TOTP Rewind – the 90s | My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 05 AUG 1993

Posted on September 28, 2022 by 80stastic

I started the previous post talking about the poor state of the BBC’s musical output in 1993 and the landscape altering changes that were coming to both Radio 1 and TOTP. Well, one of them has just happened ahead of schedule. Radio 1 DJ and pretty much the embodiment of the comedy characters Smashie and Nicey Dave Lee Travis resigned on air three days after this TOTP aired. Apparently he was due to leave the station in ten weeks time anyway when his contract ran out but so irate was the ‘Hairy Cornflake’ about what was going on in the corridors of power at the station that he chose to have his own little private or rather very public moment of venting.

“…and I really want to put the record straight at this point and I thought you ought to know – changes are being made here which go against my principles and I just cannot agree with them”
“Profile: Dave Lee Travis”. Aircheck Tracker. Archived from the original on 22 October 2009. Retrieved 13 November 2008.

DLT was referring to the changes being ushered in by new controller in waiting Matthew Bannister that would lead to a massive overhaul of the station and its presenters. Simon Bates, Gary Davies, Alan Freeman, Bob Harris and Paul Gambaccini would follow him out of the door soon after. Eventually even Steve Wright whom Bannister had put on the breakfast show slot would resign* ushering in the era of the self styled saviour of Radio 1 Chris Evans. Heaven help us.

*Writing this coincidentally on the day of Steve Wright’s last ever afternoon show on Radio 2

TOTP would undergo its own major transformation a few months on from the comings and goings at Radio 1 but for the moment it was business as usual. Let’s see who was doing the rounds this week…

Well, there’s Juliet Roberts opening the show with her single “Caught In The Middle” for starters. Long before this hit, Juliet had a gig on a TV show called Rockschool. Nothing to do with Jack Black, it was a BBC programme that ran for four years and showed viewers techniques for making rock and pop music using guitar, keyboards, bass, drums etc.

I don’t remember this at all but by the comments against some of the clips on YouTube, the 80s kids loved it. It did have some pretty big names appear on the show such as Gary Moore, Vince Clarke, The Communards and Midge Ure. The presenters were pretty wooden but they were good musicians. Guitarist Deirdre Cartwright in the thumbnail below had been in a band called Painted Lady who would go on to become Girlschool. Play the opening song in the clip below. It sounds like prog-poppers It Bites who knew their way around a tune or two…

The clip below features Juliet (1:56) talking about singing styles. She also co-hosted a Channel 4 show called Solid Soul that was basically a retooling of America’s Soul Train.

All that work in front of the camera should have made her TOTP appearance here a doddle. She looks pretty confident for sure and nice to see an almost totally female backing band behind her (I think the drummer is a bloke). The 1993 trend of the tall hat started by Linda Perry of 4 Non Blondes carries on with Juliet’s choice of headgear. Top (hat) stuff.

What on earth is going on here?! Daniel O’Donnell on TOTP?! At a time when Matthew Bannister was lurking the corridors of Radio 1 on a dinosaur hunt to turn the station back to its original raison d’être of being for ‘young listeners’, what was the natural successor to Val Doonican doing on the BBC’s prime time pop music show?! Bizarre doesn’t begin to cover it. Even host Mark Franklin sounds surprised when he introduces him.

Look, I know Daniel O’Donnell has a massively loyal fan base who swear by him and he wasn’t doing any harm by giving them what they wanted to hear but in terms of the symbiosis between the BBC’s two main musical arms, it seemed like an outlier at best. To put it into context, it wouldn’t be long before Radio 1 Head of Production Trevor Dann would ban Status Quo records from being played on the station.

“Whatever Happened To Old Fashioned Love” was only O’Donnell’s fourth single release and he would only ever release eighteen in a fourteen year period fifteen of which would make the UK Top 40. Albums were a different matter altogether. Check out these numbers:

Studio albums: 38
Compilation albums: 13
Live albums: 4

Wow! That’s a lot of Daniel O’Donnell! Big props by the way to the floor managers for this show for getting the studio audience to scream at Daniel as if he was a member of Take That.

The Madonna video for “Rain” again?! This is the third time in four weeks! And it was a non-mover this week (albeit within the Top 10)! Overkill much? It would get no higher despite all this exposure. I said in a recent post that you only had to look at the fact that all five singles from the “Erotica” album made the Top 10 in the UK as evidence that she was still current, popular and relevant at this time. However, what I didn’t say was that four of them (the four consecutive releases after the title track) failed to make the Top 5, the first time that had ever happened. She wouldn’t have another No 1 record until “Frozen” five years later.

One place higher than Madonna we find Urban Cookie Collective with “The Key The Secret” and unlike her Madgesty, they are on the up. Their ride up the charts so far has been as follows:

40 – 29 – 20 – 11 – 6

They would rise to No 2 the following week where they would stay for two weeks kept off the top spot by Freddie Mercury. It would then spend the next three weeks inside the Top 10 and a further three inside the Top 40 before finally dropping out.

The other day the tweet below appeared on my timeline:

Mental note to oneself – when in office don’t randomly pipe up ‘I’ve got the secret’ when someone says, ‘I’ve got the key.’ It leads to confused looks and questions about what secret you know. Not everyone has song lyrics from 1993 still playing in their head.
— Lucy Mitchell (@LucyMitchAuth) September 27, 2022

The replies to Lucy’s tweet showed that there were loads of us with similar lines from songs that we pull out automatically given the correct prompt. Mine and my wife’s include “(Hey You) The Rock Steady Crew” by Rock Steady Crew and “Fresh” by Kool And The Gang. Within the replies to Lucy’s tweet, someone managed to get in another 1993 reference:

At a wedding once and a bridesmaid stands to do a reading entitled ‘What is Love?’ To which my husband whispers ‘baby don’t hurt me’ I don’t think our row heard any of the reading
— Bronagh (@BristowBronagh) September 28, 2022

The well worn tale of soap star to pop idol has another chapter. How many had already made that transformation by August 1993? Well, off the top of my head there’s Kylie and Jason obviously, Kylie’s sister Dannii, Craig McLachlan, Stefan Dennis (!) and that’s just from Neighbours. If we look closer to home, we find perhaps where this whole phenomenon began with another resident of the aforementioned Albert Square. Seven years prior to this, Anita Dobson took “Anyone Can Fall In Love” into the Top 5 starting a flurry of EastEnders chancing their arms as pop sensations. Nick Berry, Letitia Dean and Paul Medford, Sophie Lawrence all had hits of varying size whilst there were also some feeble failures from the likes of Tom Watt and Peter Dean. None of them though seemed to have the credibility that Michelle Gayle had.

She’d been on our screens as Hattie Tavernier for over three years by this point but left Albert Square to pursue a pop career full time. Her debut single was “Looking Up” and it was no crappy cover version designed to deliver a one-off hit. I could imagine someone like Dina Carroll, Kim Appleby or even Louise post Eternal performing it. An uplifting, catchy chorus aligned with a well placed one word sample (‘Rejoice!’), it sounded current and relevant and well…on the money for 1993. Michelle herself displays no signs of imposter syndrome in her confident TOTP turn but then this wasn’t her debut musical performance…

Go to 18:25

Fresh ‘n’ Fly there wrekkin’ the mike (PSYCHE!). “Looking Up” made No 11 (not quite the Top 3 that host Mark Franklin predicted then) and its success was enough to convince Michelle and her label RCA that she should quit EastEnders to be a full time pop star. She would go on to have seven Top 40 hits (including her most well known tune “Sweetness”) and recorded two albums before leaving RCA to sign with EMI where she was the victim of an artist rostering reshuffle and never released any recordings with them. She has returned to music periodically with a second place finish in 2003’s Reborn In The USA retro music contest and even had a go at Eurovision in 2008.

They’ve dropped the number of Breakers from five to four this week (thank god!) and we start with a collaboration between two artists at either end of the alphabet. Aswad and Yazz were at school together Mark Franklin tells us and they looked each other up again to record a cover of Ace’s 1975 hit “How Long”. We’ve seen the cover version as career revitaliser strategy countless times before but both Aswad and Yazz’s fortunes certainly needed a tonic in 1993. Neither had managed a hit in three years and in the case of Yazz especiall, her career was a mess. After the huge success of “The Only Way Is Up” and the “Wanted” album at the end of the 80s, she’d record two albums for two different labels neither of which was released. “How Long” was the lead single from her third LP attempt that did see the light of day but “One On One” disappeared without trace leaving only that Ace cover to remind us of Yazz’s name. It would be her final chart hit when it peaked at No 31. Aswad though would score a Top 5 hit with “Shine” the following year. They were in the news for tragic reasons recently when founding member Drummie Zeb died aged just 62.

Next a huge dance hit from The Goodmen or is it The Good Men or is it Chocolate Puma or even Zki & Dobre? Confused? Well, these were just a few of the names that Dutch DJ and production duo René ter Horst and Gaston Steenkist went by. Not names that roll off the tongue naturally – that may explain the aliases. If their real names aren’t familiar then their tune “Give It Up” surely is to anybody frequenting the club scene around this time as it was huge. An African rhythm combined with that regimented drum sound was ubiquitous and led to it being a global hit especially in the US where it topped the dance chart. So massive was it that it crossed over into the mainstream and became a No 5 hit on the UK Top 40. Given its success, it’s rather surprising that it was never shown on TOTP again. Maybe they didn’t know what to do with it. Its impact led to it being sampled two years later by Simply Red for their No 1 hit “Fairground” but let’s not go there eh?

Talking of No 1 records, here comes a future one courtesy of Culture Beat and “Mr Vain”. This lot were yet more Eurodance chart botherers and as they will be chart toppers shortly, I’ll keep my comments about them in this brief Breakers appearance…well…brief. Here’s a nice little bit of pop trivia for now though. “Mr Vain” was the first record to got o No 1 in the UK that wasn’t released on 7’’ vinyl.

Bon Jovi complete this week’s Breakers with the fourth single from their “Keep The Faith” album. Was “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” just a rewrite of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”? Bit harsh but then the band have incorporated the Stones song into their composition when performing it live so there must be some similarities structure wise. The black and white promo video features a number of scenes clearly meant as a tribute to / stolen directly from A Hard Day’s Night and also Jim Morrison’s grave in Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris. I went there once and there are some incredible figures from history buried within it. Chopin, Edith Piaf, Marcel Proust, Oscar Wilde…and yet all anybody seemed interested in was the singer of The Doors. I saw many hand made signs saying ‘This way to Jim’ and at his actual grave, someone had laid not flowers but a nicely rolled joint. It’s what he would have wanted.

“I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” peaked at No 17.

This week’s live by satellite performance is by UB40 and comes from the Garden State Arts Centre, New Jersey. It’s another pointless exercise as the only camera angle we get is of the band performing “Higher Ground” on a two level stage. Completely dull. Also completely dull was their song which was the second single from the “Promises And Lies” album.

This was a very commercially successful time for UB40. As Mark Franklin says, they’d just had a No 1 single in “(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With You” and the album was also a chart topper. By my reckoning, this was also the last really successful era of the band. There had been a few during their career – the heady days of their politically powerful first hits like “One In Ten”, their covers period of “Labour Of Love” and “Red Red Wine”, the chart topping collaboration with Chrissie Hynde on “I’ve Got You Babe” and then this 1993 spell. “Higher Ground” was a bit of a stinker though.

This episode of TOTP became ‘The UB40 Show’ by be end of it with Ali Campbell introducing the next act who was actually one of their mates. Bitty McLean was a tape operator at the band’s recording studio originally – the reggae Rick Astley then – before being promoted to co-producer and engineer for them. He even provided backing vocals for some of the “Promises And Lies” album. His debut single was a cover of a 1961 Fats Domino tune “It Keeps Rainin” which he retitled “It Keeps Rainin’ (Tears From My Eyes)” presumably much to the annoyance of the TOTP graphics team.

I hated this as it was just more evidence to me of what a terrible year for music 1993 was turning out to be. Plastic reggae with a ragga style shout out at the start of it just to jump on that bandwagon. Horrible. As always, I was in the minority and the record soared to No 2 in the charts. Bitty would have a total of seven UK Top 40 hits.

A fourth and final week at the top of the heap for Take That with “Pray”. They needn’t have worried though as it was the first of eight No 1 singles in the first part of their career. They will be back in a few weeks with “Relight My Fire” accompanied by the dreadful Lulu.

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Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Juliet Roberts	Caught In The Middle	Nope
2	Daniel O’Donnell	Whatever Happened To Old Fashioned Love	As if
3	Madonna	Rain	No
4	Urban Cookie Collective	The Key The Secret	I did not
5	Michelle Gayle	Looking Up	Negative
6	Aswad and Yazz	How Long	Nah
7	The Goodmen	Give It Up	No thanks
8	Culture Beat	Mr Vain	Never happening
9	Bon Jovi	I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead	No but I had a promo copy of the Keep The Faith album
10	UB40	Higher Ground	I did not
11	Bitty McLean	It Keeps Rainin’ (Tears From My Eyes)	Just awful – no
12	Take That	Pray	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/m001c94b/top-of-the-pops-05081993

TOTP 29 JUL 1993

Posted on September 24, 2022 by 80stastic

It’s late July 1993 and the BBC’s musical output has gone stale. The seismic changes of the TOTP ‘year zero’ revamp happened twenty-two months ago and many are no longer with us most obviously the majority of the slew of new presenters that were introduced. In fact, the only two remaining are Mark Franklin and Tony Dortie who have been presenting solo on alternate weeks since October 1992. The show’s audience has plateaued at a level of 6.5 million which was less than it was attracting pre the revamp.

Meanwhile, over at Radio 1, whilst it seems like the ‘Smashie And Nicey’ image propagated by the likes of Simon Bates, Dave Lee Travis and Gary Davies will carry on forever, change is a-comin’. The era of Matthew Bannister as controller of Radio 1 is nearly upon us and he will action a root and branch transformation that will strip away the old, rotting wood. The culture of change would prove to be contagious. Within months, TOTP would also change head producer and the incoming Ric Blaxill would reverse most of the ‘year zero’ changes. For now though, it was the calm before the storm. Let’s see who was afloat before the sea of change appeared over the horizon…

We start with an act that was having some success under the current regime but who would flourish under the new. “Unforgiven” was D:Ream’s third of four consecutive Top 40 hits in 1993 though none would get any higher than No 19. Solid but not spectacular. Come early 1994 though they would go off like a rocket with the re-release of “Things Can Only Get Better” soaring to No 1.

Like most people I’m guessing, I don’t remember “Unforgiven” but on listening back to it, I was pleasantly surprised. It’s OK. A bit more grit to it than their most famous tune, the most impressive part of it is the bridge into the chorus which Peter Cunnah almost growls – quite the feat in a dance record. Linda Perry from 4 Non Blondes seems to have started a trend for tall hat wearing given the millinery of one of the backing singers. Where will it all end? Well, I’ll tell you where it won’t end – with me making the almost obligatory reference to Professor Brian Cox on keyboards…oh shit.

“Unforgiven” peaked at No 29.

“Show Me Love” by Robin S was not just one of the biggest dance tunes of 1993 but of the whole decade and beyond. How do you follow a hit line that? Easy! Just release virtually the same song again but change its title. “Luv 4 Luv” is “Show Me Love”, not just sonically but linguistically with the same three syllable title and chorus but with a slight change of spelling. Money for old rope? This was, to reference the film maker Stanley Kubrick, money for pieces of string too short to be useful*. Even Tony Dortie can’t resist a jibe by stating tongue-in-cheek that it’s “nothing like her first single”.

*Kubrick was a massive hoarder and when his family were sorting through his estate after his death, they found a box labelled ‘pieces of string too short to be useful’. His archives now reside at the London College of Communication .

Amazingly, enough people bought the single to send it to No 11 in the UK charts. I don’t get this. Presumably if a punter liked it enough to buy “Luv 4 Luv” then said punter must have felt the same about “Show Me Love” and also bought that so essentially you have the same record twice. Surely there can’t have been people who only bought “Luv 4 Luv”?! “I wasn’t bothered about “Show Me Love” but this new one by Robin S is great and I must have it”…said no-one ever.

When Freddie Mercury died in November 1991, Queen’s most iconic song “Bohemian Rhapsody” was rereleased and almost inevitably became that year’s Xmas No 1. Four months later, The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert for AIDS Awareness took place at Wembley Stadium with the remaining members of Queen all involved. Such was Freddie’s popularity though, there was still a clamour for his recordings and so the band’s label raided his back catalogue as a solo artist. For a name as big as Freddie’s, there wasn’t actually that much solo work to raid. He only recorded two studio albums (and one of those was the “Barcelona” collaboration with Montserrat Caballé) plus the standalone single “The Great Pretender”, a couple of tracks for the Dave Clark musical Time and “Love Kills” from Giorgio Moroder’s restoration of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. That didn’t stop Parlophone coming up with the unimaginatively titled “The Freddie Mercury Album” compilation in 1992 which included elements of all those recording projects. That album had already seen the release of “In My Defence” from Time and a rerelease for the aforementioned “The Great Pretender” which had both charted.

What came next though, nearly two years after Freddie’s death, was a surprise. A posthumous No1 record with a single that had stumbled to a peak of No 50 when originally released eight years prior? How did that happen? Well, it was all down to a team of remixers called The No More Brothers who took the track “Living On My Own” which had been on Freddie’s 1985 solo debut album “Mr Bad Guy” and that 1992 compilation and turned it into a dance hit. A chart topper all over Europe including the UK, it was a sales sensation. Me though, I didn’t get it. I hadn’t been aware of the 1985 original but this 1993 version didn’t make me want to seek it out. It just sounded so bland and I hated the lines ‘Dee do de de, Dee do de de, I don’t have no time for no monkey business”. What?! Written down, the first part looks like a script for a Harry Enfield’s The Scousers sketch whilst the monkey business bit was just hackneyed. How was this a No 1 record? The video is the same one used for the 1985 release and uses footage of Freddie’s 39th birthday party in Munich where he recorded the “Mr Bad Guy” album.

The general perception amongst the fanbase of Manic Street Preachers is that their second album “Gold Against The Soul” is also their worst. There is also an agreed opinion that the one stand out track on it is “La Tristesse Durera” which was released as its second single. I disagree on both counts. I love this album and though “La Tristesse Durera” is a fabulous track, it’s not my favourite from it. That honour switches between “Roses In The Hospital” and “Life Becoming A Landslide” on a regular basis.

Actually, I need to correct myself here and give the song its full title which is “La Tristesse Durera (Scream To A Sigh)”. No brackets, no points. I make this clarification not just for the sake of accuracy nor to be a pedant but to highlight a peculiar oddity about the track that has a tie in with another song I love that has brackets in the title. For some reason, when released in the US, the the song’s title was changed to “Scream To Sigh (La Tristesse Durera)”. Why? I have no idea but nearly a decade earlier, The Icicle Works’ single “Birds Fly (Whisper To A Scream)” had its title changed to “Whisper To A Scream (Birds Fly)” for the US market. What was it about US record labels and brackets and the word ‘scream’?

As for the performance here, would there have been outrage at Nicky Wire wearing a dress? There shouldn’t have been. It’s not as if we hadn’t seen it before. There was Bowie on the cover of his “The Man Who Sold The World” album and that bloke from Mud who wore one on the actual show.

“La Tristesse Durera (Whisper To A Scream)” peaked at No 22.

“Live from the Dominion Theatre in London’s West End…” Don’t get too excited it’s just Craig McLachlan in a revival of Grease the Musical and I have to say that, based on this short clip of “You’re The One That I Want” he doesn’t seem too convincing as Danny Zuko. Maybe it’s his curly hair, or his average singing voice or maybe it’s just that he’s not John Travolta which is not his fault of course. Debbie Gibson on the other hand belts it out and wears that iconic leather outfit well.

As Tony Dortie says, the cast included Shane Richie who played the role of Kenickie but as for him being “very funny” – if he performed anything like he did when on 3–2–1 in 1987…Perhaps he should have changed his name to Shame Richie…

Five Breakers again this week (bastards!) starting with Juliet Roberts and “Caught In The Middle”. I had no idea at the time but this wasn’t Juliet’s first Top 40 record – she was the vocalist on “It’s Over” by Funk Masters way back in 1983. She then joined smooth jazzers Working Week whose single “I Thought I’d Never See You Again” I quite liked though nobody else seemed to much when it peaked at No 80. Fast forward eight years and Juliet finally had a hit in her own right.

There’s a couple of parallels between Juliet and Shara Nelson who was on the show the other week. Both were having success under their own names after supplying the vocals for other artists (Shara sang on Massive Attack’s “Unfinished Sympathy”) and both were on the Cooltempo label. Also like Shara, Juliet’s solo career seemed to peter out rather. “Caught In The Middle” made No 24 though a David Morales remix the following year peaked ten places higher. A couple more Top 20 singles followed before the decade was out but that didn’t translate into album sales with her debut long player “Natural Thing” only making No 65. She continues to be in demand as a backing singer though.

The first of two huge stars now who are experiencing a drop off in singles sales as their latest offerings fail to tempt UK record buyers. After her last single “That’s The Way Love Goes” went to No 2 over here, Janet Jackson might have expected the follow up to perform similarly. It didn’t. “If” was the second single from her “Janet” album which I thought was meant to be a more smooth, sensual sounding soul record but this single could have been on the more strident previous album “Rhythm Nation 1814” with its hard beats and rock guitar riff. Yes, the lyrics aligned with the album’s sexual theme touching on fantasy and voyeurism but sonically it was nothing like the previous single.

The video plays on the voyeurism subject with scenes involving touch screen monitors and web cams, seemingly jumping on the bandwagon of Sliver, the erotic thriller starring Sharon Stone that was popular at the time. Maybe the racy video worked against the single’s commercial potential – was it too racy for anything other than a short Breaker spot on TOTP? Whatever the reason, “If” only made it to No 14 in the UK.

Oh crap! It’s “River Of Dreams” by Billy Joel. Now I like Billy and some of his back catalogue (especially the earlier stuff) is great. Even his last album prior to this (“Storm Front”) had some good singles on it. This track though rivalled “Uptown Girl” for sheer, undiluted awfulness. The title track off his only studio album of the 90s and the last to be comprised of pop songs*, it was and remains shockingly bad.

*His 2001 set “Fantasies & Delusions” contained only classical compositions.

Not everyone agreed with my assessment though. It was a huge global hit and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Record of the Year for 1994 losing out to, by coincidence, the next artist to feature on the Breakers. Why couldn’t I stand it? It was just so twee and I hated that harmonised intro that goes “In the middle of the…I go walking in the…”. I think ultimately though it reminds me of a time when I wasn’t that happy at work but that’s for a post in the near future.

Long after I’d finished working in record shops and stopped listening to Radio 1, I found myself at the radio home for the newly middle aged and listening to Terry Wogan’s breakfast show and he used to play this constantly. It nearly broke me.

“River Of Dreams” peaked at No 3.

Now to that second artist (alongside Janet Jackson) suffering an unexpected downturn in sales of their latest single and also the winner of that 1994 Grammy for Record of the Year. “Run To You” was the fourth single released by Whitney Houston from The Bodyguard soundtrack and was basically a retread of the third single “I Have Nothing” in that they were both towering ballads executed with precision by Whitney over a shiny production. So similar were they that Natalie Cole performed a medley of them at the 1993 Academy Awards (I’m guessing Whitney was indisposed).

Presumably due to the fact that the so many people already had the song due to buying the soundtrack album, “Run To You” failed to work itself into a sprint up the charts peaking at No 15 in the UK and No 31 in the US.

The video looks a bit crap by today’s high CGI standards with Whitney running against a backdrop of clouds although maybe it was a homage to the film of the aforementioned Grease when Danny and Sandy’s car takes off into the sky and they fly off into the clouds?

Neither “Run To You” nor Janet Jackson’s “If” were shown in full on TOTP which you maybe wouldn’t have expected for two such huge names.

Another huge name who had already had her video shown in full on the show is the final Breaker this week. Madonna is up to No 7 with “Rain” from her “Erotica” album. The tickets Tony Dortie refers to are for the two concert dates in September that Madonna played at Wembley Stadium as part of her The Girlie Show world tour.

“Rain” ended the first act of the show and was interspersed with “Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me)” by The Temptations and “Singin’ In The Rain”. Want to hear it? Here you go but having sat through the whole thing myself, I must warn you that you won’t get these 9 minutes and 48 seconds of your life back…

Back in the studio we find Dannii Minogue performing her rendition of Melba Moore’s “This Is It”. You know I said earlier about Juliet Roberts being an in demand backing singer after her solo career ended? Well, she must have been moonlighting back in 1993 as she provided backing vocals on Dannii’s previous single to “This Is It” which was called “Love’s On Every Corner”.

Twenty years after she had a hit with “This Is It”, the track supplied the title for a Best Of Dannii album which included a duet with sister Kylie of the ABBA standard “The Winner Takes It All” – I wonder which of the two of them that was then?

“This Is It” peaked at No 10.

There’s only one Bee Gees song I remember from 1993 and it ain’t this one. “For Whom The Bell Tolls” was a surprise Top 5 hit over Xmas that year that just seemed to keep on selling even when you thought it must have run out of steam. “Paying The Price Of Love” though? Nah, I’ve got nothing. Their previous hit to this had been the shameless rewrite of “Chain Reaction” that was “Secret Love” in 1991. Did this one sound like any of their other songs? A slight hint of “You Win Again” maybe? Maybe not.

Barry Gibbs’ falsetto here is quite remarkable. That’s not a compliment though – a better descriptor would be ridiculous. I know it works somehow on most of their back catalogue especially their disco era peak but taken in isolation it’s quite mad. If he turned up on a talent show like The Voice for example and did that, would the judges turn around or would they look at each other and break out into a fit of uncontrollable giggling? What if they did turn around and then saw his mane of hair?! I can only really think of Barry Gibb and Queen’s Brian May that have always maintained the same hairstyle throughout their careers. Honourable mentions should also go to Rod Stewart and Paul Weller for sustaining comedy haircuts but they have tweaked them down the years.

“Paying The Price Of Love” peaked at No 23.

You can’t really argue with Tony Dortie’s assessment that Take That were “simply the biggest pop band in the UK” at this time as “Pray” notches up a third week at No 1. The boys are back in the studio this week and what I’m noticing from this performance is the clear division of hairstyles between them (and yes, I know I seem to be obsessed with pop star barnets yet again this week). Mark, Howard and Robbie all have that classic mid 90s long at the the sides curtains style while Jason and Gary have a more classic crew cut. I think I know which has aged the better.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	D:Ream	Unforgiven	Nope
2	Robin S	Luv 4 Luv	Never
3	Freddie Mercury	Living On My Own	I did not
4	Manic Street Preachers	La Tristesse Durera (Scream To A Sigh)	Not the single but I had the album
5	Craig McLachlan and Debbie Gibson	You’re The One That I Want	No
6	Juliet Roberts	Caught In the Middle	Negative
7	Janet Jackson	If	Nah
8	Billy Joel	River Of Dreams	Hell no!
9	Whitney Houston	Run To You	No thanks
10	Madonna	Rain	It’s a no
11	Dannii Minogue	This Is It	No it isn’t
12	Bee Gees	Paying The Price Of Love	I didn’t pay the price
13	Take That	Pray	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/m001c948/top-of-the-pops-29071993

TOTP 22 JUL 1993

Posted on September 21, 2022 by 80stastic

Look, I know that TOTP producer Stanley Appel couldn’t possibly have known that twenty-nine years on from deciding the running orders for these shows that I would be writing a review of each one and that the more acts that he shoehorned into thirty minutes, the more words I would have to write but damn! These TOTP repeats are killing me. This edition has thirteen acts on it. Thirteen! Bastards! Right then. No time for an intro about what else was happening in the world to form a theme for the post. As Duckie said in Pretty In Pink, “Let’s plow”…

The voice and co-writer of “Unfinished Sympathy” begins the show as Shara Nelson starts “Down That Road” of being a solo artist. She looked fair set to become a huge star as well. With her fly Massive Attack credentials and being signed to Cooltempo Records (home of Carleen Anderson, Arrested Development, The Brand New Heavies and…erm…Kenny Thomas), she had credibility as well as a decent debut tune. She also had a Mercury Music Prize nominated album in “What Silence Knows” which would furnish her with four Top 40 hits. Yet somehow that huge career that seemed inevitable got away from her. Second album “Friendly Fire” performed poorly and then she rather disappeared for a bit before resurfacing to collaborate with the likes of producer and DJ Charles ‘Presence’ Webster.

“Down That Road” managed to combine some cool vibes with a crossover appeal that would see it gain plenty of daytime airplay. It was also one of those records that had a tiny but crucial instrumental hook that lodged itself in your brain – that little sax parp after Shara sings the word ‘road’ in the chorus (see also the final strum of Billy Duffy’s guitar in the riff to “She Sells Sanctuary”).

Something I wasn’t aware of though was that DJ Pete Tong obtained a restraining order against Shara in 2011 following her 12 month community order and community service sentence for harassment of Tong and his wife! Blimey! She really shouldn’t have gone down that road.

“Down That Road” peaked at No 19.

Roxette are next with their highest ever chart entry as “Almost Unreal” crashes into the Top 10 at No 7. It’s their first time back there since “Joyride” made No 4 two years previously but they shouldn’t have got carried away with themselves as it will also be their very last time there in the UK and the song itself was almost universally panned by critics. Even the band themselves didn’t like it stating in the liner notes to their 1995 Greatest Hits album “Don’t Bore Us, Get to the Chorus!” that “if you wanted to make a parody of Roxette, it would probably sound something like this”. Erm, no. This is how a parody of Roxette sounds..

Anyway, “Almost Unreal” was from the film Super Mario Bros which I’ve never seen but I’m led to believe stank out every cinema it played in around the world. Just like Roxette not liking their song from it, the film’s star Bob Hoskins was even more scathing about the actual movie.

“The worst thing I ever did? Super Mario Brothers. It was a fuckin’ nightmare. The whole experience was a nightmare. It had a husband-and-wife team directing, whose arrogance had been mistaken for talent. After so many weeks their own agent told them to get off the set! Fuckin’ nightmare. Fuckin’ idiots.”
Hattenstone, Simon (August 3, 2007). “The Method? Living it out? Cobblers!”. The Guardian.

The song was originally intended for the film Hocus Pocus hence the lyric “I love when you do that hocus pocus to me” but was pulled at the last minute and transferred to the Super Mario Bros project. The soundtrack featured an eclectic collection of artists from Megadeth to Charles and Eddie to Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch via Us3 (more of whom later).

Host Mark Franklin gives what must be one of the most underwhelming introductions in TOTP history. “Here’s a song that’s done well gradually” he tells us. Gradually?! You couldn’t have gone with “Here’s a song that’s climbing the charts” or “Here’s a song that’s finally getting the recognition it deserves” Mark? Anyway, the record is “The Key The Secret” by Urban Cookie Collective.

Now to be fair to Franklin, the single did take a while to climb the charts and had quite the gestation period. It was released in its original format on the tiny Unheard Records label but when a remix of it sent clubbers rushing to their nearest dance floor, it was given a bigger push on Pulse 8. Even then, radio was resistant to its crossover appeal but when it finally entered the Top 40, they couldn’t cock a deaf ‘un (as my Dad might say) any longer. It would go on to rise as high as No 2 and become one of the biggest dance tunes of the decade.

The hanging gold key in the background to this performance has a nativity play scenery feel to it but then apparently the song was written about taking magic mushrooms so maybe it looked better if you were under the influence.

For my money, OMD have one of the best back catalogue’s of Top 40 hits out there. By 1993 though, I’d lost sight of them completely to the extent that this single – “Dream Of Me (Based On Love’s Theme)” passed me by completely. The second of three singles released from the patchy “Liberator” album, it was structured around the 1974 US No 1 “Love’s Theme” by Barry White’s The Love Unlimited Orchestra. I was only five when the original was a hit but didn’t Gary Davies use it to soundtrack ‘The Sloppy Bit’ of his Radio 1 show? I think he did.

Anyway, back to OMD and whilst I can appreciate the idea of what Andy McCluskey was trying to do with the track, I’m not entirely sure he pulls it off. Supposedly the single version is different from its album counterpart with the Barry White samples stripped out but I’m not sure that I can tell the difference having listened to both. Whichever version it is on TOTP, at least the slower bpm of the track has toned down McCluskey’s legendary wiggy dancing.

OMD would only return to the UK Top 40 one more time in 1996 with the rather lovely “Walking On The Milky Way”.

The Breakers are the reason that there’s thirteen songs on tonight’s show as there’s five of them! The first three are all dance tunes starting with “Take A Free Fall” by Dance 2 Trance.

This was the follow up to “Power Of American Natives” but I couldn’t really care less about that. What’s intriguing me about this track is the guy in the video zooming about on some sort of flying Minecraft piece. The look of it reminded me of something and I finally remembered what it was…

Go to 2:33

It’s all about the record labels tonight. After name checking Cooltempo earlier here comes an act that you can’t talk about without mentioning the legendary record label that they were on. Us3 were all about Blue Note Records the American jazz label which released recordings by everybody from Miles Davis to Art Blakey to Horace Silver (and yes I only know those names from the jazz section of every Our Price store I ever worked in). Not only were they signed to the label but their debut album “Hand On The Torch” only featured samples from tracks that were released by Blue Note. Even their name came from an album produced by Alfred Lion, the founder of Blue Note Records. They were totally committed.

“Tukka Yoot’s Riddim” was the jazz-rappers’ first chart hit when it peaked at No 34 (btw another song that Mark Franklin described using the word ‘gradually’ – “this song’s getting there gradually” he says) but I reckon most people know them for their hit “Cantaloop” which was their biggest chart placing when it was rereleased after this single and made No 23. I must admit to sometimse confusing them with the similarly named Oui 3 who were their chart peers.

And another dance tune! This one is from techno ravers N–Joi and their “The Drumstruck EP”. This was their belated follow up to “Live In Manchester EP” that was a No 12 hit in February of 1992. It all sounds like a load of bleeps to me. Much more interesting is that one of the guys in N-Joi was called Mark Franklin! How did TOTP host Mark Franklin not comment on this in his intro?!

“The Drumstruck EP” peaked at No 33.

Around 1992/93 was the time in REM’s career when they did the whole Michael Jackson thing. I don’t mean they bought a chimpanzee and called it Bubbles though. No. They were releasing loads of tracks from their latest album as singles. “Nightswimming” was the fifth of six singles to come off the “Automatic For The People” album and like its immediate predecessor “Everybody Hurts”, it was quite the melancholic number. Based around Mike Mills’s memorable piano melody and not much else, it remains a beautiful piece of music. It was recorded at the same studio where Derek And The Dominos laid down “Layla” with Mills playing the same piano that was used in its famous coda.

In my head, this was only released as a limited edition 10” but I can’t find anything to substantiate that online and in any case, that would have severely limited its chart potential so maybe I just imagined it.

“Nightswimming” peaked at No 27.

Just what we all needed. A retread of a Grease song by an ex-Neighbours soap star. We’d been in similar territory just two years before when Jason Donovan took “Any Dream Will Do” to No 1 when the single was released to promote the soundtrack to the West End version of Joseph And The Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat he was starring in. In 1993, it was the turn of Jason’s Neighbours pal Craig McLachlan to advertise the West End show he was in which was Grease via the track “You’re The One That I Want” with 80s popster Debbie Gibson.

Look, one of my abiding childhood memories is that of the Summer of 1978 when the film version of Grease was everywhere and you couldn’t escape from John Travolta and Olivia Newton John so I have a great affection for the songs from it but if you were going to buy any of its music then surely you’d go for the film soundtrack and not the 1993 London Cast Recording album? From Craig and Debbie’s perspectives, it was probably a good career move as both of their time as a pop star was coming to an end and I’m sure they were great in the show but this all seemed a tad unnecessary.

After that little Grease interlude, we’re back onto the dance music as Utah Saints graduate from being a Breaker last week to appearing in the studio this with “I Want You”.

I’d liked their other singles up to this point but this one was rather lost on me possibly because it didn’t employ a vocal sample like its predecessors with the band’s Jez Willis provided the vocals instead. I can think of at least two other songs called “I Want You” I’d rather listen to. Firstly there’s the Inspiral Carpets / Mark E Smith collaboration from 1994:

Then there this wonderfully atmospheric track from Elvis Costello’s 1986 album called “Blood And Chocolate”…

OK, so this show has been dominated by dance singles of various hues but I do think that Stanley Appel’s stewardship of TOTP did try and reflect other musical genres. The other week they had The Levellers on and now here’s another band who would have been considered outside of the mainstream. So much so that this was the band’s first (and I’m guessing last) ever appearance in the TOTP studio. The Waterboys though were on a roll (for them) with a second consecutive Top 40 hit in “Glastonbury Song”.

The follow up to “The Return Of Pan”, it was the second single from their “Dream Harder” album which was seen as possessing a much harder rock sound than previously heard form them but it came at a cost causing those old musical differences to splinter the existing line up. Mike Scott was left as the only true member of the band and the album was completed with session musicians. The next logical step was for Scott to go full solo and he did do with the next two releases put out under his own name.

He certainly looks like a solo act in this performance as everything centres around him and his floppy, red hat. In fact, the headgear, the long hair and being sat permanently at his keyboards, he reminds me a bit of Gilbert O’Sullivan in his 70s heyday. The song’s not bad actually and possibly the most radio friendly since “The Whole Of The Moon”. Oh and apparently, The Waterboys have had more members than the aforementioned Mark E. Smith’s The Fall. No really.

Talking of ‘aforementioned’ people, here’s Jason Donovan. I know, I can’t believe he had another TOTP appearance in him but this really was the last knockings of his pop career. In fact, this must be his final time on the show. How do I know? Because this single “All Around The World” didn’t even make the Top 40 and he didn’t release another single until 2007 and the show finished in 2006. The song really is a stinker, just awful. Talk about going out on a low. Jason has found gainful employment though and is now fronting an advertising campaign for the People’s Postcode Lottery.

Take That still hold the No 1 spot with “Pray”. We get the video this week and it’s basically just the lads getting their pecs out with chests being bared roughly every five seconds. It was pure titillation for their army of teenage girl fans. At least they didn’t get the jelly out like they did for their very first single “Do What U Like”. Small mercies and all that.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Shara Nelson	Down That Road	No but my wife had the album
2	Roxette	Almost Unreal	No
3	Urban Cookie Collective	The Key The Secret	Nope
4	OMD	Dream Of Me (Based On Love’s Theme)	Not but I have its on a Greatest Hits album I think
5	Dance 2 Trance	Take A Free Fall	Negative
6	Us3	Tukka Yoot’s Riddim	Nah
7	N-Joi	The Drumstuck EP	Never happening
8	REM	Nightswimming	No but I had their album
9	Craig McLachlan and Debbie Gibson	You’re The One That I Want	As if
10	Utah Saints	I Want You	But I didn’t want you
11	The Waterboys	Glastonbury Song	I did not
12	Jason Donovan	All Around The World	Ha! Of course not
13	Take That	Pray	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/m001c1qs/top-of-the-pops-22071993

TOTP 15 JUL 1993

Posted on September 17, 2022 by 80stastic

The day after this TOTP aired, Jurassic Park opened in UK cinemas. A ground breaking film both in terms of box office receipts and its revolutionary use of CGI, it’s hard to explain to people who weren’t there at the time quite what a big deal this film was. The hype and sense of excitement around it was palpable. I was working in the Rochdale Our Price at the time and there was only one other record shop in the town. The manager of it used to come into our store all the time and I recall him telling me that he’d been to see Jurassic Park the night before and how blown away he’d been by it. He specifically went on and on about the scene where the T-Rex has a torch light shined in its face and the pupil in its eye dilates. Like I said, it’s hard to explain now how advanced the film seemed to an audience like me who had been brought up on the special effects of Ray Harryhausen in the likes of Jason And The Argonauts and Clash Of The Titans. Of course, that original film spawned a whole franchise with the latest film coming out just this year. I wonder if any of the artists on this TOTP could be described as dinosaurs back in 1993?

I don’t think Dannii Minogue would have qualified as a dinosaur back in 1993. She was still only two years into her fledgling pop career. However, things weren’t going quite as well as they had been in 1991 for Dannii. After scoring two Top 10 successes and a couple of Top 20 singles from her debut album, the hits had dried up rather. Her version of The Jacksons’ “Show You The Way To Go” had spluttered to a high of No 30 whilst follow up “Love’s On Every Corner” had missed the Top 40 altogether. However, 1993 afforded an ideal opportunity for Dannii to kickstart her career as a disco revival was in full swing. Now bearing in mind that she’d already scored a disco styled hit with a version of Stacy Lattisaw’s 1980 hit “Jump To The Beat”, it made perfect sense for Ms Minogue to go there again and so she did with a cover of Melba Moore’s 1976 hit “This Is It”. It did the job too easily being the biggest of the five singles taken from her sophomore album “Get Into You” when it peaked at No 10. The album itself though bombed, vastly underperforming when it peaked at No 52 after her debut “Love And Kisses” had gone Top 10. It would be another ten years before she would return there with “Neon Nights”.

Dannii gives her usual energetic performance to sell the song backed with some equally perky dancers though why they have a backdrop of a sprawling metropolis lit up at night and some palm trees I don’t know. Even more confusing is what Dannii’s then fiancé is doing on the show. Host Tony Dortie introduces him at the end of the song with news of the couple’s impending nuptials. Julian McMahon was his name and he met Dannii on the set of Home And Away. According to Wikipedia, he appeared in the video for “This Is It” but sadly their marriage only lasted eighteen months. It can’t have been his dance moves that first attracted Dannii – in his brief time on screen here he looks like a pissed uncle at a wedding and even after the song has stopped continues to bob up and down like a pigeon’s head when walking. All very odd.

Ah, Tony Dortie has joined me on the Jurassic Park references. “We’ve got no dinosaurs on the show tonight, just Paul Weller’s prehistoric haircut” he chortles to himself. Blimey! If he thought the 1993 version of Weller’s barnet was bad, what would he have made if its current incarnation?

Anyway, this felt like the point in Weller’s solo career where he achieved full lift off. His debut solo album had reminded people of his abilities as a songwriter after it had looked like the 90s might just pass him by. However it was his second album “Wild Wood” which would go platinum in the UK and show that Weller was a force still to be reckoned with. It’s worth remembering that he was only 35 at the time so we shouldn’t have been surprised at his re-emergence and that reports of his musical death were greatly exaggerated.

“Sunflower” was the lead single from the album and I’d forgotten what a strong song it is. It whipcracks away with a spiky rhythm and rapier like guitar riff – mesmerising stuff. It reminds me in parts of a song that Weller himself covered whilst in The Jam – “Big Bird” by Eddie Floyd.

The simple yet effective video with its quick cutaways and a camera revolving around Weller imbues it with even more urgency and energy. “Sunflower” peaked at No 16. It should have been higher.

OK, no real dinosaur connections with 4 Non Blondes other than to say on the soundtrack to Wayne’s World 2, the running order has “Out There” by Dinosaur Jr. followed immediately by “Mary’s House” by – yes – 4 Non Blondes. Tenuous I know.

I can’t find a clip of this particular performance of “What’s Up?” so I have had to use one from a previous week but Linda Perry has swapped her rastacap style headgear for something that Slash might have worn. It hasn’t affected her vocals though as she belts the song out. Whatever you thought of the song (and many didn’t like it), Linda had some pipes on her. Her performance here has echoes of Shakespear’s Sister “Stay” in that Perry has a touch of Siobahn Fahey about her. Not her voice as I’d have to say that is superior to the ex-Banana’s (sorry Siobahn!) but for her twisted, almost demonic delivery especially when she opens her eyes wide amongst all that eye shadow.

Now there’s some I’m sure who would have been happy to describe Deacon Blue in 1993 as dinosaurs (not me obviously). How did they fit into a dance obsessed chart with their well crafted pop songs about hardship, hope and heartbreak? Well, the truth is that they did try to fit in with fourth studio album “Whatever You Say, Say Nothing” being co-produced by legendary dance DJ Paul Oakenfold (somebody I once worked with told me I looked like Oakenfold – I don’t). This new musical direction received mixed reviews and commercially underperformed compared to all three of its predecessors.

Now I would count myself as a fan of the band and have a few of their records but I really don’t remember a fourth single from “Whatever You Say, Say Nothing” but here it is. “Hang Your Head” was the lead song of a four track EP and was very un- Deacon Blue like with its driving beat and rock guitar licks – it was no “Dignity” – but actually it sounds OK to me. Not enough of the wonderful Lorraine McIntosh in this performance though.

A Best Of album came out the following year but the band split after that before reforming five years later. They continue to record and perform live with their last album being as recent as 2021.

This week’s Breakers start with Jon Secada who’s chart career wasn’t quite extinct in 1993 but surely that dinosaur-destroying asteroid was on its way. Having scored an unlikely Top 5 hit with “Just Another Day” the previous year, Jon stalked another hit raptor like and came up with a trio of them though none got any higher than No 23. This one, “Do You Really Want Me”, was the last of them and from the few seconds afforded it on the show sounded like a lost squawking seagull. Where’s an asteroid when you need one?

Ah, now. Here’s an interesting one and an example how quickly the pop world can turn. Back in 1991, Jesus Jones bestrode the charts T-Rex* like, the dominant species of the Top 40. Then that aforementioned asteroid hit in the form of the music press who decided that the band had been the inkies’ darlings for long enough and that they were crap after all.

*I’m meaning the dinosaur here but I guess my point would also work with Marc Bolan’s band.

To their eternal credit, the band carried on regardless and are still together today. Back in 1993 though, “Zeroes And Ones” was the final single to be lifted from their “Perverse” album and would prove to be their last ever UK Top 40 hit. It also provides the title for an upcoming Best Of album due out in October 2022. As for the track itself, it’s pretty standard Jesus Jones fare and I must admit it passed me by at the time.

Also on the end of a music press backlash were Blur who had experienced a slump after the success of debut album “Leisure” and a poorly received US tour. Unlike Jesus Jones though, Blur were able to evolve from their dinosaur state to become one of the 90s (and beyond’s) biggest bands. Enabling that leap from the thrills of “Leisure” to the glories of “Parklife” was inbetweener “Modern Life Is Rubbish”* from which “Chemical World” was the second single to be released. Although it didn’t pull up any trees at the time sales wise, it has retrospectively been labelled as one of the defining albums of Britpop with its Small Faces and The Kinks influences and lyrics that spoke of the experience of British life.

Immediately though, it didn’t appear as if Blur’s fortunes had been reversed. These were the chart peaks for every single release since “There’s No Other Way” made the Top 10 in 1991 until “Girls And Boys” did the same in 1994:

24 – 32 – 28 – 28 – 26

“Chemical World” was responsible for the penultimate entry in that sequence but it probably deserved better. If Paul Weller would come to be seen as one of the Godfathers of Britpop then Blur (alongside Oasis of course, where else would they be?) were its pin up boys. Blur’s and our own worlds would look very different just twelve months later.

*I actually picked up the “Modern Life Is Rubbish” album whilst on holiday in New York. Naturally it was in the bargain bin.

Being a musical dinosaur was the last thing that you could accuse Utah Saints of in 1993. They were at the cutting edge of making groundbreaking, mainstream dance music with their penchant for sampling pop records from the likes of Eurythmics and Kate Bush and repurposing them. However, after three consecutive Top 10 hits, was the writing on the wall for them when fourth single “I Want You” only made No 25? All of them came from their eponymous debut album but apart from a couple of stand alone singles, there was nothing then until 2000 – the equivalent of the Jurassic period (56 million years) in the world of pop.

Why did “I Want You” fail? Well, maybe sampling thrash metal band Slayer’s “War Ensemble” was just a little too niche to secure the band a fourth massive crossover hit. Just a thought.

Like Jesus Jones and Blur before him, Kenny Thomas was facing the challenge of following up on initial success with more hit-worthy material. Even host Tony Dortie talks about the soul crooner being under pressure to do so in his intro. “Stay” was the song that was chosen to relaunch Kenny but unlike the aforementioned Shakespear’s Sister and their track, it wasn’t a resounding success peaking at No 22.

Kenny’s music left me cold at the best of times but this one made me fell like I was locked in a freezer. Sorry Kenny but if this song was a scene from Jurassic Park, it would have been the bit where the guests on the island take a tour in those electric vehicles and none of the dinosaurs appear prompting the two kids to say “I don’t see anything. Do you see anything? There’s nothing there.”

Now, in much the same way that the dinosaurs were wiped off the surface of the earth by that asteroid, the next act seem to have been expunged from the history of 90s music in that you hardly hear them mentioned at all nowadays. In 1993 though, Oui 3 were bona fide chart stars with three Top 40 singles to their name. OK, none of them got any higher than No 17 and two of them were actually the same song (one single was re-released eight months after it initially came out) but that’s three chart hits all the same. That re-release was their Buffalo Springfield sampling song “For What It’s Worth” which, as he told us in his intro, was Tony Dortie’s favourite single of the year to that point. What he didn’t tell us was the name of Oui 3’s new hit which was “Break From The Old Routine”. Bet their record label weren’t too impressed by that. Schoolboy error Tony!

I liked both singles and my wife enjoyed them so much she bought their album “Oui Love You”. Not many other people did though as it peaked at No 39. A second album was never released and after one final minor hit (“Facts Of Life” – No 38) and a couple of stand alone singles that flopped, it was all over – Oui 3 were no(n) more. What I hadn’t realised until now was that one of the band was Blair Booth who was one third of late 80s collaboration Terry, Blair and Anouchka featuring Terry Hall and who were responsible for the marvellous non-hit “Missing”:

Oui 3 though were nothing like Terry, Blair and Anouchka, coming on, as they did, like Stereo MC’s cooler, more laid back cousin. The rapping was on point (though I’m no judge of what makes a good rapper to be fair) and they had what I can only describe as some good grooves. I would have been interested to see what that second album would have sounded like.

Despite having been around for the best part of a decade by 1993, Madonna was nowhere near being a dinosaur what with all the controversy over her “Erotica” album making her still seem exciting and contemporary. Fast forward to 2022, and Madge is plodding around the music landscape like a ponderous brontosaurus desperately seeking ~~Susan~~ validation that she is still relevant.

Anyway, “Rain” was her latest single and the last to be released in the UK from “Erotica”. I’ve said before that when I first heard the album that was the track that stood out to me as a potential hit single. I was right as well but it took a while. As it turned out it would make No 7 meaning that all five of the singles from “Erotica” made the Top 10 over here. Well, there was the evidence if you needed any that Madonna wasn’t a dinosaur back then.

Compared to the other singles, “Rain” felt like it didn’t really belong on the album. It was in many ways a very standard, though lushly produced, big ballad. The lyrics are based around that well worn literary (and indeed cinematic) metaphor of rain being a cleansing agent and washing away previous sorrows to be followed by the sunshine and redeeming warmth of a new love. Or are they? This was a track from “Erotica” remember so were lines like “I feel it…It’s coming…Rain…Feel it on my fingertips” actually referring to something rather more sexual? Does the video give us any clues? Well, it’s much safer than something like “Justify My Love” being a sort of film within a film with the plot depicting Madonna as the star of a promo being directed by composer Ryuichi Sakamoto no less. There is a scene of her kissing a man behind a glass screen while water falls but it’s pretty tame stuff. What do I know though as it won two MTV Video Awards for Best Art Direction and Best Cinematography.

Take That are straight in at No 1 with “Pray”. Straight in! To think just a couple of years before when Gary Barlow popped into the Our Price store in Market Street, Manchester where I was working, my colleague Craig followed him round the shop floor mouthing “nobody buys your records” behind his back!

To say that the group were very much seen as five individuals with each one having a devoted fan base (I’m guessing!), what comes across in the performance here is that the other four very much look like Barlow’s backing dancers. The lead vocals were shared out more equally over subsequent releases. As I recall, Mark Owen took centre stage on “Babe”, Robbie Williams did “Everything Changes” and Howard Donald got the job on “Never Forget”. Did Jason Orange ever get a go to show us his vocal talents? I’m not sure he ever did. No wonder the poor lad ended up leaving the band.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Dannii Minogue	This Is It	Not likely
2	Paul Weller	Sunflower	No but I had the Wild Wood album
3	4 Non Blondes	What’s Up?	No but I found a copy of their album behind a filing cabinet when shutting down the Our Price in Market Street, Manchester
4	Deacon Blue	Hang Your Head	No
5	Jon Secada	Do You Really Want Me	As if
6	Jesus Jones	Zeroes And Ones	Nope
7	Blur	Chemical World	No but I had the album Modern Life Is Rubbish
8	Utah Saints	I Want You	I didn’t actually
9	Kenny Thomas	Stay	Never happening
10	Oui 3	Break From The Old Routine	No but my wife had their album
11	Madonna	Rain	Nah
12	Take That	Pray	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/m001c1qq/top-of-the-pops-15071993

TOTP 08 JUL 1993

Posted on September 15, 2022 by 80stastic

On the day this TOTP aired, and presumably straight after it finished, Phil Mitchell got married for the first time in Eastenders. His wife was a Romanian refugee called Nadia with the object of the nuptials being to get her a visa so she could stay in the UK. As soon as she was married, she went off with her boyfriend. Fast forward 29 years and Phil is about to get married for the fifth time to Kat Slater but as with his first wedding, it doesn’t go to plan. I wonder how many of the songs on tonight’s TOTP could apply to Phil’s love life?

A perfect start with “What Is Love” by Haddaway! Does Phil know? I doubt it. How about Haddaway? Did he have any inkling? He probably didn’t care as he was up to No 2 in the charts and onto his third TOTP appearance. Piece of piss this pop star lark he probably thought after ditching his career in the navy (presumably he said “sod this for a game of sailors”). So easy did he find bagging a hit that he did it again…and again…and again. His debut album would give him three further Top 10 hits though I couldn’t have named any without checking his discography. So effortless was Haddaway’s rise to fame that he didn’t even bother to name his album properly instead just calling it “The Album”. A bit like Daryl Dixon from The Walking Dead calling his dog ‘dog’ then. I once found myself in Xanadu nightclub in Rochdale where I was working and being surrounded by punters dancing to Haddaway was a bit like being on the set of The Walking Dead in retrospect.

Phil Mitchell must have proclaimed “Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love” to one of his many wives down the years in that rasping voice of his. Taylor Dayne wasn’t one of them though as she’s never married Wikipedia tells me though she does look a little bit like the character Chrissie Watts (played by Tracy-Ann Oberman) who was married to Dirty Den and indeed murdered him. Hmm. I seem to have gone down a rather bleak rabbit hole there. I’m sure Taylor, on the other hand, is as sweet as popcorn….

Yes, after a career that took in acing, Broadway and pop stardom, the younger generation will know Taylor as Popcorn from The Masked Singer. Back in 1993 though she was promoting her “Soul Dancing” album via her cover of Barry White’s “Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love Babe” though it failed to cut through like her “Tell It To My Heart” debut that went double platinum in the States. She did however continue to have hits on the US Dance chart into the new millennium.

“Will You Be There?” Phil Mitchell might have been thinking to himself this week as he stood in church waiting for a very late Kat Slater to arrive. Michael Jackson must have been asking himself “Will you be a hit?” seeing as this was the eighth single to be taken from his 1991 (yes that’s 1991!) album “Dangerous”. He needn’t have worried as it made No 9 making Jackson the first artist to have an album generate eight consecutive Top 20 hits (it would have been eight consecutive Top 10 hits but for “Jam” peaking at No 13).

I thought I didn’t know how this one went but on hearing it back, it does sound familiar. It’s got a very gospel feel to it while the melody puts me in mind of “Lean On Me” by Bill Withers. However, it was another song that sounded similar which caused Jacko some legal problems when Italian songwriter Albano Carrisi launched a plagiarism suit claiming “Will You Be There” copied his composition “The Swans Of Balaka”. The claim was ultimately rejected.

Unbelievably, a ninth single – the prophetically entitled “Gone Too Soon” – was released from “Dangerous” nearly two years to the day since the album came out. That was a step too far though and it struggled to a peak of No 33 in the UK.

And the 1993 disco revival is still going strong. After Taylor Dayne covering Barry White earlier comes Kim Wilde who has recorded a cover of Yvonne Elliman’s 1978 hit “If I Can’t Have You”. Why? Well, it’s to promote her Best Of album “The Singles Collection 1981-93”. Kim, of course, had history when it came to cover versions to help restore former glories. In 1986, she did a version of “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” by The Supremes to revive a career that was stalling. That proved to be a master stroke as it went to No 1 in the US and No 2 over here. “If I Can’t Have You” wasn’t quite the same success though it did supply her biggest hit since “Four Letter Word” in 1988 by peaking at No 12. It would also be her last ever UK Top 40 hit which presumably means this is also Kim’s final ever TOTP appearance (sob!). That Best Of album performed pretty well though going gold in the UK and just missing the Top 10.

What? An Eastenders connection? Oh well, didn’t Alfie Moon say to Kat the other night something to the effect of “If I can’t have you, I don’t want nobody baby”.

It’s Chaka Demus & Pliers now for what I think is the third time in the show with “Tease Me”. I think I’ve had enough of this one now Mr. TOTP producer! In his intro, host Mark Franklin states that 50% of this week’s Top 10 are live in the TOTP studio and I can’t help thinking that maybe CD & P were fitted into the running order just so that the show could make that claim. In fairness though, they had just moved up a place to a peak of No 3 so no doubt that’s how their inclusion would have been justified. After all, “Tease Me” was a hit all over the world but nowhere bigger than in the UK where it sold 400,000 copies.

I’m struggling to get a Phil Mitchell reference in for this one although surely he must have used a pair of pliers during a car repair down The Arches at some point down the years?

I’m giving myself a break from Eastenders references for the Breakers mainly because none of them lend themselves to the soap or Phil Mitchell at all. I mean, where’s the connection with U.S.U.R.A. and “Sweat”? These were the people who brought us “Open Your Mind” on the achingly trendy Deconstruction label and this was the follow up. Not being a dancehead, this did nothing for me (neither did its predecessor) though I understand it was a big hit in the clubs. “Sweat” peaked at No 29.

Now a guy who was a breakthrough success in 1991 but whom we hadn’t heard from since. Back in those 1991 posts, I admitted to an irrational hatred of Kenny Thomas back in the day, an opinion I had to modify on account of Kenny being a stand up, decent guy according to all sources.

My view of his music remained the same though – I wasn’t a fan and so I’m pretty sure that the thought of a second album of songs from him wouldn’t have had me counting down the days until its release date. “Wait For Me” was that album and its lead single was “Stay”. As Mark Franklin says in his intro, it was a cover though he doesn’t advise us who did the original so I did the detective work and tracked it down. I’m still none the wiser though even with the answer in front of me. It was the title track of a 1986 album by US R&B group The Controllers but only made No 77 in the UK charts. I have no idea about any of the content of the previous sentence.

“Stay” was all about the number two. It peaked at No 22 for two weeks.

AC/DC have come up many a time during these TOTP repeats and I’ve never really known what to say about them as I just don’t really get them at all. The throaty vocals of Brian Johnson, the misogynistic undertones of the lyrics and Angus Young’s schoolboy uniform stage outfits; none of it appealed to me. And yet there are people who I know and like who swear by the band.

Anyway, the end is nigh for AC/DC/TOTP as “Big Gun” is their penultimate UK Top 40 hit. Taken from the soundtrack to Last Action Hero, it made No 23. I’ve never seen the film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger but from reading the plot on Wikipedia it sounds like a stinker. I can appreciate there was an attempt to do something different with the action genre but it sounds like one of those movies where the kids are smarter than the adults which I’m not a fan of. The soundtrack is a who’s who of hard rock featuring Anthrax, Aerosmith and Alice In Chains alongside AC/DC and that’s just the ‘A’s.

Is this the first time we’ve seen The Levellers on TOTP? Well, yes and no. It is the first time we’ve seen them in these BBC4 repeats but not the first time that they appeared on the show. That was on 21st May 1992 when they appeared live by satellite from Paris performing “15 Years” but we didn’t get to see that repeat due to it being presented by Adrian Rose who refused to give permission for shows he featured in being re-broadcast. The band wouldn’t appear in the TOTP studio until 1995 when they performed “Hope Street”.

Back in 1993 though the band had just released their third and eponymous studio album and although they have retrospectively voiced their dislike of it, commercially it was their then best performing album peaking at No 2. In fact, The Levellers were on their way to the apex of their popularity which was displayed in a very visual way when they headlined Glastonbury in 1994 in front of 300,000 people.

The lead single from “The Levellers” album was “Belaruse” and it would start a bizarre run of chart placings which would see four of their next six single releases peak at No 12. Listening to it now, the hard drumming intro really reminds me of “Funeral Pyre” by The Jam.

The first of three songs that have been on the show before now starting with M People and “One Night In Heaven”. By the way, I can’t find the clips from this particular show so have had to use previous performance’s instead. Heather Small might be glad I have as there seems to be a curious tinny effect on her vocals as if the microphone isn’t working properly. She seems slightly uncomfortable up there as if she’s aware there’s a problem but it’s too late to do anything about it so she’s just going with it. Maybe it’s just because I’m playing it back through my phone.

“One Night In Heaven” peaked at No 6.

Stand aside Kim Wilde, here’s a true disco legend. Yes, you did a nice job with your cover of “If I Can’t Have You” but this is the Queen of Disco herself, Gloria Gaynor.

Look, I don’t need to tell you about “I Will Survive” though what I will say is that it’s been covered over a hundred times but maybe one of the more obscure versions is this from the Puppini Sisters who I caught live in a tiny venue in Hull that was completely oversold to the point that it really didn’t feel safe so I left early. Yes, I did survive.

Oh and one final Phil Mitchell/Eastenders reference – Phil has of course survived many a drama on the soap none more so than in the 2001 ‘Who Shot Phil?’ storyline when he survived being gunned down by ex-girlfriend Lisa.

It’s a final week at the top for Gabrielle with “Dreams”. Little did we all know that it would take seven years for her to get back to the top of the heap when her Bob Dylan sampling hit “Rise” made it to No 1 in early 2000. Not that there weren’t any hits in between of course. She clocked up nine Top 40 hits in the intervening years including five Top Tenners. The hits didn’t stop with “Rise” either with a further three Top 10 entries occurring in the subsequent 12 months. That’s sixteen hit singles in total plus seven charting albums (including a No 1). Maybe Gabrielle doesn’t get the credit she deserves?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Haddaway	What Is Love	Hadaway and shite!
2	Taylor Dayne	Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love	No
3	Michael Jackson	Will You Be There?	No I won’t be and indeed wasn’t
4	Kim Wilde	If I Can’t Have You	Nope
5	Chaka Demus & Pliers	Tease Me	Never happening
6	U.S.U.R.A.	Sweat	Negative
7	Kenny Thomas	Stay	As if
8	AC/DC	Big Gun	Big log more like – no
9	The Levellers	Belaruse	Nah
10	M People	One Night In Heaven	No but my wife had the album
11	Gloria Gaynor	I Will Survive (Phil Kelsey remix)	I did not
12	Gabrielle	Dreams	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/m001btp2/top-of-the-pops-08071993

TOTP 01 JUL 1993

Posted on September 13, 2022 by 80stastic

I seem to have spent a lot of time recently talking about 90s American sitcoms. There was Cheers and its memorable theme tune one week and then Blossom the next thanks to tonight’s opening act. There’s a connection to yet another one on this show as well but we’ll come to that in due course. For now, it’s that Blossom star Joey Lawrence who is in the studio to get teenage girls’ hearts racing as he performs “Nothin’ My Love Can’t Fix”. I suppose there was a tradition of young male US teen idols making a splash in the UK that proceeded Joey. I’m thinking David Cassidy, Donny Osmond, Michael Jackson of course…OK, I’m not making a case that Lawrence had anywhere near the success of those guys but maybe we shouldn’t have been surprised that he did translate over here. Good looking lad, de jour pop tune, hit TV show to his name. Look if Leif Garrett and Glenn Medeiros could have huge hits over here why not Joey Lawrence?

Looking through his film and TV credits, he seems to have played characters called Joe or Joey six times. Talk about being typecast. Still, he sells his song well enough here though his sleeveless leather jacket (very “Bad Boys” era Wham!) seems a bit dated and I’d have to say that Blossom herself had the better dance moves…

It’s ~~Debbie~~ Deborah Harry’s birthday so host Tony Dortie tells us. She was 48 then which makes her 77 now! I suddenly feel older than usual and I feel ancient most of the time anyway. We get her video for “I Can See Clearly” tonight after that nonsense with the magician in the studio the other week which sees her cavorting around in a field at night during a storm complete with lightning strikes. Not sure how that would help her see clearly unless the video director was using the illumination from the lightning as a metaphor? As for that song title, do you think she deliberately left the word ‘now’ off despite the chorus including it just so people wouldn’t think she’d done a Johnny Nash cover?

“I Can See Clearly” peaked at No 23 and remains her last UK solo hit.

Well, what a disappointment! After the sparkling and sprightly tune that was “Regret”, New Order followed it up with the completely dreary “Ruined In A Day”. The intro promises so much more but then it just flatlines as soon as Bernard’s vocals come in. Sometimes Sumner’s lo-fi singing is the perfect foil for the track but here it’s just a drone. Surely there must have been better options on their “Republic” album than this for a single? Yes, yes there was as the third single from it, “World (The Price Of Love)”, was a much better choice which makes you wonder why they didn’t just go with that instead seeing as they released it anyway.

“Ruined In A Day” peaked at No 22.

The first of two women in very large hats on the show tonight next as we get a 90s take on a70s disco classic. I think she’s called Yvonne Shelton and the guys behind her are Barry Jamieson and Jon Sutton. Together they were Evolution and, mixing in the same circles as A Guy Called Gerald and 808 State, they would go on to be huge names in the world of dance music, known for creativity and innovation working with the likes of UNKLE, Sasha and Jon Digweed. There doesn’t seem to be anything very innovative about adding some Italian House piano to Chic’s “Everybody Dance” to me though. Hadn’t we seen this sort of trick dozens of times before already in the dance era? We all have to start somewhere I suppose. Oh and Yvonne? Worzel Gummidge says he wants his hat back.

Four Breakers again this week (seriously, 1993 TOTP – give me a break won’t you!) and we start with The Smashing Pumpkins and “Cherub Rock”. To say I spent almost the entire 90s working in record shops, I seem to have ignored many a band who others swear by. These Chicago indie rockers are a case in point. Even today, I probably only know about three Smashing Pumpkins songs most notably “Tonight, Tonight” their highest charting UK single. This track passed me by completely though I do recognise the cover of the album it came from (“Siamese Dream”) so I must have sold a few copies.

Weren’t they a bit like a US version of The The (who I do like)? Not in musical style so much as in the structure of the band which is basically Billy Corgan as The The is essentially Matt Johnson? Apologies if I’m outraging any Pumpkins fans here but in my defence, I don’t really know what I’m talking about!

Billy Idol on the other hand I do know something of though not so much this period of his career. The Billy Idol I knew about was the 1984-85 vintage when the UK finally welcomed his style of rock with reactivated singles “White Wedding” and “Rebel Yell” finally becoming Top 10 hits alongside his more toned down side as shown on “Eyes Without A Face”. I kept tabs on him through 1986’s “Whiplash Smile” album and again with more re-released hits in the late 80s like “Mony Mony” and “Hot In The City” to promote his “Vital Idol” Best Of.

As the 90s dawned though, I lost sight of him. “Charmed Life” passed me by and then came 1993’s “Cyberpunk”. A concept album no less (no really) which was inspired by Billy’s desire to embrace emerging technology and the digital world in order to create music. Idol combined this with his interest in the sci-fi sub genre of cyberpunk following a comment by a journalist about an electronic muscle stimulator on his leg which was part of his recovery process after a motorcycle accident. The album included spoken word narratives between tracks and was created in Idol’s home studio on his Mackintosh computer.

Reaction to the album amongst critics was overwhelmingly negative but I wonder if there’s some snobbery at play. David Bowie’s 1999 interview with Jeremy Paxman about the role the internet would play in our future lives has seen him lauded as a visionary retrospectively. Rightly so of course.

However, shouldn’t Billy be afforded a bit more credibility for his own observations six years prior to Bowie’s?

“Shock To The System” was the album’s lead single written about the Los Angeles riots of 1992 with a video that seemed to be a mash up of Judge Dredd meets Robocop. Despite the kudos I’ve given Billy above, it’s a poor song which explains its peak at No 30 in the UK charts.

After Brian May and Cozy Powell stank the studio out last week, here’s another rock royalty amalgamation – Whitesnake’s David Coverdale and Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page together on a single called “Take Me For A Little While”. I called Brian and Cozy hoary old rockers in the last post but Tony Dortie refers to David and Jimmy as “two dinosaurs of rock” in his intro. I’m not sure which is the bigger insult.

As with The Smashing Pumpkins earlier, I remember selling the “Coverdale-Page” album due to its plain but distinctive cover and we sold a lot of it quickly as all the rock fans of Rochdale where I was working made a trip to their local Our Price to pick up a copy of this imagination pricking collaboration. I don’t remember it being played in the shop though and therefore I don’t know this track at all. I never got the boat going to Led Zeppelin island and my knowledge of Whitesnake is limited so I’m not the best judge of its merits but I don’t think I’ll be playing it again. I’d rather have Robert Plant and his “29 Palms” I think.

Taylor Dayne? What “Tell It To My Heart” Taylor Dayne? Her? In 1993? Wow! I had totally forgotten this! Well, in the intervening eight years since her last UK hit, Taylor had scored a US No 1 record with “Love Will Lead You Back” which stiffed over here so when she presented Arista label president Clive David with her third album, he suggested she cover the old Barry White hit “Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love, Babe” to boost its chances. Whereas Debbie Harry earlier had knocked off the word ‘now’ from her “I Can See Clearly” single to ensure it wasn’t confused with the Johnny Nash song, Taylor removed the word ‘Babe’ from her song even though it was actually a cover version. Hardly the best way to “Prove Your Love” of the original (see what I did there?).

Anyway, Taylor’s version of “Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love” was produced by C+C Music Factory’s Clivillés and Cole and was a US dance chart No 1 and made a respectable No 14 over here.

Time for that second big hatted lady on the show now and she’s singing a song that will always transport me straight back to 1993 – “What’s Up?” by 4 Non Blondes. It’s one of those records that would become more well known than the band who made it (see also “Take My Breath Away” by Berlin and “(I Just) Died In Your Arms” by Cutting Crew). It’s also a song that, like it’s chart peer “Two Princes” by Spin Doctors, very much seems to divide opinion. Some seem to love it whilst others can’t abide it. I’m a bit more in the middle – I think it’s a good song but it probably suffered from bring overplayed on the radio. So much airplay did it receive that punters were asking for it before it had entered the Top 40. I recall we ordered a few copies in to see how it went (we didn’t normally buy in non chart singles) and they did indeed go straight away. The buyers at Head Office must have got wind and scaled out loads of it across the chain and…hey presto! With copies actually available in the shops, a huge hit ensued. It went to No 1 all over Europe (though No 2 in the UK) and would make the band almost perfect one hit wonders – one huge hit then nothing followed by the band splitting up. I say ‘almost’ as there was a follow up single called “Spaceman” but it tanked although their album “Bigger, Better, Faster, More!” did well going to No 4 in the UK.

Eighteen months after 4 Non Blondes had been and gone I was helping to shut down the Our Price store in Market Street, Manchester as the company had sold the unit. I was clearing out the manager’s office and when moving a filing cabinet, found a CD of “Bigger, Better, Faster, More!” behind it. I took it home as I didn’t know what else to do with it (all the shop’s other stock had already been disposed of) but I’ve no idea where it is now.

Oh and that connection to another US sitcom that I mentioned earlier? Well, the woman in the big hat belting out “What’s Up?” is Linda Perry who was married to Sara Gilbert for five years and who is Sara Gilbert? She’s the actress who played Darlene Conner in Roseanne.

Tony Dortie had a bit of a thing for Jade didn’t he? “Now it’s time for me to break out into a hot sweat” he brazenly tells us as he introduces their live by satellite performance from Los Angeles. “I Wanna Love You” was actually the trio’s debut single in the US but which was released in the UK off the back of the success of “Don’t Walk Away”. Maybe it’s just the similarity of song title but it sounds very much like Color Me Badd’s “I Wanna Sex You Up” to me. It’s almost as if “I Wanna Love You” is the clean version of that 1991 hit with the word ‘sex’ being replaced by the more wholesome ‘love’. At least there’s some extra content to this satellite performance with some pre-recorded shots of the group arriving at a venue before we get the standard fare of the track being sung in some soulless setting.

“I Wanna Love You” peaked at No 13 in the UK.

Next the moment that Dortie has been bigging up all show – Take That are in the studio! “Pray” was the first of their twelve (twelve!) No 1 singles of which eight came within the group’s first incarnation up to 1996. Those eight chart toppers were almost consecutive with only “Love Ain’t Here Anymore” breaking the sequence halfway through when it peaked at No 3. They’re impressive figures whatever your opinion of Take That. I did have an opinion though and it was that “Pray” was really lame and throwaway. Yes, it has that gospel feel chorus (pray geddit?) but compared to their high octane rendering of “Could It Be Magic” for example, it seemed so pedestrian.

As for their performance here, well it didn’t need to be anything special to sell the record and it wasn’t. An obvious gospel choir in the background and some twisty – turning dancing from the lads whilst Gary Barlow (now minus his peroxide blonde hair – a true non-blonde as it were) does the actual singing. It was all very underwhelming but then I guess I wasn’t the group’s target audience to be fair.

Gabrielle gets a second week at No 1 with “Dreams” and in 2023 she’s touring to commemorate its 30 years anniversary! I feel very old for the second time in this post. She’s even coming to my current home of Hull. Will I be going to see her? Dream on.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Joey Lawrence	Nothin’ My Love Can’t Fix	Never happening
2	Deborah Harry	I Can See Clearly	No it was poor fare
3	New Order	Ruined In A Day	See 2 above
4	Evolution	Everybody Dance	No
5	The Smashing Pumpkins	Cherub Rock	Nah
6	Billy Idol	Shock To The System	Nope
7	David Coverdale & Jimmy Page	Take Me For A Little While	I did not
8	Taylor Dayne	Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love	Negative
9	4 Non Blondes	What’s Up?	No but I had that found CD of the album for a while
10	Jade	I Wanna Love You	It’s a no
11	Take That	Pray	Of course not
12	Gabrielle	Dreams	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/m001btp0/top-of-the-pops-01071993

TOTP 24 JUN 1993

Posted on September 12, 2022 by 80stastic

1993 is not one of my favourite years for music. That’s based on my memory and what I’ve seen on these TOTP repeats from this year so far but I would have to say that the singles chart was pretty eclectic. I’ve moaned and moaned about the proliferation of Eurodance tunes on the show but a glance at the running order for this episode paints a different picture. Yes, there are what you would term dance acts but there’s also some old timers like Rod Stewart and Brian May plus Gloria Gaynor makes her bow in the 1993 disco revival. There’s a boy band (sort of) plus there’s even some actual decent music courtesy of one of Scotland’s finest bands. Oh and Joey Lawrence is on as well. There has to be some utter tripe on or how would we know it’s still 1993?

We start with one of those dance acts but it’s a homegrown one as opposed to being imported from Europe. For me, this was the moment when M People became a proper big deal. Yes, they’d already cracked the Top 10 with a remix of “How Can I Love You More” earlier in the year but that track had topped and tailed debut album “Northern Soul” by being the first and last single released from it. What we had now was new material from a traditionally difficult second album. How would the public receive it? As it happened, they made “One Night In Heaven” the band’s biggest hit to date by sending it to No 6 in the charts giving them a second consecutive major smash and thereby continuing a run of eight singles that would all make the Top 10. It was official – M People would be sticking around for a while.

That second album was of course “Elegant Slumming” that would go triple platinum in the UK and produce another three hit singles after “One Night In Heaven”. It was also, memorably, the winner of the Mercury Music Prize in 1994. Mike Pickering had hit upon a successful formula of dance music which had enough beats to satisfy the bpm addicts and enough melody to appeal to the less hardcore dance heads. As an aside, I had a lecturer when I was a Polytechnic student called Mike Pickering but we all called him Mick Prick. No idea why. He seemed like a decent sort.

Before the next act, we have to address host Mark Franklin’s hair. What’s he done to it? Where’s his usual bouncy quiff gone? He’s plastered it all down to his head! I guess it does look very 1993 or is it jazz club?

Somebody else having hair issues is the next artist, the aforementioned Rod Stewart. I’m sure you’ve all seen this as it’s been doing the rounds but just in case…

Fuck sake 😂 https://t.co/53wGzX0wSr
— Sir Rod Stewart (@rodstewart) August 31, 2022

Heh. Anyway, Rod was back in the charts with a cover of Van Morrison’s “Have I Told You Lately”. He’d recorded it for his 1991 “Vagabond Heart” album but this live version was taken from his “Unplugged…And Seated” album recorded as part of the MTV Unplugged series. That format was already well established in music fans’ minds with artists such as Paul McCartney, Mariah Carey and Eric Clapton having released albums under its banner recently. Even so, I was still slightly surprised at the success of Rod’s MTV album which went to No 2 and was platinum selling. As for his performance of “Have I Told You Lately” here, it’s all a bit much with Rod over emoting all over the place and then there’s that weird bit in the middle where a woman in the audience gives him a bunch of flowers and then rushes off past the camera and seemingly out of the venue. What was that all about? Now if she’d have handed him a hairbrush, that might have made some sense.

“Have I Told You Lately” peaked at No 5.

Next to the (sort of) boy band and so far I’d say that East 17 had done a good job of becoming the anti- Take That. However, the decision to release a cover of “West End Girls” by Pet Shop Boys was a complete misstep. What was the thinking around this? Were record label London concerned that last single “Slow It Down” had failed to make the Top 10 and so released a cover to ensure a hit? If so, it was a strategy that was not a complete success as the East End boys version of “West End Girls” peaked at No 11. Somebody suggested on Twitter that it was down to their manager Tom Watkins who was trying to restart a working relationship with former clients Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe after they had separated at the end of the 80s. Whatever the truth, it was a calculated decision as the original pressings of their album “Walthamstow” didn’t include “West End Girls”. It was re-released with it added on in the wake of the single charting and we had to withdraw all the old copies from sale in the Our Price I was working in.

It’s just such a stiff, unconvincing cover not helped by the performance here which is just a lot of twirling around and jumping about on stage. All except for John Hendy. Were the other three trying to tell John something? He always seemed to be the one left to his own devices when the band appeared on TOTP. He was relegated to the back of the stage noodling on a bass guitar when they performed “Deep” and sat on a sofa idling away at a keyboard for “Slow It Down”. He’s back on the bass again here whilst Brian, Terry and Tony are doing their thing out front. I’m surprised that he’s not kicking in chairs and knocking down tables in frustration. Ahem.

Number One in the World! Except it’s not. It’s No 6 in the chart this week on its way to a high of No 3 for Chaka Demus and Pliers and “Tease Me”. It’s another of those live by satellite performances (New York this week) which might just be in a room next door to the TOTP studio for all we know. It’s literally an empty setting other than a light pattern projected onto the blank walls. Seriously, what was the point?

I find it hard to discuss Chaka Demus and Pliers without finding them completely ridiculous because of that tool-related name. I’m sure there was a scene in the 90s sitcom 2point4 Children where the Belinda Lang character asks her teenage daughter what she’s listening to and when the answer comes back as Chaka Demus and Pliers, it’s the foundation for a whole litany of jokes. So what was the story behind that moniker? Here’s @TOTPFacts with the details:

Pliers explains his moniker: "I first got the name… when I was in the studio recording a song for a DJ in Jamaica who was like, ‘You sound like [Jamaican reggae singer] Pinchers, so shouldn’t you be called Pliers?' He was really excited about it…" #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) September 2, 2022

"I was never really interested in being called Pliers. So when they went on and renamed me Pliers anyway, I wasn’t happy… It wasn’t until the record came out that I realised they’d changed it! But because it had already been done I just went with it." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) September 2, 2022

So now you know.

Four Breakers again this week. I wish they would give this up. Really elongates these reviews unnecessarily. Most of them we never see again anyway. Ho hum.

SWV are the first of the four with their single “Weak”. The UK was still resisting the charms of the Sisters With Voices unlike in the US where this song was No 1 for two weeks and sold a million copies. By contrast, it stiffed at No 33 over here. It wasn’t until the “Right Here/Human Nature” mash up single came out a few weeks later that we decided we quite liked them after all.

And so we arrive at the time of Joey Lawrence. Who? Well, he was one of the stars of an American sitcom called Blossom that had been picked up by Channel 4 over here and was based around the title character played by Mayim Bialik. The premise of the show was of a family of three kids and their Dad dealing with their mother/wife leaving them. Lawrence played middle child Joey, a sports jock (to use the American vernacular) who wasn’t blessed with great intelligence but fancied himself as ‘one for the ladies’ and was given a catchphrase of “Woah!”. He was a sort of prototype Joey from Friends I guess. The show actually had far more depth to it than Lawrence’s character suggests. Firstly, it centred around a female lead which was not the norm at the time but it was also the atypical comedy themes that it dealt with such as sexual assault, Blossom’s first period and drug abuse (Blossom’s elder brother Tony was a recovering alcoholic and drug addict).

It was a decent watch and indeed me and my wife did tune in to it regularly when it was broadcast on Fridays I think. Bialik would go on to star in The Big Bang Theory whilst Lawrence starred in Melissa & Joey for four seasons. That’s not what concerns us here though. No. We have to address Lawrence’s music career which began whilst he was just 16 with the single “Nothin’ My Love Can’t Fix”. Actors becoming pop stars was nothing new of course – we’d had a plethora of them in recent years mainly from the Aussie soap Neighbours but supposedly music was always Joey’s first love and he co-write this tune. It was a bit Bobby Brown-lite sounding to me (and I wasn’t a fan of the full fat flavour in the first place) and did he get a “Woah oh oh” into the chorus to play up to his character’s catchphrase?

Thankfully Joey Lawrence mania never really took off (although there was one young female customer in the Altrincham Our Price that I ended up working in who was a bit obsessed) and the whole thing was done by the end of the year. For the record though, “Nothin’ My Love Can’t Fix” peaked at No 13.

And now for some ‘proper’ music though I have to admit I wasn’t an early adopter of Teenage Fanclub. Even though they were on to their fourth album (“Thirteen”) by 1993, they seemed to have eluded my radar which must have been on the blink as their brand of jangly power pop was right up my street. “Radio” was the lead single from that album and would become their second Top 40 hit after the previous years “What You You Do To Me” (how had I missed that single?!).

To me, they always seem more recognised for their influence and legacy than their commercial deeds and indeed were described by Kurt Cobain as the best band in the world in 1992 when they toured with Nirvana. I’ve since become a convert and “My Uptight Life” from their “Howdy!” album is one of my favourite ever tunes. Alas, I fear they won’t make their full TOTP appearance until the 1997 repeats come around.

“Radio” peaked at No 31.

Ah shit! More Shabba Ranks? Really?! Yes, if we thought he only had one song in “Mr Loverman” then we were wrong for here he is back again with “What’cha Gonna Do”. This was another collaboration, this time with Queen Latifah following his hit “Housecall” with Maxi Priest. You know what? Sod this for a game of darts. What am I gonna do Shabba? I’m moving straight on. “Laters!” as Tony Dortie might say.

Right what’s next? Oh come on! This wasn’t what the kids wanted in 1993 surely? Some hoary old rock from some hoary old rockers? I speak of Brian May and Cozy Powell who, having been a Breaker last week, are in the studio this time to perform “Resurrection”. This sounds horrible. Can I just get away with skipping this one as well? No? You want some more content? OK – here’s host Mark Franklin no less with some trivia:

Yeah, not a particularly good one for me I agree. Bit of trivia ahead of TX for those who enjoy it. Bryan May’s backing singer on this performance is Shelley Preston who replaced Jay Aston in Bucks Fizz in 1985.
— Mark Franklin (@MarkFranklin123) September 2, 2022

Now away with you all!

I’m gathering some speed now so look out anybody who gets in my way! Oh, it’s alright as it’s Gloria Gaynor – she’ll survive (ahem). Yes, inevitably given the disco revival of 1993, Gloria Gaynor has entered the fray with a Phil Kelsey remix of her 1979 No 1 and subsequent gay / feminist anthem, “I Will Survive”. This was always going to happen wasn’t it? There is an interesting back story to this track though. Gloria had lost her ‘Queen of Disco’ crown to the emerging Donna Summer and so was looking for a hit to reclaim it. “Substitute” was chosen as the song to relaunch her. It had originally been recorded by The Righteous Brothers but had been a recent massive hit for South African all-girl group Clout (one of the best records of the 70s – fact!). Needing a B-side, songwriters Dino Fekaris and Freddie Perren supplied “I Will Survive” which Gloria loved but which her label Polydor didn’t and “Substitute” was released as the A-side.

When it failed to do the business, Gloria persuaded club DJs to flip the record and it eventually became a favourite at New York superclub Studio 54. Meanwhile, Boston disco radio DJ Jack King was also playing “I Will Survive” and this combined promotion would convince Polydor to re-release the single with “I Will Survive” on the A-side. The rest is history.

The 1993 remix though is awful with a horrible Chicago House backing installed for no apparent reason other than bandwagon jumping. It would rise to No 5 and a Very Best Of album was put out on the back of its success. Gloria’s vocal in this performance is effortless though I could have done without the audience sing-a-long that she encourages towards the end.

Oh God! Mark Franklin hasn’t just restyled his hair – he’s added an earring aswell! That camera angle of the back of his head which shows it in full effect was surely planned?! Anyway, Mark is back on screen to introduce Alexander O’Neal who is in the studio to promote his latest single “In The Middle” which was the second track to be lifted from his “Love Makes No Sense” album. A whole studio appearance seems a bit like overkill for a single that only got to No 32 and was a follow up to the album’s title track and lead single which only made No 26. Things didn’t get any better for Alexander who only returned to the UK Top 40 once more in 1996 with the No 38 hit “Let’s Get Together”.

Gabrielle is the new No 1 with “Dreams” though it’s hardly a surprise given its entry last week at No 2. The TOTP producers have decided that Gabrielle is a classy performer and adorned the stage with white drapes for some reason to make that point. As with Gloria Gaynor earlier, I could do without the metronomic clapping from the studio audience. At the end of the song, we get something which I don’t think we’ve seen since the early days of the ‘year zero’ revamp where Mark Franklin joins Gabrielle on stage for a little chat to ask when her album is out. It’s still cringey and still a bad idea. Maybe he just wanted to get more screen time for his earring?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	M People	One Night In Heaven	No but my wife had the album
2	Rod Stewart	Have I Told You Lately	Nah
3	East 17	West End Girls	See 1 above
4	Chaka Demus and Pliers	Tease Me	Not likely
5	SWV	Weak	No
6	Joey Lawrence	Nothin’ My Love Can’t Fix	As if
7	Teenage Fanclub	Radio	No to my shame
8	Shabba Ranks and Queen Latifah	What’cha Gonna Do?	Not buy it obviously
9	Brian May and Cozy Powell	Resurrection	I say again, “Away with you!”
10	Gloria Gaynor	I Will Survive	Nope
11	Alexander O’Neal	In The Middle	Never happening
12	Gabrielle	Dreams	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/m001bm8v/top-of-the-pops-24061993

TOTP 17 JUN 1993

Posted on September 8, 2022 by 80stastic

It’s mid June 1993 and the big news story on this particular day was that Manchester United bought Nottingham Forest midfielder Roy Keane for a then record £3.75 million. And yes, you’re right this is meant to be a music blog so here’s a Roy Keane inspired ditty…

This Morrissey single never made the Top 40 and so this TOTP performance was never broadcast until a viewers vote got it played on retro show TOTP2 in 2003. Mozza would often change the lyrics to “never seen a keener midfielder” when performing it live and the track was played over the closing credits of Keane’s 2002 documentary As I See It.

Right, that’s the 1993 news done. On with the show and we start with, as per usual, a high tempo dance track courtesy this time of The Time Frequency and a track from their “The Power Zone EP” called “Ultimate High”. This all feels a bit 1991 if not 1989 with a definite whiff of Italian House about it. On first glance I actually thought there might be a Germanic influence as it looked like one of the obligatory anonymous blokes at the back on keyboards was dressed like a member of Kraftwerk circa “The Man Machine” era but he’s actually just wearing a red jacket over a black T-shirt.

I’m kind of intrigued as to why they called themselves The Time Frequency and not just Time Frequency. The addition of the definite article seems incongruous somehow. Time Frequency seems to fit better for a dance music project to my mind. I wonder if the band naming process went something like the scene in 1991 film The Commitments? In a discussion about what the band should be called, manager Jimmy Rabbitte, in response to suggestions like ‘Free Beer’ (always draws a big crowd) and ‘A Flock Of Budgies’ says:

We have to be “the” something. All the great sixties bands were “The Somethings”

Looking at this performance from The Time Frequency, I don’t think they look half as much fun as The Commitments…

When I think of 1993, I don’t immediately bring to mind a disco revival but there was one in amongst all the Eurodance nonsense. We’ve already seen Boney M (or at least a version of them) back in the charts and in a week or so Gloria Gaynor will go Top 5 with a remix of “I Will Survive”. And then there’s Sister Sledge who are into their third hit of the year with a remix of “Thinking Of You”. I was just 16 years old awaiting my ‘O’ Level results when it was first a hit in the Summer of 1984. Nine years later and I’m a married man working in a record shop in Rochdale.

I’m not sure I had that sort of perspective at the time though. It was probably just another single to be sold to the punters. I never minded this though either in 1984 or 1993. And what’s a true test of a good song? If it can be covered in a completely different style by an artist outside of the originator’s genre of course. I present Paul Weller…

Did someone mention Eurodance? Yes, I did of course but that doesn’t mean I wanted to hear any and certainly not from this bloke. For some reason, in my head, Haddaway has become the pin up boy for all the musical shite that 1993 threw our way with his song “What Is Love” being the biggest, stinking turd in the toilet bowl. I’m sure he’s a nice guy but I just hated this. Hadaway and shite!

Bizarrely, just like Cliff Richard who was a Breaker on the show last week, Haddaway’s album was also just called “The Album” meaning there were two albums on the album chart at the same time called “The Album”. Got that? Good.

The circular spotlights in this performance look familiar. Oh yeah, the Mysterons. That’s it…

From Captain Scarlet to Dr Who now as we find good, old Sting doing this week’s live by satellite performance (from Pittsburgh) which features what appears to be the opening titles of the Jon Pertwee era doctor on the walls in the background.

Anyway, it looks like, after weeks of coming close, we have arrived at the actual most boring satellite performance in TOTP history. There is literally nothing going on here (if you discount the Dr Who lighting) with Sting sat down throughout whilst he sings “Fields Of Gold”, the third single taken from his “Ten Summoner’s Tales” album. So unenthusiastic is Sting about the whole prospect of performing that he hasn’t even learned the words to the song as he appears to have a lyric sheet in his hand. He just sits steadfast and motionless on his chair with a wry smile on his face as if he’s in on some band in joke or has just farted and knows it’s going to be a bad one that will linger. Or maybe this was some sort of preparation for a bout of tantric sex that he is infamous for. Meanwhile, the only other camera shots we get are of the guitarist fingering the strings of his instrument. Hmm. Maybe it is something to do with tantric sex? After all, look what the man himself says of the song courtesy of @TOTPFacts:

Sting on the lyrics of "Fields Of Gold": "In England, our house [in Wiltshire] is surrounded by barley fields, and in the summer it's fascinating to watch the wind moving over the shimmering surface like waves on an ocean of gold." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) September 2, 2022

"There's something inherently sexy about this sight, something primal, as if the wind were making love to the barley. Lovers have made promises here, I'm sure, their bonds strengthened by the comforting cycle of the seasons." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) September 2, 2022

The song itself tends to divide opinion. As this TOTP repeat aired, Twitter comments ranged from “brilliant song” to “absolute shite”. I don’t mind it I have to say and it took on a whole new lease of life when the now departed Eva Cassidy did a version of it which was played on the radio extensively by Terry Wogan. Though never released as a single in the UK, Cassidy’s posthumous career was based largely around this song and “Over The Rainbow” which saw her compilation album “Songbird” go to No 1 in the UK in 1998.

Sting’s original peaked at No 16.

One of the biggest hits of the year now from a complete newbie. I’d be lying if I said I’d heard the original Tracy Chapman sampling promo of “Dreams” by Gabrielle before the official release sans sample came out on Go! Beat in 1993 but there was one and here it is…

Apparently it was played in the clubs a lot around ‘91/‘92 but I was not really frequenting clubs much at the time on account of being permanently brassic. It must have reached quite a few people though as when the officially sanctioned (some may say sanitised) version came out, pre-demand was so high that it entered the chart at No 2, the highest position ever at the time for a previously uncharted act*.

*That record would be broken just a year later when Whigfield went straight to No 1 with “Saturday Night”.

Who was Gabrielle though? This was the second time in under a year that a young, female singer appeared from nowhere to score a huge smash hit following Tasmin Archer in 1992. Well, she was Louise Gabrielle Bobb and she hailed from Hackney, London. She’d had the condition ptosis causing the drooping of the upper eyelid since childhood hence the eye patch she wore in all her public appearances and performances. I can’t remember what the general reaction to the eyepatch was at the time, whether people saw it as an affectation or not but it certainly added an element of intrigue to her. Where Tasmin Archer had her ‘Who Is Tasmin Archer?’ poster campaign to raise her profile, Gabrielle had her eyepatch.

The thing about “Dreams” that I never understood for years was what the words to the second line of the chorus were. It was almost unintelligible. Thankfully, the world is digital these days and so a quick Google reveals them to be:

Look at me babe, I’m with you

Hmm. Bit of an anticlimax that.

Right I’m really behind with these TOTP reviews so let’s whip through these Breakers starting with Kingmaker. This lot should have been a lot bigger than they were and indeed looked they would be for a while but record company interference did for them. Their legacy was a back catalogue that was been given a deserved revisit in the form of 5 CD box set “Everything Changed” courtesy of reissue specialist label Cherry Red a couple of years ago. This single, “Queen Jane”, was the follow up to “10 Years Asleep” and would make No 29 in the charts.

Now I’m writing this a few days after the Queen passed away which has resulted in all the TV schedules being rearranged to accommodate coverage of the aftermath and also to ensure nothing deemed inappropriate at this time is broadcast. What has this got to do with Kingmaker? Well, there’s their band name for a start. Could well be deemed to be in bad taste. Then there’s the case of their 1992 single “Armchair Anarchist” with its lyrics about bombing the House of Lords was deemed too insensitive for daytime radio and failed to make the charts. Fast forward thirty years and I’m wondering that if the Queen had died a week earlier, would this edition of TOTP have been allowed to be broadcast? Look at these lyrics in “Queen Jane”:

A funny thing happened on the way to here, the headlines read like the end was near for Queen Jane

They say your vacant face, helps the tourist trade, If they could see you in your leisure time, well!

Queen Jane, you’ve got everything to die for

Considering that radio stations are currently tying themselves up in knots over coming up with sombre pop songs to play, I’m pretty sure “Queen Jane” wouldn’t make the cut.

What I remember about Brian May and the early 90s is as follows:

“Driven By You” and that Ford car advert
Freddie Mercury’s death and the memorial concert
“Too Much Live Will Kill You”

What I don’t remember is a song called “Resurrection” with legendary rock drummer Cozy Powell. From the few seconds it’s afforded as a Breaker, I have no wish to get to know the song better as it sounds like a dreadful noise.

I’m sure I say this every time Thunder are on the show but they have a remarkable singles chart record. Eighteen Top 40 singles points to incredible consistency and yet none of them got any higher than No 18. I guess they had a sizeable, loyal fanbase but never managed to crossover with a huge single like, say, Extreme did with “More Than Words”. This single “Like A Satellite” is a case in point. The fourth and final track to be lifted from their “Laughing On Judgement Day”, it peaked at No 25.

This year’s Eurovision winner next and in 1993 it was Ireland’s Niamh Kavanagh with “In Your Eyes”. This was the first time that a winning song in the contest had featured on the UK chart since 1987 when Johnny Logan made No 2 with “Hold Me Now”. Ireland was in the middle of a run of three consecutive Eurovision wins between ‘92 and ‘94 (they also won it in ‘96) but the unlikely truth is that the United Kingdom has won the contest more recently than Ireland.

Niamh had some musical chops though having performed as lead and backing vocalist on the soundtrack to the film – and I genuinely didn’t know this when I referenced it earlier – The Commitments! “In Your Eyes” though is nothing like any of the soul songs found in that film. It’s a straight up, big ballad that sounds like it could have been a hit for Gloria Estefan. Predictably it was No 1 in Ireland and peaked at No 24 in the UK.

1993 was pretty good to Terence Trent D’Arby. He’d recovered from the false step that was sophomore album “Neither Fish Nor Flesh” to comeback with a Top 10 LP in “Symphony Or Damn” and four Top 20 hit singles. “Delicate” was the second of them and was a duet with Des’ree who’s only chart entry to that point had been her Top 20 hit “Feel So High” from the previous year. An (ahem) delicate ballad, it showcased the diversity of TTD’s talent. Whether you liked him or not, the guy could sing and write a decent tune. Featuring a groovy, Eastern sounding melody, it was a nice antidote to all that Eurodance nonsense.

The careers of Terence and Des’ree went in opposite directions after this coming together. The former would release his “Vibrator” album in 1995 which failed to consolidate on the success of “Symphony Or Damn” and he would not release another for six years before ultimately changing his name to Sananda Matreiya. Des’ree would go on to sell a million copies in the US of her 1994 album “I Ain’t Movin’” and achieved a No 1 record in Europe (and No 8 in the UK) in “Life” in 1998.

Despite working in a record shop at this time, there have been a substantial number of singles from this year that I have nothing down for in my memory banks. Here’s another one – “I Can See Clearly” by Deborah Harry. Nothing to do with Johnny Nash, this track was the lead single from Harry’s fourth (and so far final) solo album “Debravation” and was written by legendary record producer Arthur Baker. All of those solo albums followed a pattern in that each produced just the one hit which in every case was the lead single. For the completists out there the others were:

1981 – “Backfired” from “KooKoo”

1986 – “French Kissin In The USA” from “Rockbird”

1989 – “ I Want That Man” from “Def, Dumb & Blonde”

I have to say that I don’t know “Backfired” but “I Can See Cleary” doesn’t match up to the other two songs for me. All very unremarkable. What is remarkable is this performance and I’m not talking about the lead singer of Blondie having brown hair. I haven’t checked but is this the first time an artist has appeared on TOTP with a magician? Perhaps a more pertinent question would be why did Debbie (sorry Deborah!) feel the need to do it? The guy doing the magic tricks is surely the most incongruous addition to an act since Howard Jones’s dancing mime Jed in 1983?! It all looks so lame. First he makes a candle appear then disappear, then a pair of glasses (presumably to help Debbie – Deborah damn it! – see clearly) then a flaming torch and finally he sets fire to a flower. All very underwhelming. Now if he’d have changed her hair colour from brown back to blonde on stage, I would have been impressed.

“I Can See Clearly” peaked at No 23 but she reactivated Blondie in 1999 notching up a No 1 record with “Maria”.

UB40 remain at No 1 with “(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With You” but they surely must have been looking over their collective shoulders at Gabrielle gatecrashing the charts at No 2. They would have been right to as this would prove to be their last week at the top of the pile. It was a different story in the US where it was No 1 for seven weeks. Parent album “Promises And Lies” also went to the top of the charts and was the seventh best selling album of the year in the UK. The band would never be as big again. Only twice have they revisited the Top 10 of the singles chart since (follow up “Higher Ground” made No 8 whilst 1998’s “Come Back Darling” just snuck in at No 10). The band splintered in 2008 when Ali Campbell left to form his own version of the group with fellow departees Mickey Virtue and Astro. Rumours abounded that ‘Mr Ubiquitous 1993’ Maxi Priest was to replace Ali Campbell but in the end it was his brother Duncan Campbell who stepped into that role. Tragedy struck the UB40 family in 2021 with both founding members Brian Travers and Astro passing away.

Ghj

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	The Time Frequency	The Power Zone EP	Never happening
2	Sister Sledge	Thinking of You (RAMP Radio Mix)	Nope
3	Haddaway	What Is Love	I say again, ‘Headway and shite!’
4	Sting	Fields Of Gold	No
5	Gabrielle	Dreams	Nah
6	Kingmaker	Queen Jane	I did not
7	Brian May and Cozy Powell	Resurrection	Resurrection?! It should have been buried deep in the ground never to be heard of again! That’s a no by the way.
8	Thunder	Like A Satellite	Negative
9	Niamh Kavanagh	In Your Eyes	Not likely
10	Terence Trent D’Arby and Des’ree	Delicate	Nice tune but no
11	Deborah Harry	I Can See Clearly	No it was crap
12	UB40	(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With 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/m001bm8s/top-of-the-pops-17061993

TOTP 10 JUN 1993

Posted on September 3, 2022 by 80stastic

June 1993 saw the demise of two big names in the world of comedy – one a performer and one a TV show. The former was comedian Les Dawson who died on the same day this TOTP aired aged just 62. The latter was US sitcom Cheers which ended this year after 275 episodes over 11 seasons. Channel 4 broadcast the final three shows over the weekend following this TOTP. Both had a musical element to them. Dawson included his wonky piano playing in his act whilst Cheers had one of the greatest theme tunes of all time…

Let’s see if any of the tunes on this TOTP are anywhere near as good as Gary Portnoy’s famous song…

Certainly not this one! As I said in the last post when confronted by Eurodance merchant Haddaway opening the show, I’d totally had enough of that particular genre of music by this point. This time it’s the turn of Snap! to be the first act on with their new single “Do You See The Light (Looking For)”. The TOTP producers often seemed to top the show’s running order with a dance act. In recent weeks we’ve had Stereo MCs, Felix and 2 Unlimited in addition to Haddaway. I guess it made sense to try and begin proceedings with a bang. The year zero revamp hadn’t quite let go of the party atmosphere era of Michael Hurll. Having said that, the performance here of Snap! featuring Niki Harris seems to suggest a soirée rather than a massive rave-up. I have to say that as objectionable as his views were, the group seemed to lose something when rapper Turbo B left. The performance here seems very lacklustre. Maybe if the set hadn’t been so sparse it might have sparked things into life a bit. And why do the backing singers resemble water nymphs?

This track was taken from “The Madman’s Return” album and the album version of it is quite different with vocals by Thea Austin instead of Niki Harris, a rap by the aforementioned Turbo B and even a (slightly) different title in “See The Light”. The single version peaked at No 10 and No 14 in 2002 when it was remixed and rereleased.

Spin Doctors are still going up the charts? Checking its stats, “Two Princes” remained on the chart for 18 weeks so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s a pretty nifty tune all said and done and there was a brief moment in time when the band seemed to be the next big thing. Parent album “Pocketful Of Kryptonite” went to No 2 and achieved platinum sales in Europe and yet somehow it all seemed to stall and fall away on both sides of the Atlantic.

If I’m honest, the follow up singles just weren’t as good. “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong” and “Jimmy Olsen’s Blues” just didn’t capture the imagination in the same way as “Two Princes” although in the case of the latter, in a three way race of Superman themed singles, they definitely finish above Laurie Anderson and Black Lace.

“Two Princes” peaked at No 3 in the UK.

A proper pop moment next as TOTP brings us the return of Pet Shop Boys. Neil and Chris had been away for only 18 months or so but their last release had been their first official Best Of album “Discography” which on reflection felt like a line in the sand drawing to a close the first part of their career. What would the first material of their next phase be like? Well, not too dissimilar to their previous work to be fair. “Can You Forgive Her” didn’t feel like a massive departure from what had gone before but then Neil Tennant’s voice is so distinctive that it overrides sometimes any potential musical deviation on their behalf. Not always of course. For example, something like “Jealousy” or “Se A Vida É” sound nothing like “West End Girls” but in the case of “Can You Forgive Her”, it didn’t seem, to me anyway, like a radical new sound. Not that it wasn’t any good either though. It had a strident feel to it, enabled by a punchy chorus that demanded to be heard. And heard it was as it gave the duo their first Top 10 hit in two years after their previous three singles all failed to make that achievement.

Somehow though it always feels overshadowed by the second single to be lifted from parent album “Very” which was the enormous hit that was the cover of Village People’s “Go West”. Initial copies of the album came in an orange CD jewel case featuring raised bumps which resembled Lego. In those days, the Our Price chain I worked for didn’t use security tagging and so the CDs we sold weren’t ‘live’ on the shelves as it were. The actual CDs were filed away behind the counter so the cases were empty. However, the manager of the store I was working in when the album came out thought the Lego case so nickable that we kept those behind the counter as well and had a dummy case on display that used the inner back sleeve to say what it was. Genius! Except it was a pain in the arse to put together when selling it to a customer and we also had a few people ask if our dummy sleeve was somehow a different version of the album. It would be another five years before I worked in an Our Price that displayed CDs live.

Anyway, back to the show and this performance really does give us the pop moment I referred to earlier. There’s so much to unpack here. The over exaggerated pointy dunce hats, Neil Tennant in a high chair, the cricket bat wielding space cadet backing dancers, a huge egg on stage for no reason but most of all there was Chris Lowe. The perennially motionless man moved more in that one performance than in all his previous ones added together. What had got into him? There were even what passed for dance moves! Maybe I was wrong. Perhaps this really was a different Pet Shop Boys to what had gone before.

1993 really was the year ragga/dancehall took over the charts. After Shaggy, Shabba and Snow came the ludicrously named Chaka Demus And Pliers. Opening themselves up to all sorts of tool related jibes, this pair of toasters joined forces in 1991 and released “Murder She Wrote” the following year in America to great acclaim. The follow up was “Tease Me” and the hordes lapped it up sending it to No 3 in the UK Top 40. The lyrics were fairly clear about the song’s subject matter with references to ‘reaching climax’ and its title of course. There’s also that shout out line which seemed to encapsulate the whole movement – “Number One In The World”. I’m sure that seemed to feature on every song of this type after that.

Chaka Demus and Pliers have bought all their mates with them to the TOTP studio for a jolly up whilst the camera man seemed very intent on giving us multiple views of the gyrating female backing dancers. Ahem. We’ll also be seeing lots more of CD and P before 1993 is out.

And the fascination with all things erotic thriller continues. I’m guessing Indecent Proposal must have been performing well at the box office to generate this much of a profile. It’s another outing for “Ordinary Love” by Sade which was featured heavily in the film but was not actually on the soundtrack. After last week’s glimpse of the mermaid promo video, we get a live by satellite performance from New York this time. Sade Adu looks stunning as ever but it’s the two guitarists in the background who have caught my eye. They spend the first half of the performance not even bothering to mime playing their instruments but doing the nerd shuffle together whilst clicking their fingers in unison. It doesn’t really seem appropriate for an artist as sophisticated as Sade. Bet they got a bollocking when the cameras were turned off.

Therapy? were enjoying a huge breakthrough year in 1993. After the “Shortsharpshock EP” featuring lead track “Screamager” made the Irish rockers bona fide Top 10 artists in March, the follow up was also an EP. “Face The Strange” featured four tracks of which “Turn” was chosen to promote it. Clearly the EP’s title is a David Bowie reference being a lyric from his song “Changes”. I learned recently that I know someone who met Bowie and not just met but took him out for a drink around about 1972 just as he was launching his Ziggy Stardust era. I know! There’s a few Bowie super fans that I know who would be blown away by my friend’s recollections. What’s that? The Therapy? song? Oh, I didn’t like it much. Sorry.

The Breakers are their usual eclectic/bonkers mix of artists starting with the evergreen Cliff Richard. Despite being 52 at the time and having had his first hit 25 years ago, Cliff was showing no signs of slowing down in 1993. In fact, the decade was going pretty well for him so far. He’d already clocked up a No 1 in “Saviour’s Day” and four other Top 10 hits. Also having a fine old time of it around now was Maxi Priest who’d had a hit twice with Shabba Ranks (albeit with the same song in both cases) and who’d supplied the ‘Shabba!’ sample for the massive selling “Mr Loverman” single. To add to his collection of chart connections came “Human Work Of Art”. You see, Maxi had released this as a single from his “Bonafide” album three years prior but it had failed to chart.

It was recycled for Cliff’s 1993 album called…erm…”The Album” and this time made No 24. It sounds every inch a Cliff record and you’d be hard pressed to guess at its reggae-fied earlier incarnation. It’s also utterly awful under his guardianship. Yes, it’s a polished production but then you can polish a turd of course.

I can’t find the official video online so here’s it being performed on Surprise Surprise.

From the despair of another banal Cliff record to…where? Well, fortunately it’s Manic Street Preachers with their new single “From Despair To Where” (ahem). OK, firstly weren’t they have meant to have split up by now? Wasn’t that their mission statement to make one blow your socks off, anarchistic album then dissolve the band? Clearly that was just bravado then. What they actually did was to record second album “Gold Against The Soul” which I liked enough to buy but which the fan base has always dissed as the worst album in their back catalogue. I’m sure I heard an interview with James Dean Bradfield once where he was asked to rank the band’s albums in order of merit and even he put it bottom of the list.

Maybe debut “Generation Terrorists” had raised the bar and expectations too high but the music press gave it mixed reviews at best. Maybe fan favourite and third album “The Holy Bible” would have been a more acceptable choice with its themes of human suffering and bleakness. Was “Gold Against The Soul” seen as too radio friendly, too (gulp) corporate rock? It sounded alright to my ears with the lead single ticking all my aural boxes. It swoops and soars but bites as well with lines like ‘there’s nothing nice in my head’. It had all of that and yet wasn’t even the best track on the album for me. I liked this version of the band a lot but then I’m not a paid up member of the Manics army who could shoot my opinion down in flames I’m sure.

What I’m not sure about is the video which is basically some moody shots of the band (Richie looks especially cool) intertwined with some sepia tinted clips which seem to suggest a sci-fi /horror film but it’s all a bit blurry to make a clear judgement although that look like an alien autopsy in the thumbnail below.

The Manics of course did do a TV show theme tune when they covered “Suicide Is Painless” – the theme tune from M*A*S*H. Better than the theme to Cheers? It’s a tough call but yes possibly.

The Sister Sledge revival bandwagon continues apace with a rerelease of their 1984 hit “Thinking Of You”. Remixed as the (RAMP Radio Mix), it was the last of three singles taken from the Greatest Hits compilation “The Very Best Of Sister Sledge 1973-93” following “We Are Family” and “Lost In Music”. It would peak at No 17 just six places lower than its 1984 counterpart. However the song dated back to 1979 when it was a track on the “We Are Family” album and issued as the B-side to the initial release of “Lost In Music”.

Reading that paragraph back it seems like the group made a 40+ year career based around just three songs that have been recycled over and over again. Lead singer Kathy Sledge even did her own cover version of “Thinking Of You” with house duo Aristofreeks in 2015. OK look, I know there’s also “He’s The Greatest Dancer” and “Frankie” in their repertoire but the former is very similar to the “Family/Lost/Thinking” trilogy and the latter is one of the worst recordings of all time (and I’ve just had to listen to Cliff Richard’s “Human Work Of Art”). I doubt even the Sledge sisters want to be remembered for that one.

Sister Sledge have only released one more single since this. And guess what? It was a rerelease of “We Are Family” in 2004 which made No 93 on our charts.

Who? The Time Frequency? Sounds like a phrase Dr Who might say. Have we seen this lot before? Can’t remember now. So many of these dance acts about. Anyway, “The Ultimate High” was a track off their “Power Zone EP” and sounds very much like a knock off version of “Insanity” by Oceanic to me but then, as I’ve said many times before, I’m no dance music aficionado.

The Time Frequency were from Scotland so I wonder if they knew fellow Scottish dance acts Primal Scream and The Shamen or is that a bit like an American, who on meeting someone from London, asks them if they know their cousin who lives in Notting Hill?

Lisa Stansfield? Again? It can’t be! She seems to be on every week at the moment. Given the high level of exposure it got, I’m surprised that “In All The Right Places” didn’t get higher than its No 8 peak. She’s back in the studio this time and has gone full on Louise Brooks with her haircut. No messing about like the other week with that half hearted Brett Anderson-esque wedge style. The way the stage has been set up with her first name and first name only in lights gives it a feel of a residency at Las Vegas. In fact, I could just imagine Liza Minnelli up there belting this one out.

Lisa will be back in October with her “So Natural” album and single.

UB40 have made it to the top spot deposing Ace Of Base in the process. Were they on tour at this time as it’s the video for “(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With You” yet again this week? I’m guessing that the director got the band to perform emerging into a tight corridor to link in with the themes of claustrophobia and paranoia that the film it was taken from (Sliver) clearly was based around. Ironically, a few years down the line, the band fractured into two different identities due to internal arguments and there’s no way that Ali and Robin Campbell would ever be in such close proximity to each other like that again.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Snap!	Do You See The Light (Looking For)	Never happening
2	Spin Doctors	Two Princes	Liked it, didn’t buy it
3	Pet Shop Boys	Can You Forgive Her	No but I have it on their Pop Art Best Of
4	Chaka Demus And Pliers	Tease Me	As if
5	Sade	No Ordinary Love	Nope
6	Therapy?	Face The Strange EP	Nah
7	Cliff Richard	Human Work Of Art	Of course not
8	Manic Street Preachers	From Despair To Where	No but I bought the album
9	Sister Sledge	Thinking Of You	No
10	The Time Frequency	Power Zone EP	Not likely
11	Lisa Stansfield	In All The Right Places	Negative
12	UB40	(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With 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/m001bdx3/top-of-the-pops-10061993

TOTP 03 JUN 1993

Posted on August 31, 2022 by 80stastic

In a recent post I made a reference to the ex-footballer Chris Waddle who had just been voted the 1993 sports writers’ Player of the Year. As this is a music blog, I obviously had to mention Waddle’s almost surreal attempt at pop superstardom in 1987. I even inserted a clip of him performing on TOTP. Unfortunately that seemed to cause the misapprehension amongst some that I was mixing up my TOTP years. As such, I need to be careful in this intro as I am going to talk about his partner in crime, Glenn Hoddle. You see, the day after this TOTP aired, Glenn was appointed as the new manager of my beloved Chelsea. Back in 1993, this was big news for Chelsea fans. Growing up, I’d seen my team managed by a succession of useless gaffers like Ken Shellito, Danny Blanchflower and Geoff Hurst. The latest incumbent Ian Porterfield had been similarly challenged. Hoddle, by contrast, was in demand after taking unfashionable Swindon Town into the Premier League. Plus, he brought some glamour with him. At 36 years of age, he was young for a manager and of course he had been a pop star (of sorts) in the 80s. Let’s see if there’s anyone in this show who can hold a light to Glenn in his “Diamond Lights” pomp…

…oh God no! Not him! I knew it must be coming as it’s one of the big hits of 1993 but I always, always hated it. I talk of Haddaway and his Eurodance song “What Is Love”. This guy was like a German Sydney Youngblood in that both served in the forces before deciding they’d give this pop star lark a go – Haddaway was in the Navy (you can sail the seven seas) and Youngblood the US Army. His debut single was pretty much No 1 in every country in Europe apart from the UK where he had to be satisfied with a No 2. Yes, it was catchy but all those Eurodance hits were catchy – it didn’t guarantee any measure of quality though. It’s not even that Haddaway couldn’t sing as the guy clearly had some pipes on him. It’s just that there seems to be a never ending conveyor belt of this sort of stuff this year and even by early June I was sick of it all. Yes, I guess it’s got a bit more soul to it than something like “No Limit” but that stabbing synth riff used to make my skin crawl.

The other reason I couldn’t take Haddaway seriously was that, having spent three years in Sunderland as a student, hearing his name immediately sent the synapses in my brain firing to arrive at the North East phrase of ‘hadaway n’ shite’ – a proclamation of negativity or disbelief to put it politely.

Look, if I want a song called “What Is Love” there’s one right here which is infinitely more preferable to me…

Isn’t this No 1 yet? Must surely be next week then. UB40’s version of “(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With You” has exploded sales wise – we were shifting loads of it in the Our Price store in Rochdale where I was working – though I was never quite sure why. It just sounded so clunky and mechanical and…well…ham-fisted in its production. All the charm of the song seemed to have been sucked out of it. Nothing wrong with putting a completely different spin on a song of course but it felt like they put as much love into it as they would have writing a shopping list. Compare their laborious take on the song with this joyous version from 1986 by Lick The Tins…

I know the UB40 version was on the soundtrack to the film Sliver but surely that wasn’t responsible for its popularity was it? I’ve never seen the film but it was an erotic thriller so surely didn’t have that mainstream appeal of something like Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves and we all know what that film did for Bryan Adams. Surely the age rating it would have been given would have precluded some potential record buyers from even getting into the cinema? I’m guessing that the promo video for the single is based around CCTV scenes featured in the movie some of which clearly indicate that Sharon Stone’s character has gone further than just crossing her legs as per her Fatal Attraction character. I’m no prude but I’m surprised the BBC didn’t edit them out.

Right here comes Jamiroquai to “Blow Your Mind” except that this track was hardly going to do that. It’s just a watered down version of their first hit “Too Young To Die” isn’t it? A jam session that’s been told it’s a song and believed the messenger. Jay Kay just scats his way through it with a lot of Fast Show jazz club free-styling – the wearing of his trademark silly hat doesn’t convince. Neither does the staging of this performance. Why has the stage been made to look like someone’s living room? There’s two sofas with members of the band sat precariously on arms and a backrest (that’s the sort of thing I’d tell my child off about) plus a fruit bowl on a coffee table possibly featuring plastic fruit. Why? How is that a depiction of blowing your mind? Just nonsense.

“Blow Your Mind” peaked at No 12, a chart position so high that it is the only thing that is mind blowing about the whole release.

Now, host Tony Dortie informs us that the next artist should have been performing live in the studio but she’s unwell so we have to make do with the video for “Lords Of The New Church” by Tasmin Archer. On reflection, surely this track should have been the follow up to her No 1 smash “Sleeping Satellite” rather than the excellent but commercially challenged “In Your Care”? It’s much more up tempo and certainly more radio friendly and, according to Tasmin herself, was written about a new breed of politicians in the early 90s and definitely not the 80s post punk band of the same name.

All of the above theory though is debunked by the chart position the single attained – a lowly high of No 26, ten places lower even than its predecessor. Was Tasmin losing her audience already at this point? If so, could it have been halted if the release order of “In Your Care” and “Lords Of The New Church” had been reversed? We’ll never know but what is a fact is that she suffered from a case of diminished returns when it came to her five hit singles whose chart peaks were:

1 – 16 – 26 – 30 – 40

I’m not sure what’s going on in the video which seems to revolve around a man in a gold lame suit and a Stetson hat travelling through Nevada on his way to Las Vegas. Perhaps a studio performance from Tasmin might have sold the record more. When you consider that she was scheduled to do just that but couldn’t due to ill health, was that single event a sliding doors moment in her career? Yeah, I’m probably reading too much into that aren’t I?

Here come this week’s Breakers starting with Sade and their (Sade are a band not a singer remember) single “No Ordinary Love”. A little bit of a chart curio this one. I’d forgotten this but this was actually the second time it had been a Top 40 hit in under a year. How so? Well, originally released as the lead single to fourth album “Love Deluxe”, it had peaked at No 26. Sade had even performed it in the TOTP studio. However, subsequent singles from the album had failed to chart and sales of the album were less than its predecessor. In fact, much like Tasmin Archer, Sade had suffered from diminished returns as well but with their albums. “Love Deluxe” sold half of what third album “Stronger Than Pride” sold which in turn sold half of sophomore album “Promise”. All of them performed less well than the iconic debut “Diamond Life”.

As such, were Epic Records in a panic about their artist’s commercial value and that’s why they rereleased a single that had proven to be popular (albeit in a small way)? Maybe but it seems more of a case of opportunism as the rerelease* was surely due to the inclusion of the song in the film Indecent Proposal. Yes, if a song was in a film in 1993 it was more than likely to be an erotic thriller and probably this one. Strangely though, despite featuring in the actual film proper, it didn’t make it onto the official soundtrack. Maybe that’s why the promo video doesn’t include any clips from the film in it – probably some complicated licensing issues. Ah yes, the promo video that sees Sade Adu as a mermaid. Hmm. I wonder what angle the director was going for?

The rereleased “No Ordinary Love” peaked at No 14.

*When is a re-release actually a re-entry? Apparently the 1993 version had the same track listing and catalogue number as its 1992 counterpart.

And talking of Indecent Proposal…here’s a song that is on the official soundtrack to the film. We saw Lisa Stansfield on the show in person last week performing “In All The Right Places” and that exposure has helped propel it into the charts at No 13. As she’s in the Breakers section, it’s the video this time which does include scenes from the film. As I mentioned last week, rumours persisted at the time that Lisa had been offered the Demi Moore role in the film. Whether she was or not, what is true is that she did finally get to appear in a film some six years later when she starred in musical comedy Swing opposite Hugo Speer. I’ve never seen it but it gets decent reviews online so it might be worth a watch plus she recorded most of the music for it.

So who remembers this? “Three Little Pigs” by Green Jellÿ? Yeah, I know. You’ve tried to forget it. I really wasn’t excited by the concept of a comedy rock band from America I have to say but that’s what this lot were having been around since 1981. One of their early songs was called “I’ve Got Poo-Poo On My Shoe” so we shouldn’t have been surprised by this god awful retelling of the Three Little Pigs fairytale. They had form.

The musicianship is intentionally bad (that’s part of the joke you see) whilst much was made of the ‘hilarious’ stop motion clay animation video. It was hardly original though was it? We’d already seen this sort of parody single back in the 80s from the likes of Weird Al Yankovic and The Firm, the latter of which had also used the same video technique to great effect on their No 1 single “Star Trekkin’”. I didn’t get why this was so popular (the single went Top 5) unless it was kids buying it thinking they were being rebellious.

They followed this up with a cover of “Anarchy In The UK” that they interlaced with references to The Flintstones. Again, not original as The Screaming Blue Messiahs beat them to it by about five years with their “I Wanna Be A Flintstone” hit.

Ah, some proper music now or as host Tony Dortie describes it “some solid musical nourishment” courtesy of A–ha who are back with new single “Dark Is The Night”. Nothing to do with the Shakatak single of the same name, this was the trio’s first UK Top 40 hit since “Crying In The Rain” three years before and was the lead single from their fifth studio album “Memorial Beach”.

By 1993, A-ha’s days of being teen pin-ups were well behind them but then they’d never really pursued that anyway. It was kind of a byproduct of their Scandinavian good looks. However, they definitely seemed determined to shed that image with a song like “Dark Is The Night” which is such a more mature sound than something like “Touchy” or “Take On Me”. I liked it but not too many others seemed to. Its chart trajectory petered out at No 19 whilst the album got no higher than No 17 and produced no further hits. The commercial failure of the project convinced the band to take a seven year hiatus before returning with the “Minor Earth, Major Sky” album.

That means that this could well be the last time we see A-ha on TOTP which also means one final chance for me to indulge in an activity I had been doing since I was 17 and which I was still doing in 1993 despite it being my 25th birthday three days after this TOTP aired. I am, of course, referring to ‘Morton Harket hair watch’. My fascination with Morton’s barnet had been with me through A Levels, Polytechnic and even getting married. My aim – to get my hair to look like his. Here he seems to have grown it and let it flop with no product aided quiff to be seen. Surely I could achieve that?! Sadly, even if I could, my complete lack of cheekbones meant I would never pull off the Morten look convincingly.

As the Tory party leadership contest draws to a close and we stand at the dawn of a new PM, what better act to mark the event than P.M. Dawn?! You think I’m done with the crappy puns? Hell no! It seems now that it is “More Than Likely” that Liz Truss will be the next UK Prime Minister. Heaven help us all. OK, now I’m done – back to the matter at hand. This was the very last of six UK Top 40 hits for both artists concerned here P.M. Dawn and Boy George though this one only just made it peaking at No 40 despite this TOTP appearance at Disneyworld no less. It’s not quite as bonkers as New Order on the set of Baywatch on Venice Beach but it’s up there. It’s a decidedly odd vista, the two of them togged up in completely inappropriate clothes for the weather, sat down metres apart for the whole performance with the Disney castle towering above them in the background. @TOTPFacts has the story behind the location:

This PM Dawn/Boy George performance in Disneyworld apparently took place during a layover on George's flight from London to Buenos Aires for his first South American tour. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) August 26, 2022

The song itself is another gorgeous P.M. Dawn melody which suits Boy George’s vocals perfectly. It really should have been a bigger hit. I had a promo copy of parent album “The Bliss Album…?” which includes a rather wonderful version of “Norwegian Wood” by The Beatles:

It all ended tragically for the original line up of the group. DJ Minitemix was accused of sexually assaulting a 14 year old relative and was subsequently fired from the band whilst Prince Be died of renal disease in 2016.

This is starting to feel like overkill now as we get the third song on the show from the film Indecent Proposal and a fourth from an erotic thriller if you include UB40’s from Sliver. A Breaker last week, Bryan Ferry is in the studio this week (with everyone’s trusty sidekick bass player alongside, the ubiquitous Gail Ann Dorsey) to perform “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow”. As with P.M. Dawn and Boy George earlier, this would be Bryan’s final UK chart single although he would continue to have big selling albums.

As usual, Bryan is effortlessly cool but it all looks a bit too comfy and predictable for me. The reaction he provoked with his debut TOTP appearance in 1972 with Roxy Music performing “Virginia Plain” is a million miles away from what he’s doing here. Maybe it’s unfair to compare them. Maybe.

I’m not sure that I ever knew until now that “All That She Wants” hitmakers Ace Of Base were a family group (well almost). Three of the four members were siblings – they’re basically the Swedish Corrs. It got me thinking about other famous family bands. There’s Oasis obviously plus the Campbell clan of UB40 (pre and post their splintering). The Beach Boys featured three brothers and a cousin and then of course there’s The Osmonds and The Jackson 5. How about Kings Of Leon or the Bee Gees? There’s been a few. Where do Ace Of Base rate in this list? For me, they’re below The Partridge Family* and they weren’t even a real family! I’d almost even have Glenn and Chris before them. Almost.

*Yes, I know Shirley Jones was David Cassidy’s stepmother.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Haddaway	What Is Love	Hadaway and shite!
2	UB40	(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With You	Nah
3	Jamiroquai	Blow Your Mind	No but my wife had the album
4	Tasmin Archer	Lords Of The New Church	Nope
5	Sade	No Ordinary Love	Negative
6	Lisa Stansfield	In All The Right Places	No
7	Green Jellÿ	Three Little Pigs	Pigshit – no
8	A-ha	Dark Is The Night	No but I have it on a Best Of CD
9	P.M. Dawn / Boy George	More Than Likely	No but I had a promo copy of the album
10	Bryan Ferry	Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow	I did not
11	Ace Of Base	All That She Wants	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/m001bdx1/top-of-the-pops-03061993