Wet Wet Wet | TOTP Rewind – the 90s

TOTP 23 JUN 1994

Posted on April 15, 2023 by 80stastic

It’s the final week of June 1994 and the World Cup is well under way. Republic of Ireland have already pulled off an unlikely 1-0 win against Italy and Diego Maradona had shocked the world with that bulging eyes goal celebration. Two days after this TOTP aired, he failed a drug test after the Argentina v Nigeria group game and was expelled from the tournament. He never played for his country again. The England team were watching at home like the rest of us after failing to qualify for the first time since 1978. Did we not like that! The World Cup provides the perfect opportunity for tonight’s host Simon ‘Smug’ Mayo to play to the camera by wearing a different country’s football shirt every time he does a link. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – what a nob!

We start with a band who had history when it came to rustling up a big hit out of nowhere. In 1988, Aswad bagged themselves a No 1 with “Don’t Turn Around”. There previous highest chart peak had been No 70. They would spend the next six years as infrequent visitors to the Top 40 clocking up a handful of medium sized hits. By the Summer of 1994, their last chart entry had been a rather desperate career reviving attempt – a cover of Ace’s “How Long” with Yazz. I, for one, did not see them plundering a Top 5 single any time soon but that’s what they did with the release of “Shine”. Why did this particular track spark with the record buying audience? If I knew the answer to that, I’d be a super wealthy songwriter rather than an impoverished blog writer. For what it’s worth, “Shine” (to me) seemed much more aligned with their reggae roots than the likes of the out and out pop of “Don’t Turn Around” and given the then recent trend for ragga/dancehall songs and reggae-fied pop classics in the charts, maybe this was the apposite time for an Aswad comeback. Whatever the reason, “Shine” certainly had some legs – it spent three months in the Top 40 of which half of that time was in the Top 10. I’m sure we’ll be seeing Aswad again on these repeats.

Just to prove my point about the proliferation of reggae and its various sub genres in the charts at this time, here’s Dawn Penn with “You Don’t Love Me (No, No, No)”. And if that wasn’t enough evidence to prove how parochial the charts were becoming and this TOTP in particular, here’s @TOTPFacts with a further tidbit:

Aswad later sampled "You Don’t Love Me (No, No, No)" for their track "You're No Good" a no 35 hit in 1995: https://t.co/XYmjep0ptK #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) April 7, 2023

If Aswad’s comeback was surprising then what can be said about the success of this single? Originally recorded in 1967 and based around a Willie Cobb 1960 song (which itself relied heavily on a 1955 Bo Diddley track), somehow in 1994, it was deemed essential Summer listening. NME put it at No 24 in their list of the 50 best songs of the year. However, it was a case of ‘yes, yes, yes’ for the single and ‘no, no, no’ for the accompanying album which was received much less favourably and it got no further than No 51 in our charts.

Oh this is just getting silly now. How much more Aswad can one blog post take?! The next act is Ace Of Base whose latest single is a version of the aforementioned “Don’t Turn Around”! Why?! Why did they think this was a good idea? Well, apparently it wasn’t the band’s brainwave but their record label Arista’s who wanted some extra tracks laid down for the release of the US version of their debut album. One of those tracks had been previous single “The Sign” and now it was the turn of a song written by songwriter extraordinaire Dianne Warren and Albert Hammond. It was originally recorded by Tina Turner as the B-side to her 1986 single “Typical Male” before Aswad got their hands on it. Six years later it resurfaced in the hands of Swedish hitmakers Ace Of Base who wanted to give it a makeover and reworked it in a minor key to lend it an air of melancholy. I guess they should be given some credit for trying to do something different with what was clearly a straight up and down, uptempo pop song but it’s still a big, steaming pool of piss. I think it’s the nasally vocals on it (and indeed all their records) that grate. That plus the god awful rap in the middle. Oh, and the nasty, tinny production. Yeah, I think that covers it.

Arista clearly knew their markets though and “Don’t Turn Around” went to No 4 in the US and No 5 in the UK as well as being a hit all around the world. Ace Of Base would return with yet another cover version in 1998 with their take of Bananarama’s “Cruel Summer”.

Pretty sure there’s no Aswad association with this next artist. Whilst the UK was experiencing the second coming of Bryan Adams in the form of Wet Wet Wet being No 1 for weeks on end, America also had its own version of chart purgatory in the shape of All 4 One whose single “I Swear” topped the Billboard Hot 100 for eleven consecutive weeks. Inevitably, it became a massive success over here as well and surely would have risen to the summit were it not for Marti Pellow and chums. It got wedged in at the No2 position for seven weeks unable to dislodge “Love Is All Around”. I think this was my sister and her then boyfriend’s song as I recall. No doubt it held that status for many a couple in 1994.

Not quite a one hit wonder in the UK (they had a No 33 single in 1995), they had more success in the US though no chart entries there either past 1996. Despite that, the group are still together with the original line up with their most recent album coming in 2015.

Well before Yorkshire rockers Terrorvision were singing about ‘whales and dolphins’ on their 1996 hit single “Perseverance” there was Shed Seven and their first foray into the Top 40 “Dolphin”. I seem to remember there being a lot of fuss about the emergence of this lot (who were also Yorkshire lads hailing from York itself) and the release of their debut album “Change Giver”. I hadn’t been an early adopter of the Shed buzz though. I hadn’t noticed their debut single “Mark” (to be fair, it only made No 80) and this one also seemed to have passed me by. Not sure why as it’s a decent tune and I was open to the idea of a guitar band playing a form of jangly pop. The music press seemed open to it as well, at least initially. Comparisons with The Smiths and an article in the NME describing them as ‘the UK’s brightest hopes’ alongside positive gig reviews fuelled expectations. Within months though the press had turned and the band were even criticised for their names. Not the band’s name but their actual names. Look at this:

“Do they really expect to make it big with a singer called Rick Witter?”
Sullivan, Caroline. “Feature: Blurred Vision”. The Guardian G2 (Thursday 10 November 1994): 5.

Ridiculous. Anyway, the album made a short lived but significant splash reaching No 16 but only spending two weeks on the chart. It was a start though and within two years they were cranking out some quality tunes like “Getting Better” and “Going For Gold” both of which were used to soundtrack some BBC montages of the England football team during Euro 96 at the height of lad culture. Perhaps their pièce de résistance though was “Chasing Rainbows”, the lead single from third album “Let It Ride”. They were up there with the big boys of Britpop briefly. Ah yes, Britpop. Blur Vs Oasis and all that. Except for a while it was Shed Seven Vs Oasis, a rivalry which I must admit to not being aware of at the time but which seems to be heightened by both bands releasing debut albums within a week of each other. The rivalry became a feud that was played out in the music press with comments like this from Noel Gallagher:

“If we’re The Beatles, where are The Rolling Stones… it’s not f***ing Shed Seven’.”
Simpson, Dave. “Feature: More Songs About Puberty And Power”. Melody Maker (10 September 1994): 32–34.

Ultimately, “Change Giver” couldn’t compete with the record breaking “Definitely Maybe” but it wasn’t for a lack of confidence. Rick Witter is wearing a Shed Seven T-shirt in this TOTP performance with a picture of himself on the front! “Dolphin” peaked at No 28.

https://youtu.be/LW1S-Bf_Ers

Live action films that use cartoons as their source material are rarely a good idea in my book. As far back as 1980 when Robin Williams took on Popeye, they never seemed to work. Leslie Nielsen’s turn as Mr Magoo in 1997 didn’t live long in the memory and neither did Matthew Broderick’s as Inspector Gadget in 1999. And then there’s The Flintstones. A staple of many a child of the 60s and 70s televisual schedule, the live action film starring John Goodman as Fred Flintstone actually did pretty well at the box office but it was still awful. With songs from films being big business in the 90s (think Bryan Adams / Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Whitney Houston / The Bodyguard and Wet Wet Wet / Four Weddings and a Funeral), it was no surprise that Universal Pictures wanted a huge hit to promote the film. Enter The B–52’s to record a version of the cartoon’s well known theme tune.

In many ways they were the perfect vehicle for a reworking of “(Meet) The Flintstones” having an almost cartoonish image themselves and being at the kitsch end of New Wave but on listening back to this today, it sounds horrific. Renamed as The B.C. 52’s (how amusing), they put their trademark stylings to the song like the over emphasised vocals of Kate Pierson and some wah wah guitar but it just doesn’t work for me. Shoehorning in some of the sound effects from the original into the mix like the canned drum roll that accompanies ‘Fred’s two feet’ in the cartoon sounds completely incongruous. What did I know though as the single went all the way to No 3. It would be the band’s final UK and US chart hit.

Some more pissing Eurodance next. I’m so fed up of this now. At the risk of sounding like my Dad when he used to pass judgment on the music of my youth, it all sounds the same and the bigger the crap the longer it goes on. Cappella seemed to be a poor man’s 2 Unlimited but with an obsession with inserting ‘U’ instead of ‘you’ in their song titles. “U & Me” was the third of their singles to follow this trend after “U Got 2 Know” and “U Got 2 Let The Music”. I can’t remember how they went but I’m guessing they sounded pretty similar to this one. Do you think Eurodance is just a dead form of music now? Like Latin is a dead language that nobody speaks anymore, is Eurodance a genre of music that nobody makes nor listens to any longer? We can only hope. “U & Me” peaked at No 10.

The 90s had been pretty good to Elton John so far. The decade had furnished him with his first ever solo UK No 1 in “Sacrifice / Healing Hands”, his album “Sleeping With The Past” (1990) was also a chart topper whilst “The One” (1992) went to No 2. Meanwhile, his collaborations album “Duets” had given him two Top 10 singles on the bounce. I hadn’t liked any of it though. In fact, I’d thought it was all terrible pretty much. However, that period’s success had lifted Elton out of his late 80s malaise when everything had gone a bit awry post “Too Low For Zero” and its radio friendly singles like “I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues” and “I’m Still Standing”.

What came next in 1994 some would say was his best work in years and it was all due to a Disney film. The Lion King would become an international phenomenon becoming the second highest grossing film of all time at one point behind the original Jurassic Park but also spawning a musical, sequels, a prequel and TV series. The man behind its soundtrack though was Elton and he fashioned a record that would go diamond in the US alone, achieving 10 million sales. The two big singles from it were “Circle Of Life” and this one, “Can You Feel The Love Tonight”. Both were heart strings tugging ballads the like of which Elton was more than capable of composing once he’d weaned himself off the overly saccharine which he was want to indulge in. I could appreciate the musicality of both hits from the soundtrack though I preferred “Circle Of Life” if I’m honest as did Elton who is on record as stating it’s the better song. It was “Can You Feel The Love Tonight” though that won an Oscar for Best Original Song in 1995.

The single was also a big hit in the US where it made No 4 though the reception to it in this country was somehow only worthy of a chart peak of No 14. Elton would return in 1995 with the platinum selling “Made In England” album.

It’s week four for Wet Wet Wet at the chart summit. What can I say about it this week? How about our perception of what exactly was going on here at the time? Did we have any idea that we were witnessing the genesis of a 15 weeks run at No 1 for “Love Is All Around”? Four Weddings And A Funeral was pulling in huge numbers at the box office to help promote the song in much the same way that Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves did for “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You” so maybe we should have seen it coming? Or had we consigned the whole Bryan Adams debacle to history as a one off and therefore in our minds there was no way such a run could happen again or at least certainly not within three years?

And what of chart rivals? Were there any records that looked likely to depose the Wets in those early weeks? Was it inconceivable that someone like Big Mountain (with their own song from a film) could get to No 1? How about Dawn Penn or US chart toppers All 4 One? Or even Ace Of Base who’d already scored a chart topper of their own the previous year and whose current single was a song that had been No 1 for Aswad just six years before? Marti Pellow and co would see them all off to achieve fifteen weeks atop the charts before getting bored themselves and deleting the record so that sales would eventually and inevitably decline. At least that put them marginally above Bryan Adams in the credibility stakes.

The play out song is “Night In My Veins” by The Pretenders. I’d completely forgotten that there was a follow up to “I’ll Stand By You” but here it is and it’s not bad if nowhere near as memorable as its predecessor. A catchy, melodic rock work out, it would make No 25 and was the band’s penultimate UK Top 40 entry.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Aswad	Shine	Nope
2	Dawn Penn	You Don’t Love Me (No, No, No)	No and indeed no, no
3	Ace Of Base	Don’t Turn Around	As if
4	All 4 One	I Swear	No but I bet my sister did
5	Shed Seven	Dolphin	No but I have a live album of theirs with it on
6	The B-52’s	(Meet) The Flinstones	Never happening
7	Cappella	U & Me	Negative
8	Elton John	Can You Feel The Love Tonight	Nah
9	Wet Wet Wet	Love Is All Around	I did not
10	The Pretenders	Night In My Veins	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/m001krc9/top-of-the-pops-23061994

TOTP 16 JUN 1994

Posted on April 13, 2023 by 80stastic

It’s the middle of June 1994 and before we get started on this week’s TOTP, it’s time I popped back into my personal life to see what I was up to back then. After three moves in four months at work, I’d ended up back where I’d started my career at Our Price at the Market Street store in Manchester. Despite being apprehensive initially, I’d kind of settled into being back there and was about to clock up a solid six months when everything changed again. The store manager took me aside one day and told me that he’d got a job at HMV (traitor!) and would be leaving soon. Fair play, good luck to him and all that but his change of employer would have ramifications for me.

The manager asked to replace him was my old boss at the Market Street store who I liked and so I had no concerns about him coming in. Unfortunately, he had some concerns about me. It was nothing personal but he was overseeing the start up of two new Our Price stores at Manchester airport and would continue with that as well as managing the Market Street branch. As such, he wouldn’t be around that much and wanted a more experienced Assistant Manager than me in place and so a guy from down South who wanted a move up North was transferred into my position.

So where did that leave me? Area management shunted me up the road to the Piccadilly store. It was my worst nightmare come true. The Piccadilly store had quite the reputation for a…let’s say ‘colourful’ clientele. In other words it’s where all the scallies and shoplifters hung out. They employed a full time security guard there (we didn’t have one at Market Street). Plus, they were a single floor store and the trading area was massive which made it hard to police plus a lot of work to make it look appealing to customers. We had two floors at Market Street but they were much smaller in size and much more manageable. To say I wasn’t keen on going there was an understatement. Somebody jokingly wrote in my leaving card that he’d heard they’d installed gun turrets at Piccadilly to control the scallies. Gulp! In the end, I lasted about five months in Piccadilly and hated nearly every minute. Not long after I arrived, the security guard left and a new guy came in. I’d had a look in the previous incumbent’s security log one day and it was full of entries that just said ‘nothing to report’. My experience of the store couldn’t have been further removed from that assessment. The new security bloke was shit hot at catching shoplifters and I spent most of my days sat with him and his latest capture in the shop kitchen waiting for the police to arrive. The previous guy had worn a security outfit and spent most his time chatting to the staff as far as I could see. This new fella wore ‘undercover’ clothes and loved nothing more than apprehending thieves and there seemed to be lots of them to catch. I just wanted to sell some records to punters. I didn’t want any of this. My time there will probably influence my opinions on the songs on TOTP for the next few months as most of them I associate with my miserable experience in Piccadilly. You have been warned.

Right. With all that said, it’s time for the show and we have another ‘golden mic’ guest presenter this week in the form of Angus Deayton. You remember him. The gangly looking bloke who hosted Have I Got News For You and was in One Foot In The Grave as Victor Meldrew’s neighbour. Whatever happened to him? Well, the short answer is cocaine and prostitutes. In May 2002, The News Of The World exposed his extra curricular activities leading to an excruciating appearance on HIGNFY where he was mercilessly teased by Paul Merton and Ian Hislop. After more allegations in the October, Deayton was dismissed from the show and despite continuing to work in TV and radio, his media profile has never been as high since. Back in 1994 though, his choice as TOTP host made perfect sense. He was a confident presenter and his suave demeanour even led to him being labelled as ‘TV’s Mr Sex’ in Time Out magazine. Oh the irony.

The first act Deayton has to introduce are The Grid who are riding high in the charts with their hit “Swamp Thing”. There’s a lot going on in this performance and most of it is pretty weird. I have to start with the banjo player who is hooked up to some machinery which is giving me heavy A Clockwork Orange vibes, specifically the scene where Alex undergoes aversion therapy with his eyes pulled permanently open. Then there’s the guy who seems to have fashioned himself a crown of safety pins. Finally, the fact that everyone on stage is dressed head to toe in white and safety pin guy has the slogan ‘No pain, no gain’ in big black letters on his top makes it all look like you’re watching Wham! performing “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go” in their ‘Choose Life’ T-shirts but if you were coming down from a bad trip. As I said, decidedly weird.

Just when I thought the time of 2 Unlimited was coming to an end and despite their last single being on its way down the charts at No 32 this week, the TOTP producers have still managed to manufacture yet another slot for them to appear on the show. “No One” was a track from their album “Real Things” which, rather surprisingly to me, was the No 1 album this particular week. It would eventually be released as a single three months later and peaked at No 17 which presents the frightening prospect of it being on the show again a few weeks down the line. For all the accusations against them that their songs all sounded the same, this one was slightly different. I mean, it wasn’t a big ballad or anything but it didn’t t seem to have that 2 Unlimited bpm urgency. In fact, it sounds like any other Eurodance hit of the time which wasn’t a good thing either in my book. Oh, and what was with the oversized wrap around glasses the backing band are wearing? Was it meant to represent anonymity, as in ‘No One’. I’m probably overthinking it which I doubt 2 Unlimited did.

https://youtu.be/15ucWhy9eKQ

It’s the video for “Anytime You Need A Friend” by Mariah Carey next. You may recall that she flew over to appear on the show in person to perform the song the other week. Wikipedia informs me that this was the first promo in which Mariah has straightened hair as opposed to her cascading curls. And the world was never the same again.

Talking of world altering events, an NHS choir called Breathe Harmony recorded a version of the song during the COVID-19 pandemic with contributions from over 100 staff recorded at home on mobile phones that were put together into one video. That film came to the attention of Mariah herself who tweeted that it had brought tears to her eyes (in a good way). The recording was eventually released as a single to raise money for two NHS charities. Mariah’s original peaked at No 8 in the UK.

Finally a D:Ream hit that isn’t a re-release of a previous single. After “Things Can Only Get Better” (once) and “U R The Best Thing” (twice) had been given the re-release treatment to great effect realising No 1 and No 4 hits respectively, here comes “Take Me Away”. However, like its predecessors, it was a track on the band’s debut album “D:Ream On Volume 1”. Truth be told, it’s not a great song and this was reflected in its chart peak of No 18. It probably should gave remained an album track. Peter Cunnah sounds ever so slightly out of breath doing a live vocal here and he’s also not wearing his trademark chequered suit. Maybe the two are related – no suit equals laboured vocals, like Samson and his lack of strength once his hair was cut off.

Professor Brian Cox watch update: That’s not him again is it?

Twice in the same show?! After pulling a fast one to get 2 Unlimited on the show once more, the TOTP producers have done the same again for Toni Braxton. Not content with having been a regular on the show for the whole of 1994, Ric Blaxill and co have come up with a way of squeezing her into the running order despite not having a single that was in the charts at the time. Again like 2 Unlimited before her, “Love Shoulda Brought You Home” would would eventually be released from her album and become a No 33 hit. Unlike 2 Unlimited, the song was actually her debut single release (in the US) back in 1992. It also appeared on the soundtrack to the Eddie Murphy movie Boomerang alongside Boyz II Men’s “End Of The Road”.

As for the performance here, is this the first time Toni has been in the TOTP studio in person? In the past she seems to have done a lot of those live by satellite turns. A more pertinent question though might be why has she been styled to look like Halle Berry in the film version of The Flintstones?

We do have a live by satellite performance next but as Toni Braxton was over in the UK anyway, the slot has gone to Spin Doctors who are showcasing their song “Cleopatra’s Cat”, the lead single from their sophomore album “Turn It Upside Down”. I don’t wish to be unkind but this was utterly pointless from start to finish. Firstly, the song is dreadful – it sounds like it was worked up out of a noodling jam session and some nonsensical lyrics were overlaid as a guide vocal. Ah yes the lyrics – some meandering bollocks about Roman general Mark Antony not being able to outwit the cat of his girlfriend Cleopatra, the ruler of Egypt from 51 to 30 BC. I’m sure it’s probably a metaphor for something but really, who cares? It was certainly no “Two Princes”.

Secondly, theres the staging of it. How we were meant to get excited about seeing some disheveled hippy types performing on a boat on the East River surrounded by some skyscrapers, I’m not sure. “Cleopatra’s Cat” peaked at No 29 and was their last UK Top 40 hit.

Still with Chaka Demus and Pliers? In the Summer of 1994? Fear not though as “I Wanna Be Your Man” would be their penultimate UK Top 40 hit. Yet another track from their “Tease Me” album, this one is nothing to do with the Lennon -McCartney song recorded by both The Beatles and The Rolling Stones but rather is the usual staple we’d come to expect from the duo with Pliers singing about a “sexy lady”and getting the “cherry from the cherry tree” before Chaka Demus blows in like a foghorn with his toasting. He even begins with a “Here me know” – please spare us.

After one final hit with “Gal Wine”, they would try (and fail) to score a further hit in 1996 with a cover of “Every Kinda People” by Robert Palmer talking of whom…

I don’t think Robert Palmer had been on TOTP since he performed his Marvin Gaye mashup hit “Mercy Mercy Me / I Want You” in 1990. The most likely reason for this would be that he hadn’t had any UK Top 40 hits since then and this new single “Girl U Want” would not reverse that trend peaking at No 57. So why was he on the show then?Maybe it was a change of direction brought in by new producer Ric Blaxill where the artist’s name and fame was considered bigger and more important than their chart position? In any case, it fitted in with the unconventionality of this particular show being, as it was, the third song on that wasn’t a current hit single after 2 Unlimited and Toni Braxton.

I didn’t know until now that this was actually a cover of a track by US New Wavers Devo but it is although it’s definitely been given the Palmer treatment. He’s made it sound like a companion piece to his 1988 song “Simply Irresistible” which is no bad thing in my book. Bob looks as suave as ever in this performance though I do wonder if many of the youths in the studio audience had a clue who he was. Tragically, Palmer would be dead in nine years from a heart attack.

Right, how many weeks are we up to for Wet Wet Wet’s version of “Love Is All Around” being at No 1? Three is it? Just another twelve to go after this then! Maybe it’s time to discuss the original recording of the song now. Asked to name any songs by The Troggs, I’d have got “Wild Thing” and “Love Is All Around” and probably nothing else. It turns out though that in addition to those two, they had another six Top 40 hits between 1966 and 1968 including a No 1 (“With A Girl Like You”). After that point, the hits quickly vanished and a reluctance to tour in the US until 1968 meant they failed to consolidate on the success of “Wild Thing” topping the charts over there.

Changes of record label failed to improve the band’s commercial fortunes and even resorting to the extreme option of re-recording “Wild Thing” with Oliver Reed and Alex Higgins failed to make a splash (if you don’t count Reed’s infamous drunken promotional appearance on The Word). They did, however, earn some credibility points when they recorded an album with REM called “Athens Andover” in the early 90s. The collaboration came about after Michael Stipe and co had covered “Love Is All Around” in concert. Wanna hear it? OK then…

Better than the Wets version? I’ll leave that for you to decide. Troggs lead singer Reg Presley famously spent the royalties from it on researching crop circles and UFOs releasing his findings in a book published in 2002 called Wild Things They Don’t Tell Us.

The play out song this week is another cover version – “Word Up” as done by Gun. Originally a hit for Cameo in 1986 of course, these Scottish rockers recorded it for the lead single of their third album “Swagger” to reactivate a career which had stalled rather since their debut hit “Better Days” in 1989. As we have seen so many times in these TOTP reviews, cover versions are a great way of securing a chart hit when one is needed and so it was with “Word Up” which gave Gun their biggest ever hit when it made No 8. I always quite liked their rock-tastic take on the track but I would have sworn it came out later in the decade than 1994. Five years on, Mel B also had a hit with a cover of “Word Up” taking her version to No 13.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	The Grid	Swamp Thing	No
2	2 Unlimited	No One	As if
3	Mariah Carey	Anytime You Need A Friend	Nah
4	D:Ream	Take Me Away	I did not
5	Toni Braxton	Love Shoulda Brought You Home	Nope
6	Spin Doctors	Cleopatra’s Cat	No chance
7	Chaka Demus and Pliers	I Wanna Be Your Man	Never happening
8	Robert Palmer	Girl U Want	Negative
9	Wet Wet Wet	Love Is All Around	I didn’t
10	Gun	Word Up	Liked it, didn’t buy it

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/m001kkll/top-of-the-pops-16061994

TOTP 09 JUN 1994

Posted on April 9, 2023 by 80stastic

OK, so this ‘golden mic’ feature of TOTP producer Ric Blaxill’s that saw celebrities, pop stars and comedians brought in to host the show has stepped up a gear in recent weeks. After the rather obvious choice of Take That’s Mark Owen and Robbie Williams and the ‘it just about worked’ decision to give the over the top Meatloaf a go, Blaxill had gone in the opposite direction by inviting the sardonic wit of Jack Dee into the studio recently. Of the three guest turns, it was Dee’s deadpan delivery that worked best for me. Maybe it did for Blaxill as well as he’s opted for not one but two comedians this week. Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer were fast becoming household names by 1994. Having broken through with Vic Reeves Big Night Out on Channel 4 in 1990/91, the duo had made the move to BBC2 with their latest show The Smell Of Reeves And Mortimer. The first series had aired in the Autumn of 1993 and brought us some brilliant new characters like Uncle Peter (“Donkey!”), The Bra Men – Pat Wright & Dave Arrowsmith (“Are you sayin’ I’ve got nowt”) and the wonderful Slade parody Slade In Residence. Vic had himself become a pop star of course in 1991 with the hits “Born Free” and “Dizzy” (a No 1 record no less) so maybe with feet in both camps, Vic & Bob were a logical choice to host TOTP?

Anyway, if Blaxill was hoping for some zany comedy to add some zoom to the show, what he got was a whole lot of controversy courtesy of opening act Manic Street Preachers. After becoming somewhat disillusioned with the direction that they had taken with the radio friendly, melodic rock of sophomore album “Gold Against The Soul”, the Manics decided a back to basics return to their origins was required. Where they ended up though was a very dark place indeed. With 75% of their third album “The Holy Bible” being written by Richey Edwards whose mental state was fragile to say the least, the songs were bleak. Where previously we’d had “Motorcycle Emptiness” and “Little Baby Nothing” from first album “Generation Terrorists”, now there was “Archives Of Pain” and “The Intense Humming Of Evil”. And yet the songs were valid. This was no death metal nonsense. The tracks spoke of the extremes of the human condition detailing suicide, anorexia, serial killers and the holocaust.

When ABC released “Beauty Stab” in 1983 as the follow up to the iconic “Lexicon Of Love”, it was seen as a the ultimate example of killing your career. Eleven years later it seemed like a case of the Manics saying “hold our beers” but although the sales of “The Holy Bible” were initially disappointing, its legacy has far overtaken its chart achievements. Routinely voted as one of the best albums of the 90s if not of all time, it is also the album held most dearest by the band’s fanbase.

The lead single from it was “Faster” which certainly sounds rawer than any of the singles from “Gold Against The Soul” but it was the choice of James Dean Bradfield to where a balaclava on this TOTP appearance that caught the headlines. The IRA connotations led many a viewer to believe the band were IRA sympathisers which the band, of course, vehemently denied. The BBC received 17,500 complaints and the band’s record company Sony were concerned that they would not be allowed on the show again. They were eventually invited back but not for another two years when they were a trio following the disappearance of Richey Edwards on 1st February 1995. My own opinion of balaclava -gate? I believe their defence detailed by @TOTPFacts below but for such a politically switched on band, it seemed a bit naive to not have foreseen such a reaction.

"Because we were all dressed in army regalia, it felt like we were parodying the use of legitimate power, like the special forces. It didn't enter our heads that people would see it as an Irish paramilitary symbol." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) March 31, 2023

As for “Faster”, I couldn’t engage with this era of the band. Maybe I was just that bit too old at 26 but I know people who swear by “The Holy Bible” album. Maybe I should explore it further.

As the camera switches back from the Manics to Vic and Bob, we get an unintentional piece of comedy gold when the former asks an unsuspecting member of the studio audience if she had liked the last performance. Having not been listening but suddenly confronted with a microphone in her face, she answered in the only way she could and with a belief that this was what was required of her, she whooped. Marvellous stuff.

The next act is a kind of diva supergroup. Kind of. I suppose a collaboration between disco/Hi-NRG heavyweights Kym Mazelle and Jocelyn Brown was as inevitable as it was obvious but the fact that it was the idea of Simon Cowell kind of discredits it slightly. Why were they doing a cover of the disco classic “No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)” made famous by Barbara Streisand and Donna Summer? The aforementioned Cowell alongside producers Matt Aitken and Mike Stock (working together for the first time since the split of SAW) had heard the version made by Erasure’s Andy Bell and k.d. lang for the Coneheads movie and thought they could do it better. And better in their eyes meant Kym and Jocelyn.

It made sense though. Jocelyn was the voice behind 80s club classic “Somebody Else’s Guy” and in the 90s had supplied vocals on Top 10 hits for Incognito and Right Said Fred. Meanwhile, Kym had duetted with Dr. Robert of The Blow Monkeys on Top 10 dance hit “Wait” in 1989. More recently, she’d been in the Top 30 in 1993 with Rapination on “Love Me The Right Way”. Put them together on a legendary disco track and you’ve got a sure fire, gigantic hit on your hands yes? Well, sort of. Despite entering the charts at No 15 and the exposure of this TOTP appearance, the single topped out just two places higher. The only country where it was a bigger hit than that was The Netherlands. By comparison, the Streisand/Summer original was an American No 1 and UK No 3. Why wasn’t it a bigger success second time around? Did the kids not know the original? Was it seen as too retro compared to the contemporary sounds of, say, Eurodance? Who knows but let’s just hope it pissed off Simon Cowell.

It’s that bloody “Absolutely Fabulous” song again! I think this is the third time it’s been on the show. There was no Comic Relief live event in 1994 so maybe the single was being given an extra push by the BBC? The song is of course the work of the Pet Shop Boys and seeing as I have nothing else left to say about what must be their worst ever single, how about I squeeze in a link between it and the aforementioned Barbara Streisand? Neil Tennant is on record as saying that after he and Chris Lowe had shot the video with Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley, they all went for a meal at a restaurant in Holland Park and got pissed. Right at the end of the evening, into the restaurant walked John Cleese, Joan Collins and Christopher Biggins who had all been to see Barbara Streisand who had been playing at Wembley Arena. Naturally, Tennant had already been to see her the previous week. So that’s Cleese, Collins, Biggins, Saunders, Lumley and the Pet Shop Boys all in the same place at the same time. It sounds like the best Blankety Blank line up ever! Absolutely fabulous darling!

Meanwhile, back in the studio, Vic and Bob are weaving their particular brand of comedy magic via the gift of scotch eggs. “Would anyone like a scotch egg?” they ask the studio audience on the gantry to which one game girl, with an unshakable desire to get herself noticed, shouts in Vic’s face, “I’ll have a scotch egg! Hiya Mum!”. Excellent work!

After that classic example of letting your parent know that you’re on TOTP, we get Blur who are in a much more sombre mood with the second single from their “Parklife” album. I’m guessing that the images and sounds that come to most of our minds when we think of the “Parklfe” era of the band, it’s Damon and Phil Daniels lord marching it up on the title track or the hypnotic, non sequitur chorus of “Girls & Boys”. However, there are also some majestically understated songs on the album too. “End Of A Century” falls into that category for me and then there’s “To The End”. The obvious choice of second single would surely have been the title track but then Blur weren’t always obvious and had depths to them that it could be argued their Battle of Britpop opponents Oasis didn’t. “To The End” was such a change of mood from “Girls & Boys”. A dramatic ballad with a full orchestral accompaniment, did it wrong foot record buyers after the faux hedonism of its predecessor? Certainly, it was nowhere near as big a hit peaking at No 16.

A year or so later, the band would release an even grander ballad in “The Universal” from their “The Great Escape” album. It put me in mind of Madness from a decade earlier when The Nutty Boys broke from their hits formula to release two wistful, pensive pieces in “One Better Day” and “Yesterday’s Men” in 1984 and 1985 respectively.

The performance here is suitably melancholy. The black and white camera tint, the formal suits the band are wearing and the deliberate lack of movement on stage (Alex James seems almost Ron Mael-esque). Damon just about pulls off the vocals but who was the woman sat on stage with them? Apparently, Lætitia Sadier from Stereolab adds some vocals on the recording but I’m not convinced that’s her next to Damon. Whoever she was, as Vic Reeves noted afterwards, she didn’t do much did she?

Acid jazz was in the air (waves) back in 1994. After Galliano appeared on the show the other week, here were label mates The Brand New Heavies with their sixth consecutive Top 40 hit “Back To Love”. I was never that much of an Acid Jazzer though my wife was quite keen and I think she bought the album that this track came from (“Brother Sister”). However, I quite liked the breezy Summer feel of this one – a real daytime radio winner. The band doubled down on that vibe with their next release, a cover version of Maria Muldaur’s “Midnight At The Oasis” which I would suggest would become their best known hit. Meanwhile, “Back To Love” would peak at No 23.

Here’s a rather nice thing. A 50s doo-wop song given the hard rock treatment. The first era of Guns N’ Roses was coming to an end and it did so with a rather unexpected finish. The band’s decision to record an album of cover versions in 1993’s “Spaghetti Incident” seemed a bit odd to me but I guess it was to plug the gap between albums of new material. Nobody could have known that gap would be 17 years long. It sold well enough but in nowhere near the numbers of the “Use Your Illusion” albums and “Appetite For Destruction”. A collection of mainly punk and hard rock songs by the likes of New York Dolls, The Stooges, The Damned and Nazareth, it also included “Since I Don’t Have You” by The Skyliners.

https://youtu.be/x2rdbTd4OXk

Easily for me the stand out track on the album, it really shouldn’t work but somehow it does. Axl Rose’s angular, throat throttling vocals should decimate the song but actually it’s safe in his hands…erm…mouth (?). Being the hard rockers they are though, the band can’t resist adding their own imprint on the track so in the middle we get the line “Yep, we’re f****d”. I’m guessing that didn’t feature on any radio edit of the song.

Now I would have bet money that this had been released around Christmas in 1993 but clearly not. However, it had been planned to put it out then and subsequently in February but was pulled both times so that might explain my confusion. “Since I Don’t Have You” peaked at No 10. The band’s next single – another cover, this time of “Sympathy For The Devil” by The Rolling Stones for the film Interview With The Vampire – would be their last for 14 years.

Another one of those dance records next that hung around the Top 40 for weeks on end like one of those floater turds that won’t flush away without the need to resort to a literal shitty stick to break it up. Apologies for the excrement metaphor but I really have had enough of having to find something to say about these ‘club anthems’ that lingered like a nasty fart (see also Reel 2 Real’s “I Like To Move It”). “Get-A-Way” by Maxx was one such record. It stayed on the Top 40 for 10 weeks of which 5 of them were inside the Top 10 peaking at No 4 for 2 weeks.

The last time this lot were on the show they performed against the backdrop of a police car for no discernible reason and this time their dancers are jigging away behind some wire mesh fences. Why? Were they meant to have been caught by the fuzz and now be in some sort of detention centre? Just ridiculous.

A classic one hit wonder (huge hit then nada) next as Dawn Penn takes to the stage with her song “You Don’t Love Me (No, No, No)”. Back in 1994, my reaction would have been the same as Vic Reeves – who? As it happens, Dawn was part of the ‘rocksteady’ movement of the late 60s that was a successor to ska and a precursor to reggae (Wikipedia tells me) and she’d originally recorded the track (then just titled “You Don’t Love Me”) in 1967. Dawn then took a Guns N’ Roses style 17 years off from singing before returning to the track and doing a dancehall version of it. Thanks to her appearance at an anniversary show for her original label Studio One Records, the song was released as a single and with plenty of radio support became a huge hit in the UK peaking at No 3.

The UK had always been susceptible to one hit wonders from out of the leftfield like this one. I’m thinking Althea and Donna, Phyllis Nelson, Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley etc and just like those acts, Dawn seemed an unlikely pop star. She was already 42 when she appeared on TOTP which I guess is fairly old to be having your first hit. “You Don’t Love Me (No No No)” entered the charts at No 9 and spent the next four weeks inside the Top 10. Despite Dawn’s protestations, the UK did love her.

It’s the second of fifteen (gulp!) weeks at the top for Wet Wet Wet and “Love Is All Around”. They’re in the studio pretending to be hippies again but this time scenes from Four Weddings And A Funeral have been interspersed into the performance. I’m guessing the production company or distributors pushed for that though the film didn’t need any more promotion as it was top of the box office charts for weeks. I have to say I do like the film – it’s one of those that I always tend to end up watching if I stumble across it whilst channel flipping. Its appeal may have waned over the years but I still think the acting performances are good (apart from a rather wooden Andie Mac Dowell) and the pacing works really well. I wonder if some of the negativity that it attracts now is related to the Wets single putting people off by being No 1 for so long? I’m bound to refer to the film agin over the next 13 weeks but I think I’ll leave it there for now.

The play out tune is back after being omitted last week and it’s yet another dance tune, this time “Harmonica Man” by Bravado. I can’t tell you much about this as I don’t remember it and I can’t be arsed to research it online but it seems to have been inspired by The Grid’s “Swamp Thing” with its banjo theme but they’ve used an harmonica instead. Apparently it spent one week inside the Top 40 peaking at No 37.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Manic Street Preachers	Faster	I did not
2	Jocelyn Brown and Kym Mazelle	No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)	No
3	Pet Shop Boys	Absolutely Fabulous	Not even for charity
4	Blur	To The End	No but I had the Parklife album. Didn’t we all?
5	Brand New Heavies	Back To Love	No but my wife had the album
6	Guns N’ Roses	Since I Don’t Have You	No but I have it on their Greatest Hits album
7	Maxx	Get-A-Way	Hell no
8	Dawn Penn	You Don’t Love Me (No, No, No)	No, no and indeed no
9	Wet Wet Wet	Love Is All Around	Nope
10	Bravado	Harmonica Man	Nah

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/m001kkld/top-of-the-pops-09061994

TOTP 02 JUN 1994

Posted on April 5, 2023 by 80stastic

I’m nearly 26! Well, I’m not (I’ll be 55 next birthday) but back in 1994 I was four days from being that age. I know it’s a daft thing to say because 29 years is a long time but it feels like a lifetime ago. The memory is such a mysterious beast though. Certain things that I would have been able to reel off without hesitation at the time like the names on the staff rota I can now no longer raise from the depths of my recollection. Neither can I tell you what I did on my birthday that year. Yet, random snatches of conversation (that shouldn’t have been that memorable!) have lingered and endured. I wonder if I’ll remember all the songs from this TOTP…

N.B. The host this week is yet again the insufferable Simon Mayo who has his full weaponry of obscure and hopelessly unfunny one liners on display. I don’t propose to comment on every one as I have done previously as he doesn’t deserve the attention but be sure that they were all of his usual woeful standard.

Yep, this one’s in the old memory banks. Giving the reggae treatment to pop standards was quite the trend around this time and the latest act to jump on the bandwagon were Big Mountain who scored a massive hit with their version of Peter Frampton’s “Baby I Love Your Way”. The perennial appeal of this song seems quite disproportionate to its quality to me. Not only was a live version of it a hit for Frampton himself in 1976 but it returned in 1988 as part of a medley with “Freebird” by Will To Power which went to the top of the US charts. And here it was again in 1994 only being held off the UK No 1 spot by Wet Wet Wet. Just like “Love Is All Around”, Big Mountain’s version was from a film soundtrack, Reality Bites starring Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke and Ben Stiller.

https://youtu.be/UGJ0VLKu7rQ

I’ve talked about this film before because someone has to as it seems to be largely forgotten these days. Reflecting the angst of the Generation X demographic and channeling the grunge scene vibe (and I know that makes it sound really wanky!), it told the story of a group of friends and roommates whilst also breaking the fourth wall (sort of) with the character of TV network executive Michael (Ben Stiller). Supposedly, it now holds cult classic status but you never see it on TV or any of the streaming platforms. The soundtrack is actually pretty fab including the likes of Crowded House, Squeeze, U2, Lenny Kravitz and World Party. It was also home to another runaway hit in “Stay (I Missed You)” by the then unsigned Lisa Loeb And Nine Stories which was a US No 1 and UK No 6.

Back to “Baby I Love Your Way” though and I have to say I found the Big Mountain version a bit sickly and twee. I wasn’t the only person who wasn’t a fan of the song when it featured in another film…

The Beautiful South burst onto the UK charts with a nest full of big hits after the break up of The Housemartins. Their first four singles released between June 1989 and September 1990 furnished them with chart positions that included No 1, No 2 and No 8. However, of their next seven releases, none got any higher than No 16 and three didn’t make the Top 40 at all despite all of them being quality tunes (bloody stupid British record buying public). Now I’m not suggesting that the band looked at this and thought “let’s release a cover version to arrest this trend” but that is what happened. “Everybody’s Talkin’” came to fame via the version recorded by Harry Nilsson that featured in the film Midnight Cowboy and was a perfect choice to be given The Beautiful South treatment. Possessing of a delicate, fluttering melody, it was also a great showcase for the vocal talents of the recently recruited Jacqui Abbott. I think this may have been her first ever TOTP appearance which may explain her rather nervous looking demeanour.

“Everybody’s Talkin’” gave the band their biggest hit since their 1990 No 1 “A Little Time” when it peaked at No 12. A year after this they recorded another cover version, this time their take on The Mamas & The Papas hit “Dream A Little Dream” for the soundtrack of the film French Kiss. I’m pretty sure that it didn’t get a UK release as a single which caused record shop staff issues when trying to explain this to annoyed punters who had seen the film. The song being picked up for airplay by local radio stations didn’t help either. The band recorded a whole album of cover versions in 2004 called “Golddiggas, Headnodders and Pholk Songs” which would provide them with their final Top 40 hit in “This Will Be Our Year”. The Beautiful South split in 2007 famously citing ‘musical similarities’.

https://youtu.be/-gvPx47ENZA

Another one that I definitely remember now which is surprising given it’s a dance tune but “Swamp Thing” by The Grid was no ordinary dance record – this one had a banjo in it! Dave Ball (ex- Soft Cell of course) and Richard Norris weren’t exactly new to the UK Top 40 having previously visited its mid echelons with “Crystal Clear” and “Texas Cowboys” but “Swamp Thing” was by far their biggest hit reaching a nose bleed inducing No 3. Apparently, the banjo part wasn’t a sample having been played specifically by folk musician Roger Dinsdale though there were a couple of sampled spoken word bits in there. It was for all intents and purposes though, an instrumental track which maybe makes its commercial success more surprising. Maybe.

The accompanying video with the baby crawling about amongst some synthesiser instruments and equipment puts me in mind of the promo for “French Kiss” (the track by Lil’ Louis not the aforementioned film) which also featured a young child playing with some toys against a white background.

Of course, if you’re talking visual clips featuring banjos, it’s hard not to think of this…

No, don’t recall this at all but that’s hardly surprising given that “Fountain Of Youth” by Arrested Development was never released as a single. This appears to be an attempt by the TOTP producers to shoehorn an international artist onto the show just because they happen to be in the country. Simon Mayo tells us in his intro that they are his guests on his Radio 1 show the following day so why not get them on the BBC’s flagship music show while we’re at it? There was a problem though. Here’s @TOTPFacts with the story:

Arrested Development's current single "Ease My Mind" was falling from its peak of 33 to 35 in this week's singles chart, which made it ineligible to appear on #TOTP under the rules of the show at the time. It was the last of their four UK top 40 singles.
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) March 24, 2023

The solution was to create a space for them using the old ‘album track slot’ trick. The album in question was “Zingalamaduni” which was released the following week. However, it wasn’t a huge success, peaking at No 16 over here and massively underselling compared to their multi platinum debut “3 Years, 5 Months And 2 Days In The Life Of…”. I can’t say that “Fountain Of Youth” does much for me and who was the old fella on the raised stage at the back? Mr. Wendal perhaps? More to the point, what was he doing? Praying to the fountain of youth? Drinking an elixir from it? Or was he just watering a plant?

I said I wouldn’t spend any time commenting on Simon Mayo’s pathetic puns in his segues but his attempt to draw humour from “Shoop” by Salt ‘N’ Pepa by restyling it as adding salt and pepper to soup is truly pitiful. Anyway, this was a rerelease of a single that peaked at No 29 in 1993 but which was given another chance in the wake of the success of “Whatta Man” with En Vogue and this time it managed a high of No 13.

It’s a pretty groovy track with the ‘Shoop’ hook an instant ear worm and infinitely preferable to the only other songs I can think of with that word in the title – Cher’s version of “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s In His Kiss)” and “Exhale (Shoop Shoop)” by Whitney Houston.

Who couldn’t remember this? Is this the first time Pulp appeared on TOTP?*

*Yes, if you merge those two sentences then you almost get the title of Pulp’s first Top 40 hit and yes that was deliberate and yes, I’m a smart arse.

Of course, Jarvis and co had been around for a good 10 years by this point but “Babies” (the lead track from “The Sisters EP”) really did seem to draw a line under their early, rather gloomy work, and announce themselves as the coolest uncool anti-pop stars in the UK. Essentially a song about voyeurism that doesn’t end well for the protagonist, it wasn’t your typical pop song subject matter. And yet Pulp made it work and then some. Once the viewing public got a first glimpse of Jarvis and his idiosyncratic moves and looks to camera, his stardom was assured. His Bob Geldof / John Travolta style taunting of Wet Wet Wet only added to his appeal for many. Pulp had arrived.

In case you didn't catch it: taped instead Jarvis Cocker's jacket was a piece of paper with "I HATE WET WET WET" written on it – a phrase we'll all be screaming in another five or six weeks' time. #TOTP pic.twitter.com/xeCn6rDMf8
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) March 24, 2023

Well I definitely remember Pink Floyd releasing “The Division Bell” as it went to No1 in the album charts and we sold plenty of it in the Our Price shop in Manchester where I was working at the time. What I don’t recall is how it sounded as I’m pretty sure it never got played on the in store stereo (apparently record shop staff snobbiness was alive and well in 1994). Therefore, the single “Take It Back” which was taken from it is new to me. Listening to it now, I find myself asking “Is this really Pink Floyd? The Pink Floyd of “The Dark Side Of The Moon” and “The Wall” fame? because it sounds like a second rate Runrig to me.” Look, I’m no Pink Floyd devotee and I don’t own any of their albums so I may be committing heresy here but this sounds so lame. The video is awful too.

I think Mariah Carey must have been a friend of the show. How else do you explain her being on it in person so many times otherwise? “Anytime You Need a Friend” wasn’t what she said to producer Richard Blaxill when he was struggling to fill his running order but was the follow up to her recent No 1 single “Without You” and it was generally seen as a stand out track on parent album “Music Box” by critics as its gospel flavour allowed Mariah to dive deep into her record breaking vocal range. I guess it’s well produced and does a job but I’m not sure I would have remembered it without the prompt of this TOTP repeat. Mariah would see 1994 out with the release of that Christmas record which undeniably has lived longer in the memory than “Anytime You Need a Friend” and which peaked at No 8 here but was the first of her singles to miss the Top 10 in the US.

OK, so we all remember this one and some would no doubt wish that they could erase it permanently from their memories. It’s week one of fifteen at the top of the charts for Wet Wet Wet with “Love Is All Around”. My first observation of this performance would be why do they look like they’ve arrived hot foot from a production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat? Oh, it’s meant to be a hippy / summer of love / flower power type thing is it? That would explain the long hair, the flowers inserted into the necks of the guitars and the bean bags I suppose? I think they may have lost people right from the start with this staging idea. Oh well. Just another 14 weeks to go. Channel your inner Jarvis Cocker people!

Oh, one last thing. There’s no play out tune this week. Not sure if this is a permanent change but it seems like a good idea given that the producers had wasted this slot on songs that didn’t even make the Top 40 played over a montage of visuals from the show that we’d all just seen.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Big Mountain	Baby I Love Your Way	Nah
2	The Beautiful South	Everybody’s Talkin’	Not the single but I have it on their Carry On Up The Charts Best Of. Don’t we all?
3	The Grid	Swamp Thing	No
4	Arrested Development	Fountain Of Youth	My wife had their first album but a second one was a purchase too far. No
5	Salt ‘N’ Pepa	Shoop	Negative
6	Pulp	The Sisters EP	No but I had seen them live the year before supporting Saint Etienne and they were by far the better band on the night
7	Pink Floyd	Take It Back	No I won’t – this was awful
8	Mariah Carey	Anytime You Need a Friend	Nope
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/m001khlx/top-of-the-pops-02061994

TOTP 19 MAY 1994

Posted on March 28, 2023 by 80stastic

Right, after banging on about football in what’s supposed to be a retro music blog last time out, I promise there’s nothing about the beautiful game in this post. It’s straight to the music and the direct to camera message at the top of the show this week comes from a snake. No really. An actual snake but it’s no ordinary snake. Not only does it talk but it’s owner is ‘The Godfather of Shock Rock’ himself Alice Cooper who is on the show as both performer and host tonight. Blimey! Iggy Pop last week and Alice Cooper the next. There’s two ways of looking at this. Either new producer Ric Blaxill was trying to restore some credibility to TOTP by demonstrating that the show was still a pull for some of the most iconic names in music or he was totally misreading the room and not giving the kids what they wanted at all. Alice Cooper was 46 at the time this show aired and his biggest hit “School’s Out” had been No 1 22 years prior. Or was their a third view? Was he trying to reel back in those disaffected viewers who thought that they had outgrown the show? All I know is that was two ‘Godfathers’ on the show in consecutive weeks after ‘The Godfather of Punk’ Iggy Pop seven days before. It surely wasn’t just coincidence was it?

To completely blow my theorising above out of the water, we start with an act that surely couldn’t have existed and been successful at any other time other than the early to mid 90s. 2 Unlimited must have been one of the most prolific artists to appear on the show in this period. “The Real Thing” was their 10th consecutive UK chart hit of which only two didn’t make the Top 10. Unlike most of their previous offerings, Ray actually gets to do some prolonged rapping in this one rather than having to settle for shouting out “Techno, techno techno techno” every now and then.

The track reminds me of another song that I can’t quite put my finger on…

If you're thinking that "The Real Thing" reminds you of something (apart from every other 2 Unlimited track), it's probably Johann Sebastian Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor: https://t.co/2eUw8dCmjV #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) March 17, 2023

No, @TOTPFacts, not that (although clearly, that as well). Got it! It’s this…

Just me then. Oh well. By my reckoning there’s at least a couple more occasions when Ray and Anita will be on TOTP so we’re not quite done yet but the end is coming.

While the end of 2 Unlimited is nigh, we’re just at the start of something very lengthy and for some interminable and intolerable. Yes, Wet Wet Wet are here for the first time with (gulp) “Love Is All Around”. Yes, just three years since Bryan Adams spent 16 weeks at the top of the charts, the UK was about to embark on another splurge of record buying that would create another long term resident at No 1, Chart Street. How could we have let this happen again so quickly?! Well, like “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”, Wet Wet Wet’s single was also from a popular, mainstream film but for Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves read Four Weddings and a Funeral. Richard Curtis’s rom-com was a runaway success topping the box office’s chart for 9 weeks and making it the second highest grossing film ever in the UK at the time. Although the song only features over the end credits (a version is sung by the hippy looking couple at the first wedding in the main body of the film), such exposure and promotion was always going to make it a big hit. Did any of us envision 15 weeks at No 1 though? I’ll need to keep something back for that lengthy a run on the show so for the moment, here’s some stats:

It was the best selling single in the UK for 1994 (obviously)
It went double platinum in the UK
It was No 1 in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Holland, New Zealand, Norway and Sweden
It has the joint third longest reign at the top of the UK chart only behind Bryan Adams and Frankie Laine
It spent 26 weeks in the UK Top 40 of which 20 were in the Top 10

In short, it was a monster with teeth. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Right, who’s this? Bad Boys Inc? They were still a thing in mid 1994? If that seems unbelievable, guess how many hits these stinkers had? Two? Three at a push? Uh-uh. Six. SIX! How? Why? What the hell was going on? “More To This World” was the fourth and biggest of them giving the group their only Top 10 hit. Filling the gap as an alternative to Take That for the teen market until Boyzone turned up a few months later, this lot were the template of how to be a second rate boy band. A frontman with a passable voice at best backed by some grinning no marks whose only contribution to the project was cheekbones, styled hair and dancing. Dreadful stuff from every body involved. We shall detain ourselves no longer with this shallow nonsense.

Proving just how bonkers the charts of 1994 were, we move from a lower league boy and to ambient world music in the blink of an eye. Well, not quite a blink but it’s a pretty short segue featuring occasional host Bruno Brookes and tonight’s superstar Alice Cooper. Oh, and that snake as well. It actually works quite well. Brookes keeps a straight face and Alice delivers his line effectively. And not a gold disc presentation on sight. Please take note Simon Mayo.

Back to that ambient world music though. Its two main protagonists, in the charts at least, were Enigma and Deep Forest and by happy chance they are next to each other in the Top 40 this week. The former is at No 21 with “The Eyes Of Truth” whilst the latter is in the No 20 position with their eponymous track “Deep Forest”. It doesn’t quite have the charm of its predecessor “Sweet Lullaby” but was still an exponent of the growth of World Music that had come to mainstream attention via Paul Simon’s “Graceland”, Peter Gabriel’s Real World label and experiments in the genre via Brian Eno and David Byrne. Deep Forest (and Enigma) seemed to me to create their own strand of it though by adding electronica sounds to the most unlikely of samples – Gregorian chants in the case of Enigma and field recordings of the indigenous peoples of Polynesia by Michel Sanchez and Eric Mouquet of Deep Forest. Nearly 30 years on, maybe the depth of the impression their material made upon the mainstream public has diminished but it really felt quite out there at the time. And mainstream it certainly was. Deep Forest’s debut album sold nearly four million copies worldwide and was nominated for a Grammy for Best Global Music in 1994 but lost out to Ry Cooder. It might not have been to everyone’s taste but when you consider that the UK No 1 in this particular chart was by a football team and was based on a horrible Status Quo track, maybe everyone’s taste wasn’t always the best barometer.

It’s the return of Seal next with his first new material since his massive selling debut album stormed the charts in 1991. His second album (also just called “Seal” or sometimes referred to as “Seal II”) is the album that “Kiss From A Rose” is from right?

*checks Seal’s discography

Thought so. That track was huge after featuring in the Batman Forever film but it wasn’t the album’s lead single. That honour went to “Prayer For The Dying” which has become a bit of a lost Seal track. Ask most people to name one of his songs and I’m betting the titles offered up would be either the aforementioned “Kiss From A Rose” or “Crazy” or “Killer”. “Prayer For The Dying” though? Not so much. I couldn’t have dragged it out of my memory banks unaided. It’s actually a very smooth and accomplished track though and did make No 14 in the charts but it lacks the edginess of something like “Killer” or “Crazy”. Trevor Horn was still at the mixing desk so of course it was well produced but it sounds like it’s been crafted to appeal to multiple US genre radio stations and spreads itself bit too thin. I mean, compared to 2 Unlimited or Bad Boys Inc, it’s a towering colossus of musical quality but somehow it’s not one of his best or indeed best remembered tunes.

The album sold well though, topping the chart as its predecessor had done and it went four times platinum in the US thanks to “Kiss From A Rose” being a No 1 record over there. I recall the initial scale out of it for the Our Price store I was working in not being that big (a poor decision by the buying dept it would seem) and the Area Manager telling us to hunt stem the advanced promo copy we had to add to stock. Funny the things you remember.

An occasional feature now with something from the album chart. Presumably these sections weren’t weekly because of the changing nature of artist availability? If the show could be populated by artists promoting a single did they take priority? The album chart slot started with Stanley Appel’s ‘year zero’ revamp but it seems subsequent show producer Ric Blaxill hasn’t ditched it yet. Maybe he does down the line – I can’t remember off the top off my head.

Anyway, the occupant of the slot this week is Julia Fordham who seems a rather obscure choice given that her album “Falling Forward” never hit any higher than No 21. In fact, as much as I quite like Julia Fordham, she’s never pulled many trees up chart wise. Two hit singles (Nos 19 and 27) and her best placing in the album chart was No 13 for sophomore collection “Porcelain”. She really should have had more hits given her talent. She remains a live draw and has toured with Beverley Craven and Judie Tzuke as part of the “Woman To Woman” project. This track, “I Can’t Help Myself”, was released as a single in the July making No 62.

Bruno Brookes is back to present the next act but he looks like he’s been smeared with shit since he’s been gone. The explanation for his appearance is that he’s been in an off screen fight with Alice Cooper’s snake. OK, the joke is wearing thin now and I think they’ve overcooked it. There’s no snakes anywhere near the next act who are East 17 though they did seem to shed band members as regularly as a snake sheds it skin after the hits dried up. Look at this timeline:

1997 Brian Harvey sacked (drugs comments)
1997 Tony Mortimer leaves (creative differences)
1998 Brian Harvey reinstated and group renamed as E17
1999 Band splits
2006 Original line up reforms for reunion gig
2006 Tony Mortimer leaves (after altercation with Brian Harvey)
2010 Tony Mortimer returns for a second time
2010 Brian Harvey leaves for second time (commitment to band questioned)
2011 Blair Dreelan joins band
2011 Blair Dreelan leaves band (contractual obligation)
2013 Tony Mortimer leaves band for third time
2014 Robbie Craig joins band
2018 Original member John Hendy leaves (personal reasons)
2018 Terry John joins band
2019 Terry John leaves band
2019 Jake Livermore joins band

Blimey! There’s so much coming and going in that lot that they should have been called E20 (the fictional postcode for EastEnders location Walford). “All Around The World” peaked at No 3.

It’s finally time for Alice Cooper to be onstage as a performer rather than to the side of it as a presenter. He’s here, of course, to promote his latest single which is “Lost In America” from his concept album “The Last Temptation” album. I’m not much of an Alice aficionado I have to say. I know his real name is Vince Furnier without looking it up and that he’s a golf fanatic. Musically, I’m familiar with “School’s Out” and “Elected” from his 70s era and “Poison” and “Hey Stoopid” from his late 80s early 90s revival but not a lot else and that includes this track.

Ah crap! I promised there’d be nothing about football in this post after last week’s was hijacked by my talking about the 1994 FA Cup final but the No 1 is “Come On You Reds” by The Manchester United Football Squad so what can I do? Five days on from their demolition of my beloved Chelsea in said final, they have moved to being the best selling single of the week in the UK. It would stay there for two weeks. This achievement was quite remarkable given the fact that it’s a football record. Sure, this niche genre has had big hits before – Liverpool FC got to No3 with “Anfield Rap” in 1988 and the England World Cup squad (in conjunction with New Order) also got to No 1 in 1990. Hell, my beloved Chelsea got to No 5 in 1972 with “Blue Is The Colour” – but No 1 for two weeks?! With that song?! As cup finalists, Chelsea also released their own single – “No One Can Stop Us Now” (oh the irony!) – which made No 23. I believe it was quite unusual for both teams to have cup final songs in the Top 40 simultaneously. Obviously it was dreadful as well but I bought it as a souvenir of the day thinking we might never get to the final again (how wrong I was).

The play out song is “Absolutely Fabulous” by Pet Shop Boys. Or is it? I think officially it’s credited to just Absolutely Fabulous and is produced by Pet Shop Boys but we all know it’s them really. This was the 1994 Comic Relief single and as much as I didn’t like the track, it was an upgrade on the likes of “The Stonk” by Hale & Pace and “Stick It Out” by Right Said Fred. There is, of course, a link to Alice Cooper here with the 1992 Comic Relief single being a cover of their (Alice Cooper was the band’s name at this point) 1972 hit, the aforementioned “Elected” by Mr Bean and Smear Campaign. “Absolutely Fabulous” made No 6 and was the second time that Jennifer Saunders had featured on a Comic Relief single after 1989’s “Help” as part of Lananeeneenoonoo alongside Bananarama.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I but it?
1	2 Unlimited	The Real Thing	No
2	Wet Wet Wet	Love Is All Around	I did not
3	Bad Boys Inc	More To This World	As if
4	Deep Forest	Deep Forest	Nah
5	Seal	Prayer For The Dying	Nope
6	Julia Fordham	I Can’t Help Myself	It’s a no
7	East 17	All Around The World	Another No
8	Alice Cooper	Lost In America	Sorry Alice – no
9	The Manchester United Football Squad	Come On You Reds	Are you kidding?!
10	Pet Shop Boys	Absolutely Fabulous	And a final 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

TOTP 06 JAN 1994

Posted on January 16, 2023 by 80stastic

1993 has finally done one and we are into a new year at last! After that previous 12 months, things can only get better (ahem). Or not. By my reckoning, just about now back then, I’d have been having a rather heated discussion with my Area Manager at Our Price about me being moved yet again for the third time in four months. I wasn’t best pleased. I’d not enjoyed the transfer to a bigger store at Stockport and was relieved to end up being shifted to the much smaller unit in Altrincham for Christmas. I’d liked it so much there that my wife and I had even started looking at flats there for a potential move from our base of the previous three years in South Manchester. Sadly, we we’re getting way ahead of ourselves. As soon as New Year was over, I was informed that I was to be transferred over to the Market Street store in Manchester where I’d started as a Christmas temp just over three years before. I had reservations about going back as there were still some people working there from my previous incarnation and I suppose I wondered how I would be received returning in a management position. That and the fact that I felt like I’d had my fair share of moves recently and this was just taking the piss. Despite my protestations I had to go, not least because it was in my contract that I could be made to so that was that. What was that about things could only get better…?

So after at least two fairly lame attempts by myself to tee this up in my intro, here’s the first act on TOTP of 1994…with a song from 1993! Yes, it probably gets forgotten due to how big a hit “Things Can Only Get Better” by D:Ream was this time around but it had already been a middling sized hit exactly twelve months before when it peaked at No 24. So why the re-release? Well, D:Ream had bagged themselves quite the support slot for a tour by the biggest boy band in the country meaning their exposure to the record buying public was massively enhanced. A Take That endorsement was certainly a ringing one when it came to the cash tills. The 1994 re-release would go on to sell 600,000 copies.

It wasn’t just a re-release though as it was also a remix. The original release didn’t include the gospel style a cappella intro that was reinstated for the 1994 version which had much more of a pop feel to it as opposed to the more club orientated original. Suddenly there was a buzz about the song again. Perhaps the timing of the release date was a factor with it being New Year and that renewed hope that people have that this will be a better year than the one before, new year resolutions and all that. Whatever it was, the timing, the sound, the record company marketing, it became one of those records that we were all told would be a huge hit and so it duly was. It went straight in at No 10, then No 2 and then topped the charts for four weeks. It spent nine weeks inside the Top 10 and fourteen in the Top 40 altogether. It was a monster.

Whatever its legacy – and the revisionists seem to have decided it was cheesy probably not helped by its 1997 General Election connections – you can’t deny its positivity. Peter Cunnah gives a decent vocal and does a good job of selling it (despite his horrible checked suits) though I never liked its M People style, sax parping middle eight which always seemed a bit incongruous. We’ll be seeing and hearing plenty more of this tune in future TOTP repeats so I’ll leave it there for now.

Dinah Carroll is next starting the year as she finished the last – with a huge hit record. “The Perfect Year” is up to No 5, possibly benefiting, like D:Ream before it, from New Year good vibes given its title and lyrics. As the single is at its peak this week, I’m guessing this could be the last we’ll see of Dina for over two and a half years as she would not release any new material until late September 1996. I feel almost bereft after all the times she’s appeared in the show in the previous twelve months! 1993 really was her (ahem) perfect year with four hit singles and a huge selling album in “So Close”.

Not that 1994 didn’t have any highlights for Dina. She was named Best Female Artist at the BRIT Awards in February whilst her album continued to sell steadily throughout the year and was shortlisted for the Mercury Music Prize. She also played a sell out tour in December. Then…nothing. She took some time out after suffering from burnout and then record label contract wrangles delayed the release of her new album. By the time it came out, Britpop had happened and the musical landscape had changed. “Only Human” sold well enough but Dina was never as big as she was during her initial flush of success.

Just like “The Perfect Year”, here’s another record that had been around the charts for a while by this point and was also inside the Top 5. Whereas Dina Carroll was never as successful again as she was in 1993, you could make a similar claim for East 17 in 1994. Not only did “It’s Alright” reach No 3 ultimately to become their highest charting hit at that time, not only did they follow it up with another No 3 single and a No 7, not only did they release double platinum selling sophomore album “Steam” but they also notched up their first and only chart topping single which was also the year’s Christmas No 1. Phew! Breathe it in boys!

Now there’s a few things to be said about this TOTP performance not in the least Brian Harvey’s hat which was presumably the inspiration for the 1998 hit by The Tamperer featuring Mya with its lyrics “What’s she gonna look like with a chimney on her?”. Secondly, what on earth was it that Terry Coldwell (geezer to the immediate left of Brian Harvey) was bringing to the party here? He just stands there sort of shuffling about. He’s shown up by everyone else on stage – Harvey as lead vocalist obviously, Tony Mortimer on piano and with his rap half way through and even the fourth guy who just noodles about on his bass guitar. Terry, it’s really not alright mate.

What’s going on here then? Why were The Mission in the charts in 1994 with a single that had already been a No 12 hit in 1988? There’s no great mystery really. It was to promote a Best Of album called “Sum And Substance” with the single in question being “Tower Of Strength”. I once spent an afternoon wandering around the record shops of York with my friend Robin who was looking for a Best Of album by The Mission (it may have even been “Sum And Substance”). Why did it take a whole afternoon? Because Robin wasn’t prepared to pay more than £5 for it. He was probably right to be so exacting on reflection.

Anyway, just like D:Ream earlier, this was not just a rerelease but a remix done by producer de jour Youth though fat lot of good that did the band as it stalled at No 33. Perhaps trying to rewrite Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” wasn’t the best career move after all.

P.S. I’m not sure what Tony ‘Friend of East 17” Dortie was on about in his intro exhorting us to listen to the bass sound on “Tower Of Strength”. What bass?

It may be a new year but the Breakers are still with us starting with “Whoomp! (There It Is)” by Tag Team. I could have sworn this was a hit later in the decade than this?

*checks Tag Team discography

Well, that didn’t take long as “Whoomp! (There It Is)” is pretty much their only claim to fame. However, the story of the track is a long one. So, do I need to do a deep dive for a Breaker that we’ll never see in full and only made No 34 on the UK Top 40? I do? You’re all cruel and heartless! OK, to answer my earlier question. This was its only appearance in our charts so it wasn’t a hit in subsequent years via a rerelease or something so that was just my memory playing tricks on me. In my defence though, the song has a life well beyond it chart stats having been used multiple times in TV adverts and on film soundtracks – it was actually remade as “Addams Family (Whoomp!)” for Addams Family Values.

Let’s begin at the beginning though. It started out as a very raunchy rap by an act called 95 South and was entitled “Whoot! There It Is” which led to accusations that they were subsequently ripped off by Tag Team. The latter’s story via DC The Brain Supreme (real name Cecil Glenn! No – really) is that he came up with it while DJing in a strip club in Atlanta with the phrase “Whoomp! There it is” referring to a stripper’s…ahem…derrière. The reaction to the track in the club was off the scale and so DC and his partner Steve Rolln set about getting themselves a record deal. Having signed up to the Bellmark label, a sanitised version which played down the sexual references was released and, appealing to a more mainstream audience than a strip club’s clientele, it went nuclear rising to No 2 in the US Billboard Hot 100. Tag Team were an overnight sensation but they hadn’t cleared the sampled they used in the track by Italian electro/disco group Kano who sued the label’s asses causing them to go bankrupt. The track lived on though being used at baseball games to soundtrack a home run leading to the duo doing half time shows (in my naivety, I originally thought the song was something to do with WWF Wrestling rather than strip clubs – maybe I was just ahead of my time). However, they couldn’t replicate the success of “Whoomp! (There It Is)” and they fell on hard times. DC went back to DJing in clubs whilst Rolln did time for drug offences.

And still their track refused to die and resurfaced in the 2003 film Elf and 2004’s Shark Tale. Sadly for Tag Team, they’d signed their publishing rights away with the Bellmark deal and so only got a writer’s credit. And yet still the song wouldn’t go away. It was used in an AT&T / iPhone advert, an ice cream campaign (“Scoop! There It is”) and a nappy commercial (“Poop! There It Is”). It was even parodied by Beavis and Butt-head (“Whoomp! There’s My Butt”). So, quite the story. You wanted it, whoomp….there it is!

From a song with, as Limahl once sang, a never ending story to one which hardly got past page one. “Time Of Our Lives” by Alison Limerick anyone? I have to admit to only being able to name one of Alison’s songs and it isn’t this one. Surely most people’s go to Limerick tune is “Where Love Lives”? I mean, it was released four times in total being a hit twice (No 27 in 1991 and No 9 in 1996). This one though was taken from her second album “With A Twist” and could only make No 36. Possibly because the record label we’re after a bigger hit than that, Alison followed it up with a cover of “Love Come Down” by Evelyn ‘Champagne’ King. That also peaked at No 36. Oh.

There was a young singer called Limerick

Who tried many times to have a hit

Sadly for her, there’s only one that was heard

It was the four times released “Where Love Lives”

The first hit now for a band who were embarking on a run of twelve consecutive Top 40 hits throughout the course of the decade. Despite spending the whole of the 90s working in record shops, I had no idea they had that many. I’m talking about West Yorkshire rockers Terrorvision who I never quite got to grips with but had a few decent tunes and deserve a better legacy than just that “Tequila” song.

“My House” was actually a rerelease of the second single to be taken from their debut album “Formaldehyde” and the scheduling of it was curious. Why? Well, it was reissued just a few weeks before the lead single from their second album came out. Surely their record company would have wanted to clear the calendar for new material or did they think the band needed a bona fide chart hit behind them before releasing anything else? Either way, it seemed to work. The rerelease of “My House” made No 29 and second album “How To Make Friends And Influence People” was a Top 20 hit (by contrast, “Formaldehyde” had only just scratched the Top 75). That album would generate five Top 40 singles whose chart position’s demonstrated the consistency of the band’s material and their growing fanbase. Check these figures out:

21 – 25 – 25 – 24 – 22

This solid foundation paved the way for ever bigger singles including a No 10 (“Bad Actress”) and a No 5 (“Perseverance”) before the ultimate high of a No 2 with “Tequila”. In my book, this added them to the list of artists who’s biggest hit is far from their best (see also The Boo Radleys, The Stranglers, Suzanne Vega and fellow West Yorkshire rockers Embrace). Lead singer Tony Wright became a bit of a celebrity durging the band’s heyday appearing several times on Never Mind The Buzzcocks and even guest presenting an episode of TOTP.

WHO?! DJ Duke?! Never heard of him! Apparently this guy’s real name is Ken Duke and he had DJ’d in some of the world’s biggest clubs before releasing his own music. His biggest crossover hit was this one “Blow Your Whistle” which seems essentially to be a house beat, a vocal sample saying ‘Blow your whistle’ and indeed some whistles being blown. Apparently Duke went on to work with such names as Junior Vasquez and Felix Da Housecat whilst also going by a slew of other monikers himself such as Roxy Breaks and Underground Attorney. Talking of names, I had art teacher by the name of Kenny Dukes and I would rather be back in his art class aged 11 than have to listen to “Blow Your Whistle” again which somehow made No 15 in the charts.

Next up are Wet Wet Wet but don’t panic as it’s not that single that they released in 1994. “Cold, Cold Heart” (not a cover of Midge Ure’s 1991 hit) was the second new track recorded for their first ever Best Of album “End Of Part One: Their Greatest Hits” which had been a big seller over Christmas. The song features on an uncredited French speaking female as demonstrated visually by the inclusion of a scantily clad woman from the promo video at the start of this performance. Her spoken word intro puts me in mind of “Je T’Aime Moi Non Plus” – Wet Wet Wet do Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg the latter of whom was responsible for one of the most excruciating moments in the history of TV…

Ahem. Anyway, back to Wet Wet Wet and their song which is the wrong side of tedious for me. It never gets goings and even if it did, it wouldn’t know where it wanted to go. No wonder the TOTP producers tried to liven it up with the inclusion of the French lady. Her appearance certainly prompted some reaction on Twitter leading to a rather unfortunate mishearing of one of the song’s lyrics by a user by the name of J.A.Y…

More to the point, why is Marti Pellow singing about "the rectum torn apart"? pic.twitter.com/cSCGciorf0
— J.A.Y. (@DronedLove) January 13, 2023

“Cold, Cold Heart” peaked at No 20 but their next hit was just a tad more successful…

Well this is weird! As part of the celebrations that were taking place in this year to commemorate TOTP’s 30th anniversary, the producers were raiding the archive for some classic clips. So what have they chosen for this first show of the year? Bowie with his arm around Mick Ronson’s shoulder for “Starman”? Mud and that “Tiger Feet” dance? Boy George’s’ gender bending first TOTP appearance? No, they’ve gone for Pan’s People dancing to “Mama’s Pearl” by Jackson 5, a No 25 hit from 1971! Never mind one for the Dads, it must have been one for the Grandads by 1994!

Now, those of us of a certain age will remember Pan’s People, the all female dance troupe that performed routines to hits of the day from 1968 to 1976. Watching them back today, their choreography seems not exactly innocent but…loose? Loose as in not tight and not anything to do with sexual innuendo. Basically, not highly synchronised like we would see today with every individual’s move in precise time with everybody else’s. The classic Pan’s People line up would become celebrities in their own right with the likes of Babs, Cherry, Dee Dee etc becoming household names. I’m sure there’s a scene in an episode of Porridge where Fletch name checks Babs. Eventually the troupe would splinter and be replaced by Ruby Slipper, then Legs and Co and finally Zoo before the whole concept of a specific slot for dancers was ditched in 1983.

We have a new No 1 for the start of a new year and it’s knocked Mr. Blobby off the top spot for which it deserves our thanks. It also holds the distinction of being the 700th No 1 record since the charts started being compiled. For context, the 600th came in 1987 and was “China In Your Hand” by T’Pau. On a personal level though, I didn’t like the Chaka Demus And Pliers version of “Twist And Shout” at all and it seemed to me that it was only at No 1 as it took advantage of the traditional post Christmas sales slump to jump to the top of the charts. That said, it did manage to cling on to its crown the following week before succumbing to D:Ream. It was all down hill commercially for Chaka Demus And Pliers after this. They did manage three more UK Top 40 hits though none got any higher than No 19. Their final two single releases were also cover versions – Robert Palmer’s “Every Kinda People” and “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” by The Police. Good grief!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	D:Ream	Things Can Only Get Better	I did not
2	Dina Carroll	The Perfect Year	Nope
3	East 17	It’s Alright	I did! I did!
4	The Mission	Tower Of Strength	No but my friend Robin bought their Best Of
5	Tag Team	Whoomp! (There It Is)	Nah
6	Alison Limerick	Time Of Our Lives	No
7	Terrorvision	My House	It’s a no
8	DJ Duke	Blow Your Whistle	You can stick your whistle up your arse mate!
9	Wet Wet Wet	Cold, Cold Heart	Negative
10	Jackson 5 / Pan’s People	Mama’s Pearl	N/A
11	Chaka Demus And Pliers	Twist & Shout	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/m001h025/top-of-the-pops-06011994

TOTP 04 NOV 1993

Posted on November 13, 2022 by 80stastic

Finally it’s that time of the year. No, not bonfire night that was upon us in 1993 but that cherished but fleeting period that us synchronists look forward to – when the BBC4 TOTP repeats and the present day month match. November 1993 meet November 2022. We can watch these old shows safe in the knowledge that the tunes featured were from almost exactly 29 years ago. Indeed, when the second TOTP was aired on the Friday just gone they synchronised to the very day – 11th November. Perfect! I’m getting ahead of myself though. Let’s trawl through the 4th November show to see what fireworks and bangers await…

We start with the first of two Scottish electronic dance bands featured tonight (what were the chances eh?). I speculated in a previous post about why The Time Frequency felt the need to include the definite article in their name. Reading up on them some more, it seems founding band member Jon Campbell was in an 70s synth band called Thru The Fire and when they broke up, he kept the initials of the name as a template for his next project. Well, that’s what Wikipedia tells me but it seems a bit of a lame reason to me. Anyway, after scoring a Top 20 hit earlier in the year with “The Power Zone EP”, the decision was taken to rerelease their debut single “Real Love” which had missed the charts the previous year. A remix was made of it and it was shoved back out into the market under the title of “Real Love ‘93” – there was very little imagination around in record label offices when it came to naming rereleases it seems. Lacking in imagination they may have been but their business case was sound and the rerelease became the band’s biggest ever hit when it peaked at No 8. To me though, it sounded like the poor relation to “Insanity” by Oceanic.

https://youtu.be/2LFM8cZWvCQ

The performance here with the two dancers dressed in full metal robot outfits brought back memories of a rather cheesy but somehow endearing chart hit from 1985…

https://youtu.be/Xfoxz6aBNsI

Next a song that I would have thought was a much bigger hit than it was. However, its chart peak of No 7 doesn’t tell the whole story. I’m talking about “Hero” by Mariah Carey which was the second single taken from her “Music Box” album. We sold loads of this over Christmas ‘93 when I was working in the Our Price in Altrincham, Cheshire and if you check out the single’s chart run, it backs up my claim. It just wouldn’t go away. Yes, it only had three weeks inside the Top 10 but it had another seven where it ricocheted around the Top 20 between positions 18 and 11. It actually stood solid for three consecutive weeks at No 18 before going back up the charts. It reversed its decline in sales another time during its chart life to move back into the Top 10 having fallen out of it the previous week. These were not normal chart manoeuvres. It eventually fell out of the Top 40 around mid January ‘94. Why was it so durable? It could be that ballad at Christmas time always being a winner theory in action again. Maybe it was to do with the lyrics about self-belief, inner courage and finding the hero within oneself that struck a chord with record buyers.

Its durability would lead to longevity. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks of 2001, Mariah re-recorded the track as a medley with a song from her “Glitter” album called “Never Too Far” and released it as a charity single. In 2008, the X Factor finalists covered the song to raise funds for the Help For Heroes and Royal British Legion charities. It would become a sales phenomenon selling 100,000 copies in its first day of release and becoming the best selling single of that year. They performed the track with Mariah in one of the live shows.

Proper rock legends next though their list of UK chart hit singles up to this point belied that status. Not counting their collaboration with Run-D.M.C. on 1986’s “Walk This Way”, “Cryin’” was only the fifth ever Top 40 hit for Aerosmith up to that point in time. It was, however, their third hit on the bounce (all from the “Get A Grip”) album). “Livin’ On The Edge” (like ex-Home Secretary Priti Patel, the band had a habit of dropping their ‘g’s at the end of words) had made No 19 and “Eat The Rich” No 34 earlier in the year. “Cryin’” would be the biggest of all three when it peaked at No 17 over here though it was more successful in the rest of Europe going Top 10 just about everywhere and even topping the charts in Norway.

This was the band in proper power ballad mode but with that bit of Aerosmith cheek thrown in for good measure. Or as Steven Tyler described it:

“It was country – we just Aerosmith’d it.”
“The 20 Songs That Can Represent The Career Of Aerosmith”. Society of Rock. Retrieved May 23, 2022.

I have a distinct memory of a young Zoë Ball, early in her TV career, interviewing Tyler on some music programme about how to be a rock music fan (or something) and her finishing the piece by wandering off camera singing “Cryin’” whilst performing the Chuck Berry duck walk though her version of it made her just look like she was constipated.

Though the TOTP producers have pulled off a coup here by having the band in the studio, it means we don’t get to see the award winning video that promoted the single. Featuring a sixteen years old Alicia Silverstone plus pre fame Stephen Dorff (Backbeat) and Josh Holloway (Sawyer from Lost), it won three MTV video awards in 1994.

As host Tony Dortie says, 1993 saw loads of solo female artists break through with the likes of Dina Carroll, Gabrielle and Michelle Gayle all having big chart hits. Add to that list Pauline Henry. Late of The Chimes parish but now striking out on her own, her cover of Bad Company’s “Feel Like Making Love” (note the ‘g’ in making Aerosmith and Priti Patel!) was her second and biggest hit when it peaked at No 12. Just about as far removed from The Chimes’ soulful take on U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” as it could be, Pauline really belted out this raucous rock standard. Fair play to her by the way for daring to take on the mighty vocals of Paul Rodgers – if it was a football match, it would certainly go to extra time.

Sadly for Pauline, her single success didn’t translate into album sales and her debut LP staggered to a high of No 45. A second album of more cover versions resulted in two minor hit singles before Pauline decided on a change of career and studied for a Bachelor of Law degree and a masters in Intellectual Law Property.

After dicking about with the Breakers feature for a couple of weeks, the section is now firmly re-established by the TOTP producers with five acts in it this week. We start with a collaboration between Faith No More and Boo–Yaa T.R.I.B.E. (that’s the second time I’ve had to type a rap act’s name in that format this post!). “Another Body Murdered” was a track from the soundtrack to the film Judgement Night, a crime thriller starring Emilio Estevez, Cuba Gooding Jnr and (joy oh joy for us synchronists again!) Stephen Dorff. The soundtrack followed an idea by Cypress Hill manager Happy Walters that each track should pair a rock artist with a rap act. Alongside the Faith No More Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E. (third time!) meet up, there was Teenage Fan Club and De La Soul and Living Color and Run-D.M.C. (fourth time!!) to name but two. Critical reaction to the premise has been mixed. Some saw it as laying the groundwork for bands such as Korn and Limp Bizkit to thrive (was that a good thing?) whilst others saw it as jumping on the Anthrax/Public Enemy collaboration “Bring The Noise” bandwagon. I have to say judging by the twenty-five seconds of “Another Body Murdered” we get here, I’m unlikely to search out the soundtrack album though that meeting of Teenage Fan Club / De La Soul does sound interesting.

Just to prove Tony Dortie’s point about UK female solo artists in 1993, here’s another one and like Pauline Henry before her, she had a solid CV behind her already. Juliet Roberts first came to chart prominence ten years prior with Funk Masters’ Top 10 hit “Its Over” before she became the vocalist for Smooth jazzers Working Week. Critical acclaim but little commercial success led her to move on finding work as a session singer for the likes of Cathy Dennis and rather improbably Breathe before taking the plunge on her own. Having breached the Top 30 with her hit “Caught In The Middle” earlier in the year, she was back with another tilt at it with “Free Love”. It would attain a similar chart peak of No 25.

Sadly for Juliet, also like Pauline Henry, a collection of middling hit singles didn’t convert into a hit album and her debut effort “Natural Thing” could only manage a high of No 65. Her last chart entry came as vocalist on David Morales’s “Needin U II” in 2001, a title that makes Aerosmith and Priti Patel look like linguistic experts.

By late 1993, Soul II Soul had reached the point in their career where diminishing returns were starting to set in. “Club Classics Vol. One” and the track “Back To Life” especially had made the band global superstars but four and a half years on their commercial fortunes, though by no means flatlining, were not what they were as the 80s ended and the 90s began. The remedy? A Best Of album of course and so it was that “Volume IV The Classic Singles 88-93” was put together and released for the Christmas market. I actually liked the fact that they continued with the ‘Volume’ theme even though this wasn’t a studio album and included tracks that had already been part of the previous volumes. Except this one. “Wish” was a brand new track recorded to promote the collection as was the established trend (see also contemporary chart peer “Please Forgive Me” by Bryan Adams). The album sold well enough going to No 10 in the charts but subsequent releases failed to reverse the sales drift.

As for “Wish” itself, I’m no Soul II Soul expert but it seemed to me to promise a lot but deliver little or as a rather posh sounding woman I heard on Radio 4 recently delightfully put it whilst describing Liz Truss, it was ‘all fart and no shit’.

Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston on the same show?! One year on from the sales phenomenon that was her cover of “I Will Always Love You” comes the final single released by her from The Bodyguard soundtrack. “Queen Of The Night” was the fifth track taken from it recorded by Whitney (though seventh including other artists) and it stood alone from the other four in its sound. With three of those four being big ballads and the other a cover of Chaka Khan’s “I’m Every Woman”, there was space for something different and “Queen Of The Night” was. Or was it? A few critics at the time cited its similarities to En Vogue’s “Free Your Mind” and Janet Jackson’s “Black Cat” with its hard rock guitars and Whitney’s growly vocals though personally I think it just about stands up on its own legs.

The video is pretty much the performance of the song in the actual film – the scene where Whitney’s character has to be rescued by Kevin Costner when the security arrangements at her gig are shown to be lacking and a riot breaks out. The Bodyguard film generally gets slated as being substandard with Costner especially being highlighted for a wooden performance but I always quite liked it and thought Whitney gives a decent and convincing turn but then if she couldn’t play a pop star diva then what character could she play?

“Queen Of The Night” peaked at No 14. We wouldn’t see Whitney in the charts again for two years when she would return with songs from another soundtrack for a film in which she starred, Waiting To Exhale.

The final Breaker comes from Culture Beat who are straight into the Top 10 with “Got To Get It”. I’ve shared this anecdote before but I’m going to use it again – well, if Culture Beat can recycle their No 1 single “Mr Vain” and just blatantly release it as the official follow up as if it’s a brand new song then I’m certainly allowed to use a story twice! I was in the last days of working at the Our Price in Stockport when this single came out. On the day of release, a young girl came up to the counter and asked for the single by Culture Beat. As “Mr Vain” had still been selling and had only just dropped out of the Top 40 the other week, I thought I’d better check which one she meant and so asked her “Got To Get It?”. Her reply? “I just really like it”. Lovely stuff.

It’s time for the second of those two Scottish electronic bands now as The Shamen are in the studio with “The SOS EP (Comin’ On)”. This was the sixth single released from their “Boss Drum” album that had been out for nearly fourteen months by this point. Those singles attained the following chart peaks:

6 – 1 – 4 – 5 – 18 – 14

Not too shabby you’d have to say. This was peak era Shamen. They were never as big again with only four more Top 40 hits throughout the entire decade none of which got higher than No 15. I have to say I don’t remember “Comin’ On” (they must have attended that Aerosmith songwriting class) but it sounds better than I was expecting. Sort of starts out a bit like The Prodigy and then spins into an infectious dance anthem but with a pop song structure. By the way, what had happened to Colin Angus’s hair. Were those long tresses real or extensions?

A conversation between Soul II Soul’s Jazzie B and Wet Wet Wet’s Marti Pellow* sometime in early Autumn 1993:

*with massive apologies to anyone reading this who is Scottish

JB: Marty my man! How’s it hanging?

MP: Jazzie! Och, aye, no bad ye ken. How urr ye?

JB: You know me man. A happy face, a thumpin’ bass, for a lovin’ race!

MP: Aye.

JB: Marti man. You look down. What gives fella?

MP: We hae nae got a record oot for Yule. Oor label ur nipping us tae sort it oot.

JB: No worries man. Put a Best Of album out.

MP: Crakin’ yin! Och hing oan, whit aboot a single tae promote it?

JB: Just knock a new track out one afternoon. That’s what we did. Any old shite will do.

MP: Aye Jimmy!

It could have happened like that! Anyway, the Wets Best Of was called “End Of Part One: Their Greatest Hits” and was a big seller over Christmas ‘93 originally peaking at No 4. The following year, the band did a Bryan Adams and were at No 1 for fifteen weeks with “Love Is All Around”. To cash in, their label Mercury added it to the album and rereleased it at which point it returned to the charts straight to No 1. As for that new track, “Shed A Tear” was duly shoved out to promote it. I have zero recall of it but it sounds like it possibly was recorded in an afternoon with band’s collective thumbs up their bums and minds in neutral. It peaked at No 22.

Watching the performance here, the front three Wets (including Marti) all have ponytails whilst the keyboard player looks like he’s trying to grow his hair to catch up but his naturally curly locks are hampering his endeavour. Drummer Tommy Cunningham looked the same as he ever did and continues to do so to this day. Maybe it’s a drummer thing – Blur’s Dave Rowntree has similarly always maintained the same look.

Meatloaf still bestrides the charts like a colossus with the epic rock ballad “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)”. As with my Culture Beat anecdote, I’ve told this story before but the big guy’s at No 1 for weeks yet so I’m having to resort to recycling. My mate Robin has a friend who is a musician who has toured with the likes of Westlife. His own band was booked to play at the wedding of one John Hartson, the ex-professional footballer and now pundit. His best man was one of my footballing heroes, ex-Chelsea striker Kerry Dixon. Apparently the drinks flowed and everybody over indulged…including the groom. So pissed was Hartson that when Robin’s friend’s band finished their set, Hartson asked them to play one more song, especially for his new wife. The song Hartson chose to dedicate to her was Meatloaf’s “Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad” the lyrics of which include:

I want you, I need you, there ain’t no way I’m ever gonna love you

Now don’t be sad, ‘cause two out of three ain’t bad
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Jim Steinman
Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad lyrics © Carlin America Inc, Warner Chappell Music, Inc

Oh…my…God.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	The Time Frequency	Real Love ’93	Never happening
2	Mariah Carey	Hero	Nah
3	Aerosmith	Cryin’	Nope
4	Pauline Henry	Feel Like Making Love	I did not
5	Faith No More / Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E.	Another Body Murdered	No
6	Juliet Roberts	Free Love	Negative
7	Soul II Soul	Wish	Definitely not
8	Whitney Houston	Queen Of The Night	It’s a no
9	Culture Beat	Got To Get It	I didn’t unlike that young girl I served
10	The Shamen	The SOS EP (Comin’ On)	Like it, didn’t buy it
11	Wert Wet Wet	Shed A Tear	No. not a patch on their earlier work
12	Meatloaf	I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)	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/m001dzyf/top-of-the-pops-04111993

TOTP 16 JUL 1992

Posted on March 11, 2022 by 80stastic

Right – before I get into this can I just say that the BBC4 schedule for these TOTP repeats has been relentless of late. It’s been two shows every Friday for weeks now meaning lots of content needing to be created by this blogger. Can’t the BBC slip in an impromptu Proms or something to give me a blow?! Having checked the forthcoming schedule I can see there is no abatement pending at least until the end of the month. Thanks very much BBC4.

In keeping with last week, there is only one presenter again this week; the fresh faced Mark Franklin. Unlike last week there’s been a tweak to the format which sees Franklin appear on our screens straight away rather than being a disembodied voice announcing the first act and he then proceeds to go straight into a rundown of the Top 10! It seems to be a nod back to how the show used to begin in the 70s and early 80s with a chart countdown soundtracked by “Whole Lotta Love” before we saw any of the acts.

After that we’re into the music and we start with Wet Wet Wet who, like many an artist this year, seem to be having an unexpected revival of fortunes. “Lip Service” is their third Top 40 hit in succession after chart topper “Goodnight Girl” and follow up “More Than Love”. It’s also the fifth and final track to be released as a single from their “High On The Happy Side” album. I always quite liked this – it sort of frothed and bubbled away until the hook of the chorus brought it to the boil. Marti Pellow has turned up for this performance dressed as a poker playing gunfighter from the Wild West (minus a ten gallon hat) or is it as a member of Showaddywaddy?

The band would not release another studio album for three years so they filled the gap with their first Best Of compilation (“End Of Part One: Their Greatest Hits”) and a live set (“Live At The Royal Albert Hall”). Then came that single in the Summer of ‘94 but that’s a while off yet.

“Lip Service” peaked at No 15.

Our first glimpse of Madonna in 1992 came via her single “This Used To Be My Playground” which was from the film she was currently starring in A League Of Their Own. I say ‘starring’ in but hers was actually quite a secondary role in this account of the US women’s baseball league that was founded in 1943 to keep the sport in the public eye during WWII. I really am rather fond of this film with some great performances from Tom Hanks, Geena Davis and Lori Petty as the three major protagonists. One of those guilty pleasure films that I’ll watch if I stumble across while channel flipping. Madonna’s name was all over the promotion campaign for the film but as I say, her character isn’t one of the principal leads.

As for the song itself, it’s a bit of an outlier coming as it did in between* the provocative “Justify My Love” and the outright society baiting “Erotica” project. Very much a stand-alone single – contractual issues meant it couldn’t even be included on the film’s soundtrack – it’s an accomplished ballad but one which I have to admit I always found to be quite dull.

*I’m not counting the “Immaculate Collection” inspired re-releases of “Holiday” and “Crazy For You” in ‘91.

The video concept of a man flicking through a photo album, the pages of which have Madonna singing in various different settings, was not as original as it was made out to be. Boy George’s video for his “To Be Reborn” single of five years earlier had a very similar look. Indeed, in his autobiography George said he was furious when he first saw Madonna’s promo and renamed it “This Used To Be My Video”. He had a point – Madonna’s video is a direct rip off…

‘Furious’ may not have been the exact word George used to express his anger at the steal. Here’s TOTP presenter Tony Dortie:

#totp Bumped into Boy George not long after that Playground @Madonna song came out he had some very choice words about it consisting (insert multiple 4 letter words of your own choice)
— Tony Dortie (@TonyDortie) March 4, 2022

“This Used To Be My Playground” peaked at No 3.

Next up are The Wedding Present though you’d be forgiven for thinking it was Altern-8 given the hazmat suits and masks that the band are wearing. What was all that about? Well, apparently the outfits were from the promo video for the single “Flying Saucer” but while watching it back, I discovered something else that interested me far more. There’s a bit where there a close up of David Gedge that just shows his eyes and nose and I swear that could be me back then. Hell, it could be me now! Well, maybe.

Anyway, this was the latest in their year long odyssey to release a new single every month in ‘92. “Flying Saucer” was the seventh of such singles and would peak at No 22, the fourth lowest performing of the twelve released. I quite liked this one. Some crunchy indie guitar licks and Gedge’s usual idiosyncratic vocals made for a winning combination. I’m not sure that the band achieved whatever it was they were trying to with this performance though unless it was actually meant to be a send up of Altern-8.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNrzXyVl8DA

Fresh from his appearance on the last ever Wogan the other week, Jason Donovan was back in the Top 40 however implausible that may have seemed in the middle of 1992. A few things had changed since his last hit though. Firstly, he had successfully sued The Face magazine for libel after he argued that the publication had implied he was a hypocrite for lying about his sexuality after suggesting he may be gay. Secondly, he had left the Stock, Aitken and Waterman family and switched labels from PWL to Polydor.

His first album for his new masters was “All Around The World” (incidentally it shared its name with a single by one of Polydor’s most famous acts The Jam) with its lead single being “Mission Of Love”. This is a truly dreadful song. It would struggle not to come last at The Eurovision Song Contest. Actually, it would struggle not to come last in A Song For Europe. I’m amazed it got to even No 26 in our charts. Polydor we’re clearly not impressed and getting cold feet about the album. In an amazing lack of faith in their charge, they licensed some of his previous hits and shoved them on the album to beef up its sales potential. In total they added six old tracks, four from his previous albums and two from the Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat cast recording. Donovan was less than impressed and when the album stiffed, he and Polydor inevitably parted ways. The era of Jason Donovan the pop star was just about over.

Ah shit! It’s time for another wretched track. Why is it that the offensiveness of a song seems to work in direct correlation to how popular it is? “Achy Breaky Heart” by Billy Ray Cyrus became the first ever single to achieve triple platinum sales in Australia and spent five weeks at the top of the US Country charts before crossing over into the mainstream and peaking at No 4 in the Billboard Hot 100. It was a hit all across the world and yet was also voted No 2 in a VH1 poll of the 50 Most Awesomely Bad Songs. The same TV network voted it in at No 87 in their 100 Greatest Songs of the 90s poll. Has there ever been a more schizophrenic hit? There are people who despise it for popularising line dancing whilst there is also a faction who credit it with breathing life into a genre of music that was dying on its arse amongst younger audiences. It’s a basket case of song. Whatever you make of it though (and it’s almost a novelty song for me), it certainly made an impression on 1992.

Cyrus is of course the father of Miley Cyrus who rose to fame as Disney character Hannah Montana and then as a pop star under her own name. Her bio on Wikipedia is absolutely massive. I was literally scrolling for about thirty seconds just to get to the bottom and I didn’t read a word of it.

“Achy Breaky Heart” was a No 3 hit in the UK which probably means we haven’t seen the last of it yet.

If Jason Donovan’s time as a pop star was coming to an end then the next act were just getting into gear as a mainstream chart stars. The Shamen had turned tragedy into triumph when they managed to carry on despite the death of band member Will Sinnott and rack up a huge hit with a Beatmasters remix of “Pro>gen” as “Move Any Mountain” in the Summer of ‘91. Fast forward a year and they were ready to take it to the next level with an album full of hit singles. That album was “Boss Drum” and the first hit from it was “LSI Love Sex Intelligence”.

With rapper Mr. C now a full time member and the face of the band, an all out charge at the charts was ready to go. All they had to do now was get their tunes out there and they began with this No 6 hit. Another crucial addition was vocalist Jhelisa Anderson who’s contribution helped make the new sound of The Shamen.

The performance here is interesting in that that the staging of it is surely what The Wedding Present should have done instead of those hazmat suits. It’s got a goddam flying saucer prop! WTF? Did Gedge and co not see this in rehearsal and think ‘oh yeah, that’s what we should have done’. It’s sort of like the Madonna/Boy George thing but in reverse. Oh I give up trying to make sense of it all!

Just two Breakers again this week starting with that old rascal Morrissey. Surely one of his more memorable song titles, “You’re The One For Me, Fatty” was the second single from his “Your Arsenal” album although it hadn’t actually been released at this point. When it did arrive at the end of July, I was still working at the Our Price store in Market Street, Manchester and I asked our Assistant Manager Pete if he’d heard “Your Arsenal” yet to which he replied that he had no interest in listening to Morrissey’s arse! To be fair to Pete, Mozza was not his cup of tea at all. As for me, I quite liked it with its robust, glam inspired guitar (well it was produced by David Bowie’s mate Mick Ronson). “You’re The One For Me, Fatty” peaked at No 19.

The second Breaker hadn’t had a UK Top 40 hit for a couple of years and indeed only had four all told. Was (Not Was) really should have had more. If Jason Donovan could have sixteen chart hits than surely to goodness these Detroit musical boundary pushers deserved a bigger haul.

I’d first come across Was (Not Was) in 1983 when “Out Come The Freaks” narrowly missed the UK Top 40 but nearly 10 years later, despite some excellent tunes, they were still mostly known for 1987 hit “Walk The Dinosaur”. They were still deemed worthy of a Best Of chart compilation by record company Polygram and “Hello Dad…I’m In Jail” was released this year. To promote it, two tracks were released as singles. A cover of INXS’s “Listen Like Thieves” seemed like an overtly commercial decision not in keeping with the band’s previous back catalogue and it was ultimately proven to be misjudged as the single stalled at No 58.

The second single released to promote the album was a different case altogether. Now I never knew this until now but “Shake Your Head” was actually an early Was (Not Was) song from 1982 that had quite an interesting back story. It always featured the vocals of Ozzy Osbourne (who re-recorded them for the ‘92 remix by Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley) but a pre-fame Madonna had also laid down some vocals for the track that were ultimately not used by the band. As possibly the most famous woman on the planet ten years on, the band approached Madonna for permission to use her original contribution but she refused (surely she didn’t hold a grudge, not Madge) so they asked actress Kim Basinger to sing on it instead. They didn’t miss Madonna at all as “Shake Your Head” provided the band with the biggest UK hit of their career when it peaked at No 4.

Meanwhile back in the studio we find Sophie B. Hawkins though you wouldn’t know it as there is no introduction for her at all. We go straight from the end of the Breakers to a camera shot of her and her rather large backing band on stage. Not even a voiceover segue from Mark Franklin. Bit odd. “Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover” is up to No 16 by this point and Sophie gives a pretty good performance of it here. If she watched it back afterwards though, she may have been alarmed at her achingly stylish ripped jeans. As well as the tears around the knee area, she also seemed to have a big, gaping crotch hole which the TOTP cameraman managed to find in a rather salacious camera angle late on. I hope Bob Geldof wasn’t in the studio that night after his ‘I’m just going to look at you’ comment the other week!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5vlNjvfBds

Jimmy Nail has hit the proverbial on the head and is at No 1 within 2 weeks of “Ain’t No Doubt” being released. How did this happen? Since his days in Auf Wiedersehen Pet, Jimmy’s lost a lot of weight and grown his hair longer but he still isn’t what you would describe as your standard looking pop star.

Nail has crafted a career out of being a professional Geordie to the point where he was used as a tool in Anglo American relations. What am I talking about? Well, my friend Robin (the one who hates every Elton John song ever) is partial to golfing holidays in America. He usually goes with some mates who are proud Geordies and keen to promote the cultural significance of The Toon. When in a bar one holiday, the woman serving them was struggling with their accents and was curious as to where they were from in the UK. When their answer of Newcastle brought a shrug of non recognition, Robin’s mates tried to explain their home by mentioning famous people associated with the city. I think the list went like this:

Ant & Dec
Spender
Alan Shearer

When the Premier League’s all time top goal scorer failed to make her understand, it prompted howls of disbelief:

“Yer dinna nar Sheara? Clive man! She dinna nar Sheara!”

“DINNA NAR SHEARA?!” etc etc…

In the end it was Cheryl Cole who was the celebrity that the woman behind the bar knew, presumably from her stint on the US version of The X Factor. Quite why they thought throwing the name of Jimmy Nail’s TV series Spender in the mix would do the trick I do not know.

In another tweak to the show’s format, the closing song video has been reintroduced. Up until this point, the ‘year zero’ revamp shows had finished on the No 1 single. They’ve gone for a big name to relaunch this in Prince (and the New Power Generation) who are back with new single “Sexy MF”. I say back but a Prince was so prolific it seemed like he’d never been away as he always had new material out. “Sexy MF” was the first single from the album “Love Symbol” or to give it its true title ‘unpronounceable symbol’ as depicted on the cover art of the album.

Now we all know what the ‘MF’ in the title referred to (no Mark Franklin not your name) so the single had to be heavily edited to allow radio airplay. So concerned were record company Warners that they released it in the UK as a double A-side with the more palatable track “Strollin’” but nobody played that. Interestingly, though a big No 4 hit over here, it only made No 66 in the US. Maybe it was that airplay issue.

Of course, any mention of “Sexy MF” has to prompt another viewing of this:

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Wet Wet Wet	Lip Service	No but my wife had the album
2	Madonna	This Used To Be My Playground	Nah
3	The Wedding Present	Flying Saucer	No
4	Jason Donovan	Mission Of Love	Hell no!
5	Billy Ray Cyrus	Achy Breaky Heart	Double Hell no!
6	The Shamen	LSI Love Sex Intelligence	Nope
7	Morrissey	You’re The One For Me Fatty	Negative
8	Was (Not Was)	Shake Your Head	Not the single but I bought that Best Of album it wads promoting
9	Sophie B. Hawkins	Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover	It’s a no
10	Jimmy Nail	Ain’t No Doubt	That’s another no
11	Prince and the New Power Generation	Sexy MF	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/m0014zvq/top-of-the-pops-16071992

TOTP 26 MAR 1992

Posted on February 6, 2022 by 80stastic

We’ve missed another TOTP repeat broadcast due to the Adrian Rose issue and so find ourselves at the fag end of March 1992. So who is this guy enraging the community of TOTP repeat completists and why won’t he let the shows he presented in be re-shown? I have touched on this subject before when it first became apparent it was an issue at the end of the 1991 programmes. This is the seventh of fifteen that we will miss because of it so a recap feels in order.

It seems Adrian Rose now goes by the name of Adrian Woolfe and is the founder and co-CEO of Studio 1, an international production, distribution and licensing company. His bio on their website shows that he was part of the creative team at Celador that developed Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and was responsible for implementing a brand and marketing roll out strategy for it and managed the show’s intellectual property rights into 107 countries. All this wanky business jargon are the words in his bio not mine by the way! OK, so he’s now a big shot in the entertainment business. Still doesn’t explain his reluctance to have his TOTP past repeated. Apparently ‘he has his reasons’ which is the only rather cryptic explanation emanating from his camp. Whatever they are, it all happened 30 years ago and he’s clearly made a success of his post show career so what’s up with this? Of course, it is Adrian’s prerogative and his ‘crime’ of upsetting some music nostalgia enthusiasts is hardly one to trouble the Met (mind you nothing seems to be worthy of the Met’s due diligence these days) but still. It all seems rather unnecessary.

OK. Enough of Mr Rose/ Woolfe. Onto the shows we do have access to and we start this one with TOTP stalwarts Erasure who are now into their seventh year of appearances on the show. “Breath Of Life” was the fourth and final single from their “Chorus” album and I have to say it’s not the single that immediately comes to my mind when I think of Erasure in 1992. No, that honour would go to their “Abba-esque” EP that would provide them with their first and so far only UK No 1 single. Still, “Breath Of Life” was a bona fide Top 10 hit peaking at No 8 so maybe it doesn’t deserve to be so overlooked. Having said all that, it’s not one of their stronger efforts for me. It seems to have pinched the title of that Squeeze single “Take Me I’m Yours” for its chorus and has a keyboard riff that sounds like it could have been from an early Depeche Mode single; not surprising I guess given Vince Clarke’s musical origins.

As for the performance, usually Erasure seemed to put a lot of thought into the staging of their TOTP appearances but here they seem to just have a mock up of the surface of the moon behind them and some backing singers in very glittery dresses. Also, what was the deal with Vince’s massive synth?! It looks like Cape Canaveral back there.

After their mention in my last post surrounding the hirsute Fred being in the audience of a play I saw whilst visiting my mate Robin in London, Right Said Fred are on the show in performance mode. Not in the studio though as we get the “great” (as presenter Claudia Simon describes it) video for latest single “Deeply Dippy”. The release of this track saw the band at the peak of their popularity when it went to No 1 in the UK.

I have to admit that the first time that I heard this, I found it vastly underwhelming though it’s actually infinitely better than “I’m Too Sexy” which is ultimately a novelty song. Some perspective is needed here obviously. This is Right Said Fred we’re talking about but “Deeply Dippy” does sound quite accomplished in comparison. It actually builds nicely to an uplifting (fair)brass section emboldened climax courtesy of the Average White Band. There’s even some shades of subtlety in there with some shifts of tempo and some gentle guitar noodling. To be fair(brass), the Freds were professional musicians with the brothers having played with the likes of David Bowie and Bob Dylan. They weren’t just some stooges brought in to front the act.

The video is the usual montage of Right Said Fred japes with the band generally just arseing about in various locations surrounded by various leggy models (“see those legs man”). According to an interview with Richard and Fred Fairbrass on the Songfacts website, the promo was deemed too ‘gay’ for US audiences and their American label made them shoot another one. They might as well not have bothered as it sank without trace and the band are still known as a one hit wonder (for “I’m Too Sexy”) over there. Apparently the woman in the green dress is the wife of the Fred who was in the audience of that play I saw down in London a couple of weeks before. I wonder if she was with him.

Meanwhile, back in the studio, we find Annie Lennox who looks like she nipped in on her way to a red carpet event such as the Oscars so sparkly and glamorous is her dress. Never afraid of messing around with gender roles and appearances, Annie’s hair and make up are designed to challenge with their nod to the gothic. After her ‘exclusive’ performance two weeks ago of her debut solo single “Why”, she’s back on the show after crashing into the Top 10 with it. By the way, I’m not counting her 1988 hit single “Put A Little Love In Your Heart” with Al Green from the film Scrooged on account of the fact that…well…she wasn’t solo was she?

Annie doesn’t need any backing musicians nor singers (not even Al Green) up there with her and does the whole thing on her own with just some studio lighting and a smoke machine for company. The audience come in with their applause a tad too early though (presumably on instruction from a floor manager) so that they drown out Annie’s final “You don’t know how I feel” line. Boo!

As with most celebrities, there is a Half Man Half Biscuit song that name checks Annie called “Paintball’s Coming Home” but it took me many a listen to hear the reference. If you don’t know the song, maybe you’ll get it first time…

Next, one of the most ridiculous songs of the whole decade in my book. Def Leppard had not been in the 90s at all up to this point. Presumably they had spent the first two years of it trying to write a follow up album to their monster hit “Hysteria” from which they released just about every track as a single. What they came up with was “Adrenalize” the lead single of which was “Let’s Get Rocked”.

This song was just an appalling waste of everyone’s time. The band’s for recording it, the radio stations for having to play it and the public for having to listen to it. What’s so wrong with it? Well, it’s just dumb ass, bombastic, cliched rock for one but it’s most heinous crime are the lyrics. Yes, I know that lead singer Joe Elliott is assuming a role within it and isn’t singing in the first person per se but it’s still ludicrous to hear a then 31 year old Sheffield man singing about being asked by his Dad to take out the trash and tidy his room and also refer to himself as a ‘dude’. I just couldn’t take it seriously. He then goes on about trying to get his ‘baby in the mood’ before coming out with a double entendre Finbar Saunders would have baulked at “ I suppose a rock’s out of the question”. Good grief!

Just like a Tory minister defending Boris Johnson’s latest gaff, the band had a go at justifying it. Here’s Joe Elliott courtesy of @TOTPFacts.

"We ended up writing this song, lyrically, which summed up the character of Bart Simpson – but [also] the character of any 16-year-old kid that's going through one of those phases with his father." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 28, 2022

Nice try but I wasn’t buying it (metaphorically and literally). As if the song wasn’t bad enough, the video looks like a nasty knock off of the promo for “Money For Nothing” by Dire Straits. Back in 1985 that video had blown our minds but by 1992 we’d all seen Michael Jackson’s “Black And White” which made “Let’s Get Rocked” look like caveman scribblings.

The follow up single was the equally risible and bad taste “Make Love Like A Man”. Oh come on now! None of this seemed to bother their fans though who sent “Let’s Get Rocked” to No 2 in the UK and the album “Adrenalize” to the top of the charts both sides of the pond. Well if people can accept and believe Boris Johnson’s lies then buying this shit is hardly a great leap.

This week’s ‘Exclusive’ performance comes from the current US No 1 act Vanessa Williams. Just like Shanice a few weeks before her, Vanessa seemed to appear from nowhere with the song that she will always be known for even though technically she isn’t a one hit wonder. “Save The Best For Last” was No 1 in the US at the time of this TOTP performance even though it had only just sneaked into our Top 40 which I guess was the justification for its ‘exclusive’ billing. A tale of two people having made eyes at each other over the years without acting on it and then finally getting it together, it was a decent ballad but oh so boring. The twee lyrics didn’t help. Whenever I hear it now I’m still convinced that she’s going to sing “sometimes the cow jumps over the moon”.

Vanessa is also an actress and has appeared in loads and loads of film and TV projects like Eraser, Perry Mason, The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air, Ally McBeal and possibly most famously as The Queen Of Trash in The Adventures Of Elmo In Grouchland. Alright alright. That last one should be as Wilhelmina Slater in comedy drama Ugly Betty. Oh and that comment about Vanessa technically not being a one hit wonder? She also had a UK No 21 hit in 1995 with the song “Colors Of The Wind” from the soundtrack to the Disney animation Pocahontas. “Save The Best For Last” would miss the top spot over here when it peaked at No 3.

A happy face, a thumpin’ bass for a loving’ race! Soul II Soul are this week’s “mega exclusive” as co-host Mark Franklin describes it and they are back with new material which to my ears was a lighter, more uplifting sound than their previous work. “Joy” was the lead single from their third album “Volume III Just Right” and their trademark thumpin’ bass was replaced by a ‘new vibration rocking the nation’. Other changes included new vocalist Richie Stephens and the addition of a gospel backing choir and a prominent brass section. Jazzie B was still there of course but there was no sign of Caron Wheeler who had embarked on a solo career as the new decade began although she did contribute vocals on one track on “Volume III Just Right”.

It seemed like a solid return for the band when “Joy” peaked at No 4 but subsequent singles from the album failed to even pierce the Top 30. Whilst the album sold steadily, its gold status compared very unfavourably to the triple platinum high of debut “Club Classics Vol. One” from just three years before. The Our Price I was working in had a promo cassette single of “Joy” which I snaffled away for my wife who liked the song. No idea where it is now though.

Now then, to the Breakers of which there are four this week and also of which none of them will feature on the show again. I’m seriously starting to doubt the wisdom of this feature. First up are, like Soul II Soul, another band who are returning with new material after a significant break. The Cure’s last studio album had been 1989’s “Disintegration” with the gap between that and its follow up being plugged by the remix album “Mixed Up”. Come 1992 and they returned with their very first and so far only chart topper “Wish”. Prefacing the album was the single “High”.

It sounded like very traditional Cure fare to me. Good but hardly anything we hadn’t heard before. We played the album in store and my memory of it was that it was pretty gloomy. And then came track 7. “Friday I’m In Love” was joyous and would become one of the best loved and most played songs of their whole back catalogue. However, that’s all for another post. The video for “High” was probably better than the song for me with its cloud imagery giving me very strong Monkey vibes. Not sure what I’m talking about? Watch this…

As he did the other week, Mark Franklin fails to name check all of the artists in this week’s Breakers section. He only refers to three of the four that appear. This suggests to me there wasn’t an autocue so was it scripted like this? If not, was Mark just incapable of holding four names in his head at once? Anyway, the act he doesn’t mention is this one. “Do Not Pass Me By” would be the very last of eight UK Top 40 singles that Hammer would have. I never knew this but it’s actually a reworking of a 19th century hymn called “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior”. Interesting. I maybe shouldn’t be surprised given the career that Hammer (real name Stanley Burrell) went on to have as an ordained preacher. In all, if we’re just looking at the UK, Hammer’s reign as the forefather of ‘pop rap’ lasted just 18 months or so. The largest part of his legacy remains his pants. “Do Not Pass Me By” peaked at No 14.

How do you follow up an unexpected No 1 hit? Well, if you’re Wet Wet Wet, you release a better song than your chart topper which they duly did in “More Than Love”. Previous single “Goodnight Girl” had gloriously returned the band back into mainstream success and so they weren’t about to waste their shot at being pop stars all over again. Instead of re-releasing one of the two singles preceding “Goodnight Girl” from the album “High On The Happy Side” that hadn’t been massive hits, they went with another album track that was a solid, mid tempo, singalong pop song. If Gary Barlow had written this, it would have been regarded as an instant pop classic. As it is, it’s one of the Wets least remembered hits not helped by its unspectacular No 19 chart peak.

The rather basic video seems to have been storyboarded purely to allow Marti Pellow to show off his luxurious locks. In fact the whole band have gone in for the very long hair look except drummer Tommy who seems to be almost bullied by his hirsute band mates given his thin head of hair. Tommy always strikes me as being very much in the same mould as Blur’s Dave Rowntree. The member of the band that garners the least attention but is the most dependable. Drummers. They aren’t all Keith Moons or John Bonhams.

Manic Street Preachers? Again? Weren’t they on just the other week performing “You Love Us”? Yes they were but with momentum building and their reputation preceding them, here’s another single called “Slash ‘N’ Burn”. Released exactly two months after its predecessor, this was another track from their “Generation Terrorists” album, the fourth of six in total. Its strident guitar riffs were inspired by Guns ‘N Roses apparently who also seemed to inspire the song’s title given the inclusion of that ‘n’ instead of ‘and’. It got me thinking how many other times ‘n’ has been used in music history. Obviously there’s Salt ‘n’ Pepa but any others? Erm…Jack ‘n’ Chill?

It’s a sixth week at the top for Shakespear’s Sister. As it’s parent album “Hormonally Yours” is coming up to its 30 years anniversary and is getting a deluxe 2 CD re-release, there was a Guardian article about “Stay” over the weekend. In it, Siobhan Fahey says that the look she was going for in the video was “an unhinged Victorian heroine meets Suzi Quattro meets Labelle!”. Well, obviously. She also admits that she’d been on the vodka in the shoot and was half cut by the time her scenes were being shot. That might explain her maniacal grin as she descended the stairway.

I recall that when their album was released it was heavily discounted in Our Price so that the CD was just £9.99 which was pretty cheap for a chart CD back in the day. Why do I remember this stuff when I can’t remember where I’ve just put my glasses? F**k knows.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Erasure	Breath Of Life	I did not
2	Right Said Fred	Deeply Dippy	Didn’t mind it, certainly didn’t buy it
3	Annie Lennox	Why	No but buy wife had the album
4	Def Leppard	Let’s Get Rocked	C’mon get real!
5	Vanessa Williams	Save The Best For Last	There was more chance of the cow jumping over the moon
6	Soul II Soul	Joy	No but I had that promo cassette single
7	The Cure	High	Nope
8	Hammer	Do Not Pass Me By	Nah
9	Wet Wet Wet	More Than Love	See 3 above
10	Manic Street Preachers	Slash ‘N’ Burn	‘N’-egative
11	Shakespear’s Sister	Stay	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/m0013vgg/top-of-the-pops-26031992

TOTP 13 FEB 1992

Posted on January 21, 2022 by 80stastic

We’ve missed another show due to Adrian Rose’s still unexplained refusal to sign the repeat waiver for the TOTP episodes on which he presented and so we arrive in the middle of February, 24 hours before Valentine’s Day. That means it’s been four whole months since the new, ‘year zero’ revamp of the show. How do we think it’s been going?

I have to say that I can’t think of anything that’s been introduced that’s improved the show. The live vocal policy has just found people out rather than given the performances an extra edge. The relegation of the chart rundown to just the Top 10 (with no voice over initially) seems to have been just for the sake of drawing a line under the old format and the studio set up with the audience visible running in between stages seems chaotic. The on stage interviews of the artists from the early weeks has been ditched thankfully (they were excruciating and pointless) but the new sections such as the ‘exclusive’ showing of new videos and the US charts seem shoehorned in for the sake of it.

And then there’s the presenters. It’s not that I think they were terrible – heaven knows that the old guard of Radio 1 DJs have prompted reams of ire from me during these TOTP posts – it’s just that they didn’t seem to add anything other than youthful over enthusiasm which in the case of some resulted in a lot of shouting of links (yes I’m looking specifically at you Claudia Simon). To be fair, Tony Dortie and his silly urban yoof slang has grown on me and he seems to be a decent fellow who tweets along to the repeats with good humour.

Tonight’s show has tinkered with the formula rather. There are only three studio performances and the three of the nine acts on tonight are just the Breakers which have been moved back to that incongruous position just before the No 1. It just doesn’t feel right.

The opening act tonight are…WTF?! It’s those talentless bozos Color Me Badd. Now if like me you thought this lot’s rise to fame and subsequent descent to the wilderness all happened within the calendar year 1991, then also like me, you’ll be wondering what the hell they are doing on TOTP in 1992.

Well, it’s all to do with what I was talking about earlier and those new sections. This time it’s the turn of the US charts which is why Color Me Badd are on the show except…as far as I can tell this track “Heartbreaker” wasn’t released as a single in the US. It seems to only feature in the lower regions of the chart in New Zealand, the Netherlands and this country. Yes, the lower regions, so low it didn’t actually make our Top 40 peeking at No 58. So it wasn’t in the American charts nor was it in ours? What’s that Claudia? It’s No 6 on the Top 100? What the hell does that mean? The US album chart? The graphic in the corner of the screen just had an American flag and the No 6. It must be the US chart mustn’t it? I think a bit of behind the scenes negotiating between the BBC and the band’s record company must have been afoot. I think the Beeb were out manoeuvred though as I can’t imagine that many TOTP viewers would have been excited at the prospect of this ‘exclusive’. They were literally last year’s news. That and the fact that “Heartbreaker” stinks the place out.

Do you think they had their eyes on New Kids In The Block’s crown? The track sounds a bit like them. Clearly the lead vocalist can’t do the dance moves his three band mates behind him are cranking out as he remains motionless when one of them steps forward to do a rap halfway through. No effort is made to to swap places with him and take up the slack in the dance steps. This must have been the boy band template that Take That followed early in their career. Didn’t Gary Barlow famously struggle with bustin’ his moves that the rest of them could do effortlessly?

At the end of their performance, co-host Steve Anderson says we may well be seeing “Heartbreaker” in the British charts next week. I’m guessing that line was definitely scripted in some forlorn attempt to justify it opening the show and pretty sure that nobody in the UK had heard “Heartbreaker”again in the 30 years between the original TOTP transmission and this repeat.

“Remember The Time” when the biggest scandal in the press about Michael Jackson surrounded the rumour that he bleached his skin? Sadly for everyone involved, there would be scandals of a much more serious, damaging and distinctly horrible nature to come in the years that followed.

Back in early 1992 though, Jackson was just getting started on another round of releasing every track from his latest album as a single. Seven singles were lifted from “Thriller”, nine from “Bad”. His 1991 album “Dangerous” would follow suit with another nine tracks making it into the UK singles chart. That’s twenty five singles generated from three albums. David Coleman would surely have described it as “quite extraordinary”.

Following up global No 1 “Black And White” was always going to be a hard act even for Jackson but he gave it a good go with “Remember The Time” which was a No 3 hit in both the US and the UK. Written and produced by Teddy Riley, the creator of the New Jack Swing sound that was sweeping the world, it was no surprise that the song was in the same vein. It was all a bit too slick for my liking and didn’t hold my attention anywhere near as much as “Black And White” had.

The video was a lavish affair (of course it was) but we missed the exclusive first showing of it on TOTP the previous week as it was one of those shows that was Adrian Rosed. We still get another whopping five minutes of it tonight though. Quite why it was set in ancient Egypt I’m not sure. The track has no Egyptian connection and indeed the only country specifically mentioned in the lyrics is Spain! There’s the by now routine roster of stars in the promo including Eddie Murphy and super model Iman who would marry David Bowie later in the year. Jackson plays a wizard brought to the palace to entertain the Pharoah’s bored wife but who angers him by flirting with her instead. Cue some laborious chase scene involving Jacko and the Pharoah’s royal guards. Apparently this is the first video when Jackson kisses his female co-star. However, I’m more interested in how this particular conversation may have played out.

When a video pops up on YouTube & you have to explain to your kids why grandma was married to Eddie Murphy in ancient Egypt. 😂 @The_Real_IMAN pic.twitter.com/L5VasTjlzh
— Duncan Jones (@ManMadeMoon) July 13, 2020

The song won the 1993 Soul Train award for Best Male R&B single. Jackie performed it at the awards show sat in a chair having twisted his ankle earlier. I think I prefer him sat down instead of doing all those exhausting to watch dance moves.

https://youtu.be/Waf31G22TR4

Next we have one of two distinctly and defiantly indie bands both inside the Top 10 this week. The Jesus And Mary Chain are at No 10 and one place above them are a band that the Scottish feedback monsters gave a helping hand to at the start of their career. Apparently Jim Reid heard an early Ride demo via DJ Gary Crowley which led to interest from their former manager and founder of Creation Records Alan McGee. A recording contract followed and the band became one of the pin ups of the ‘shoegaze’ movement.

By early 1992, Ride we’re nearing their commercial peak which they would reach with their biggest hit single “Leave Them All Behind” and parent album “Going Blank Again”. Apparently the single was written about the second rate groups (in the band’s perception) that had trailed in their dust after their success came. Bit arrogant. They would be undone by a combination of touring fatigue and the advent of Britpop and they broke up in the mid 90s before reforming a couple of times in the new millennium.

Lead singer Mark Gardener would stay in the music business working with various artists and also recording as a solo artist whilst guitarist Andy Bell went onto form Hurricane #1 before famously joining Oasis and Beady Eye. However, I’m more interested in bassist Steve Queralt who was working as the singles buyer in the Banbury Our Price store when he joined Ride. Wow! There must be a few stories of pop stars working in record shops either before or after their fame. I’ve said a few times before about working with Pete the original bass player in The Stone Roses at the Stockport Our Price. I also worked with long time Peter Hook collaborater (Monaco, Peter Hook And The Light) David Potts in Manchester. Must be loads more though.

Time for one of those TOTP ‘Exclusive’ videos now but, as with Color Me Badd at the top of the show, I think the producers have seriously misjudged the demand for and excitement to be generated by the latest Bryan Adams promo. After his 16 week run at No 1 the previous year, I think we’d all had our fill of the Groover from Vancouver but that didn’t stop Steve Anderson trying his best to big up Bryan’s latest single “Thought I’d Died And Gone To Heaven” in his intro.

This was already the fourth single to be released from his “Waking Up The Neighbours” album that had only been out since September and it’s quite the plodder. There’s a definite Def Leppard vibe to it, not surprising though seeing as it was produced by the man responsible for all their big hits Mutt Lange.

As for the video, was it worth the build up and airtime? It’s a resounding no from me. It features Bry and his band in a sepia tinted hue, playing in a barley field (as you do) whilst some dolphins occasionally leap out over their heads. What?!

“Thought I’d Died And Gone To Heaven” peaked at No 8.

Almost exactly 12 months on from this TOTP, broadcast, the aforementioned Michael Jackson performed the half time show at Super Bowl XXVII. So? Well, the game took place in Pasadena, California and who are the final act in the studio tonight? Yep, The Pasadenas (I don’t just throw this stuff together you know) who are up to No 4 with “I’m Doing Fine Now”. In scenes not witnessed on TOTP since The Leyton Buzzards performed “Saturday Night (Beneath The Plastic Palm Trees)” in 1979, the band are singing their hit…yep…under some plastic palm trees.

https://youtu.be/yeHKQLke35M

Why? Who knows. Pretty sure there’s nothing in the lyrics about beaches or palm trees and the middle of February is hardly holiday season is it? To make the palm trees look even more ludicrous and indeed incongruous, the lead singer is wearing a full length leather coat and hat whilst the rest of the band all have warm looking jackets on. Just crazy.

The Pasadenas would have three more minor chart hits (all of them cover versions) so it’s possible we haven’t quite seen the last of them yet but the end is nigh.

The Breakers start this week with “For Your Babies” by Simply Red which had already been on the show before Xmas as an ‘exclusive’ performance basically to plug the “Stars” album for the festive market – as if it needed any more help in pushing sales. As such I haven’t got much else to say about it apart from if I was forced at gunpoint to pick a song from “Stars” that I could most tolerate then it would be this one.

“For Your Babies” peaked at No 9.

Macaulay Culkin appearing in TOTP was starting to become a regular occurrence. After his cameo in Michael Jackson’s “Black And White”, here he is again on the promo for a re-release of “My Girl”. His involvement here is of course because he was starring in a film that took its name from the title of The Temptations’ most well known song. I’ve never seen said film and have to admit I’d always assumed it was some cutesy, young love nonsense but having read the plot summary for it…well, without wanting to give away any spoilers, it does seem to be quite a bit darker than that.

Obviously “My Girl” the song is included both in the soundtrack and the film itself and given its success and Culkin’s then profile, it was given a re-release. I’d always assumed that it had been a massive hit in the 60s when originally recorded but although it was a US No 1, it didn’t even make the Top 40 in the UK. The 1992 re-release righted that wrong though when it went all the way to No 2.

It’s always sounded a bit like “The Tracks Of My Tears” by The Miracles to me but then it was written by Smokey Robinson so that’s hardly surprising. For the record, I think “The Tracks Of My Tears” is infinitely the better song. As for The Temptations, this was their first time in the UK Top 40 since 1984’s “Treat Her Like A Lady” and inevitably there was a Greatest Hits compilation album released off the back of it which duly went Top 10. They are still a recording entity with a new album due this very month but with a list of line ups changes that makes The Sugababes look like U2, you’d need a Tory minister to make the case that it was the same group.

And the grunge bandwagon keeps on moving….Were Pearl Jam actually a grunge band or was it just that they happened to come from Seattle? To me, debut single “Alive” sounded more like classic stadium rock than the punky, garage offerings of Nirvana but then I’m no expert on Eddie Vedder and co. I did like “Alive” though and the other singles from debut album “Ten” but I lost track of the band after that. Most rock fans didn’t though if their sales figures are anything to go by (which clearly they are). “Ten” went 13 x platinum whilst follow up “Vs.” sold 7 million copies in the US alone. Third album “Vitalogy” sold 877,000 copies in its first week making it the second fastest selling album in history only behind their own “Vs.”. Pearl Jam were and are a big deal. Somehow though, TOTP managed to avoid them and this Breaker appearance is the only time we got to see “Alive” on the show. Maybe the producers had got their fingers burned by that chaotic Nirvana studio performance of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”.

“Alive” peaked at No 16 on the UK Top 40.

The No 1 spot still belongs to Wet Wet Wet and “Goodnight Girl”. The band are still going to this day albeit without Marti Pellow in their ranks anymore. A split between the two parties back in 2017 now seems permanent, especially as there is a new lead singer installed in the form of ex Liberty X star Kevin Simm. The rift apparently surrounds Marti’s unwillingness to concentrate solely on the band and his determination to try new musical projects. A sad tale but definitely not unique. Spandau Ballet find themselves in a very similar situation with Tony Hadley.

Pellow’s real name is Mark McLachlan but he adopted his stage name which was based on his school nickname ‘Smarty’ and his mother’s maiden name. Funny that the surname McLachlan was good enough for Craig.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Color Me Badd	Heartbreaker	Not a chance
2	Michael Jackson	Remember The Time	I did not
3	Ride	Leave Them All Behind	Nah
4	Bryan Adams	Thought I’d Died And Gone To Heaven	And no
5	The Pasadenas	I’m Doing Fine Now	Nope
6	Simply Red	For Your Babies	No
7	The Temptations	My Girl	Negative
8	Pearl Jam	Alive	Liked it, didn’t buy it
9	Wet Wet Wet	Goodnight Girl	No but my wife had the album

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/m0013cfm/top-of-the-pops-13021992