Whitney Houston | TOTP Rewind – the 90s

TOTP 07 JAN 1993

Posted on June 7, 2022 by 80stastic

1992 has bitten the dust and to celebrate the dawning of 1993, there are a glut of new songs on the first TOTP of the new year. Traditionally a time when singles don’t have to sell that many copies in the post Xmas sales slump to bag a Top 40 placing, let’s see if we can spot any examples of that here….

Could this be a contender? Now admittedly there was a time when Jesus Jones were one of the hottest properties on planet pop but that was back in 1991 and we all know that the old adage about a week being a long time in politics can also apply to the music industry. Would they still have an audience nearly two years on? Well possibly but one big and committed enough to send their new single “The Devil You Know” straight into the Top 20?

This was the lead single from third album “Perverse” which was one of the first albums ever to be recorded entirely on computer and the concept behind it according to rock journalist Stephen Thomas Erlewine was “to make techno palatable for the pop masses”. A worthy ambition or a pointless pursuit? The music press of the time couldn’t make their minds up and reviews were mixed. The album has been revisited more positively retrospectively so maybe Mike Edwards and co were just ahead of their time?

As for the single itself, I think I can hear the sound they were trying to meld but I’m not sure that it was any good. There’s an Eastern influence to it at the beginning (an Iranian instrument apparently) and a bit of a panel beating techno riff where the chorus should be. All a bit of a mess really. The single went to No 10 and I’m stating for the record that chart peak would not have been achieved at any other time of the year.

Having just been pipped to the best selling single of the year title late doors by Whitney Houston, Snap! have followed up “Rhythm Is A Dancer” with their ode to the daleks “Exterminate!”. Not as gigantic sounding a tune as its predecessor, it was hardly understated either though. There some Enigma “Sadeness” vibes thrown in the mix but the biggest change is the omission of rapper Turbo B from proceedings. I’m not sure of the exact timeline but he left the Snap! family around this time and so it was left to ex-Madonna backing singer Niki Haris to do the vocals and be the public face of the whole project. Given “Exterminate!” achieved an ultimate chart peak of No 2, you’d have to say she did a pretty decent job. And yet, asked to name a song by Snap!, how many of us would opt for it? “Exterminate!” you say? By Snap!? Like Kajagoogoo having hits without Limahl, it just doesn’t compute.

Something else that didn’t compute was this next performance by a band making their TOTP debut. More specifically it was their look that didn’t make any sense.

The Frank And Walters (not Frank And The Walters Tony Dortie!) hailed from Cork, Ireland and “After All” would turn out to be their only UK Top 40 hit when it peaked at No 11. A couple of EPs got them noticed by the Go! Discs label who released their debut album “Trains, Boats And Planes” from which “After All” was taken.

I liked “After All”. It was quirky, catchy and blazed its own little trail for unlikely pop stars. Listening back to it now, it seems to have a sliver of “Sit Down” by James about it. However, it did seem to divide opinion. I once worked with someone who absolutely detested it though I could never quite work out why.

So getting back to their image, my use of the word ‘unlikely’ doesn’t rally cover what was happening in front of our eyes with this performance. Bright orange roll necks and hideously patterned trousers?! Really?! Here’s singer Paul Linehan (courtesy of @TOTPFacts) with some more detail:

Paul Linehan on this #TOTP performance. “We bought the polo necks in a charity shop on Castle Street [Cork] and we got the trousers in Leaders on North Main Street – I think they were there since the ’70s." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 3, 2022

And the hair? Here’s Paul again:

“My mam did my hair. I had tried to get the same cut in the barbers, but he couldn’t do it. My mam had a bowl that fitted my head perfectly and she just cut around it.” #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 3, 2022

None of the above explains why though? Were they influenced by the Trevor and Simon ‘Singing Corner’ characters from Going Live? Or were they the influencers? Was Mike Flowers watching this show and taking hairstyle notes for launching his tilt at the charts with that bizarre cover of “Wonderwall” in 1995?

The Franks came close to a second hit when follow up single, the wonderfully titled “Fashion Crisis Hits New York” stalled at No 42. A gap of five years until their next album was never going to be good for maintaining momentum and the charts would never make their acquaintance again though they have continued to release material with their last album coming in 2016.

https://youtu.be/4_Hjw7bcA5k

After that portal into a possible parallel world where the charts weren’t full of nasty, homogeneous dance hits, that wormhole is firmly shut by the arrival of next act Slipstreem and their hateful single “We Are Raving”. A rave version of “Sailing”?! What in the name of Rod’s beard? Who were these people and just what the f**k was going on here? Actually, I couldn’t care less who they were and I know what was going on. This was cashing in pure and simple. Jumping on a bandwagon and then bastardising it for a shit hit and a quick buck.

And what a dog’s dinner of a performance to promote it. There’s the obligatory two guys on keyboards because hey! This is a dance hit you know. Then there’s two dancers in wet suits (obviously) and the ‘singer’ in a de rigueur puffa jacket. And then there’s the other two. A Captain Birdseye lookalike is behind a ship’s wheel bedecked with a tartan scarf but for any viewers who hadn’t quite cottoned onto the Rod Stewart connection there was the shittest Rod lookalike you’ve ever seen stumbling about the stage ramming the point home. He’s definitely not wearing it well.

“We Are Raving” peaked at No 18.

After that unedifying spectacle, it’s time to chill out, with some come down music and that must be the first time rockers Little Angels have been described as such. Let’s face it, they’re hardly Röyksopp are they? We do, however, find them in reflective mood at least with new single “Womankind” which would prove to be their biggest ever hit when it peaked at No 12.

Taken from their No 1 album “Jam”, it’s a decent rock ballad and singer Toby Jepson has some pipes on him for sure. I could imagine it being used to soundtrack some dramatic scene in a big Hollywood blockbuster. They’ve even got some orchestra strings thrown into the mix to give it a big, epic feel. Plus, I always quite liked the phrase “desperate proclaimer” in the lyrics. Yeah, not a bad effort all round.

Are you kidding me? FIVE Breakers?! This better not be how it’s going to be for the whole of 1993! There had better be some decent tunes amongst them then. We start with…ah…a decent tune from Prefab Sprout. How can anyone not love Paddy McAloon? As the 2018 song he wrote for the aforementioned Rod Stewart “Who Designed The Snowflake” says in its lyrics, he’s a genius work. So many great songs and yet, like XTC who I referenced in my review of 1992, so little commercial success.

“Life Of Surprises” was a new track taken from the previous year’s Best Of album of almost the same name and its peak of No 24 meant it became only the band’s fifth ever Top 40 hit. Indeed, in their whole career they only had six all told. Compare that to, oh I don’t know, Snap! who were on earlier who had fourteen UK Top 40 entries. More than double! Where’s the justice?

That Best Of album actually supplied three of their six hits as new tracks “Sound Of Crying” and “If You Don’t Love Me” had earlier achieved chart highs of Nos 23 and 33 respectively. “Life Of Surprises” was actually an older track from fourth studio album “Protest Songs” from 1989 and had already been released once as the B -side to “From Langley Park To Memphis” single “Nightingales”. It’s typical McAloon fare with a fine melody allied with Paddy’s almost whispered vocals. Lovely stuff.

Paddy is still writing and recording with his most recent release being 2019’s “I Trawl The Megahertz”. He suffers from tinnitus which makes his output even more remarkable and has grown a massive Gandalf like beard in later life, far removed from his clean cut image in this video.

Hasn’t this one been out before? I’m sure “Love See No Colour” by The Farm has already been a hit once hasn’t it?

*checks internet*

OK, so not a hit (it peaked at No 58) but it had been released 12 months previously. Why was it given another promotional push? Well, I’m guessing that sales of their second album of the same name had been a massive disappointment after their debut “Spartacus” had been a No 1. After they’d finally got a hit single out of it by resorting to a cover of The Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me”, record company Sony must have wanted to consolidate on that bit of success.

Their solution was to get the band to re-record “Love See No Colour” with an emphasis on a synth sound and gospel feel. They even commissioned a new video to help promote it. None of their strategies really worked though as the single got no higher than No 35. Sales of the album didn’t improve and the band were dropped. Quite a fall from their “All Together Now” peak, a 2.0 version of which they were presumably trying to recreate by re-recording “Love See No Colour”.

You wait for ages for one band from Cork to have a hit and then two turn up at once! Yes, unbelievable as it seems, The Sultans Of Ping FC, like The Frank And Walters earlier in the show, were also from Cork. It’s not quite up there with that bizarre phenomenon of The Wonder Stuff, Pop Will Eat Itself and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin all hailing from Stourbridge in the West Midlands as Cork is three times the size population wise but it’s still quite a thing. There was a third Cork band around at this time called Stump who achieved a minor chart placing with the gloriously eccentric single “Charlton Heston” but for now it was all about The Ping.

Having released a trio of singles on independent label Divine Records during 1992 (including the marvellous “Where’s Me Jumper”), the band had been picked up by Epic through which their debut album “Casual Sex In The Cineplex” was released. Trailing it was the single “You Talk Too Much” which had much more of a punk vibe than their fellow Corkonians The Franks and their simultaneous hit single.

Around this time I was visiting my mate Robin in London and wandering around Piccadilly Circus we arrived at the Virgin Records store just in time to catch a p.a. and set by the band. Robin has reminded me that there were some hecklers in the audience and the lead singer came back with “we’re No 27 in the charts. Have you ever been in the charts?”. Excellent.

The album included the track “Give Him A Ball (And A Yard Of Grass)” which was inspired by a remark from his Brian Clough when talking about brilliant Nottingham Forest winger John Robertson. Here’s his quote in full:

John Robertson was a very unattractive young man. If one day I was feeling a bit off colour, I would sit next to him. I was bloody Errol Flynn compared to him. But give him a yard of grass and he was an artist. The Picasso of our game.

The legendary Brian Clough there. Still sadly missed. As for The Sultans Of Ping FC, they went through a few name alterations dropping the FC, then removing the Ping part before finally restoring it to Sultans Of Ping in 2005.

Another cover version now but an unlikely one. The decision process behind Sunscreem‘s choosing of a 1980 Marianne Faithful single that flopped takes some fathoming. “Broken English” was the title track from her comeback album after years of health and addiction problems. It is widely regarded as her ‘definitive recording’ and Faithfull herself described it as her “masterpiece”. I was surprised to find out then that it bombed in the charts peaking at No 57. The title track from it sank without trace. I have to admit to not knowing it at all so I gave it a whirl…

Hmm. It doesn’t (Sun)scream techno anthem to me I have to say. The Essex groovers version adds a few interesting squiggles in the background but I can’t imagine it being that easy to dance to but then I wasn’t spending much time in the clubs around then. It would become the band’s highest charting hit when it settled at No 13 and they would follow it up with a rerelease of early single “Pressure.

The final Breaker is a bit confusing. In my head, Arrested Development followed their huge hit “People Everyday” with another big seller called “Mr. Wendal” so what was this track “Revolution” all about? Well, both tracks were released as a double A-side. “Mr. Wendal” was from their “3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life Of…” album whilst “Revolution” was from the soundtrack to the Spike Lee directed biopic Malcolm X starring Denzel Washington. In the US they were released as separate singles but in Europe they were doubled up. I have zero recall of “Revolution” but “Mr. Wendal” was a tune. Hope we get to see that in future TOTP repeats.

A real taster next of the direction the charts would be going in this year although in truth, Apache Indian was actually ploughing his own furrow. Real name Steven Kapur, this guy grew up in the multicultural metropolis that was Birmingham in the early 80s listening to reggae and dancehall music. Creating a stage name for himself, Steven set about fusing those influences with the cultural sounds of his own Indian background. That fusion of ragga and Bhangra drew positive reactions from audiences of both genres and so bhangra ragamuffin was born or bhangramuffin as it became known.

Picked up by the legendary Island Records, Apache Indian recorded his debut album “No Reservations” in Jamaica’s Tuff Gong studios and from it came the single “Arranged Marriage”. The controversial track dared to take on the normally taboo subject of its title and provoked negative criticism from some of the Indian community. This guy was no ordinary pop star and was determined to do things his own way.

The performance here is great and nothing like we’d really seen before. There were no sitars à la Monsoon and “Ever So Lonely” from the early 80s. “Arranged Marriage” would make No 16 and was nominated for an Ivor Novello award for Best Contemporary Song. However, Apache Indian will surely be best remembered for his later single “Boom Shack -A- Lak” which took him to the Top 5.

In the Story Of 1993 BBC documentary, Kapur opened up about his experiences of this year and he explained that he was good buddies with Shaggy, one of the year’s other big reggae fusion/dancehall movers alongside Shabba Ranks and Snow. The charts they were a-changin’..,

https://youtu.be/HealqMJzu_M

From someone brand new to one of the biggest artists in the world. Paul McCartney hadn’t released any new material in the 90s so far but delivered on his fanbase’s hopes of a new song with “Hope Of Deliverance”. Taken from his ninth solo studio album “Off The Ground”, it was hardly the stuff of legend. Yes it was bright, breezy and positive but it was also the wrong side of predictable and ever so slightly annoying.

The album achieved gold status but didn’t furnish any further hit singles (“Hope Of Deliverance” peaked at No 18) and surely can’t be any Macca fan’s favourite album of his? This phase of his career very much reminds me of his mid 80s era when his “Press To Play” album was commercially and critically received in much the same way and the singles from it were only minor hits. He would return four years later with “Flaming Pie” which got his best reviews since 1982’s “Tug Of War”.

https://youtu.be/eSokJcERbuY

If we were thinking that Whitney Houston’s reign at the top would be over when the Xmas decorations were put away for another year then we were completely and utterly mistaken. Any of us under that illusion hadn’t factored in that the film “I Will Always Love You” was taken from, The Bodyguard, wasn’t released in the UK until Boxing Day therefore instantly giving the single another impetus of sales. Whitney’s run at No 1 still had plenty of legs left yet.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Jesus Jones	The Devil You Know	Nah
2	Snap!	Exterminate!	Nope
3	The Frank And Walters	After All	Liked it, didn’t buy it
4	Slipstreem	We Are Raving	NO!!!
5	Little Angels	Womankind	No but I had a promo copy of their album
6	Prefab Sprout	Life Of Surprises	No but I had the Best Of album it was taken from
7	The Farm	Love See No Colour	Nope, neither time it was released
8	The Sultans Of Ping FC	You Talk Too Much	See 3 above
9	Sunscreem	Broken English	No
10	Arrested Development	Revolution	No my wife had the album though
11	Apache Indian	Arranged Marriage	Interesting though it was, no
12	Paul McCartney	Hope Of Deliverance	Very weak – no
13	Whitney Houston	I Will Always Love You	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/m0017wtw/top-of-the-pops-07011993

TOTP 17 DEC 1992

Posted on May 27, 2022 by 80stastic

It’s only a week until Xmas 30 (!) years ago and I’m working my arse off in Our Price, Rochdale doing long days and serving even longer queues of customers as the panic of not getting all your shopping done sets in. I’m enjoying it though as the team at the shop were great. Everyone was hard working and got on with each other. That bonhomie amongst the staff was needed though when it came to dealing with the public, especially on Xmas Eve when many of the punters who entered the store that day were manic and had no time for any basic manners or civility. In short, they slaughtered us. Many an exchange went like this:

Me: I’m sorry but we’ve sold out of Gloria Estefan’s Greatest Hits on cassette madam.

Customer: You f******g what?! You’ve ruined my daughter’s Xmas you have!

Something like that anyway. No doubt I would have sold some of the singles showcased on this final regular TOTP before Xmas…

N.B. I’m not reviewing the Xmas day episode. It’s too long and most of the acts on there have already featured in previous posts.

We start with The Shamen who are getting in the Xmas party spirit by dressing up as characters from Alice In Wonderland. Eh? Why? Where are the Santa hats and Xmas jumpers? If they really wanted to go down a literary route, surely Dickens’ A Christmas Carol would have been the way to go? Scrooge in his bedclothes, ghosts, Tiny Tim, Jacob Marley and his chains….hey, they could have even called themselves Jacob and the Marley Chain. OK, the last bit is a crap idea but surely no worse than what they actually came up with. Again I ask, why? Oh, hang on. The ever reliable @TOTPFacts might have the answer…

Given the book's long association with psychedelics – Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" et al – I think we can guess why The Shamen decided to dress up as characters from Alice's Adventures In Wonderland. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) May 20, 2022

Ah well possibly I guess. An overindulgence of some illegal substances might explain why Mr C is dressed as the Knave of Clubs. Surely it’s the Knave of Hearts (who stole some tarts)? As for the song itself, “Phorever People” sounds like “Ebeneezer Goode” part II but then, why re-invent the wheel when the first one is spinning so well? The four singles taken from their “Boss Drum” album achieved the following chart peaks:

6 – 1 – 4 – 5

Pretty impressive stuff. That run of success helped earned the band the Smash Hits Best New Act award for 1992. Quite an achievement for a band that had been in existence since 1985.

A quick word on the presenters tonight. One is regular Tony Dortie but the other is rising BBC star Mr Blobby. This character achieved the seemingly impossible feat of being more annoying than Noel Edmonds despite the latter being responsible for Blobby’s rise to fame on Noel’s House Party. How on earth was the Blobby phenomenon allowed to happen?!

A third appearance on the show next for the video to “Deeper And Deeper” by Madonna. This became Madge’s first single to fail to make the Top 5 in this country since 1987’s “The Look Of Love”. None of the subsequent three singles released from the “Erotica” album managed to outdo “Deeper And Deeper” although they all went Top 10. It was a mixed bag of a time for Madonna. Her profile was as notorious as ever thanks to her X-rated coffee table book Sex and yet her album “Erotica” only sold half as many copies as its predecessor “Like A Prayer”. Nowhere was this dichotomy witnessed more succinctly than in the fact that Madonna’s managed to be simultaneously the most and least fanciable female at that Smash Hits poll winners party.

The people who started the early 90s trend for dance versions of pop standards have returned to the scene of the crime to remind us all that they were the original culprits. I speak of East Side Beat who kicked this ghastly movement off in 1991 with a cover of Christopher Cross’ “Ride Like The Wind”. In their wake came acts like Undercover, Rage and KWS but this Italian duo were back to remind us they were alive and kicking with their version of…erm…”Alive And Kicking” by Simple Minds. You’ll remember that this 1985 track had only recently been back in the Top 40 promoting the Scottish stadium rockers Best Of album. Was that in the thinking behind East Side Beat’s choice of song to cover? The fact that it had been reinforced in the minds of pop fans just a short time ago and had proved to retain its popularity? Could they jump on the bandwagon of its promotion and marketing campaign? Or was it all just one big happy coincidence?

Whatever the truth of the matter, their song choice worked. A Top 40 hit meant a TOTP appearance and there’s a lot to unpack about this particular performance. We start with the intro to it by Tony Dortie who, not for the first time I may add, uses the description drum ‘n’ bass erroneously. WTAF?! How is some naff Eurodance in any way, shape or form anything to do with drum ‘n’ bass?! By Goldie’s teeth!! I think Tony has retrospectively admitted he had no idea what he was talking about during some of his links but that just begs the the question why go there at all?!

Secondly, what was going on with the backing dancers? They appear to be wearing Italian club football shirts but were seemingly not allowed to wear any shorts with them. Hmm. All a bit dubious. Hang on. Is football the reason that East Side Beat chose “Alive And Kicking” to cover? Wasn’t that the song that soundtracked the advertising campaign for the launch of Sky’s coverage of the inaugural season of the Premier League? Yes it was…

Again I say hmm. Thirdly, and I’m really not wishing to get into racial stereotyping here but the lead singer must be the least stylish Italian ever!

East Side Beat’s cover of “Alive And Kicking” peaked at No 26.

Now I can’t find a clip of this live by satellite performance from Miami by Gloria Estefan so if you’re reading this after the episode has fallen off iPlayer, you’ll have to take my word for it but there’s something off about it. I couldn’t put my finger on it for ages but I think it’s the way the backing musicians have set up so they’re not actually facing the same way as Gloria as she performs. It’s quite off putting once you’ve noticed it, like they’re part of a different performance altogether but where somehow the two parallel worlds have collided like an episode of Star Trek. Talking of which, in what universe was it appropriate to add a bit of a 2 Unlimited keyboard riff to a Latino pop medley?

The “Miami Hit Mix” peaked at No 8.

The running order for this TOTP has now taken us from cover version to megamix and back to cover version in the space of three records. The second cover of the night comes from The Lemonheads whose version of Simon & Garfunkel ‘s “Mrs Robinson” was a Breaker last week. This week however, they’re in the studio and their performance has a definite Nirvana / Smells Like Teen Spirit vibe to it. Just looking at them, they look incongruous and like they don’t really belong on TOTP. Too counterculture, too anti-establishment, too slacker? Too tall in the case of Evan Dando. He looks enormous here. Apparently he’s 6ft 3” and he looks every bit of it bestriding the stage in his red duffle coat. Well, bestriding it until he attempts an abortive forward roll. Presumably that was supposed to put the watching audience on alert that something unexpected might happen and that there was an element of chaos at play as per that Nirvana performance. He even tells us audibly by singing “you don’t know what’s gonna happen next” at one point. What does happen is that he breaks into an impression of Morrissey. I mean it’s unmistakably Mozza – Dando has been known to boast about how great his impression of him is – but isn’t that just copying what Kurt Cobain did when he was on the show? I mean Cobain’s impression was terrible and Dando’s is clearly better but where’s the originality? Furthermore, isn’t Evan’s oversized coat derivative of the Nirvana lead singer’s fashion style? Too harsh? Maybe. Perhaps Evan should have stuck with his Beatles head wobble impression instead of branching out into Mozza territory.

One final thing. At the start of the performance, he shouts over to the bass player “louder man!”. Those instruments weren’t actually plugged in surely?

To the Breakers and guess what? We begin with the aforementioned Nirvana! Just like Guns N’ Roses before them the other week, here was a band still releasing tracks as singles from an album that was well over a year old. “In Bloom” was the fourth such single taken from “Nevermind” and there is a school of thought (championed by Courtney Love no less) that this should have been the lead single from the album on the basis that it’s a much better song than “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. For what it’s worth, I think she’s right. She also once said that “Hungry Like The Wolf” is the best song ever written so she knows her stuff. Ahem.

The Ed Sullivan Show pastiche video works pretty well as it remains faithful to the source material and it’s that element of realism that completes the humour of Nirvana as clean cut boys à la those lovable moptops.

“In Bloom” peaked at No 28.

OK. Just when you think the bottom of the barrel can’t be scraped any harder…We really did witness some truly ghastly acts in the UK charts during 1992. Wrestlers (WWF Superstars) strippers (The Chippendales), two acts peddling singles based on computer games (Tetris and Ambassadors Of Funk) and now this. After Shut Up And Dance delivered “Raving I’m Raving” based on “Walking In Memphis” by Marc Cohn earlier in the year, now came “We Are Raving – The Anthem” by Slipstreem. Using Rod Stewart’s “Sailing” as its blueprint, this load of arse juice was an abysmal idea that sounded even worse. Who were these berks and why didn’t Rod but an injunction out to stop this atrocity? After all, it’s what Marc Cohn did. I’ve got no words left for this type of garbage. Next!

As well as being remembered for some terrifyingly dreadful chart hits, 1992 will also rightly be recalled as the year of The Wedding Present “Hit Parade” project. Twelve singles in one calendar year and all made the Top 40 meaning that they equalled Elvis Presley’s 1957 record. Except their achievement was better as they wrote all their songs whereas Elvis’s were written for him. They did however do some cover versions for the B-sides including for the final release “No Christmas” which had Elton John’s “Step Into Christmas” on the flip and a fine version it is too.

The highest chart position attained by any of the “Hit Parade” singles was No 10 while the lowest was No 26. It still stands up as quite the achievement I think.

Now working in a shop in Rochdale at this time, I lived in hope that the next artist might pop in one day as she grew up there from the age of 11. Sadly, the day Lisa Stansfield glided into the store was my day off! FFS!

Anyway, there was much hope that her latest single “Someday (I’m Coming Back)” was going to be a huge seller coming as it did from the soundtrack to The Bodyguard. It was certainly a decent sized hit peaking as it did at No 10 but there was genuine belief that it could have been a Top 3 contender. I have to say it seemed a bit lacklustre to me. Maybe it was overshadowed by all those Whitney Houston power ballads that packed out the rest of the album. Lisa’s track was the only one to be released as a single from the soundtrack that wasn’t by Whitney so I guess she deserves some kudos for that.

Do you think that Lisa was having a bad hair day when this performance was recorded? How else do you explain her decision to wear a cat burglar’s hat otherwise?

Now I’m not sure why the TOTP producers chose to show this next video instead of the official promo for “Heal The World” by Michael Jackson. It’s a concert clip from the Dangerous World Tour. I’ve put in some footage from the Bucharest date below but I don’t know if that’s the one shown on the programme. It’s looks like Jacko’s wearing the same jacket in both so I’ll go with that. The five UK dates had already been and gone so it can’t have been to increase ticket sales and in any case, wouldn’t all the gigs have sold out almost immediately anyway?

I guess if anyone had the best shot of beating Whitney to the Xmas No 1 it was Michael Jackson. Possibly the most famous person on the planet and with a huge, goodwill to all ballad, it seemed like a decent shout. And yet I never felt like he would actually do it. Maybe that was purely based on what we were selling in the Rochdale store but I just never doubted it would be a Houston Xmas chart topper. For once, I was right.

It’s a second medley on the show tonight. After Gloria Estefan earlier, here come Boney M. Ever wondered why they were called Boney M? Here’s @TOTPFacts with the answer…

Frank Farian named Boney M after Boney, an Aussie TV drama about a half-aboriginal detective called Bonaparte. The series featured a white actor badly “]
blacked-up in the title role, and was a bit of a joke in Germany. https://t.co/qXtEsd7L4w #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) May 20, 2022

I remember Boney! It used to be on Sunday afternoons on ITV in the Midlands where I grew up. When it came on, me and my brother used to say (in a very un-PC way) “first he was fatty, then he was skinny, now he’s Boney”. We thought we were hilarious!

Their 1992 “Megamix” was the third such single released by the band – or whatever assembled line up passed for the band at that time – in the last four years. This was by far the biggest hit though peaking at No 7.

It’s still there, it will be the Xmas No 1 and it will continue to occupy top spot in the charts for weeks to come. Whitney Houston’s cover of “I Will Always Love You” was a sales phenomenon. It was on the way to being just the second single in the last six years to reach one million sales in the UK. It would end up selling over 1,550,000 copies. The Bodyguard film wasn’t even released in the UK until Boxing Day. Presumably that gave it a second wind sales wise (as if it needed it).

Mr Blobby is back to say goodbye just before the credits roll. One year later he would be on the show again, this time with the Xmas No 1 crown. What a time to be alive!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	The Shamen	Phorever People	Nope
2	Madonna	Deeper And Deeper	No
3	East Side Beat	Alive And Kicking	Never!
4	Gloria Estefan	Miami Hit Mix	Nope
5	The Lemonheads	Mrs Robinson	Liked it, didn’t buy it
6	Nirvana	In Bloom	Ditto
7	Slipstreem	We Are Raving – The Anthem	NOOO!
8	The Wedding Present	No Christmas	No but I have their version of Step Into Christmas on something
9	Lisa Stansfield	Someday (I’m Coming Back)	I did not
10	Michael Jackson	Heal The World	No but I had a promo copy of HIStory with it on
11	Boney M	Megamix	No but my wife’s first ever album purchase was Nightflight To Venus
12	Whitney Houston	I Will Always Love You	No but god knows how many I sold that Christmas

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/m0017ftn/top-of-the-pops-17121992

TOTP 10 DEC 1992

Posted on May 23, 2022 by 80stastic

When I was a lad (can’t believe I’ve started a post with that phrase!) things seemed straightforward, linear even. Timelines of events were uncomplicated. Things happened then finished. Then something else happened. What on earth am I talking about? Well, I’m thinking about musical movements.

When I was growing up in the 70s, it seemed to me that flavours of music would rise to popularity, burn brightly and then fizzle out whereupon something else would take over. So glam rock was prevalent from 1971 to 1975 approximately before punk rock pressed the reset button in a whirlwind of filth and fury. By 1978 with The Sex Pistols in disarray, punk had served its purpose and was superseded by New Wave and a Mod revival. When that bit the dust the New Romantics took centre stage with swagger and outrageous outfits. With the pin up boys of that movement aspiring to be more than cult status, New Pop was born with Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet and Culture Club dominating the charts. See what I mean? Yes, that’s a very simplistic view that could easily be debunked I’m sure (where was disco in all this for example?) but I’m going with it to enable my point. Talking of which, what is my point exactly? It’s this. By the time we got to late 1992, what musical movement were we in because I have no idea going by the running order on this edition of TOTP. Yes, obviously we had seen a dance explosion happen from at least 1988 onwards (some may even date it as early as 1986) but by this point it was the movement was so refracted that there was a kaleidoscope of sub genres. I remember whilst working for Our Price in the 90s a memo coming out from head office entitled ‘scary areas of your shop and how to deal with them’. First on the list was how to classify the dance collections section of the racks, so unwieldy had that section become.

Anyway, back to TOTP and this show featured a boy band, a Motown superstar, a part of the establishment that was into his fifth decade of hit records, the Queen of Latino pop, a posthumous release from one of the biggest and most flamboyant rock stars ever, some US R’n’B a cappella style, some indie rock, a collaboration between some Manc electronic dance pioneers and the kings of Brummie reggae and…descending from a parallel universe a troupe of wrestlers! Pick the bones out of that! What the Hell was going on?! Let’s find out..,

We start with that boy band – Take That. After having lived with the next big thing tag for a year or so without delivering on it, these lads had finally started turning potential and promotion into sales. Their cover of Barry Manilow’s “Could It Be Magic” was their fourth chart hit of the year and this one was the biggest of the lot, ascending ultimately to a high of No 3. Now Take That weren’t the first teen sensation to do a cover version – I’m thinking The Bay City Rollers doing “Bye Bye Baby” by The Four Seasons for example – but this did seem to set a template for the conveyor belt of acts that followed in their wake. Look at this lot:

911 – “More Than A Woman” by the Bee Gees
A1 – “Take On Me” by A-ha
Boyzone – “Father And Son” by Cat Stevens
Five – “We Will Rock You” by Queen
Let Loose – “Make It With You” by Bread
OTT – “Let Me In” by The Osmonds
Upside Down – “If You Leave Me Now” by Chicago
Westlife – “Mandy” by Barry Manilow

All fine versions I’m sure you’ll agree! To be fair though, Take That’s cover of “Could It Be Magic” was pretty good I think although their reworking of it had more to do with Donna Summer’s 1976 disco rendition than the Manilow version. I seem to recall it being received pretty well as an unexpectedly strong version which wrong footed most people’s expectations of what they would do next. Sure it was a cover but of a different flavour to their take on “It Only Takes A Minute” by Tavares that gave them their first big chart hit. Should they have reversed their release schedule and put “Could It Be Magic” out earlier and then gone big time on ballad “A Million Love Songs” for the Xmas No 1? For what it’s worth I think they got it the right way round.

This was the first time that Robbie Williams took on the vocals on his own. Little did we know what was to come in just a few short years. Gary Barlow is demoted to rank and file status – he’s on backing dancer/ vocals duties with the rest of the group. You can almost see him counting the dance steps in his head. I’d watch your back Gary if I was you.

Despite having passed away in late 1991, Freddie Mercury still retained a massive presence into 1992. In April, The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert was held at Wembley stadium and in November came “The Freddie Mercury Album”, a collection of his solo work released to commemorate the anniversary of his death. It was a nice idea for the fanbase and no doubt record label Parlophone always had it in mind to ring every drop of revenue they could out of his existing catalogue. What I didn’t quite get though was how they were going to put together a Best Of out of such scant source material. Freddie only released one, pure solo album in his lifetime which was 1985’s “Mr Bad Guy”. Yes, there was that “Barcelona” album with Montserrat Caballé but who, apart from superfans, really knows anything from that but the title track? What else is there? Well, he had a hit single in 1984 called “Love Kills” from Giorgio Moroder’s restoration of Fritz Lang’s 1927 classic silent film Metropolis. Then there’s his No 4 hit from 1987 which was his cover of The Platters oldie “The Great Pretender”. And…erm…oh yes! There’s “I was Born To Love You”, the only single to chart from that “Mr Bad Guy” album. Erm…except that isn’t on “The Freddie Mercury Album”! I presume it was a licensing issue as “Mr Bad Guy” was released by CBS rather than Queen’s EMI label. There are other tracks from it on “The Freddie Mercury Album” but maybe CBS/Sony didn’t want to give away the rights to its (then) best known tune.

Given all the above, Parlophone chose to promote the album with “In My Defence”. This was a track from the Dave Clark musical Time. This was the production that had already given us Top 40 singles by Cliff Richard (“She’s So Beautiful”), Julian Lennon (“Because”) and indeed Freddie himself who took “Time” to No 32 in 1986. I guess Parlophone could have rereleased “The Great Pretender” (which they ultimately did after “In My Defence”) but not “Barcelona” which had already been re-issued for the 1992 Olympics. “In My Defence” it was though and it’s a perfect vehicle for Freddie’s voice, all overblown drama and huge notes but it works pretty well. It could easily have been a Queen composition really. The single went Top 10 but there was an even bigger hit to come from the album the following year that had been hiding in plain sight but that’s for a future post…

https://youtu.be/44eEOAEC5z8

Something from the US chart now as we see a song that would end up being a big hit in the UK four years down the line but not for the original artist. I don’t recall the Shai version of “If I Ever Fall In Love” but then, despite this TOTP appearance, it only made it to No 36 in our charts. In the US however, it was a huge hit staying at No 2 for eight weeks!

Was the version they perform here the version on the record? A cappella I mean?

*checks Spotify*

I found two versions. One is the TOTP version and the other has a bit of instrumentation on it but not much. I’m not mad on a cappella I have to say and Shai haven’t made me change my mind. What was the deal with the guy with his coat half on and half off?!

Oh that version that was a hit in 1996? That was by East 17 and Gabrielle of course. They changed the title to “If I Ever”, dropped the a cappella style and took it all the way to No 2. Don’t think it stayed there for eight weeks though. I didn’t like that version either.

Right it’s time for those wrestlers! Despite the charts having been infiltrated in recent weeks by novelty tripe like computer games tunes “Tetris” and “Supermarioland” and a ‘song’ by stripper troupe The Chippendales, it seemed 1992 hadn’t done with us yet in the utter shite stakes. You may not be surprised that WWF Superstars was the idea of Simon Cowell. Here’s @TOTPFacts:

"Slam Jam" was Simon Cowell's idea: "I read in one of our newspapers that [The WWF] sold out 82,000 seats in 27 minutes. Hang on, there's not a rock band in the world that can do that. I also found out that they were selling about two and a half million videos a year…" #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) May 13, 2022

"… It didn't take a lot of time to realise that if they were selling that many seats and that many videos, there would be a lot of kids who would want to buy an album from the wrestlers as well." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) May 13, 2022

Hmm. It reminds me of a scene from one of my favourite ever films Stardust starring David Essex which tells the story of the rise of fictional rock star Jim MacLaine. After he has split from his band and gone solo, MacLaine’s manager Mike (played by Adam Faith) plans a worldwide TV and cinema simultaneous broadcast of a concert to promote MacLaine’s latest album. A conversation between Mike and Jim’s American manager Porter Lee Austin (played by Larry Hagman) plays out like this:

Mike: See, what we do is this. We get the cinemas and TV companies all over the world to put up a big enough advance to cover the cost of the album and the show. Well, I mean that way we can’t lose. I mean…If they can pick up money putting on boxing shows, just think what we can pick up putting Jim MacLaine on satellite. For every one boxing fan there must be at least 5,000 pop fans. I mean, to coincide with the concert what we can do is put the album out worldwide. Well, just think of all that promotion Porter Lee. It’s all or nothing this one Porter…

Porter Lee: What kind of concert Mike?

Mike: Don’t worry about the concert eh? Just leave that to me. I tell you one thing, it be like something you’ve ever seen before

Porter Lee: That’s a pretty good idea Mike. Maybe I can do something.

Mike: He’ll be bigger than Aldof Hitler after this lot.

OK, we probably didn’t need the Hitler reference but you get my drift. The WWF Superstars single was called “Slam Jam” (presumably after a wrestling move?) and it was, of course, dreadful. Produced by Mike Stock and Pete Waterman (it just gets worse doesn’t it?), the vinyl came in a poster sleeve bag as I recall (Cowell never misses a marketing trick) and it would reach No 4 in the charts. I’m guessing it was bought by 10 year old boys because if not, I have no idea how to explain what occurred here.

“Connecticut, we have a problem”. Host Mark Franklin advises us that there was meant to be an exclusive satellite performance by Diana Ross of her latest single “If We Hold On Together” from Connecticut but technical problems have put paid to that so we have to make do with the official video instead. To be honest, I’m not too fussed either way.

Now this was taken from the soundtrack to the Universal Pictures animated film The Land Before Time but I’m confused because it came out in 1988 so why was a song from it a hit in the UK four years later? I can only assume it had a terrestrial TV premiere around this time. Another thing that’s confusing me is what this video is that TOTP are showing? I can’t find it on YouTube. The only one I came across featured wall to wall scenes from the film whereas the TOTP version also includes footage of Diana herself. To add to the mystery, Wikipedia says there was no official video for the song. Maybe there wasn’t in 1988 but there was in 1992? I refer you to my earlier comment. I’m not really fussed either way.

As for the song, it sounded exactly as you expected it would. Basically “Somewhere Out There” from An American Tail. “If We Hold On Together” peaked at No 11.

One of the surprise breakout stars of 1992 were KWS who bagged an unlikely No 1 with their cover of KC And The Sunshine Band’s “Please Don’t Go”. A Top 10 follow up (another cover of George McRae’s “Rock Me Baby”) consolidated their success. On reflection, KWS were like the soul version of Undercover. However, by the end of the year their shtick was starting to wear thin. Yet another cover version was chosen as their third single release of the year – “Hold Back The Night” by The Trammps – but to spice it up a bit, they (or more likely their management) decided to team up with the original hitmakers on the track.

Now it’s easy in this performance to see who are The Trammps as they’re the older fellas who have taken their tuxedos and bow ties out of the back of the wardrobe. I’m assuming the KWS guys are the two on keyboards at either end of The Trammps but are they ‘K’, ‘W’ or ‘S’? Remember that their band name came from the initials of the band’s surnames – King / Williams / St. Joseph. And where was the one that wasn’t there?

“Hold Back The Night” peaked at No 30.

Ah the Breakers. Marvellous! After the Boney M “Megamix” single last week, there’s another one tonight courtesy of Gloria Estefan. Known as “Miami Hit Mix” in the UK, this was to promote Gloria’s first “Greatest Hits” album which was a huge seller over Xmas reaching No 2 and eventually going triple platinum in the UK. I recall that by opening time on Xmas Eve, the only chart stock line that we had ran out of in the Our Price in Rochdale where I was working was the cassette version of the album. We knew we had some on order that were due to come in on the day but the record company were out of stock when the delivery came in. Ian the store manager wasn’t too arsed saying “nobody will find it anywhere else in Rochdale today”. He was probably right. There wasn’t much competition record shop wise in Rochdale. There was somewhere in the Exchange shopping centre but it was very hit and miss and the manager of the place was obsessed with our shop and used to buy his records from us!

Anyway, back to Gloria and the “Miami Hit Mix”. There were five tracks in the medley from various stages of Gloria’s career. You can tell that as they were released under three different Gloria monikers:

Song	Gloria Moniker
Dr Beat	Miami Sound Machine
Conga	Miami Sound Machine
Rhythm Is Gonna Get You	Gloria Estefan and Miami Sound Machine
1-2-3	Gloria Estefan and Miami Sound Machine
Get On Your Feet	Gloria Estefan

As with Boney M, the Xmas party market meant that sales of the single were brisk enough to send it into the Top 10. Also like Boney M, it was the last time Gloria ventured so high in the UK charts.

Fed up of all the cover versions in the charts? Tough because here comes another one courtesy of The Lemonheads. I had no idea who this lot were at the time but their cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s “Mrs Robinson” sounded pretty cool to me back then. According to some of the online reviews I have found, I was in the minority. Ultimateclassicrock.com describe it as ‘terrible’ and ‘meh’. Even Evan Dando himself can’t like it that much as he is on record as hating the original and indeed Paul Simon. So why was their cover even recorded then?

Apparently it was to celebrate the 25th anniversary home video release of The Graduate, the film it features in. The Lemonheads cover brought the band more coverage and success than they’d ever had up to that point. The band had already released four albums to little fanfare since their formation in 1986. The first three had been on indie label Taang! before they were picked up by major Atlantic for their fourth “Lovey”. However, it was fifth album “It’s A Shame About Ray” that would see them gain much wider recognition. Initial pressings of the album didn’t include the “Mrs Robinson” cover but its success meant that the album was re-released with its omission now corrected. It would achieve gold status sales in the UK and a rerelease of the title track brought the band a second Top 40 single the following year.

The pinnacle of the band’s success came with the release of the “Come On Feel The Lemonheads” album in October of 1993 which made the Top 5 in the UK charts. I had transferred from the Our Price in Rochdale to the much bigger store in Stockport by that time. The manager there when I started was a guy called Paul who looked a bit like Evan Dando and certainly the image of Dando on the cover of the album bore that out. Paul moved on to HMV (or was it Virgin?) not long after I got to Stockport. On my first day I asked him what lunch he wanted to go on. He replied “lunch is for wimps”. I visibly gulped.

“Mrs Robinson” peaked at No 19.

Right, what’s this then? 808 State vs UB40? What the Hell? Electronic dance music meets reggae pop? Who’s idea was this? OK, that’s enough questions. Time for some answers. Well, I haven’t got many to be fair. This remix of the Brummies 1981 Top 10 single “One In Ten” came from the Mancs’ fourth studio album “Gorgeous” which featured other guest artists like Ian McCulloch. Why they chose to tackle UB40’s unemployment referencing classic I’m not sure. Judging by some of the comments on YouTube against the single’s video, people are very divided on whether the remix was genius or a crime. For me, I’m always going to favour the original.

The remix of “One In Ten” peaked at No 17. 808 State would not return to the Top 20 for another five years when they did so with another collaboration, this time with James Dean Bradfield of Manic Street Preachers on “Lopez”.

After all the cover versions and medleys, here’s a proper, original song courtesy of Madonna. I say original but “Deeper And Deeper” does delve into one of her most iconic hits when it morphs into “Vogue” in the coda. Oh, and there’s a “La Isla Bonita” borrowing bridge that features flamenco guitar and castanets. And…it does pinch some lyrics from “Do-Re-Mi” from The Sound Of Music. Apart from that though, totally original.

“Deeper And Deeper” peaked at No 6.

There’s only two weeks to Xmas so Cliff Richard is making his move for the festive No 1 with “I Still Believe In You”. He resorts to his usual over emoting performance tricks that he’s been peddling for years. I’m sure it’s just a case of slowing down with age but he could mix it up a bit. The other thing that doesn’t seem to have changed for years is Cliff’s hair. It seems to have been the same since the mid 80s at least. Cliff mate, it’s 1992 and you’re still sporting a mullet! Now granted I myself cultivated one during the period ‘84-‘86. Not a Chris Waddle but it was definitely long at the back. It was fashionable back then. By 1987 though, mine was gone forever. Cliff on the other hand was determined to keep the style going single handedly…erm headedly.

Cliff never did make the Xmas No 1 this year because of this next record…

A second week at No 1 for Whitney Houston with “I Will Always Love You” and I think it was becoming obvious by this point that this was no ordinary record. I don’t have actual sales figures to hand but in the Our Price in Rochdale, it felt like it was outselling everything else in the Top 5 combined. With just a couple of weeks to go to Xmas, the idea of there being a race to be the festive chart topper felt like delusion. It was never in doubt.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Take That	Could It Be Magic	Good cover but I wasn’t buying Take That thank you very much!
2	Freddie Mercury	In My Defence	I did not
3	Shai	If I Ever Fall In Love	Nah
4	WWF Superstars	Slam Jam	As if
5	Diana Ross	If We Hold On Together	Never happening
6	KWS / The Trammps	Hold Back The Night	Nope
7	Gloria Estefan	Miami Hit Mix	No
8	The Lemonheads	Mrs Robinson	Liked it, didn’t buy it
9	808 State vs UB40	One In Ten	Not for me
10	Madonna	Deeper And Deeper	Negative
11	Cliff Richard	I Still Believe In You	The feeling is not reciprocated Cliff
12	Whitney Houston	I Will Always Love You	And no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0017731/top-of-the-pops-10121992

TOTP 03 DEC 1992

Posted on May 19, 2022 by 80stastic

We’ve clicked over into December 1992 here at TOTP Rewind which means that the population would officially have been starting to get into Xmas mode. Working at the Our Price store in Rochdale, my own days were getting busier and felt very long as sales got brisker. So what were some of the albums that were doing the business as Xmas loomed 30 years ago? The Top 10 albums were made up of eight Best Of / compilations from the likes of Cher, Erasure, Genesis, Gloria Estefan and Simple Minds. Only two were proper studio albums which were “Automatic For The People” by REM and “Stars” by Simply Red which was still in the Top 10 after being the best selling album of 1991! Now I’m all for a good Best Of album but 1992’s Xmas offerings did seem quite cynical on behalf of the record companies.

Whilst the record shops were getting prepared for a frenzy of activity, something else in the world of music was coming to a full stop. Cult TV programme The Hitman And Her broadcast its final show two days after this TOTP went out. It seems odd to recall now but there was a time when TV stations didn’t broadcast all night, when there weren’t any late night schedules and when if you suffered from insomnia then there were no old episodes of Come Dine With Me to keep you company during the wee small hours. So when Pete Waterman’s nightclub based show appeared in our screens in 1988, it felt truly transformative.

Filmed on a Saturday night in various clubs throughout the UK but with a definite North/Midlands bias, it would be televised in the early hours of Sunday morning. Performing hosting duties alongside Waterman and securing her cult status amongst the UK’s young male population was Michaela Strachan. Ever the businessman, Waterman ensured that the programme showcased a number of his PWL artists as well as some of the acid house tunes that he loved. The clubbers themselves were as much the stars of the show as the hosts, with many a punter, eager to get themselves on TV, happy to embarrass themselves by participating in some ‘hilarious’ games. Some of the regular dancers on the show included a pre-Take That Jason Orange and the two blokes who weren’t the singer in naff 90s boy band 911. I wonder if any of the tunes on tonight’s TOTP made the Hitman And Her playlist?

Well, possibly this one. If you’ve finally had a hit after years of trying, what’s your next move going to be? Yes, release a very similar sounding follow up of course! OK, “Step It Up” isn’t an exact replica of “Connected” – its got a faster bpm for one thing – but it didn’t fall far from the tree. Stereo MC’s were on a roll by this point. Their third album “Connected” missed the top of the charts by one place and would go on to sell 420,000 copies. “Step It Up” was their second consecutive Top 20 single after the album title track. They were the bomb (or something). This performance is surely the mental image that most people who were around at the time would conjure up when hearing the name Stereo MC’s. The main protagonist of course is the Catweazle-esque Rob Birch. With his oversize trousers and glimpse of a bare chest, he was a Frankenstein’s monster mash up of MC Hammer and Peter Andre. Then there were his moves. The knees bent, hip swivelling action that Birch brings to the party surely influenced Vic Reeves and his thigh rubbing antics on Shooting Stars. In fact, the whole thing reminds me of our Maltese puppy rolling on his back exposing his bits when being sniffed by some of the local neighbourhood dogs. Yeah, sorry about that mental image. Anyway, you have to give it to Rob; he certainly left it all out there as it were. Here’s his take on his performance courtesy of the ever excellent @TOTPFacts:

Rob Birch on this Stereo MCs #TOTP performance: "You know you've only got three minutes to try to get the crowd going. You're like, 'I've got to go at it like hell for leather. And because you're buzzing on nerves, your voice starts jumping out of your body."
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) May 13, 2022

Rob Birch: "I could just be a bit like some kind of plant in a gale and just, like, let it all hang out… That #TOTP wasn't a pretend performance. it had a fluidity to it."
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) May 13, 2022

Letting it all hang out indeed. “Step It Up” peaked at No 12.

If it’s TOTP in 1992 then there must be a Michael Jackson video due and here comes the latest. “Heal The World” was Jacko’s fifth single released in the UK during the year and the sixth from his “Dangerous” album overall. I’m guessing this was always going to be the track released for the Xmas market given that it’s a huge, saccharine drenched ballad with oh so worthy lyrical subject matter. So about the song’s sound – you can’t ignore its similarity to “We Are The World” which Jackson co-wrote with Lionel Richie. I mean it’s essentially the same song. Supposedly though, it is the track that Jackson was most proud of. It even inspired him to create the Heal The World Foundation, a charity dedicated to improving conditions for children throughout the world. You can’t deny the philanthropy but it doesn’t make the song any more palatable.

I really remember the rather clunky and obvious design on the cover of the single of a plaster covering a crack across the globe which is held between the hands of a black child and a white child. It was one of those fold out sleeves that turns into a poster as I remember that were awful to refold once opened to its full extent.

Sensibly, the video for the song doesn’t include Jackson himself only children set against a backdrop of images depicting war, guns and even the Ku Klux Klan. The theme of healing is portrayed by the final scene of a candle lit vigil of children coming together as one. That restraint was not in evidence at the BRITS in 1996 when Jackson celebrated the receipt of his Artist Of A Generation award with a performance of “Earth Song” that depicted him as a Christ like figure surrounded by children. Thank God for Jarvis Cocker! In any other year, the mawkish song would surely have gone to No 1 but this was 1992 and it was up against the all conquering “I Will Always Love You” by Whitney Houston and had to make do with the runners up spot.

Next we have another studio performance of the reactivated “Temptation (Brothers In Rhythm remix)” by Heaven 17. There’s a couple of differences between this and the previous 19th November show turn. Firstly, Carol Kenyon has a proper name check in the title graphics this time and secondly, she’s up there belting it out alongside Glenn Gregory without the two blokes on keyboards (the titular brothers presumably) for company. Still conspicuous by his absence though is Martyn Ware. Carol and Glenn don’t really need anybody else though certainly not the former who gives a masterclass in doing a live vocal performance for TV.

The original recording of “Temptation” featured a 60 piece orchestra and I’ve heard the aforementioned Ware say in an interview how mad it was back in the early 80s that they would just say to their record label that they required the services of an orchestra to play on one track and the label didn’t bat an eyelid at the cost. The 80s really were a time of excess within the record industry it seems. The Brothers In Rhythm remix of “Temptation” peaked at No 4.

The curious case of Dina Carroll next. Curious? Well, just in the respect that her success seemed to come in stages rather than via the classic overnight sensation mode. Sort of the musical equivalent of that ref who went down in stages when pushed by Paolo Di Canio back in the 90s…

Anyway, Dina had first come to national attention as the vocalist on Quartz’s dance version of Carole King’s “It’s Too Late” in 1991. Despite that flush of success, the Quartz project fizzled out and Dina disappeared from view. Behind the scenes though, a decision by her management company to launch Dina as a solo artist led to her being signed to A&M and the following year she returned to the charts with “Ain’t No Man”. “Special Lind Of Love” replicated its predecessor’s success exactly by peaking at No 16 before this single “So Close” made it a hat trick of Top 20 hits in 1992. Pretty impressive stuff which led to host Tony Dortie describing in his intro that Dina had enjoyed “an amazing year” and that she was “definitely in contention for female vocalist of the year”.

Come January 1993 her album was released and debuted at No 2 staying in the Top 20 for six months. And yet, it seemed to me that the album only really went into hyperdrive sales wise when the sixth single “Don’t Be A Stranger” was released in the October. I’ll type that again. The sixth single which was by far the biggest of the lot taken from the album when it peaked at No 3. Now surely that is curious?! We sold loads of the album in the wake of that single. Did A&M have it up their sleeves all the time, holding it back until the optimum moment? The single was different from the album version in that it was re-recorded with added orchestra strings to give it a dramatic feel. When was that decision taken? Either they got lucky or they had a long term strategy all along. Her success in 1993 led to Dina being named Best Female Artist at the BRIT awards in 1994 – again a marker that her success came in stages with her becoming award winning a whole year after Tony Dortie’s prediction.

As for “So Close” the song, it’s pleasant enough but never had the capacity to rival the sales of “Don’t Be A Stranger”. Maybe it was meant to just keep Dina‘s profile ticking over until the album was released? Surely the clamour for the album would have increased if “Don’t Be A Stranger” had been the third single anyway? Oh I don’t know. The bottom line is that it all worked out pretty well for Dina in the end unlike Paolo Di Canio who received an eleven match ban for his shove on ref Paul Alcock.

We’re back to cramming in the Breakers again this week with four of the little blighters in total. We start with one of REM’s best known songs I’m guessing which makes me wonder why these few scant seconds are all that were ever shown of it on TOTP. “Man On The Moon” was the second single to be released from the “Automatic For The People” album and is one of those songs that just works. Beautifully.

It manages to combine genuinely eccentric lyrics with ear worm producing hooks. Nominally about surrealist performance artist Andy Kaufman with references to his Elvis impersonations and work with wrestler Fred Blassie, it also seemed to be asking the listener to open their mind to multiple different realities. What if the moon landings were fake? What if Elvis wasn’t dead? Ultimately it returns to Kaufman and the conspiracy theory that he faked his own death. It’s a heady concoction. The black and white video with the image of Michael Stipe wearing a cowboy hat walking nonchalantly down a desert road before hitching a ride with a truck is in turns memorable and befittingly random. The original demo without lyrics was known by the band as “C to D slide” due to the opening which includes that shift of chords. When I attended a guitar class a few years ago, this was one of the songs we learned including that slide. It’s actually OK to play but does have some quick chord changes. By the way, I’m really not much of a guitarist. Just a chord strummer really. “Man On The Moon” peaked at No 18.

Another huge band that we only got to see a glimpse of as a Breaker were U2. To be fair they were promoting a fifth single from “Achtung Baby”, an album that had been released almost exactly a year ago so maybe they were pushing it a bit. Did the TOTP producers think that a fifth single from a year old album wasn’t a big enough story? It hardly qualified as an ‘exclusive’. Indeed, perhaps the real reason that a fifth single was released was to complete the last piece of the jigsaw that formed a picture of the band driving a Trabant car when you put all five single covers together. A nice bit of marketing by record label Island there.

The single in question was “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses” which I always quite liked. Apparently the gestation of the song had been quite laboured and the band had several failed attempts before they laid down a version they could live with. I always presumed that the song’s title was inspired by The Rolling Stones track “Wild Horses” but I haven’t seen anything online that comes anywhere near confirming that.

The singles from “Achtung Baby” achieved the following chart positions:

1 – 13 – 7 – 8 – 14

It’s not a bad haul for an album that was seen as a gamble in many ways with it being a definite shift in musical direction from where their success had led the band. It remains their second biggest selling album after “The Joshua Tree”.

Think of Xmas and then think of Cliff Richard. What song is currently running around your head? “Mistletoe And Wine”? How about “Saviour’s Day”? Bet it isn’t this one. It tends to get forgotten given the success of those aforementioned festive chart toppers and their ubiquity in Xmas playlists but Cliff didn’t just do those two Chrimbo tunes. There was “Little Town” in 1982, “We Should Be Together” nine years later and this one – “I Still Believe In You”.

This completely passed me by despite me working in a record shop at the time and despite it going Top 10. That’s probably because it had about as much staying power as wrapping paper come mid morning on Xmas day. In fact, it hardly even qualifies as a Xmas song with the only reference to Yuletide in the lyrics being one mention of Santa Claus. Just terrible. Cliff didn’t give up on the concept of making festive records though. In 1999, he scored an unexpected No 1 with “The Millennium Prayer”, in 2003 went Top 5 with “Santa’s List” and in 2006 got to No 2 with “21st Century Christmas”. There have also been numerous chart re-entries for “Mistletoe And Wine”, “Saviour’s Day” and even “I Still Believe In You” down the years when December rolls around once more.

The final Breaker comes from Rod Stewart and his cover of “Tom Traubert’s Blues (Waltzing Matilda)” by Tom Waits. We saw this the other week as an ‘exclusive’ live by satellite performance and the video here looks very similar to that as it’s just Rod wandering around an empty stage with a solitary piano player for company. I defy anybody to watch the video in full and be able to look at anything other than Rod’s beard for the whole four and a half minutes.

What on earth was this all about?! Boney M on TOTP?! In the 90s?! Well, it’s a straightforward answer. It was clearly another case of money for old rope. Record label Arista released this “Megamix” single with an eye on the Xmas party scene figuring the UK’s work force, pissed up and ready to party, wouldn’t be able to resist these 70’s tunes all over again. And so it came to pass that the single – a medley of “Rivers Of Babylon”, “Sunny” and “Daddy Cool” – returned Boney M to the UK Top 10 for the first time since 1979. I say Boney M but was this really them? Where was the guy with the mad Afro (Bobby Farrell) who used to leap about all over the place like he’d sat on an ants nest? Yes, there was a guy in the line up doing his best impression of Farrell but it’s clearly not him. In fact, there’s only the lead singer up there on stage that looks vaguely familiar. A bit of research tells me that it’s original member Liz Mitchell doing the singing but the rest of the group were just some randoms that were drafted in to promote the single. In an act of utter shamelessness / good business practice depending on your point of view, a cash-in “Greatest Hits” album was released early the following year which made the Top 20.

Apparently there were a number of different touring line ups of Boney M after the original line up was finally disbanded in 1986. I know! Boney M were still a thing in 1986?! They were not alone in this of course. There are plenty of examples of concurrent versions of groups following the disintegration of the originals. Off the top of my head there’s been The Temptations, Bucks Fizz, The Bay City Rollers and more recently UB40. All three female members of the original line up are still with us though sadly Bobby Farrell died of heart failure in 2010 while on tour with his version of Boney M. Unbelievably, he died on the same date and in the same city (St Petersburg) as Rasputin who was of course the inspiration behind one of the band’s biggest hits and whom Farrell used to dress up as when performing the song.

1992 had been a busy old time for Madonna. She starred in a well received film in A League Of Their Own and wrote a hit single for its soundtrack. She founded her own entertainment company called Maverick with production arms in records, film, music publishing, book publishing and merchandising. Not content with that, she released her controversial coffee table book Sex and her fifth studio album in “Erotica”. She was only 34 at the time and yet still had been a global superstar for nearly a decade.

“Deeper And Deeper” was the second single taken from “Erotica” and seems to have undergone some retrospective critical revisionism. It seems to me at the time that it didn’t create much of a fuss – how could it compete with Sex and the “Erotica” single for fuss to be fair? It now though seems to be recognised as one of Madonna’s better tracks. Indeed some may even say a banger. Certainly it was a return to that more mainstream dance sound on which she made her name but also embracing the house music movement. I have to say it never did that much for me though. At least the Andy Warhol inspired video with Madonna playing an Edie Sedgwick style character isn’t laced with whips and dominatrix style imagery like those for her recent singles “Erotica” and “Justify My Love” though there is some very loaded and deliberate peeling of bananas. “Deeper And Deeper” peaked at No 6.

This seems like a bit of overkill on behalf of the TOTP producers. This is the second time Simply Red have been on the show with two different tracks from a live EP recorded at a jazz festival. Really? “The Montreux EP” had four songs on it and after “Drowning In My Own Tears” was on a couple of weeks ago, this time we get “Lady Godiva’s Room”. Apparently this song had originally been released as the B-side to the band’s 1987 single “Infidelity” which kind of makes sense as it really sounds like B-side material to me. Uninspiring and a bit of a dirge, I was surprised that the EP got as high as it did (No 11). Make the most of this appearance though as we won’t be seeing Hucknall and co again for nearly three years (hurray!) when they will return with 1995’s “Life” album including No 1 single “Fairground”.

Right, strap in for a ten week run at the top of the charts for “I Will Always Love You” by Whitney Houston. Not quite Bryan Adams but still ten weeks of having to find something to say about this song. I’m going to start off by not talking about the song but about the film it was taken from. The Bodyguard seems to get quite a bad rap from critics but I don’t mind it actually. My theory is that the negativity stems from perceptions of Kevin Costner or more specifically his lack of acting ability. OK, he’s done some turkeys like Waterworld and The Postman but he’s also been in some decent films. His run of four films in the late 80s of The Untouchables, No Way Out, Bull Durham and Field Of Dreams is impressive and then there was Dances With Wolves which won seven Oscars including Best Director for Costner. Not too shabby. I actually think he’s decent in The Bodyguard too.

Maybe a lot of the anti-Costner stuff comes from his lack of an English accent in Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves (which is ludicrous) and Madonna sticking her fingers down her throat in reaction to him describing her show as ‘neat’ in her documentary In Bed With Madonna. Seems a bit unfair.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Stereo MC’s	Step It Up	No
2	Michael Jackson	Heal The World	Nah
3	Heaven 17	Temptation (Brothers In Rhythm remix)	No but my wife has the Luxury Of Life album
4	Dina Carroll	So Close	…but no cigar. No
5	REM	Man On The Moon	No but I had the Automatic For The People album
6	U2	Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses	No but I had the Achtung Baby album
7	Cliff Richard	I Still Believe In You	…but I don’t believe in you Cliff. No
8	Rod Stewart	Tom Traubert’s Blues (Waltzing Matilda)	No but I think my wife has the Tom Waits album it’s from
9	Boney M	Megamix	No but one of the first albums my wife ever had was Night Flight To Venus
10	Madonna	Deeper And Deeper	Nope
11	Simply Red	The Montreux EP	Never!
12	Whitney Houston	I Will Always Love You	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/m001772z/top-of-the-pops-03121992

TOTP 19 NOV 1992

Posted on May 8, 2022 by 80stastic

As Springtime approaches its end for another year, back in 1992 and the world of TOTP repeats, Xmas is coming into view. Bonfire night has been and gone and for all of us working in retail back then, the days were getting busier. I was working as Assistant Manager in the Our Price store in Rochdale having been promoted for the first time in my working life a couple of months previously. Despite the lengthy commute from our rented flat in Manchester, I was enjoying the job immensely. After previous manager Adrian had departed for pastures new (the Manchester Virgin megastore as I recall), a new boss arrived in the form of Ian from the Burnley store. Ian had worked at Rochdale before so knew the score which was helpful for the wet behind the ears me. Ian turned out to be a top bloke and one of the best people to work alongside. Around this time we recruited two Xmas temps called Chris and Lee who fitted in perfectly with the rest of the team. We were known as the ‘good time’ store by the Area Manager as every time he rang us, he could hear laughter in the background. It couldn’t have gone much better for a first time managerial role for me. Sadly, it also lulled me into a false sense of security that all shops were like this. There were darker times ahead in other stores.

That’s enough about my personal circumstances for now though. You’re not here for that. On with the show! One of the breakout stars of 1991 had been Cathy Dennis who had stepped out of D-Mob’s shadows into a solo spotlight to notch up four Top 20 singles and a Top 3 album in the UK and a pair of Top 10 hits in the US. Once you’ve ridden so high of course, the challenge is to stay there. Her initial success had been based on out and out dance tunes like “Touch Me (All Night Long)” and “Just Another Dream” but in the fast moving world of early 90s dance music, was it wise to just repeat that formula or should she go in another direction? After all, she had dabbled with balladry on hit single “Too Many Walls”. If it’s not broken, why fix it though? In the end she kind of fudged it with the single “Irresistible”. Both uptempo but with a definite pop touch it kind of fell between two stools. Taken from sophomore album “Into The Skyline”, it ended up sounding like Amy Grant’s “Baby Baby”. Pleasant enough but so, so lightweight as to be almost ephemeral, disappearing from your memory banks as soon as the last beat had sounded.

Chart wise it did OK returning Cathy to the Top 40 over here though it stalled at No 61 in the US. However its No 24 peak made it the biggest hit of four singles taken from the album. Despite the absence of any monster hits to promote it, “Into The Skyline” managed to go Top 10 which surprised me as I thought it had disappeared without trace. Talking of disappearing, what was the score with Cathy’s jumper in this performance? Its threadbare, tatty appearance suggests she may have had a case of moths in her wardrobe.

Now when I saw this next track on the show’s running list, I assumed they were carrying on with the nostalgia section which had been used in recent weeks to promote the 1,500th show even though that particular milestone had been passed last week. However I was wrong in my assumption as the retro clip of “I Got You Babe” by Sonny & Cher was actually in the album chart slot to promote Cher’s “Greatest Hits: 1965-1992” which was at No 1. Though there had been Cher Best Of albums in the past, there hadn’t been one since 1974 and so this one that had grouped together all her soft rock hits of the late 80s to ‘92 was justified I guess though maybe not ancient. Only four tracks predated the 80s although she had done brand new recordings of some covers from before then. The majority of the album though was made up of hits from her later successful albums like “Heart Of Stone” and “Love Hurts”.

And yet…TOTP chose her most well known song with one time partner Sonny Bono to broadcast. Maybe the producers felt that there hadn’t been enough distance of time since her most recent hits or perhaps they’d had good feedback on the nostalgia section? Either way, “I Got You Babe” was not given an official re-release at this time so the choice presumably was the producers?

I never liked this song much probably because of UB40 and Chrissie Hynde’s lame cover in 1985 or possibly because of its explainable but irritating overuse in Groundhog Day.

Another oldie next as we welcome back Heaven 17 to the show for the first time in eight years. Yes, incredibly we hadn’t seen these Sheffield electro pioneers on TOTP since they performed “This Is Mine” in 1984. To be fair, that was the last time they’d had a Top 40 hit in this country so I guess it’s not that surprising.

After the “How Men Are” album from which that single came had run its course, the group had gone into a commercial collapse. Mid and late 80s albums “Pleasure One” and the spookily entitled “Teddy Bear, Duke & Psycho” had missed the charts completely but suddenly they were back! Why? Well, I’d like to be able to say it was due to the public rediscovering them due to some brilliant new material they’d released but sadly it was, like Cher, due to a Greatest Hits album. “Higher And Higher: The Best Of Heaven 17” didn’t do nearly as well as Cher’s peaking at a lowly No 31 despite it being a reasonable retrospective covering all their singles plus a few album tracks and the inclusion of a Brothers In Rhythm remix of their biggest hit “Temptation”. Well, it was 1992 after all.

That remix nearly matched the success of the original peaking just two places shy of the 1983 version’s No 2 position. I know it’s a great track and I love “The Luxury Gap” album but I still found it surprising and confusing that it could be a hit all over again nine years on. 1983 felt like forever ago. I’d been a 15 year old who’d never had a girlfriend back then. I was now 24 and had been married for two years. I guess it must have been the Brothers In Rhythm association that sold it to the masses. Don’t get me wrong, I was happy to see it back in the charts it’s just that those 1983 memories of it were so strong and definitive that this new version almost felt wrong somehow.

Another dance remix of “(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang” returned Heaven 17 to the Top 40 (just!) the following year but that would prove to be their final chart entry though they are now ironically a big live draw – they never toured at all during their glory years.

Something that you very rarely used to see on TOTP but which seemed to creep in more and more during this era of the show was a single that wasn’t a hit. We have another example here as Madness release a live version of the old Jimmy Cliff song “The Harder They Come”. Taken from their live album “Madstock!” which captured their legendary live shows at Finsbury Park in August of this year, it failed to make the Top 40 peaking at No 44. After managing to squeeze three more hits out of their back catalogue already in 1992 with rereleased singles to promote their “Divine Madness” Best Of album, maybe they thought another hit just before Xmas was a shoo-in?

Quite why this performance comes from Red Square, Moscow seems to be lost in the mists of time. It doesn’t add much to proceedings apart from some obligatory Russian Ushanka hats being worn by the band and some half hearted attempts at traditional Russian dancing which almost allows Suggs and Chas Smash to fulfil the prophecy of the song title. I guess Saint Basil’s Cathedral in the background must make for one of the most impressive TOTP backdrops ever though.

Wait, what? I’m sure I’ve already announced at least twice before in this blog that this must be the final TOTP appearance for The Pasadenas but here they are yet again! This time though is the last time and I think that they knew the game was up. Why? Well, they’d resorted to a cover version to reverse the downturn in their commercial fortunes, that well known and used trick for dredging up a hit when your career depends on it. What makes it even more desperate is that they’d already released a whole album of cover versions earlier in the year called “Yours Sincerely”. They pulled it off once- “I’m Doing Fine Now” was a Top 5 hit for them – but subsequent single releases from it had bought diminishing returns. So when the cover version technique ran out of steam, surely you don’t try and rectify it by doing another cover version do you? You do if you’re The Pasadenas as their version of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together” did make the charts (unlike Madness and “The Harder They Come”) but it was only delaying the inevitable. A No 22 hit wasn’t enough to stop them being dropped by Columbia/Sony Music and they ignored the advice of their last ever hit single and disbanded a couple of years later.

In a frankly bizarre coincidence, their last time on the show was to perform a song that had a link to a band making their first appearance in eight years. Heaven 17’s Martyn Ware and Glenn Gregory both performed on Tina Turner’s career resurrecting version of “Let’s Stay Together” in 1983. Indeed Ware also helped produce it.

Some Breakers next starting with INXS and “Taste It” who were on the show two weeks ago in their first ever in person appearance. This time it’s just the promo video though.

I haven’t got that much else to say about this one other than I really like the fact that the band used the same font for the parent album “Welcome To Wherever You Are” and all the singles from it. A simple yet effective band of white across the cover with the title of the album/single in black and the band’s name in red. It reminds me of those label printers you got in the 70s where you pushed the sticky backed tape through the device, selected the letter you wanted (normally via a wheel) and then literally punched the impression onto the tape.

The Prodigy are next with “Out Of Space” and I was surprised to discover that this short clip in the Breakers was its only time in the show given the success the last fifteen months had brought them. In that time they’d had No 2 and No 3 hits plus a further Top 20 entry and their debut album “Experience” had been released to great acclaim. “Out Of Space” would add another Top 5 single to that haul.

Featuring samples from Max Romeo and Ultramagnetic MCs, the track cemented the band’s status as premier league electronic rave pioneers. That was maybe something that had appeared unlikely when they first appeared with the public information film sampling single “Charly” which saw them cast initially as novelty record merchants. They were still four years away though from being the heavy techno behemoths of “Firestarter” and “Breathe”. Did anyone see that coming? Or the ostriches?

The other week I noted how Metallica were still releasing singles from an album that had been out for well over a year. This week we have another example of a hard rock band doing exactly the same thing – step forward Guns N’ Roses. Their two “Use Your Illusion” albums had been released on the same day back in September 1991 yet five single releases across both albums later, here they were with another one. “Yesterdays” was taken from the second “Illusion” album and I always felt like it stood alone from the rest of the singles from the project in that it eased back from all the heavy rock bluster, especially in that almost sprightly opening guitar riff. You could make a case that it harks back to the opening of “Paradise City” even I guess. Of course it reverts to type eventually in the middle eight when Slash goes back to his usual ways but even so.

Every single from the “Illusions” albums made the UK Top 10 bar the final one “Civil War” and that only missed it by one place. Pretty impressive stuff. There would be a monumental gap of 17 years between the “Illusion” double pack and the next album of new material when “Chinese Democracy” came out in 2008. That album gained almost mythical status during the wait for it. It was forever listed in the new release info we used to get weekly in Our Price as date ‘To Be Confirmed’. Those 17 years were punctuated just once by 1993’s covers album “The Spaghetti Incident?” but it didn’t really satisfy the fan base selling only a third of both “Illusion” albums.

The final Breaker is by Simply Red with their “The Montreux EP”. The track played is called “Drowning In My Own Tears”. Ah, make your own jokes up!

A genuine titan of a tune next. No seriously, it was enormous, a monster, a leviathan. It came, it saw, it conquered and then it shat over everything else in the charts combined. A gargantuan hit. OK, I’ve run out of words now. I can only be talking about “I Will Always Love You” by Whitney Houston. I already knew this song as my wife had a Dolly Parton Best Of CD with it on before Whitney got her mits on it and I much prefer her version but you can’t deny the reach of Whitney’s take on it which is now the definitive recording for many. This is going to be No 1 for ages so I’m not going to say loads about it straight away. For now though, here’s some facts and stats about it:

It topped the US charts for 14 weeks and the UK for 10
It was the biggest selling single of 1992 and the 10th best selling single of the 90s in the UK
By 2013, it had sold 20 million copies making it the best selling single by a female artist ever
It won the 1994 Grammies for Record Of The Year and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance
For a time it was the second biggest selling single of all time after “We Are The World” by USA For Africa but was bumped into third place in 1997 by Elton John’s new version of “Candle In The Wind”
It is taken from The Bodyguard soundtrack which is the biggest selling soundtrack of all time

Phew!

From Houston to Houston we have a problem as Genesis are inflicting a live single on us. Yes, after Madness earlier and their live single came “Invisible Touch (Live)” which was taken from the accompanying live album “The Way We Walk Volume One: The Shorts” which documented the band’s 1992 We Can’t Dance tour. The track listing was basically the singles released from their last three studio albums so all the radio friendly pop hits hence ‘shorts’. There was also a ‘longs’ live album featuring songs from their prog rock days but the less said about that the better. Live versions of the poppier end of their catalogue was concern enough.

I guess it made sense to choose a track that had been a US No 1 as the single to promote the album if a little obvious. “Invisible Touch” must surely have been and remain one of their most played songs on radio. One question though, is this the version heard on the single or just Phil Collins doing a live vocal as per TOTP policy? I’m guessing the latter as wouldn’t we be able to detect noise from the concert crowd otherwise? It follows then that when Phil does his audience response bit with the studio audience that is actually the latter repeating “yeah-uh” back to him and not them miming along to the original gig goers as that would just be too weird. Yeah, you’re right – I’m overthinking it. Who cares?

https://youtu.be/YdRfr75bcMw

Boyz II Men have come to the end of the road at No 1 (come on, it’s an open goal!) and been replaced by Charles And Eddie with “Would I Lie To You”. At the time I couldn’t believe that this had happened as I hated this pair and what I perceived as their insipid, stupid tune. Thirty years on and I can’t quite understand what I was so enraged about. I still don’t like the song but I don’t have any hatred for it either. If anything it’s bland and inoffensive but then I guess that might be the biggest crime of all for some.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Cathy Dennis	Irresistible	Nah
2	Sonny & Cher	I Got You Babe	Wasn’t released as a single
3	Heaven 17	Temptation	Not the 1992 remix but my wife has The Luxury Gap on vinyl
4	Madness	The Harder They Come	Nope
5	The Pasadenas	Let’s Stay Together	Definitely not
6	INXS	Taste It	Not the single but I bought the album
7	The Prodigy	Out Of Space	No
8	Guns N’ Roses	Yesterdays	No but I have it on there Best Of album
9	Simply Red	The Montreux EP	Never!
10	Whitney Houston	I Will Always Love You	No but my wife had the Dolly Parton original
11	Genesis	Invisible Touch (Live)	As if
12	Charles And Eddie	Would I Lie To You?	Never happening

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/m00170d6/top-of-the-pops-19111992

TOTP 04 JUL 1991

Posted on August 24, 2021 by 80stastic

Well, that’s the first 6 months of 1991’s TOTP repeats viewed, reviewed and posted. Somehow it doesn’t seem to have been quite so much of a slog as 1990 but I’ve a feeling it’s going to get a whole lot denser to wade through from hereon in. As we enter July, Steffi Graff is about to claim her third Wimbledon singles title whilst Michael Stich (remember him?) will win his one and only by defeating Boris Becker. I recall it being very hot around this time and on the day of the men’s final, myself and my wife decided to go for a Sunday afternoon stroll around nearby Whitworth Park in Manchester. The temperature wasn’t the only thing that was hotting up that day as we stumbled across a young couple getting very enamoured with each other as they canoodled under the sun’s rays whilst stretched out in the park! Bloody hell! Get a room!

I wonder if there were any hot tunes in the charts back then? Let’s see…

The show kicks off with the week’s highest climber Incognito with “Always There”. After last week’s nonsense show opener Cubic 22, this made much more sense as being first on the running order. For a start, there’s a proper singer up there belting the tune out and when I say proper I mean proper as it’s soul legend Jocelyn Brown. Added to that, the track is a genuine breezy Summer anthem with some definite feel good vibes unlike that techno crap the week before.

Despite only having 5 Top 40 singles in the course of their career, Incognito have worked with some of the biggest names in the business (according to their very swish website) and are still a going concern with a cast of previous band members that would rival The Fall and The Waterboys.

One of those names listed is Duncan McKay which if you are a football / comic fan of a certain age like me can only bring one image to mind, that of the legendary Melchester Rovers left back, he of the ferocious tackle. Duncan appeared in the Roy Of The Rovers story for 15 years and not once did he change his image of full beard, and shaggy, shoulder length hair kept in place by a headband. Eat your heart out Mark Knopfler.

“Always There” peaked at No 6.

A “spooky little record’ as host Gary Davies describes it is up next as we get the father and daughter collaboration of Nat King Cole duetting from beyond the grave with his daughter Natalie Cole on one of his best known tunes in “Unforgettable”. This virtual duet was certainly a novel idea back then but there seems to be a distinct movement for this type of thing now. Maybe it was the inevitable advancement of technology coupled with the accelerated death rate of some of the music world’s biggest stars (remember 2016?) that brought this about but there is now a definite world of departed pop stars still giving concerts after they have shuffled off this mortal coil. Whitney Houston has definitely been brought back to life in hologram form whilst my own mother has been to see her beloved Elvis ‘live’ as it were with only The King’s original touring band actually being up there on stage. I think ABBA are due some sort of virtual reunion as well? OK, the Cole family reunion wasn’t quite up to those standards but it was pretty revolutionary in 1991.

Was it any good though? Well, despite his undoubtedly smooth crooner voice and the fact that he probably helped deny Rick Astley the Xmas No 1 spot in 1987 thanks to the re-release of his version of “When I Fall In Love” pinching sales for Astley’s version, Nat King Cole wasn’t somebody who I was ever going to explore beyond his most famous songs. The fact that his daughter had re-recorded them with his vocals as a duet therefore wasn’t going to bring about any lightbulb moments for me. Yes, them as there is a whole album of Natalie and her Dad together. Entitled “Unforgettable… With Love”, it sold steadily in the UK going gold but it went through the roof in the US racking up sales that achieved 7 x platinum status!

The ultimate sadness about the project is that Natalie herself would die before her time, passing away in 2015 aged 65. Her Dad died even younger in 1965 aged just 45. “Unforgettable” the duet peaked at No 19 on the UK Top 40.

A bizarre one hit wonder next from Cola Boy and their single “7 Ways To Love”. Bizarre how? Well, it was a dance tune that had a vocalist fronting it but the only words she sings are ‘7 Ways To Love’. If you were gong to do that why not just find a sample and not bother with a singer? Oh yes, the singer is television presenter and radio DJ Janey Lee Grace best known as being part of the posse on Steve Wright in the Afternoon. What I hadn’t realised is that she had also been as a backing singer with the likes of Kim Wilde and Boy George and also toured with Wham! including their ground breaking dates in China. In a bizarre coincidence given that last fact, the bloke in Cola Boy was called Andrew Midgeley. Weird.

Another part of the Cola Boy story that I had no idea about until now is that the people behind it were actually Saint Etienne who recorded it as a white label for dance specialist shops. In a Mojo magazine interview, the band’s Bob Stanley recalled: “It was a period when you could drive around to record shops in London, give them 20 and see what might happen. It worked. We went to a party and heard Andy Weatherall playing it”. They were singed to Arista Records off the back of the track’s success in the clubs but due to contractual issues couldn’t promote it themselves hence Janey Lee Grace and Andrew Midgeley being roped in.

The single rose to No 8 which is a higher peak than any Saint Etienne single managed* which must have been annoying for the band but maybe not as annoying as not being allowed into the TOTP studio to watch their charges on this show as, according to Stanley in that Mojo interview “They wouldn’t let us in. We got to the gates- your name’s not on the list”.

*This reminds nine of Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran producing Kajagoogoo’s “Too Shy” and it going to No 1 before the Duran boys themselves had achieved that feat. They rectified it weeks later when “Is There Something I Should Know” went straight into the charts at No 1.

Following on from the rather odd father and daughter virtual collaboration that was Nat King Cole and Natalie Cole, here’s another bizarre partnership as Anthrax and Public Enemy join forces for “Bring The Noise” (and not “Bring On The Noise” as Gary Davies mistakenly says twice). This, of course, was a Public Enemy track that had already been released as a single peaking at No 32 back in 1988. When thrash metallers Anthrax recorded a version and asked Chuck D to see if he would add his vocals on it, their request was refused by Def Jam label co-founder Rick Rubin so the band added Public Enemy’s vocals from the original master anyway. Once the track was finished, Rubin must have seen sense and the release was promoted by both bands leading to a joint tour.

I’ve told my Flavor Flav story before haven’t I? Oh well, it’s due another outing. A year on from this release, U2 were playing a gig at the G-Mex centre in Manchester entitled “Stop Sellafield” as part of the Greenpeace movement to protest the nuclear factory. On the bill with them were Kraftwerk and Public Enemy. On the afternoon of the gig, Flavor Flav wondered into the Our Price store on Market Street where I was working with an entourage of people with him and caused chaos as he meandered up and down the shop floor. He clearly had no idea where he was or what he was supposed to be doing. My colleague Justin who was a huge Kraftwerk fan and was going to the gig just to see them tried to establish contact with him in an ‘earth to Flav’ type of way but I don’t think he got very far. I think he might have been after an autograph as he was prone to that sort of thing. He once got Dion Dublin’s autograph when he came in the shop shortly after he had signed for Man Utd on the back of a picture of Bryan Robson.

“Bring The Noise” (the Anthrax/ Public Enemy mash up version) peaked at No 14.

Kim Appleby‘s time as a solo star was coming to an end in mid 1991. Having read some interviews with her, I think the allure of the whole thing was starting to wane anyway. She had worked up the songs for her debut eponymous album in tribute to her sister Mel with whom she had been writing and who had passed away at the beginning of 1990 as she wanted to create some sort of legacy for her. The success of the album and specifically the single “Don’t Worry” had achieved that. It sounds like she kind of lost her drive and purpose after that. “Mama” was the third single taken from that album and was the smallest fo the three hits off it peaking at No 19. It was also her last Top 40 hit. It was pleasant enough if a bit twee. The chorus had an endearing nursery rhyme quality to it but the verses were a bit slow. It was nowhere near as impressive as “Don’t Worry” which was nominated for an Ivor Novello in the best contemporary song category (it lost out to Adamski’s “Killer”). That nomination action though did lead to Kim being involved with the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers And Authors who co-ordinate the Ivor Novello awards and she chaired the judges panel for them for 15 years.

There was a second album in 1993 but it only received a limited release and the singles from it all failed to chart so it became a lost album. Kim has returned to live performing recently for the first time in over 20 years and was also seen co-presenting a three-part series on BBC Four called Smashing Hits! The 80s Pop Map of Britain and Ireland with Midge Ure.

This next song screams the summer of 1991. The dance /rap version of “Now That We Found Love” by Heavy D & the Boyz seemed inexplicably popular to me. I didn’t get it at all. It came across as so lazy, straight out of the ‘OK, let’s get an old tune that people will know, house it up a bit, write a rap for it and the masses will lap it up’ school of thought. Hadn’t we seen this all before from the likes of The Fat Boys when they covered “Wipeout” and “The Twist” in the late 80s?

I already knew the Third World version of “Now That We Found Love” though admittedly not from the original 1978 but its 1985 re-release. To say that I’m really not a big reggae fan, I’d always quite liked it. This take on it by Heavy D & the Boyz (obviously spelt with a ‘z’ as it was the early 90s!) sounded like a travesty to me. There was an album called “Peaceful Journey” that Our Price had made a Recommended Release meaning it was discounted by wasn’t actually in the charts but I don’t think it sold very well at all as people were only interested in the single which would go all the way to No 2.

Some Breakers now and we start with Queensrÿche who I knew back in 1991 were a heavy rock band but that’s about all I knew of them. Fast forward 30 years and that’s still pretty much the extent of my knowledge. I certainly couldn’t name you any of their songs but here they were back in the day with a bona fide chart hit called “Best I Can“. Checking them out on Spotify, that song isn’t even in their most listened to Top 10 tracks . However, the single released after it called “Silent Lucidity” has nearly 47 million plays. So I checked it out and it was pretty good actually and certainly not the hoary old formulaic rock I was expecting. The clip of “Best I Can’ that they play on TOTP though is exactly what I would have expected it to be and nothing that I would want to linger over.

Not that it’s a massively high bar really but “Things That Make You Go Hmmm…” is without doubt my favourite C+C Music Factory song. The third single from their “Gonna Make You Sweat” album, it fair fizzes along with an infectious rhythm and a driving rap all of which combine to propel the track into the furthest corners of your brain from which it can never be vacated. See Heavy D (and your Boyz), that’s how you do a rap pop crossover!

The lyrics concern honey traps and infidelity were not anything new per se – we’d already had “The Rain” by Oran ‘Juice’ Jones – but they would prove to be a popular subject with future songs like Shaggy’s 2000 No 1 single “It Wasn’t Me” creating a little sub genre of their own almost. The song’s title apparently came from a catchphrase used by US chat host Arsenio Hall:

The final Breaker is by a man who hadn’t had a hit in his own right since 1986. OK, if we’re being pedantic he did feature on a No 1 single no less (he contributed “She’s Leaving Home” to the Childline charity single in 1988 but everybody played the Wet Wet Wet cover of “With a Little Help from My Friends” instead). And yes, he featured on Beats International’s double A side “Won’t Talk About It” / “Blame It on the Bassline” which made the Top 40 in 1989 but I’m not counting either of those. I am of course talking of Billy Bragg who is back with “Sexuality” the lead single from his sixth studio album “Don’t Try This At Home”.

The track found Billy in a poppier vein than we might have expected but that was probably due to the influence of Johnny Marr who took Billy’s demo of the song and turned it into a brilliant pop song. As well as Marr’s undoubted talents, the song also featured Billy’s long time collaborator Kirsty MacColl on backing vocals. The lyrics are typically idiosyncratic Bragg, for example:

A nuclear submarine sinks off the coast of Sweden
Headlines give me headaches when I read them
I had an uncle who once played for Red Star Belgrade
He said some things are really best left unspoken
But I prefer it all to be out in the open

He’s not everybody’s cup of tea but I love Billy’s values and approach to life which is reflected in his music.

The video was made by yet another long time mate in Phil Jupitus who’s connection with Billy stretched back to the days of Red Wedge in the mid 80s and am I losing my mind but does The Bard of Barking have a look of Andrew Lincoln about him in it? OK, I am going mad but he looks more like The Walking Dead star than Robert De Niro as the lyrics would have us believe.

“Sexuality” peaked at No 27.

Now surely this next single was a prime contender for having been included in the Breakers section we have just seen but somehow the TOTP producers decided that it deserved a spot on it own in the running order despite only being at No 37 in the charts. “Generations Of Love” was the follow up to “Bow Down Mister” by Boy George’s side project Jesus Loves You. It had flopped on its initial release the previous year but had been given a second chance in the light of the chart performance of “Bow Down Mister”. Whilst you couldn’t call a Top 40 hit a flop, its peak of No 35 (even with is TOTP appearance) was hardly a resounding success either.

I didn’t mind it but it didn’t have the quirky, goofy appeal of its predecessor and would I call it a dance track as Gary Davies did? I don’t think so. I quite like the gallic accordion part in it and George’s vocals were as pure as ever but it didn’t really have any oomph to my ears. It would be the last chart entry for the band who broke up the following year.

Wait! Vanilla Ice had three hits?! Yes, yes he did. Well, actually he had four in total but “Rollin’ In My 5.0” was the third. This was just garbage and six months on from “Ice Ice Baby”, we all knew it as well (apart from those few, poor misguided souls that bought this in enough quantities to make it a No 27 hit of course). The titular 5.0 was Vanilla Ice’s 5.0 Liter Foxbody Mustang car and didn’t he also use that phrase in the lyrics to “Ice Ice Baby”? I think he did.

Supposedly Limp Bizkit’s 2000 chart topper “Rollin'” makes reference to “Rollin’ In My 5.0” but I’ve had a look at the lyrics to it and I can’t see any link unless it the line ‘And the people who don’t give a f**k’ as surely nobody did about Vanilla Ice at this point.

Jason Donovan is still at No 1 with “Any Dream Will Do”. Now I failed to mention this last week when taking about Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine but I was reminded of it by a friend on FaceBook. So after Donovan’s stint in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, he was replaced by Philip Schofield who seemed to be everywhere at that time. One place he had definitely been was the 1991 Smash Hits Poll Winners’ Party where he was the host. CUSM were only on the show as their new label Chrysalis (them again!) had pushed for it but things started to go wrong after the duo’s performance of “After The Watershed (Early Learning The Hard Way)” had been cut short when Fruitbat had kicked a microphone stand into the audience. In response to not being able to finish the song, Fruitbat started knocking over equipment on stage which led to Schofield’s sarcastic comment about smashing things up being original behaviour for a rock band. Then….a tremendous rugby tackle on Schofield by Fruitbat. I think at the time I believed it was all a bit of knockabout fun but Fruitbat really takes him out and his partner in the band Jim Bob was really pissed off with him and fearful for the band’s future after the incident. Yeah, but it was Philip Schofield after all Jim Bob so Fruitbat does deserve some credit.

As for Jason Donovan, this would be his second and final week at No 1.

The play out video is “My Name Is Not Susan” by Whitney Houston. This confusingly titled single was actually about Whitney confronting a lover who has mistakenly called her by his ex-girlfriend’s name Susan (according to Wikipedia). Relationship mis-steps seems to be all the rage for song subject matter in 1991 after the honey trap of “Things That Make You Go Hmmm…” and now this. Sadly for Whitney, the choice of this track as a single also proved to be a mis-step as it peaked at No 29 but she would be back the following year with her gargantuan selling version of “I Will Always Love You” from The Bodyguard.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Incognito	Always There	Nope
2	Nat King Cole / Natalie Cole	Unforgettable	No
3	Cola Boy	7 Ways To Love	Negative
4	Anthrax / Public Enemy	Bring The Noise	I did not
5	Kim Appleby	Mama	Nah
6	Heavy D & The Boyz	Now That We’ve Found Love	Definitely not
7	Queensrÿche	Best I Can	Another no
8	C+C Music Factory	Things That Make You Go Hmmm…	Liked it, didn’t buy it
9	Billy Bragg	Sexuality	No but I have it on his retrospective Must I Paint You A Picture
10	Jesus Loves You	Generations Of Love	Not for me
11	Vanilla Ice	Rollin’ In My 5.0	Hell no
12	Jason Donovan	Any Dream Will Do	See 11 above
13	Whitney Houston	My Name Is Not Susan	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.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000ypcb/top-of-the-pops-04071991

TOTP 10 JAN 1991

Posted on May 29, 2021 by 80stastic

Already 10 days into the new year of 1991 here at TOTP Rewind and yet tonight’s host Jakki Brambles still takes the opportunity to wish us a Happy New Year. Keep up Jakki! This show mainly features songs that were ‘new’ to us back then and we start with one from Bananarama and “Preacher Man”. Not to be confused with Dusty Springfield’s “Son Of A Preacher Man”, this was the second single to be released from the nanas fifth album “Pop Life” but actually came out a whole six months after lead single “Only Your Love” due to Sara Dallin contracting meningitis which delayed its release. Despite its difficult birth, it would end up being the most successful of the four singles released from the album when it peaked at No 20.

The single was well received critically as being a strong, hooky pop song but for me it doesn’t stand out as being one of their most memorable tunes. I think it’s the reedy sounding vocals that let it down. The “Karma Chameleon” style harmonica solo in the middle doesn’t help either. As ever with Bananarama TOTP performances, Keren and Sara mark themselves out as the power couple of the trio by wearing the same outfit while Jacquie is still very presented as the new girl and odd one out three years on with her alternative togs. This sartorial separation was also evident even when Siobhan Fahey was still in the group and the signs had been there for some time that she was not on the same page as the other two – it wasn’t the biggest shock ever when she departed.

Bananarama would not return to the Top 20 for another 14 years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV0sQB8xyRQ

Here’s Whitney Houston next with one of her trademark power ballads. After the uptempo “I’m Your Baby Tonight”, it wasn’t a surprise that she reverted to this genre and indeed, “All The Man That I Need” didn’t seem that different to the likes of “Didn’t We Almost Have It All” and “Where Do Broken Hearts Go”. Oh, check this out – on the The Bodyguard World Tour of 1993–94, she performed the song as part of a love song medley that included …yep…”Didn’t We Almost Have It All,” and “Where Do Broken Hearts Go”. Well there you go – identikit Whitney. You have to admit though that she had the pipes to be able to pull it off.

In the US, it gave her a 9th No 1 single from 11 releases but it stalled at No 13 over here. Maybe we didn’t like the video which is as dull as a night down the pub with George Eustace. It’s just Whitney mooching around various rooms in a big house (one of which includes a John Lennon “Imagine” type white piano) before she is joined by a gospel choir for the climax.

The song had already been recorded by Sister Sledge and someone called Linda Clifford before Whitney got her mitts on it and then, in 1994, Luther Vandross preformed a gender swap on it by recording at as “All The Woman That I Need”. There can’t be that many songs where that has occurred can there? Top of my head I can think of “I Saw Him Standing There” which was Tiffany’s version of The Beatles “I Saw Her Standing There” and sticking with the Fab Four, there’s The Carpenters take on their “Ticket To Ride” when Karen Carpenter changes the lyrics from ‘the girl that’s driving me mad’ to ‘the boy that’s driving me mad’. Oh and Tracey Ullman converting “My Girl” by Madness to “My Guy’s Mad at Me”.

This is more like it! This is what the kids wanted! Some grebo rock! Or were they a hip-hop/dance/rock sample heavy hybrid? Whatever, “X, Y & Zee” became Pop Will Eat Itself’s biggest ever hit up to his point when it peaked at No 15. It was also their fourth Top 40 hit as well after “Can U Dig It?”, “Touched by the Hand of Cicciolina” and the delightfully entitled “Dance Of The Mad Bastards”. Oh and I make it their 10th single Jakki, not their 13th as you suggest in your intro.

Part of the extraordinary story of how the West Midlands market town of Stourbridge became the epicentre for…whatever we’re calling this genre…when it spawned not one, not two but three bands in The Wonderstuff, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin and Pop WIll Eat Itself. How did this happen? I’m not sure but there’s surely a film to be made out of this phenomenon (if there hasn’t been one made already). There is definitely a book on the subject in existence – the rather wonderfully titled of The Eight Legged Atomic Dustbin Will Eat Itself.

Back to “X, Y & Zee” and I always quite liked this wistful track with a twist and its brilliantly quirky lyrics like:

Mother Nature and Father Time
Used to be good friends of mine
But now we’ve put them in a home
Filed them under “uses unknown”

Apparently, lead singer Clint Mansell went onto become a Hollywood film score composer creating soundtracks for the likes of Requiem For A Dream and Black Swan. I haven’t been that surprised since a lovely lad I used to work with at Our Price called Scott ended up being a bank manager. Scott was a right laugh and the most unlikely future bank manager I could ever imagine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taX4YvL-sXI

We’re back with that “Grease Megamix” by John Travolta and Olivia Newton John next. Presumably its sales had been helped by Xmas and New Year’s Eve parties across the nation. The last time this was on TOTP, they only played the “Summer Nights” section of the mix but this time they feature the other two tracks in “You’re The One That I Want” and “Greased Lightnin'”. Now of course, the latter song has some lyrics that probably wouldn’t be suitable before the watershed and indeed the following line has been edited out.

You know that it ain’t shit, we’ll be gettin’ lots of tit, greased lightnin’

However, the censors clearly didn’t know what they were doing as they left in:

You are supreme, the chicks’ll cream, for greased lightnin’

and

You know that I ain’t braggin’, she’s a real pussy wagon

What did they think Travolta was singing about FFS?!

“Grease Megamix” peaked at No 3.

Right, don’t remember this one at all. “I Can’t Take The Power” by Off-Shore anyone? Even the ever reliable @TOTPFacts could only come up with this info about it.

Off Shore was the project of German DJs/producers Jens Lissat and Peter Harder. A couple of other DJs/producers were involved in this single release: Eric Kupper provided some keyboards, and Justin Strauss remixed it. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) May 21, 2021

Oh and apparently the titular sample is from “Love’s Gonna Get You” by Jocelyn Brown. Was it supposed to be some sort of response record to Snap!’s “The Power”?

Whatever. “I Can’t Take The Power” peaked at No 7.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FR-z7QdskBc

Yes! TOTP on it tonight with what the kids like! After Pop Will Eat Itself comes Jesus Jones and although not from Stourbridge, they were definitely in the same musical universe. “International Bright Young Thing” ushered in an era of a band at the peak of the powers.

No doubt about it – Jesus Jones were big…for a time

Taken from their forthcoming second album “Doubt”, it would become their biggest ever hit whilst said album would go to No 1. It had, without… erm…doubt…been one of the most enquired about albums over Xmas (along with “Spartacus” by The Farm) in terms of when it was coming out. The world really did seem to be at their feet. Sadly, the band suffered a press backlash (maybe the ‘International Bright Young Thing’ tag was too much for some publications) and they would wind up being seen as very irrelevant very quickly especially after grunge happened.

For the moment though, they are leading the gang of dance/rock groups who are in the charts with their long, flicky hair and wayward keyboard players – look at the state of the Jesus Jones ivories tinkler here; a total dereliction of playing duties and clearly under the influence of something.They’d have been banned from the show back in the early 80s for much less (Pigbag were for a very similar offence).

“International Bright Young Thing” peaked at No 7.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxj1AoxxbFk

A couple of videos we’ve seen before next starting with MC Hammer and “Pray”. I’m sure this has been on a couple of times already but it’s a climber of two places within the Top 10 to a peak of No 8 so I guess its presence again could be justified by the TOTP producers.

There were numerous remixes of this track including:

Slam The Hammer Mix
Slam The Hammer Piano Dub
Jam The Hammer Mix
Hit ‘Em Hard Mix
Nail ‘Em Down Chant

The titles of the remixes sound like they more belong to an Iron Maiden track than the pious Mr Hammer. Check out this from @TOTPFacts again:

Speaking of praying: MC Hammer was previously in a Christian rap group called The Holy Ghost Boys. He became a preacher in the late '90s, with a Christian ministry programme on Trinity Broadcasting Network. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) May 21, 2021

The second previously seen video is for “Sadness (Part 1)” by Enigma. This is up to No 2 and will be top of the heap soon enough. Watching the video back, it’s all a bit Wicker Man. For a start, the scribe encounters Auguste Rodin’s The Gates of Hell (depicting a scene from Dante’s Inferno) which kind of relates to Police Sergeant Howie’s discovery of all the pagan Celtic imagery on Summerisle. Even more of a parallel though is the fact that the scribe seems to be being tempted by the undressed woman on the other side of the gate who whispers all that ‘Sade, donnes moi’ (‘Sade, give it to me’) Marquis de Sade malarkey to him. Remember that scene in Wicker Man when the Britt Ekland character tries to seduce Edward Woodward through the walls of his room in the pub? Come on! It’s the same thing! Well, almost.

The ever suave Robert Palmer is up next with his Marvin Gaye mash up single “Mercy Mercy Me / “I Want You”. It was a brave move to cover not one but two Marvin Gaye tracks (Palmer himself admitted to being very nervous when he debuted the song on US Television during an appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show) but I think he gets away with it.

Palmer was becoming quite the regular hit-maker by this point. This would be his second consecutive Top 10 hit following his UB40 collaboration on “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” at the back end of 1990 and would help propel parent album “Don’t Explain” into the Top 10 as well. It would be the last time he would have either a single or album in such upper echelons of the charts though.

Oh, and is that Boon Gould from Level 42 on bass up there with Robert? Could be.

The aforementioned Iron Maiden are still at No 1 with their sneakily released “Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter” single. I’ve commented before on that book that Jakki Brambles mentions at the end of the song written by Bruce Dickinson (Lord Iffy Boatrace) – it’s complete bawdy filth including a character who invents the ultimate sex machine. Didn’t mention that did you Jakki?

A musical heavyweight is the play out video. For all his success with The Police, Sting‘s solo career had not resulted in anywhere near the size of hits that his band had generated. By the 90s, he had yet to achieve a Top 10 hit and in fact, of the 10 solo singles he released in the 80s, only 3 of them made the Top 40. However, he had begun the new decade in better shape when a Ben Liebrand remix of “Englishman in New York” made the Top 20 in 1990 to be followed by this, “All This Time”, the lead single from his new album “The Soul Cages”.

I remember the release of the album being seen as a big deal and the Our Price store I was working in certainly had lots if stock of it. Big sales were expected but although it went to No 1, I don’t recall selling many. It would achieve gold status for 100,000 copies sold but was far less than his previous solo albums “…Nothing Like the Sun” (platinum – 300,000 sales) and “The Dream Of The Blue Turtles” (double platinum – 600,000 sales).

For all that talk of disappointing sales figures, I quite liked “All This Time”. Despite its dark lyrics referencing the recent death of his father, it had an uplifting melody and although he can be a complete knacker at times, I’ve always quite liked Sting’s voice. Interesting that he’s only the play out video though, not deemed worthy enough of kicking off the show or having his own little premiere moment in the middle of it. Sting would regroup and return in 1993 with the much more successful “Ten Summoner’s Tales” album when he would also finally get that Top 10 hit when “All For Love” from The Three Musketeers soundtrack went to No 2 in the charts…but it was with Rod Stewart and Bryan Adams so I’m not sure if that actually counts.

“All This Time” peaked at No 22.

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

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

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Bananrama	Preacher Man	Nah
2	Whitney Houston	All The Man That I Need	Nope
3	Pop Will Eat Itself	X Y & Zee	Liked it, didn’t buy it
4	John Travolta and Olivia Newton John	Grease Megamix	Negative
5	Off-Shore	I Can’t Take The Power	Buy it? I don’t even remember it!
6	Jesus Jones	International Bright Young Thing	No but it was on that first Q magazine album that I did buy
7	MC Hammer	Pray	It’s a no
8	Enigma	Sadness (Part 1)	No
9	Robert Palmer	Mercy, Mercy Me / I Want You	No but it’s on my Robert Palmer Best Of CD I think
10	Iron Maiden	Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter	Definitely not
11	Sting	All This Time	I did not

Disclaimer

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000w6t9/top-of-the-pops-10011991

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 01 NOV 1990

Posted on April 1, 2021 by 80stastic

It’s November 1990 and having got married just 12 days earlier, another huge moment in my life has occurred – we’ve moved to Manchester! Yes, despite knowing only two other residents of Manc land between us, my wife and I have chosen to move to that great city to begin our married life together. We arrived back from our honeymoon exactly one week after the wedding day and moved that very day to Manchester. I hadn’t even seen the rented flat we were going to be living in as my wife had sorted that out. That small studio flat would be our home for the next four years and we loved it. The big events kept coming as after the wedding, the honeymoon, moving city, moving into a flat, I then started work on the Monday at Our Price. After two days training in the offices above the Piccadilly store, I was despatched to the Market Street shop down the road. By the time this TOTP was broadcast, I would have completed two whole days there (If my dates are correct). Given that this was such a momentous time for me, I must surely remember all the songs that were on the show?

Tonight’s host is Simon Mayo who I don’t recall being so smug but that’s the exact word I would use to describe his performance here. Certainly not smug though is the opening act – if anything I would think she was the exact opposite – unsure and apprehensive. Kim Appleby was of course one half of Mel & Kim who had torn up the charts in the late 80s with their SAW dance tunes and ‘up yours’ attitude. Tragically, Mel had died of cancer-related pneumonia at the start of 1990 but Kim resolved to carry on and record some of the songs that they had been working on during her sister’s illness. “Don’t Worry” was the first of those to see the light of day but Kim’s hesitancy about going it alone was revealed in a Smash Hits interview:

“I don’t know how people are going to react to my record but all I can say is I’m doing my best.”

She needn’t have… erm…worried because “Don’t Worry” was a fantastic pop song. Was it a million miles away from her Mel & Kim era? No, of course not (even though it was not produced by SAW) but it had an added sense of maturity to it from that unexpected, gentle fade in to the uplifting lyrics promoting positivity – there was no showing out or getting fresh going on here.

If Kim was nervous about her return to the world of pop music, she disguised those anxieties with an energetic performance here although quite what she thought being dressed like Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen would add to the overall effect, I’m not sure.

“Don’t Worry” surely exceeded Kim and her record label’s expectations after being away for so long by peaking at No 2.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLBC43xoNE0

Robert Palmer already had a reputation for being a musical chameleon with his back catalogue combining elements of soul, jazz, rock, pop, reggae and blues. Quite what he hoped to get credibility wise out of a collaboration with UB40 then I’m not sure. Not only that but it wasn’t even an original song that they might have cooked up between them but a cover version. “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” was a Bob Dylan song from his “John Wesley Harding” album and given how many artists have interpreted Dylan songs down the years*, was Palmer just jumping on a well ridden bandwagon? To be fair, the version he and the Brummie reggae boys came up with didn’t sound much like Dylan with its calypso lilt and jaunty rhythms. It still doesn’t explain the reason why the two acts chose to record it though. It wasn’t as if either had been languishing in the chart doldrums for a sustained period. Indeed, both had clocked up Top 10 singles within recent memory. Maybe they just knew each other and got along?

Palmer’s album “Don’t Explain” (from which “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” was the lead single) would go onto be certified Gold although the only other chart hit from it was another cover version – “Marvin Gaye’s “Mercy Mercy Me” whilst “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” would peak at No 6.

*The history of recorded music is littered is with Dylan covers by a multitude of artists but if you want a really out there one, how about “Subterranean Homesick Blues” by Lofty from Eastenders?

After coming over all smug and superior with his ‘look at how much I know about pop music’ tone when advising us all that “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” was actually a Bob Dylan song, Simon Mayo is at it again when introducing Black Box.

“Well, cover versions are all the thing. We’ve already had one, that was the UB40 song. Here’s another one…” he starts off. He’s like the most patronising Jackanory presenter ever. ‘Let me tell you a story about cover versions…’ he might as well have said. Git. Technically he is right of course in that “Fantasy” is the song by Earth, Wind And Fire but his tone is so condescending.

This was Black Box’s fourth consecutive UK chart hit but it would prove to be the last time that they would visit the Top 10 when it peaked at No 5. I’m not sure that their version actually adds anything at all to the original being a fairly faithful reproduction of it. Also, surely the cat must have been out of the bag by this time that the woman up there front of stage (Katrin Quinol) wasn’t the actual vocalist on any of these hits. The singer on this one was Martha Wash who did most of the vocals on their “Dreamland” album. Apparently the guys behind Black Box didn’t care a jot though and were boldly brazening it out like Boris Johnson shamelessly disregarding yet another cronyism scandal. In ‘Borisworld’, the PM would no doubt have Jennifer Arcuri up there lip syncing away whilst declaring that all her vocals had been laid down in complete propriety and that the recording sessions were all there on public record for anyone to see.

More ‘look how clever I am’ – ness from Mayo next as he references Robert Palmer / UB40’s “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” (yet again) with Whitney Houston‘s “I’m Your Baby Tonight” as the song titles sound very similar. Well done Simon, what an amazing insight you provided. In all honesty though, whilst I’m criticising Mayo, I’ve very little else to say about this one myself other than I have a memory of selling the “I’m Your Baby Tonight” album on tape whilst working at Our Price that Xmas and the shop chart cassette buyer (a guy called Steve who I am still friends with all these years later) sitting near the chart cassette filing one Saturday afternoon trying to order some more as we had almost sold out and asking me to go away and sell something else as he was nearly out of stock. Yeah, right, not sure how that was supposed to work Steve? I don’t think I had an ‘Actually, would you mind awfully buying something else otherwise the buyer’s going to have a breakdown’ in me. Oh, hang on – was it the Jimmy Somerville Best Of album now I come to think of it? Amazing insight from your blogger there I’m sure you’ll agree.

“I’m Your Baby Tonight” (the single) peaked at No 5.

Some Roxette next with a re-release of their “Dressed For Success” single. When I started at Our Price there wasn’t much of a dress code; certainly there wasn’t a staff uniform (although that would come in later years). You could pretty much wear what you wanted within reason. One woman turned up in a catsuit one day and asked me if I thought it was a bit much for work. I didn’t know where to look! I’ve no memory of what I’d chosen to wear for my first day in the shop but I do remember being mercilessly ribbed the day I decided to come in wearing a white shirt and a black waistcoat. Cue lots of comments about Ray Reardon, snooker and…erm…cues.

Back to Roxette and Mayo is still shoehorning in references to Bob Dylan b-sides (even though there is no relevance here whatsoever). Some eagle eyed viewer reckoned that this performance must have been recorded for the initial release of the single back in ’89 (you could tell by the BBC logos or something) and that does make sense as the cut to the duo clearly indicates that they were not there for the actual recording of the show. This of course raises the question of why a performance would have been recorded for a song that didn’t get in the chart on first release? I thought the show was meant to have a strict Top 40 only policy? What? They had ‘the look’ and were ‘dressed for success’ and that got them the gig? Sorry – that was lame.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKY6ec7HSdg

Another song we’ve seen before recently now as Rita MacNeil sings us a tale of a “Working Man”. Although the song’s sentiments were very worthy, there was very little here to hold my attention. It was all a bit Lena Martell (who had been a favourite of my parents during my childhood) meets “Every Loser Wins” by Nick Berry. Rita never had another UK chart hit and sadly died in 2013.

When I think of The Cure‘s remix compilation album “Mixed Up”, the track that comes to mind is “Never Enough” which was the single chosen to promote it. I had totally forgotten that a second single was released from it. “Close to Me – Remix” was that single and of course was a remix of their 1985 track from their “The Head On The Door” album. I really cannot see the point of this 1990 version though. It sounds exactly like the original but just slowed down a bit doesn’t it? Or am I missing something? The gentle intrigue of the 1985 original gets lost in the mix for me.

It took me a little while to realise that the video for the remix single was a continuation of the original promo which I thought was very clever, playing on the theme of claustrophobia with the band performing under duress within the confines of a wardrobe. Unfortunately, the second video doesn’t really work as well. Carrying on where the first video ended with the wardrobe (and its content of band members) falling off the edge of a cliff into the sea Young Ones style. The story board of the second video had the band escaping from their potential watery grave only to be attacked by an octopus and a starfish. The 1985 video was genuinely ingenious – there didn’t seem to be much thought gone into its 1990 counterpart although I’m guessing they were both directed by the band’s long time collaborator Tim Pope. The sea creature costumes make it all look a bit Mighty Boosh but without the laughs. Actually, maybe the video was was a source of inspiration for Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt. I can imagine Fielding in particular being a big Robert Smith fan.

“Close to Me – Remix” peaked at No 13 (as did “Never Enough”) which was 11 places higher than the much better original. We would not see The Cure in the charts for another 18 months when they would return with their “Wish” album.

OK, for me, this next song is peak Kylie Minogue. I might be looking back through nostalgia-tinted glasses of a much happier and simpler time but “Step Back In Time” was a great pop-dance track and yes, I realise that means I am commending a SAW produced track! Essentially one of those tribute songs like “Nightshift” by The Commodores and… erm…”Tribute (Right On)” by The Pasadenas with its 70s disco referencing lyrics, it’s got a great hooky chorus whilst the bridges that lead into them (‘Remember the O’Jays…’) are brilliant. One of my Xmas co-workers at Our Price in 1990 was a girl called Lucy who loved this track and she was bang on the money. Also, the dance routines on show in this performance really are impressive. Say what you like about Kylie but she really was very good at jumping in time.

“Step Back In Time” was the second single from Kylie’s “Rhythm Of Love” album and peaked at No 4.

Well that didn’t take very long did it? “Unchained Melody” by The Righteous Brothers is No 1 after just two weeks! Know-it-all Mayo feels the need to once more furnish us with his pop music knowledge by giving us the details of other artists who have recorded the track by name checking Jimmy Young, Harry Secombe and Des O’Connor (all the greats then). Look Mayo, if you wanted to dazzle us with charts statistics then here’s how you do it courtesy of @TOTPFacts:

"Unchained Melody" was first a UK hit for Les Baxter in 1955, peaking at 10. The top 20 for 17-23 June 1955 included four different recordings of the song: Al Hibbler's version at 2, Jimmy Young at 3, Les Baxter at 17 and Liberace at 20 – a record! #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) March 26, 2021

Last week I mentioned that the video for this had confused me when I first saw it as there was only one person (Bobby Hatfield) singing and I wondered where the other Righteous Brother Bill Medley was. Well, Simon Mayo, the guru of pop trivia , had the answer for me in his closing link. At the song’s end, he says “the other one was in the loo or something, I don’t know”. Simon Mayo there doing his best Mike Read impression.

The play out video is George Michael with “Waiting For That Day”. Another video mystery with this one as last week I posited the notion that I didn’t think George had done a promo for this (much as he had refused to film one for previous single “Praying For Time” due to his dispute with Sony). All that I could find was a clip from The South Bank Show which showed George discussing the song’s origins in the studio. However, TOTP seemed to have secured a video which was solely a performance of the track in the said same studio. I’ve worked out what the deal was here though. If you go to the final minute of that South Bank Show clip, there is that very performance. Bit of clever editing going on there then I think by the TOTP producers.

“Waiting For That Day” peaked at No 23.

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yvHXM9Ur5E

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Kim Appleby	Don’t Worry	Don’t think I did – great pop song though
2	Robert Palmer / UB40	I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight	No but it might be on my Robert Palmer Best Of CD
3	Black Box	Fantasy	Nope
4	Whitney Houston	I’m Your Baby Tonight	Negative
5	Roxette	Dressed For Success	Nah
6	Rita MacNeil	Working Man	No
7	The Cure	Close To Me – Remix	Another no
8	Kylie Minogue	Step Back In Time	No but I think my wife has her Greatest Hits with it on
9	The Righteous Brothers	Unchained Melody	It’s a no
10	George Michael	Waiting For That Day	No but my wife had the album

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000th90/top-of-the-pops-01111990

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.

Some bedtime reading?

Page 1 - Smash Hits - Issue 311 - 31st October - 13th November 1990

TOTP 18 OCT 1990

Posted on March 24, 2021 by 80stastic

I’m getting married in two days time! Well, back in 1990 I was – I’ve been married for 30 years now but yes, on Saturday 20th October of that momentous year, my wife and I tied the knot at the tender age of 22. Consequently, I’m not entirely sure that I would have had the time to watch this particular episode of TOTP on the Thursday, less than 48 hours before the big day. Wedding preparations and all that. However, I was still sufficiently engaged with the charts back then to know most of the songs featured here although a couple do escape me. Let’s see what I missed out on….

Goodier had over done it in the Green room pre show and it finally caught up with him

First of all, it should be noted that, for some reason, tonight’s host, Mark Goodier, has decided to come dressed looking like a redshirt from Star Trek – you know, those disposable characters that wore red tunics to signify they were security personnel that would almost always end up dying within the first few minutes, usually after transporting down the the surface of an alien planet and probably before the opening titles had played. Let’s hope Goodier doesn’t make any howlers that leads to him dying on stage as it were.

Tonight’s first act are A-ha, not seen in the charts for nearly two years and by the point that they made it back, it seemed that maybe their time had passed. Their cover of the Everly Brothers’ “Crying In The Rain” was the lead single from their fourth album “East Of The Sun, West Of The Moon” but unlike their previous three albums which had all peaked at No 2, this one topped out at No 12. Not a disaster but definitely going in the wrong direction. “Crying In The Rain” was the only cover version on the album with the rest being either Pål Waaktaar or Magne Furuholmen originals or collaborations between the two. Did the fact that they had chosen to announce the album with a cover version indicate a lack of faith in their own songs or am I reading too much into that?

I think they actually make a fine job of “Crying In The Rain”, imbuing it with some Nordic atmospherics and a fjord full of drama. Morten Harket was born to sing this sort of stuff. However, as with the album, the public’s reaction was lukewarm and it failed to make the Top 10. Again, not a catastrophe – only the title track of the four singles lifted from previous album “Stay On These Roads” had made the Top 10 – but it was a far cry from the days of their ’85 to ’87 peak when pretty much every single release went Top 10.

I spent a lot of those A-ha glory years paying close attention to what Morten was doing with his hair with many an unsuccessful attempt to recreate his look befalling my bonce. Here though he looks like he’s got what we would call today ‘lockdown’ hair, all overgrown and loosely styled. Had I caught the show at the time, I’m not sure I would have been convinced.

A-ha would not have another Top 40 hit for three years.

A marmite song next or at least it seems to be for many people, you either love it or hate it. I fall into the former category but I know people (my mate Robin for one) who think it is beyond awful. Aztec Camera had enjoyed a remarkable and unexpected upturn in commercial fortunes at the back end of the 80s with their sleek, well polished soul-pop album “Love” which brought them (I mean Roddy Frame really of course) their biggest ever hit single in “Somewhere In My Heart” which was also their worst in my book but we don’t need to go there.

However, in a move reminiscent of ABC recording the rock-influenced sophomore album “Beauty Stab” when the smart money would have been to come up with “The Lexicon Of Love” part II (which they ultimately did in 2016), Frame retreated from putting out another overly commercial album as the follow up to “Love” and instead came up with “Stray”. Not that “Stray” was a straight up rock record despite it including their best Rolling Stones impression on “How It Is” ; no, it was more….’organic’? I hate that word but what I mean is that it was lacking in the big production sheen of its predecessor and was a bit more back to basics, the Roddy Frame of those early 80s years. The album is pretty eclectic actually with most musical genres on display including smoky jazz ballads (“Over My Head”), doomy rock (“Get Outta London”) and the sparkling indie-pop of lead single “The Crying Scene” (which I bought but everybody else seemed to ignore).

However, it’s second single “Good Morning Britain” that everyone thinks of, for better or worse, during this phase of the band’s career. Quite why people seem to hate it so much I’m not sure. In the case of my friend Robin, it seems to be about Roddy choosing to wear bondage trousers in the video (presumably as some sort of acknowledgement of his collaborator Mick Jones’s punk past) that offends so. Mind you, Robin was massively offended by the Steve character (played by Campbell Scott) in the 1992 Seattle based rom-com film Singles because Steve, urban planner by day but DJ by night, kept his record collection in see through PVC sleeves! The horror! Once that scene played out early on in the film, Robin was done and paid little attention to the rest of it. Ironically, I think the record that caused Robin to nearly self combust with rage was “London Calling” by The Clash.

Back to “Good Morning Britain”, and another person who cannot stand the song is 6 Music DJ Shaun Keaveny who I’m pretty sure made a commitment on air once that he would never allow it to be played on his show. For me though, it fair throbs along and the interplay between Frame and Jones singing alternate lines adds another layer to it. The politicised lyrics calling for better equality and treatment of citizens from all four corners of the United Kingdom seems a rallying call worth making. It’s pretty damn catchy as well of course.

It would prove to be Roddy’s last ever trip to the Top 40 when it peaked at No 19.

“The No 1 dance record in the UK at the moment” is up next according to Mark Goodier. Wow! Who could that be?! The KLF? Bass-O-Matic maybe? MC Hammer even? No, it’s Innocence with “Let’s Push It”. Really?! This was the No 1 dance record?! OK, I was never a massive dance fan so I don’t really know what I’m talking about but was this meandering, chill-out, soul/jazz confection really that much of a big deal?! I mean it’s inoffensive enough but that’s the problem, it doesn’t really go anywhere or cause any sort of reaction (well, not in me at least). I didn’t and still don’t really get it. I didn’t mind their next single, the more melodic “A Matter Of Fact” but this one? Nah, not for me.

Some more soul incoming but this was much more bold and brassy sounding to my ears. Behold the return of Whitney Houston! “I’m Your Baby Tonight” was the name of her new single and album and was apparently a deliberate attempt by her record label Arista to reconnect her with her black fan base. As such, after the all out pop sound of her “Whitney” album, her third studio album had more of an R&B edge. If there had been any fear at Arista about her success continuing after a record-breaking string of seven consecutive No 1 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 prior to this release, then they would have been allayed by the title track making it eight on the trot. The second single of the album (“All the Man That I Need”) would extend the run to nine.

However, although the album sold well, it only did half the business that her first two LPs did. Furthermore, the newly emerged foe who was Mariah Carey meant that laurels could not be rested upon, especially when she beat Whitney to the Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for her “Vision Of Love” single which trumped “I’m Your Baby Tonight”.

Fast forward two years though and Whitney would return with the biggest selling album of her career – “The Bodyguard: Original Soundtrack Album” which would sell a whopping 45 million copies worldwide. For now though, back in October 1990, she was doing OK just about. She was however, just weeks away from a pre-recorded vocals controversy when she sang the national anthem at Super Bowl XXV. Controversy and Whitney would be forever entwined throughout her life it seemed.

Mondays in the area! Yes, with my own move to Manchester happening just 9 days on from this TOTP, here were one of the kings of ‘Madchester’ back in the Top 40. Happy Mondays were bona fide charts stars now after the huge success of “Step On” earlier in the year. “Kinky Afro” though was the first big hit that they would have that was their own tune (“Step On” had been a cover version).

A Happy Mondays original it may have been but its sound was certainly shaped by some exterior influences. Apparently, the bass line was inspired by Hot Chocolate’s Brother Louie” whilst the ‘yippie yippie ya ya yeah yeah’ chorus was their take on ‘voulez-vous coucher avec moi’ from the Labelle hit “Lady Marmalade”. And check this out from @TOTPFacts about the song’s title:

Shaun Ryder: "We were gonna call it 'Groovy Afro' but we changed it to 'Kinky' after The Farm came out with 'Groovy Train.'" #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) March 19, 2021

That new album that Goodier makes reference to in his intro is of course the band’s iconic long player “Pills ‘n’ Thrills And Bellyaches”. It was released just as I was starting in my position of Xmas temp at Our Price in Manchester and I can still see the seemingly endless amount of copies of the vinyl for it behind the counter and thinking ‘are they really going to see all those?’. I think they did.

“Kinky Afro” matched its predecessor “Step On” by peaking at No 5.

Right, who’s this lady? Well, Rita MacNeil was a Canadian country singer who very briefly was one of the genre’s biggest names. Her international hit was “Working Man” which was a tribute to the endeavours of coal miners in Nova Scotia (hence Goodier’s pathetically weak quip “Yep, that song is suitable for minors”). On the back of the success of the single, she embarked on a European tour including one night at the Royal Albert Hall.

There really wasn’t much here for me I have to say although she is a big favourite of my country music loving Dad and he has even been known to belt out a version of “Working Man” himself.

Rita MacNeil died in 2013, from complications of surgery.

Some Breakers now and so much was the appetite for songs from film soundtracks in 1990 that even those that had been No 1 just four short years before were able to rise up the charts again. Yes, not content with one song from a Tom Cruise movie already being No 1 in this week’s chart courtesy of “Show Me Heaven” by Maria McKee, it seemed that we needed two as “Take My Breath Away” by Berlin from Top Gun had a second Top 40 life after it had already scaled the summit of the charts back in 1986! Talk about doubling down!

So what the crap was this all about?! Well, apparently Top Gun had its UK TV premiere earlier this month back in 1990 and such was the reaction to this happening that “Take My Breath Away” was re-released. I had just been starting my time as a student when it was first a hit and I was now about to begin another phase of my life as a married man when it reappeared. Had I had time to take this in back then, it would probably have freaked me out. Not only did it tick the film soundtrack box but it also represented the TV advert methodology of scoring a hit by being on the latest Peugeot promo for their 405 model range. You know, that one with the burning, exploding row of trees? Come on, this one…

The reissue of “Take My Breath Away” made it all the way to No 3 which seems faintly ridiculous for a song that had already been No 1 in recent memory. It was backed by “Danger Zone” by Kenny Loggins on the b-side. When I started at Our Price a couple of weeks later, the wall of the men’s toilet in the store I was working in was daubed with graffiti of hilarious poo related musical artists. I can’t recall them all but they included Deacon Poo, The Ruthless Crap Assassins, Iggy Plop and of course, Kenny Loggins.

Another Tina Turner single? Didn’t she have one out just the other week? Yes she did! “Look Me in the Heart” had only been released in mid August and yet a few weeks later here she was back for more with something called “Be Tender With Me Baby”. Like its predecessor, this was also taken from Tina’s “Foreign Affair” album (this was the fifth single lifted from it to be released in the UK!). I don’t recall this one at all so when I saw the title of it I thought it might be a cover version of that soul classic that always seems to be sung by Ruby Turner on Jools Holland’s Hootenanny but it turns out that is called “Stay With Me Baby” and is a different song altogether.

“Be Tender With Me Baby” is more of a rock ballad and not a very good one in my opinion. It peaked at No 28 but incredibly, Tina will be back in the charts the following month with “It Takes Two”, a duet with Rod Stewart. FFS!

After one music icon, here comes another. Like Tina Turner, Paul MccCartney had also spent some of 1990 still flogging his last studio album to death. “Flowers In The Dirt” had arrived in June of 1989 but he was releasing singles from it into the new decade with the fourth and final one being “Put It There”. “Birthday” was nothing to do with that particular project though being, as it was, a Beatles song that had originally been on the “White Album”.

So why was Macca releasing his own version of it some 22 years after it was originally recorded. There’s no great mystery really – it was a live version to promote his “Tripping The Live Fantastic” album which documented The Paul McCartney World Tour which was the first tour under his own name. It seems an odd choice of single given the 37 songs that could have been selected from the album’s track listing. Even the “Tripping The Live Fantastic: Highlights!” single album with just the 17 tracks on it included some legendary stuff like “Hey Jude” and “Let It Be”. Maybe they would have been too much of a crowd sing-a-long? OK, then how about “Get Back” or “Back In The U.S.S.R.” or even “Coming Up”?

The video for this is also a bit strange. If you want to promote your live album wouldn’t it be a good idea to just have the video showing you… erm…live in concert? Yes there is some of that but what’s with all the staged vignette scenes that pad it out? They are all very obvious themes around having a birthday that add little in my book and actually the scene with the all male party of braying toffs (clearly Tories) and a young woman (potentially a stripper?) bursting out of a birthday cake looks distinctly unpalatable at best through todays eyes.

Paul McCartney’s live version of “Birthday” peaked at No 29.

Still with those bleedin’ turtles?! “Spin That Wheel (Turtles Get Real)” was originally released at the start of 1990 and failed to get anywhere near the UK Top 40. Back then, there had been no tie-in with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film – the (Turtles Get Real) suffix was added for the re-release – and had included references to drug taking in the lyrics. These were all removed and a sanitised version was included on the movie soundtrack.

Hi Tek 3 featuring Ya Kid K were, of course, all part of the Technotronic family tree which was quite the tangled oak with branches everywhere – significantly its roots weren’t solid and it would succumb to powdery mildew disease (I had to look that up for the purposes of the metaphor)….

Technotronic was essentially just one person Jo Bogearet who had the original seed of an idea for the group, owned their record company and produced their records. It all got more complex when it came to promoting their releases. Bogeart was a recluse who spoke to nobody so he was never going to be the public face of Technotronic. That turned out to be a singer with blue lipstick called Felly (who didn’t actually sing on the records at all) – no, the singer was Manuela Djogi aka Ya Kid K who didn’t join the group initially because she didn’t want to sign a contract. Then she did and Felly was ousted but vowed to get some singing lessons and rejoin the group. She never did. Enter Welshman MC Eric as the rapper on third single “This Beat Is Technotronic”. While that was being a hit, “Spin That Wheel'” was released becoming a hit in the US and Australia but not over here. Then a support slot on the Madonna tour was announced – however Ya Kid K wanted to sue Technotronic’s record company for unpaid monies. A fourth single “Rocking Over The Beat” was released with next to no promotion from the group presumably because of the Madonna tour commitments though this seems unlikely as Ya Kid K and MC Eric had pulled out of the European tour dates as they didn’t want to promote the Technotronic name anymore. Then Ya Kid K announced she was pregnant – the father was MC Eric, obviously. There followed a counter court case against Ya Kid K and MC Eric brought by Jo Bogearet to stop them using the Technotronic name even though they said they didn’t want to use it anyway and that was the reason for them pulling out of the Madonna tour in the first place. Then…oh bollocks to it….who cares?!

“Spin That Wheel (Turtles Get Real)” peaked at No 15 in the UK.

A final week then at No 1 for Maria McKee with “Show Me Heaven” which also makes it the record that was No 1 when I got married. Or was it? I always got a bit confused about this as when we got back from our honeymoon the following Saturday, The Beautiful South were No 1. I’m trying to recall on what day the new charts were announced back then. Was it still on a Tuesday? Or had it moved to Sunday by then. The officialcharts.com website shows that for the week 14 October to 20 October (our wedding date), the No 1 record was indeed “Show Me Heaven” whilst for the week 21 October to October 27th it was The Beautiful South. So, I think that proves it was Maria Mckee. Either way, I’m just glad it wasn’t the song in the No 2 position which was “The Anniversary Waltz – Part 1” by Status Quo.

The play out video is “(We Want) The Same Thing” by Belinda Carlisle but before we get to that, what’s going on with Trekky Gooider? Surrounded by studio audience members for the final cut away shot, he seems disturbed, looks to his left and announces ” What’s going on here? I love it – it’s so warm” WTF?! That sounds wrong on so many levels.

Anyway, back to Belinda and this was a hit that made no sense at all. Why? Well, also like Tina Turner before her, she was still releasing tracks from an album that was 12 months old but apart from lead single ‘Leave A Light On”, none of them had pulled up any trees chart-wise. See?

Leave A Light On – No 4
La Luna – No 38
Runaway Horse – No 40
Vision Of You – No 41

Then, “(We Want) The Same Thing”, with its bizarre use of brackets, released as a fifth single from a year old album, goes all the way to No 6! How do you explain that? Well, apparently the single mix was very different from the album version so maybe Carlisle completists would have bought it for that reason? Plus, there was a deluxe 12″ vinyl boxed set with free stickers and a picture disc single on CD (according to Wikipedia) for the real Belinda obsessives but even so.

I’ve just listened to that album version and it is indeed very different. Where are the ‘Hey!’ shouts at the beginning for a start? Ah, that must have been its USP and the reason behind its success – you can’t beat some good old ‘Hey!’ yelps can you?

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U96cgH4yCcY

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	A-ha	Crying In The Rain	No but it must be on my Greatest Hits CD of theirs
2	Aztec Camera	Good Morning Britain	No but it was on that first Q Magazine album that I bought.
3	Innocence	Let’s Push it	Let’s not..no
4	Whitney Houston	I’m Your Baby Tonight	Negative
5	Happy Mondays	Kinky Afro	No but I did buy the album
6	Rita MacNeil	Working Man	No
7	Berlin	Take My Breath Away	No – not in 1990 nor 1996
8	Tina Turner	Be Tender With Me Baby	Nope
9	Paul McCartney	Birthday	It wasn’t and I didn’t
10	Hi Tek 3 featuring Ya Kid K	Spin That Wheel (Turtles Get Real)	Hell no
11	Maria McKee	Show Me Heaven	Nah
12	Belinda Carlisle	(We Want) The Same Thing	Not sure we did Belinda because I didn’t buy this

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000t884/top-of-the-pops-18101990

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.

Some bedtime reading?