Wyclef Jean

TOTP 24 SEP 1999

Posted on by 80stastic

On the date this TOTP was broadcast, 45 years earlier, the Italian footballer Marco Tardelli was born. Yes, the guy behind one of the most iconic goal celebrations of all time that happened in the aftermath of him scoring Italy’s second goal in the 1982 World Cup final which became known as the ‘Tardelli Scream’. That guy. I wonder if any of the acts in this show could elicit such a reaction of pure emotion?

Our host is Jamie Theakston and this week the show comes live from the L2 nightclub in Liverpool as part of the Top Of The Pops On Tour project. We start with last week’s No 1 which has dropped to No 4 this week (the weekly changing of the guard at the top of the charts was in full effect by this point). However, the Vengaboys were at the peak of their commercial powers in 1999 with two consecutive No 1 singles of which “We’re Going To Ibiza” was the second.

Although it is a terrible, terrible song, it does have an interesting spin off story which occurred in 2019. The ‘Ibiza Affair’ or ‘Ibiza-gate’ was a political scandal involving Heinz-Christian Strache, the former vice-chancellor of Austria and leader of The Freedom Party and Johann Gudenus, a former deputy leader of the same political party. A sting operation commissioned by Iranian lawyer Ramin Mirfakhra saw Strache and Gudenus discussing their party’s underhanded practices and intentions in a secretly recorded meeting in Ibiza. It led to the collapse of the Austrian government with demonstrators in Vienna co-opting “We’re Going To Ibiza” as a song of protest against the government causing the track to re-chart and the Vengaboys themselves to perform it at the ‘Thursday demonstrations’ protests in front of the Chancellery in Vienna. Well, it’s a step up from this I guess…

Scream connection: In interviews, Vengaboys members have mentioned that they encourage a back-and-forth energy with the crowd, often saying, “If we all scream loud enough, nobody hears the mistakes”. Yeah, there’s no scream with enough decibels to disguise what a mistake “We’re Going To Ibiza” was.

What to say about Sting’s solo career? On the one hand, the case could be made that it’s been both lengthy and stellar. Fourteen studio albums released over a 40 year period including two No 1s with the latest release coming in 2021. On the other, none of his albums have made the Top 10 since 2003’s “Sacred Love” and he has only had one Top 10 single ever if you discount his 1994 collaboration with Rod Stewart and Bryan Adams “All For Love”. I think I could probably name a fair few of his hits but then I spent a decade working in record shops. How many of his solo songs have genuinely cut through to the wider general public? I would say maybe two – “If You Love Somebody Set Them Free” because of its title based on a saying already in parlance and the reference in Jimmy Nail’s No 1 “Ain’t No Doubt” and “Fields Of Gold” and that’s only because of the life it took on when it was covered by Eva Cassidy and the Terry Wogan effect. “Brand New Day” was never going to make that list of two which is a shame as it’s not a bad song. The lead single and title track from Sting’s sixth solo studio album, it has a certain charm with its lolloping rhythms and Stevie Wonder vibe (Wonder actually plays harmonica on the track). I like Sting’s phrasing of the lyrics and even the jazzy trombone interjections which I would ordinarily object to don’t trouble me.

The album would sell well, making the Top 5 and going platinum matching the performance of its predecessor “Mercury Rising”. Tellingly though, neither sold anywhere near as many copies as 1997’s “The Very Best of Sting & The Police” which, although a bizarre concept and perhaps not a true barometer of his solo popularity, did indicate that there was maybe more interest in Sting’s past glories than an appetite for new material.

Scream connection: well, there’s the legendary screaming matches between Sting and The Police drummer Stewart Copeland as a result of their toxic working relationship.

The musical transformation of Everything But The Girl from jazz-pop stylists to electronica dance merchants had, for the most part, left me cold. I’d appreciated the milestone making “Missing” (who hadn’t?) but the continuation of that direction via the “Walking Wounded” album had not maintained that regard. I was with the gig-goer who caught the band around this time and who was overhead by the band’s Ben Watt to say, “Well, that was a load of techno bollocks”.

Rather than being a one-off experiment though, Ben and Tracey Thorn doubled down on the dance vibe for follow up album “Temperamental”. Those in the know (i.e. the music press – ahem) divined a slight readjustment of dance sensibilities with the drum ‘n’ bass beats toned down in favour of a more old school house sound but it all sounded the same to my dance deaf ears. Here’s a typical review:

“EBTG’s early bossa-nova folk has been fully transformed into a contemporary sonic physicality that washes the album’s desperation with sweaty, regenerative joy”

Walters, Barry (October 1999). “This New House”, Spin; Vol. 15, no. 10. pp. 151–152.

“Sonic physicality”? Sweaty, regenerative joy”? I think I’ll pass and I did. Having said all of that, listening to “Five Fathoms” which acted as the lead single from the album (although technically that was “The Future of the Future (Stay Gold)” which they released with Deep Dish a year prior), I actually didn’t mind it. There was more of a proper song structure in there than I was expecting and I liked some of the lyrics like:

“Did I grow up just to stay home?
I’m not immune, I love this tune”

Songwriters: Ben Watt, Five Fathoms lyrics © Sm Publishing Uk Limited

Plus, of course, Tracey’s vocals are always on point. However, “Temperamental” would prove commercially inferior to “Walking Wounded” by some distance and would be the last Everything But The Girl album of new material for nearly a quarter of a century.

Scream connection: Their song “Tender Blue” from the “Eden” album contains the lyric “The baby’s screaming down the hall”.

Before the next act, there’s a bizarre little interlude where Jamie Theakston interviews Holly Johnson. Had this been 1989 instead of 1999, it might have made some sense with Holly riding high in the charts back then with his first solo hits like “Love Train” and “Americanos” but a decade on, he hadn’t been near the Top 40 since. The album he mentions as his next release – “Soulstream” – was studiously ignored in every territory despite including a version of Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s “The Power Of Love”. It’s all a bit pointless and inexplicable and does nobody any favours with the only retrievable piece of utility being that Holly can introduce the next artist who also shares the surname Johnson.

Paul Johnson was a Chicago house DJ and record producer who started the label Dust Traxx and was known for his big personality. He was also a wheelchair user from the age of 16 following an incident where a stray bullet left him paralysed from the waist down. His wheelchair is clearly visible in this performance making him the first person to appear in one on TOTP since…Robert Wyatt in 1974 and his version of “I’m A Believer”? Did he perform “Shipbuilding” on the show in 1983?

Anyway, his hit was “Get Get Down” which was the penultimate Billboard Dance Club No 1 of the 20th century and a Top 5 hit in the UK. A house anthem that was as likely to fill daytime radio playlists as dance floors up and down the country, it was a curiously sparse track consisting of just a looped bass riff, a driving descending beat in what passed for the chorus and the word “down” repeated over and over. I would have liked it better if it had sampled “Wham Rap” – “I said a-get, get, get on down, I said a-get, get, get on down”.

One of those to play “Get Get Down” on the radio were Marc and Lard who, in a pretence of displeasure at such a negative sounding record, would chant “Up, up, up, up” over the top of it. I still miss those guys. Paul Johnson would have one leg amputated in 2003 whilst the other was also removed after a car accident in 2010. He died in 2021 after contracting COVID-19.

Scream connection: In a 1964 New Statesman essay titled “The Menace Of Beatlism”, a British journalist and historian called Paul Johnson attacked the phenomenon of screaming fans.

Anyone remember NetAid? No, me neither. Band Aid and Live Aid? Yes, of course. Sport Aid? Yep. I even vaguely recall Hear ‘n Aid but NetAid? Zip, nothing, nada. For the record, it was an anti-poverty initiative started by the United Nations Development Programme and American multinational technology conglomerate corporation Cisco Systems. It was launched by a concert event on 9 October 1999 to utilise a fledgling internet to raise money and awareness for the Jubilee 2000 campaign to cancel third world debt. Three concerts in Wembley, New Jersey and Geneva took place with a host of international stars on the respective bills. So, a sort of Live Aid for the 90s then.

To help spearhead the campaign, a single was released. Just as the aforementioned Live Aid had its own such promotional track in Mick Jagger and David Bowie’s desecration of “Dancing In The Streets”, NetAid had the duo of Wyclef Jean and U2’s Bono with an insufferable song called “New Day”. I thought I had zero chance of remembering this but there was something about Wyclef Jean banging on about “nuff respect” that stirred a neurone in my memory into action. I wish it had stayed dormant. This was a hateful mash up of musical styles that just didn’t work. There’s a cringeworthy bit where Wyclef exhorts Bono with the line “Now Bono won’t you sing the hook?”. Oh. Dear. In short, it was a complete and utter mess. Unlike Jagger and Bowie’s equally miserable effort, it didn’t even fulfil its brief of raising lots of cash for its charity, staggering to one week at No 23 n the UK charts. Look, it was for charity and all that but let’s not talk about this ever again OK?

Scream connection: Billedkunst Opphavsrett i Norge or BONO for short is a Norwegian copyright organization that manages rights for artists including Edvard Munch who painted the seminal Expressionist work The Scream.

We continue the internet theme with the return of a music legend. The 80s are often referred to as to as a fallow decade for David Bowie in terms of the quality of his back catalogue but the 90s were hardly a golden period I would argue either. After the albums “Outside” and “Earthling” saw him trying to keep up with ever changing musical movements, his final album before the new Millennium- “Hours” – found him trying to be at the forefront of a technological revolution. It was one of the first albums by a major artist available to download via the internet and specifically via Bowie’s website BowieNet. The ability to do such a thing is completely taken for granted by Generation Z but back in 1999, it would have been a totally alien concept for most of us. Not everyone was an early adopter like Bowie and even if we had an internet connection, it probably wasn’t up to downloading multiple files. However, “Hours” was released digitally before it was physically so it must have been a frustrating experience for many of Bowie’s devoted fanbase.

Bowie predicts the internet in 1999

For those people who did manage to access the album via their computer, would they have been pleased or disappointed by the fruits of their labours? Well, “Hours” received generally mixed reviews and regularly appears towards the bottom of lists ranking Bowie’s albums. Critics seemed to like individual tracks but believed that the album lacked cohesion. Lead single “Thursday’s Child” was one of its more well received songs but it’s hardly classic Bowie though some tried to relate it to his seminal “Hunky Dory” album. An airy ballad of sorts, its title was inspired by Eartha Kitt’s autobiography though surely the traditional nursery rhyme “Monday’s Child” had a bearing as well. If so, Bowie wasn’t the first to incorporate it into a song with the likes of Matt Monro and Spandau Ballet using the motif before him. Am I saying Bowie copied the Spandau boys? No, I wouldn’t dare obviously. “Thursday’s Child” peaked at No 16 despite Bowie’s in person performance here though clearly he wasn’t in the L2 nightclub in Liverpool – that would have been a major coup.

Scream connection: Bowie immersed himself in early 20th century German Expressionism during his Berlin period in the late 70s. Edvard Munch who painted The Scream was a pioneer of Expressionism.

The audience in Liverpool might have missed out on Bowie but they did get another big name in Tom Jones plus the added bonus of The Cardigans to boot. Together. How so? Well, Tom hadn’t released an album for five years and so to relaunch himself, he put together a covers album. Hardly an original concept but Tom added an extra layer of interest by recording each individual song as a collaboration with a different artist including the likes of Stereophonics, Robbie Williams and Natalie Imbruglia. The lead single taken from it was a cover of the Talking Heads track “Burning Down The House” with the aforementioned Swedish rockers The Cardigans.

It appeared a bold choice on initial inspection. For a start, how well known was the song? Sure, it had been Talking Heads’ only Top 10 hit in the US but in the UK it had failed to chart on its release in 1983. So, we were talking about a 16 year old song that had never been a hit. That take is disingenuous though as “Burning Down The House” was hardly unknown. Its parent album “Speaking In Tongues” had charted in the UK and moreover, it was an integral part of perhaps the greatest live album of all time – “Stop Making Sense”. All that said though, there were perhaps more obvious choices for the lead single from Tom’s covers album “Reload” – INXS’s “Never Tear Us Apart” or “Sunny Afternoon” by The Kinks maybe? Obvious isn’t always right though and Tom and The Cardigans’ version of “Burning Down The House” lit the charts up returning Jones to the Top 10 for the first time since 1988 which was, coincidentally, also a cover – Prince’s “Kiss” with the Art Of Noise. I was one of those who bought “Burning Down The House” though mainly for Tom’s version of EMF’s “Unbelievable” which was an extra track on the CD single after seeing him perform it live with EMF on his 1992 TV series Tom Jones: The Right Time which is just a great clip.

Scream connection: Jones is well known for eliciting screams from his audiences at live gigs where the throwing of underwear on stage has also been a regular occurrence.

One of the most memorable/annoying No 1s of the year now as Eiffel 65 top the chart with “Blue (Da Ba Dee)”. This was yet another dance track that had caused a splash over the summer in Ibiza and, like ATB and Lou Bega before it, the record had charted in a minor way just in sales of import copies alone before shooting straight to the summit over here once it had an official UK release. Despite their French sounding name, this lot were actually Italian and they came up with their most well known track after the initial looped keyboard hook was fleshed out with some nonsense lyrics about a blue man living in a blue world (or something). However, the track’s USP was the “da ba dee” line in the chorus which had an almost hypnotic effect on the listener. It also created one of the most infamous misheard lyrics of all time as many people (including myself) heard “Aberdeen I will die”. Surely only Kate Bush’s backing vocals line “Jeux sans frontières” in Peter Gabriel’s “Games Without Frontiers” which was misheard as “She’s so popular” rivals it. “Blue (Da Ba Dee)” was No 1 all around Europe and beyond and would stay at the top of the UK charts for three weeks (one of only three singles to do so in 1999) becoming the second biggest selling single of the year. Yabba-da-ba-dee!

Scream connection: Well, here’s a thing. Aside from the “Aberdeen I will die” mishear, the internet tells me that “Da Ba dee” was also mistaken for either “If I bleed, I would die” or “I will scream” and that some have concluded that they were inspired by a ritualistic, screaming, dancing event. Bloody conspiracy theories.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1VengaboysWe’re Going To IbizaAs if
2StingBrand New DayI did not
3Everything But The GirlFive FathomsNope
4Paul JohnsonGet Get DownNot for me
5Wyclef Jean / BonoNew DayNever
6David BowieThursday’s ChildNah
7Tom Jones / The CardigansBurning Down The HouseYES!
8Eiffel 65Blue (Da Ba Dee)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/m002vr8s/top-of-the-pops-24091999

TOTP 13 NOV 1998

Posted on by 80stastic

That’s not Kate Thornton! She may have similar hair but it isn’t Kate. And it’s certainly not Jayne Middlemiss so who’s this on hosting duties for this particular TOTP? Well, it was Katy Hill (she does tell us that’s her name right at the very start of the show to be fair) and she was a Blue Peter presenter who went on to appear on kids Saturday morning show Live & Kicking. Was executive producer Chris Cowey auditioning her to become part of the roster of regular presenters? If so she can’t have passed as this was her one and only TOTP gig. Was she trying to diversify? I guess Blue Peter wasn’t known for regularly featuring pop artists. In fact, did they ever have any chart acts on? A quick search of the internet doesn’t reveal many. In terms of actual performances, we have McFly, Ed Sheeran and Olly Murs but there doesn’t appear to be many names from back in the day though I could be wrong. I wonder if any of the acts on tonight’s show could ever have been on Blue Peter?

We start with Touch And Go and their salacious hit “Would You…?”. The guy behind the record, one David Lowe produced and mixed the single in his modest recording studio on the western slopes of the Malvern Hills, not far from my hometown of Worcester. There’s another tenuous link between me and “Would You…?” though. Lowe had an ongoing association with Oval Records which was run by Charlie Gillett the British radio presenter, musicologist and writer. Lowe came up with the concept of Touch And Go in collaboration with Gillett who was always on the look out for unconventional music apparently. What’s any of this got to do with me? There is the tiniest of connections. In the mid 90s, I signed up for a further education course on 50s music. After the course had finished, all us students went for a drink and at said gathering, one of the attendees told us that he had been to school with Charlie Gillett who had been a very quiet lad who’d never spoken of his passion for music (especially rock ‘n’ roll) and so when he went onto have his illustrious career in that field, it had been a total shock to his schoolmates and peers. And that is my Touch And Go/Charlie Gillett story.

Would they have ever appeared on Blue Peter? Absolutely NOT!

When Madonna got rare permission from Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus of ABBA to use a sample from “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)” for her global smash “Hung Up”, it was only the third time such a request had been granted by the Swedish superstars. However, back in 1998, Madge herself was the recipient of an application to use one of her own songs in somebody else’s hit. According to Wikipedia, her agreement toallow“MaterialGirl” to be sampled for “If You Buy This Record (Your Life Will Be Better)” by The Tamperer featuring Maya was the first time she had ceded to such a petition. However, I wish she hadn’t. Whereas Madonna’s “Hung Up” was a great song making brilliant use of the ABBA source material, The Tamperer’s effort was a horrible noise with the melody from “Material Girl” just plonked incongruously into the mix of a track that had barely anything about it at all. In fact, it was so simple – it’s ‘hook’ was a stuttering cry of “f-f-f-f-f-f-fabulous” – it could have been a blueprint for all those hits by the Vengaboys. Has there ever been a more inappropriately named hit?

Would they have ever appeared on Blue Peter? Featuring the lyric “I got a party in my pants”? No chance.

Whilst we all know who Will Smith is (one of the most famous people on the planet I would surmise), how many of us are instantly familiar with the name Tatyana Ali? Well, if you’ve forgotten or never knew in the first place, she was a regular member of the cast of The Fresh Prince Of Bel–Air alongside Smith playing his young cousin Ashley Banks. After the show ended in 1996, Smith supposedly stepped up his efforts to get Ali to consider a career in music (in some of the later episodes of the show, her character had been involved in storylines that required her to sing). The culmination of Smith’s prompting was that Ali joined the roster of artists on Michael Jackson’s record label MJJ Music with an album called “Kiss The Sky” being released. The album underperformed and Ali was eventually let go from the label but it did leave us with three hit singles, the first of which was “Daydreamin’”. Peaking at a perhaps surprising high of No 6, to me, it was a decent attempt at sounding like Janet Jackson and no more. Inevitably, there would be a release that featured Will Smith which would come with the next single “Boy You Knock Me Out” which would eclipse the chart high of its predecessor by going to No 3. She returned the favour by adding vocals to a track on Smith’s “Willennium” album but would never release another album of her own, instead returning to her acting career and adding her support to Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.

Would they have ever appeared on Blue Peter? Oh, I think so. Ali had a pretty clean living image and her song was praised for its lack of references to sex and violence.

In the course of the nearly nine years of writing this blog, I’ve witnessed many an artist just repeat the formula of their debut hit by releasing something very similar. However, Eagle-Eye Cherry took that strategy to a new level by coming up with an almost facsimile of that first success. “Falling In Love Again” sounds so similar to “Save Tonight” that I checked to see if the guitar chord structures he employed were the same in both and they damn near were. Look at this:

Save Tonight: Am – F – C – G

Falling In Love Again: Am – C – G

I’m not saying it’s not a pleasant sound but that does seem to be taking the piss rather. His sister never took such liberties with her audience I don’t think.

Would they have ever appeared on Blue Peter? Quite possibly. I think he would have met the required levels of safeness.

Like most people I’m guessing, all I knew of Faith Evans was her part in the gigantic 1997 No 1 record “I’ll Be Missing You” alongside Puff Daddy. However, there was more to her than that. She’d already had her own US platinum selling album called simply “Faith” and contributed a track to the soundtrack for Waiting To Exhale. After the death of her partner – the rapper Notorious B.I.G. – she re continued her solo career in 1998 with the album “Keep The Faith”*. The lead single from it was “Love Like This”, an out and out R&B track built around a Chic loop (weren’t they all?) that did well in all the urban charts and in the US Billboard Hot 100 but curiously failed to become a huge hit over here peaking at No 24 in our national chart. Indeed, she was bested by the improbable occurrence of another Faith in the Top 40 at the same time – Faith Hill whose “This Kiss” topped even Alanis Morissette’s “Thank U” for unlikely song words by managing to get the phrases “ centrifugal motion”, “perpetual bliss” and “pivotal moment” into its lyrics.

*The use of her name and its derivatives would be a theme Evans would keep coming back to. Subsequent album titles included “Faithfully”, “A Faithful Christmas” and “Something About Faith”.

Would they have ever appeared on Blue Peter? Married to the ultimate gangsta rapper who was murdered in a drive by shooting and an association with Puff Daddy/P Diddy/ Sean Combs and all his baggage? Never happening.

It’s the return of East 17 next or rather E-17 as the group rebranded themselves in the wake of various bust ups, negative press coverage and even a question raised about them in the House Of Commons. The fall out from Brian Harvey’s disastrous radio interview in 1997 where he endorsed the taking of the drug ecstasy claiming “it can make you a better person”, would have an everlasting effect on the group putting in motion line up changes that would become the norm in subsequent years. Harvey was initially sacked by the rest of the band but was reinstated the following year after chief songwriter Tony Mortimer himself left due to irreconcilable creative differences. The three piece vowed to carry on, bagged themselves a new record deal with Telstar and released their first new material as E-17 with the single “Each Time”. Although this entered the charts at No 2, I don’t recall hearing it at all at the time. Were they suffering an image backlash in the form of an airplay embargo? Anyway, I think I knew it was meant to be a new direction for the band with more of an emphasis on the ubiquitous R&B sound. As such, I was never that interested in actually listening to “Each Time” but now that I have, it’s not as bad as I’d feared. Quite tuneful in fact. It’s maybe a shame that this new path for the group was never given more time to play out. Sadly, that never happened as despite a No 2 position for the single, the parent album “Resurrection” never even made the Top 40 and they were left to sign off their chart career with a No 12 hit called “Betcha Can’t Wait” in 1999 and that was it. East 17 are still going (after a fashion) but with just one original member (Terry Coldwell) still in the line up. They may not be having hits anymore but they’ll always get some work at Christmas thanks to “Stay Another Day”.

Would they have ever appeared on Blue Peter? What with all those negative drug taking headlines and their ‘bad boy’ image, it was surely never on the cards unless it was to light a candle on the Christmas Advent Crown whilst singing that song. They’d have probably set fire to it anyway. Oh no, that was John Noakes wasn’t it?

Is it me or did there seem to be someone from the Fugees on the show or in the charts every week at this point? In October we had Lauryn Hill with “Doo Wop (That Thing)” riding high inside The Top 5 and just seven days prior to this, Pras dropped in to the TOTP studio to perform “Blue Angels”. This week it was the turn of Wyclef Jean but he wasn’t on his own. No, he’s got the aforementioned Pras with him alongside someone called Free Marie who is a rapper and nothing to do with the 70s rock band who had hits with “Alright Now”, “Wishing Well” and “My Brother Jake”. There was, however, a different rock band involved in Wyclef’s hit which, once you know its title is “Another One Bites The Dust”, means that you instantly know who I’m talking about. Apparently the Queen fanbase were none too pleased about this classic track by their favourite band being hijacked by Wyclef for inclusion on the soundtrack of the film Small Soldiers and I can sort of understand why. He basically took the original track and just (c)rapped all over it. Not especially creative nor indeed respectful. Also not respectful was Wyclef Jean’s video message which introduces the video we see here when he says “ C’mon Freddie Mercury, where you at?”, a line he also repeats in the actual track. Well Wyclef mate, he’d been dead for seven years so I’m not sure why you were expecting to see him! This whole project just felt all wrong from initial conception to its bad execution but it didn’t stop the sometime Fugee from doing loads more subsequent collaborations with the likes of Bono, Tom Jones, Mary J. Blige, Missy Elliott and even The Rock.

Would they have ever appeared on Blue Peter? No, I don’t think he would have been a natural fit.

Cher reigns supreme at the top of the charts with “Believe” for a third straight week of seven. This really was a transformative hit not only for Cher for whom it marked a massive uptick in her commercial fortunes after the disappointment of her last album “It’s A Man’s World” but also for the wider music world. The fact that Cher was 52 years old at the time meant that middle aged female artists suddenly had licence to show that this wasn’t a one-off and would follow in her footsteps with the likes of Diana Ross, Tina Turner, Donna Summer, Madonna and Cyndi Lauper all releasing albums that were of a dance music flavour.

Would they have ever appeared on Blue Peter? I think Blue Peter might not have been a big enough show for Cher. A bit beneath her. Still, she may have won a Grammy for Best Dance Recording with “Believe” but she hasn’t got a Blue Peter badge I’ll wager.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1Touch And GoWould You…?No, I wouldn’t and indeed didn’t
2The Tamperer featuring MayaIf You Buy This Record (Your Life Will Be Better)Hell no
3Tatyana AliDaydreamin’No thanks
4Eagle-Eye CherryFalling In Love AgainNope
5Faith EvansLove Like ThisNah
6East 17 or (E-17 if you prefer)Each TimeNo
7Wyclef Jean / Pras / Free Marie / QueenAnother One Bites The DustNever
8Cher BelieveI 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/m002n30j/top-of-the-pops-13111998

TOTP 15 MAY 1998

Posted on by 80stastic

It’s mid May 1998 and my beloved Chelsea FC have just won another cup! Having won a major trophy for the first time in 26 years the previous season when they lifted the FA Cup, they followed it up with two more in 1998. The League Cup was secured in March and now a European trophy as the Cup Winners’ Cup came back to Stamford Bridge after we beat Stuttgart in the final 1-0 two days before this TOTP aired. I couldn’t believe it! Three trophies in two seasons! My whole youth had had seen us in just one semi-final (which we lost) and then, as I was approaching 30, we were suddenly good! I wonder if any of the artists in this show were experiencing a renaissance period after a significant amount of time being shit?

Tonight’s host is Jo Whiley whom I thought for years was a bit shit but I’ve begrudgingly come round to in later years. The opening act are All Saints who I don’t think went through a crap phase, not commercially anyway, at least in their first incarnation. After two performances of “Under The Bridge”, their third consecutive appearance on the show sees them get to grips with the other A-side of their hit – Labelle’s “Lady Marmalade”. Now, if you judge this by just the chorus, and let’s face it that’s how we judge most songs, it’s a pretty faithful interpretation. However, the lyrics in the verses have been completely rewritten with Shaznay Lewis performing them as a rap. It works OK I’d say – better than their cover of “Under The Bridge” anyway. The girls are still wedded to their cargo pants look which has served them well to be fair in terms of their band image. I will comment though that executive producer Chris Cowey clearly had a great affection for them – All Saints I mean not their cargo pants. After their multiple appearances on the show for the seemingly never ending chart run of “Never Ever”, here they were top and tailing two shows having been the final artist on last week’s show as the No 1 and the first on this week’s despite having dropped a place. And there’s more…next week they return to the top spot and perform both tracks of the single on TOTP!

As Jo Whiley says, we have two songs from the 70s starting the show off as, after “Lady Marmalade” (a UK No 17 hit in 1975), we have Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams”. One of the many standout tracks from the legendary “Rumours” album, it made No 24 in 1977. However, that one statistic doesn’t tell the whole tale of its chart history as it has been more successful in the digital age via streaming platforms generating weeks and weeks back in the UK charts. Indeed, it is at No 52 in this week’s chart as I write this post in September 2025! It wasn’t the Fleetwood Mac version that saw it in the charts of 1998 though – we have arrived at the era of The Corrs. Now just as Chelsea weren’t pulling up any trees in the early 80s trundling along in the old Division 2, this family band from Dundalk, Ireland also struggled to make an impression early on in their career, in the UK charts at least.

Starting out playing in their Auntie’s bar, they quickly gained recognition via their cameo appearances in The Commitments movie and then via performances on a global stage at the 1994 World Cup, 1996 Summer Olympics and a support slot on the Celine Dion tour. Their debut album “Forgiven, Not Forgotten” sold well in their native Ireland plus Canada, Australia and Japan. However, success in the US and UK remained slight. Follow up album “Talk On Corners” would change all that and then some but not until it was rereleased with the track “Dreams” added to it which the group had recorded for a Fleetwood Mac tribute album and performed live at the Royal Albert Hall alongside Mick Fleetwood. The reaction to that performance convinced the band and their label to release it as a single but with a Tin Tin Out remix to make it more palatable for the dance market. “Dreams” easily became their biggest hit to that point when it peaked at No 6 – none of their previous seven singles had got any higher than No 43. The “Talk On Corners” album would go nine times platinum in the UK alone and become the best selling album of 1998 aided by the release of a ‘special edition’ that included five extra tracks.

Much was made of the group’s image with special attention being given to lead singer Andrea. Now a band’s front person receiving the most press was not unheard of – indeed it was an inevitable occurrence, almost natural especially when you looked like Andrea Corr. However, with her two sisters Sharon and Caroline hardly looking like “a bag of spanners” (as Terry Wogan ironically used to refer to them), it meant that brother Jim would somehow be seen as the weak link, letting the side down as it were which was patently ridiculous but took such a hold in the nation’s collective mind that it led to sketches like the one below. We’ll be seeing lots more of ‘The Beautiful’ Corrs in future TOTP repeats.

Ah now, if you ask my mate Robin whether there have been times when Simply Red suffered from, let’s say… ‘not being at the top of their game’, he would probably reply “Yes, of course. Everything they’ve ever released is absolute shit” and many would agree with him. From a purely commercial perspective though, come the end of the 90s, though they were hardly battling relegation to Division 3 as Chelsea did in 1983, they weren’t the title favourites that they used to be either. Gone were the 12 times platinum days of “Stars”. Their 1998 album “Blue” only sold 600,000 copies compared to even previous album “Life”’s 1.5 million and by the time of decade closer “Love And The Russian Winter”, sales were halved again. Now when I used the word ‘only’, it’s relative. Those are still big numbers but Hucknall clearly couldn’t command the sales that he used to.

When it comes to singles, Simply Red have never been a big hitter. Out of 26 singles released up to this point, only six had made the Top 10 (although that did include one No 1). Seven didn’t even make the Top 40 at all. Set against those figures, “Say You Love Me” making No 7 was akin to Chelsea having a cup run in the bad old days of my teenage years. Their lead single from the aforementioned “Blue” album, it was hardly anything groundbreaking but it was a perfect daytime playlist track that Hucknall could sell in his sleep. However, he would follow it up with a horrible cover of the old Hollies hit “The Air That I Breathe” and for that alone he should never be forgiven regardless of all his other musical misdemeanours that Robin could list.

It’s LeAnn Rimes next…again. I think this the third time she’s been on the show already with “How Do I Live?”. What else can I say about this one? Well, have I already talked about the fact that two different versions of the song were released on the same day – one by Rimes and another by Trisha Yearwood and that both versions were nominated for Best Female Country Vocal Performance at the Grammy Awards which was the first time such an occurrence had ever happened? Only one version could be performed at the event and LeAnn was chosen. She belted out the song in a career best turn apparently. As soon as she left the stage though, the award in her category was made and they gave it to Trisha Yearwood! Talk about awkward! It’s the football equivalent of Bayern Munich completely outplaying Chelsea in the 2012 Champions League final played at the German team’s own ground and being beaten on penalties. Get In!

P.S. What extremely tenuous connection is there between “How Do I Live?” to this week’s No 1? All will be revealed later.

The links are writing themselves for Jo Whiley tonight. Firstly, she can highlight the connection between two 70s songs opening the show in “Lady Marmalade” and “Dreams” and now she can segue from one teenage singer in LeAnn Rimes to a whole group of them in Cleopatra. Having made No 4 with their debut hit “Cleopatra’s Theme”, they repeated the trick with follow up “Life Ain’t Easy”. It’s a bit smoother on the ear than its predecessor, less jarring somehow though the vocals do have a tendency to grate and why does one of them have a rucksack on their back 3T style? To highlight that they were still school age? Was that good idea? Surely not. Jo Whiley’s comment about “Madonna’s Mancunian mavericks” was a reference to the fact that the group were signed to her label Maverick in America. Just two singles into their career and they had Madonna as a mentor? Maybe life was easy after all…

Next a song I always confuse with “C U When U Get There” by Coolio for no other reason than that they’re both by rappers and the song titles suggest journeys conducted over a period of time. I’m easily confused is my only excuse. “Gone Till November” was the third and joint biggest solo hit by ex-Fugee Wyclef Jean. It starts off all calm and melodic but then when the rapping starts, chaos ensues and it becomes almost unlistenable especially in this performance in which Wyclef’s vocals aren’t the strongest. Maybe the recorded version is better though this single edit is the ‘pop’ version so presumably more mainstream than the album track? Like “The Show” by Doug E. Fresh and the Get Fresh Crew over a decade earlier, it features an awful interpolation of “Michelle” by The Beatles. Compared to his Fugees output, I would say his solo stuff is the equivalent of Chelsea’s 1978/79 team which finished bottom of the league with just five wins out of 42 games. I really suffered for my team in my childhood!

I still haven’t provided the answer to my previous teaser (it’s really not worth waiting for either) but here’s another one. What links Wyclef Jean with the next act on the show who is Adam Garcia? The Bee Gees of course. Wyclef’s debut solo single was “We Trying To Stay Alive” which sampled the disco classic “Stayin’ Alive” whilst Adam Garcia is on the show to perform “Night Fever” from the soundtrack of the jukebox musical Saturday Night Fever based on the 1977 film of the same name. Garcia was starring as Tony Manero, the character played by John Travolta in the movie during the musical’s run at the London Palladium. He’s clearly got those iconic dance moves down pat judging by this performance but as ever with these jukebox musicals, the question remains of why would you want the soundtrack to the show when you could just have the original tracks in their full glory? That’s especially true with Saturday Night Fever with the show following the film’s plot (albeit with the darker elements removed) as opposed to a completely new story that features the songs of a particular artist.

Ooh, here’s another connections teaser – what’s the link between Adam Garcia and LeAnn Rimes? The 2000 film Coyote Ugly which starred Garcia and the soundtrack of which featured four songs by Rimes including the UK No 1 “Can’t Fight The Moonlight”. I love it when a post comes together!

We have yet another new No 1 and I’m not saying anything perceptive nor insightful by stating that nobody saw this song coming from this artist. Yes, Aqua are back at the head of the pack with their third consecutive chart topper “Turn Back Time”. Now, achieving that feat might well have been seen as completely beyond the Danish group based on the cartoon pop of their first (and admittedly) mega hit “Barbie Girl”. Even when copycat follow up “Dr Jones” replicated that position, many must have believed that a third No 1 was surely beyond them? Well, had they stuck to the formula of those first two hits, maybe the UK record buying public wouldn’t have fallen for it a third time but the truth is that Aqua released a song I certainly didn’t know they were capable of. “Turn Back Time” was nothing like its predecessors.

A proper ballad with proper singing from vocalist Lene Nystrøm rather than those squeaky noises we’d come to expect. True, there is a weird, incongruous breakdown near the end but I think we can overlook that. Also (thankfully) overlooked was that bald bloke who’d supplied the unsettling “Come on Barbie, let’s go party” line in “Barbie Girl”. Is he even on stage in this performance? Oh, is that him sat on a stool holding a tambourine with a hoodie and glasses disguising his striking look? Might be. A fourth No 1 was a step too far and Aqua would only return to the Top 10 twice more after this and one of those was a remake of “Barbie Girl” in light of the success of the 2023 Barbie film. Still, “Turn Back Time” allowed Aqua to always be able to say that there was more to them than just that song.

Oh, the link between LeAnn Rimes and Aqua? “How Do I Live?” was written by songwriting legend Dianne Warren who also penned “If I Could Turn Back Time” for Cher which is almost the same title as Aqua’s hit and if I really could turn back time, I wouldn’t have tried to make such a tenuous link in the first place.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1All SaintsUnder The Bridge / Lady MarmaladeNo but I think my wife had the album
2The CorrsDreamsIt’s a no
3Simply RedSay You Love MeNever happening
4LeAnn RimesHow Do I Live?Negative
5CleopatraLife Ain’t EasyNah
6Wyclef Jean Gone Till NovemberI did not
7Adam GarciaNight FeverNope
8AquaTurn Back TimeNo

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.