as Crush with the single “Jellyhead” which should have been a huge hit but which stalled at No 50. With its name checks for Bros and The Prodigy in its lyrics, it’s what The Reynolds Girls should have sounded like and perhaps what Girls Aloud would go on to sound like. It did well in America where it was promoted without any reference to their acting past. Donna Air would go on to have a career as an actor and TV presenter but you’d have to say that she didn’t quite scale the same heights of fame as her two Byker Grove chums.

Finally a record of interest. Even if you didn’t appreciate it sonically, you could hardly ignore this single, probably because you couldn’t avoid it – “7 Seconds” by Youssou N’Dour and Neneh Cherry was the second most played song on UK radio in 1994. The very definition of a sleeper hit, it took nine weeks to break into the Top 10 before rising to a peak of No 3. Such a chart trajectory was unusual around this time and would become almost unheard of as the 90s progressed and record companies discovered heavy discounting of singles in their first week of release to create high chart entry positions. Yet there was something about the summer of 1994 which saw a swathe of records that had incredibly long stays within the Top 40. I’m thinking “Crazy For You” by Let Loose, “I Swear” by All 4 One and of course Wet Wet Wet’s 15 weeks chart topper “Love Is All Around”.

Whilst all of the above though were propelled by a traditional momentum (a classic piece of airplay friendly pop, a big swoonsome ballad and a cover version of a well known song given huge exposure by a runaway box office hit film), “7 Seconds” was different. For a start, the artists involved were not chart guarantors by any stretch of the imagination. Youssou N’Dour was a huge name in World music but had never had a hit single before (his collaboration with Peter Gabriel on “Shakin’ The Tree” was the closest he had ever come). Meanwhile, Neneh Cherry was a long way from the huge breakthrough star she had been in 1989 when the likes of “Buffalo Stance” and “Manchild” were huge Top 5 hits. Her second album “Homebrew” had not done anywhere near the numbers of her debut “Raw Like Sushi” and had provided just two minor hit singles. The combination of the two of them on a track seemed an unlikely proposition for huge chart success. And yet…there was something about this haunting, rich synth heavy ballad that was sung in three different languages that gave it global appeal. A huge hit around Europe (it was No 1 in France for 16 weeks – have that Marti Pellow!), it was a monster both on the airwaves and the cash registers. Youssou would never have another UK hit single whilst Neneh would score a No 1 with “Love Can Build A Bridge” in 1995 as part of the charity collective for Comic Relief and a Top 10 single in “Woman” the following year.

It’s week 10 for Wet Wet Wet and “Love Is All Around” which means we are two thirds through their reign at the top. I struggled to say anything else about this record in the last post and things haven’t improved since. I’ve got some things to say about its demise but I need to keep those back for use in a few posts time. OK, how about addressing one of the record’s most distinctive bits, the guttural sound that Marti Pellow makes as the song heads into its climax. I think he growls “yeah!” and it sounds like that on the version that was released but I’m sure in some of the performances we’ve seen on the show over the weeks it sounds more like a “hey!”.

Whatever. It did get me thinking about songs with grunts, growls, screams or generally unusual vocal noises in them. First to come to mind was the “Ohhh!” by John Travolta in “Summer Nights” quickly followed by the “Ooo!” by Lionel Richie in “Easy” by The Commodores. Then there’s Paul McCartney’s strangled yelp in “Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?” and who could ignore Robert Plant at the start of “Immigrant Song”? think my favourite though comes at 1:43 in this clip…

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Maxx	“No More (I Can’t Stand It)”	I couldn’t have said it better myself
2	Level 42	Love In A Peaceful World	Nope
3	Ce Ce Peniston	Hit By Love	No
4	Status Quo	I Didn’t Mean It	As if
5	Rozalla	This Time I Found Love	Negative
6	Whitesnake	Is This Love	Not in 1987 nor 1994
7	PJ & Duncan	Let’s Get Ready To Rhumble	Nah
8	Youssou N’Dour and Neneh Cherry	7 Seconds	I did not
9	Wet Wet Wet	Love Is All Around	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/m001ldnz/top-of-the-pops-04081994

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 28 SEP 1995

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TOTP 15 JUN 1995

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TOTP 20 APR 1995

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TOTP 23 MAR 1995

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TOTP 09 MAR 1995

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TOTP 08 SEP 1994

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TOTP 01 SEP 1994

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TOTP 18 AUG 1994

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TOTP 10 AUG 1994

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TOTP 04 AUG 1994

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