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

TOTP 27 MAY 1993

Posted on August 25, 2022 by 80stastic

When I started doing this TOTP blog five and a half years ago I never imagined it would last this long. My starting point was January 1983, the year that saw music competing as my chosen interest alongside football. I was 14 years old in January 1983 and by the time of this TOTP show in late May 1993, I was just about to turn 25. Funny how the gap between those ages seems like a chasm in terms of maturity and growing up and yet the same ten year period between the ages of say 44 and 54 (how old I am currently) doesn’t seem anywhere near as seismic.

And what if you look at those ten years in terms of the charts comparing 1983 to 1993 – how different were the Top 40s? Sure, the names will have changed but how about the music trends and movements? I guess the biggest difference is the predominance of dance in all its myriad forms within the charts but in terms of quality? Well, I’m not getting into that in one short intro to be honest. Suffice to say, I have watched, listened to, dissected and given verdict on hundreds of artists, songs and genres after rewatching these old TOTP shows and the whole thing has been frankly bewildering. Let’s see if anyone on this episode can make sense of it for me…

I don’t think I’m going to get any answers from the opening act. Stereo MCs are one of the most mystifying bands ever. A platinum selling No 2 album that yielded four Top 20 singles and then nothing for nine years. The gap until “Deep Down & Dirty” meant that the album gained almost mythical status about whether it would ever come out (see also “Chinese Democracy” by Guns N’ Roses). And yes I know that their career didn’t start with “Connected” and that they had released two albums before it but unless you’re a really committed fan of the band, surely they don’t register with most people.

“Creation” was the fourth and final of those “Connected” singles and it’s of a very similar vein to its predecessors but I have to say I don’t recall it. To be fair, I bet I’m not alone. I kind of like the way that they found a formula that worked and just stuck to it – no mixing things up with a slower ballad for this lot.

“Creation” peaked at No 19, the same position as its immediate predecessor “Ground Level” and one place lower than “Connected” – they were pretty consistent you have to admit. And then they weren’t in terms of releasing music at least. Why the nine year wait for “Deep Down & Dirty”? Well, the band toured “Connected” until 1994 and had gone back into the studio after finishing the dates but inspiration failed to strike. Instead of recording they busied themselves by forming their own label and signed and released music by new artists. They also did remixes for the likes of U2 and Madonna and then things like starting families were also a factor. Basically, life got in the way to paraphrase John Lennon’s famous quote. However, a small part of 1992/93 will always belong to Stereo MCs.

Are you kidding me?! Tina Turner with “I Don’t Wanna Fight” again?! Is this the third week on the trot?

*checks BBC4 schedule*

It is! Seriously, what am I supposed to say about this record for a third consecutive time? Well, supposedly the song was originally offered to Sade but I really can’t imagine what a version of it by the makers of “Smooth Operator” and “Your Love Is King” would have sounded like. This had happened before with another of Tina’s biggest ever hits and the title of the biopic from which “I Don’t Wanna Fight” was taken. Here’s Bucks Fizz with the story (no really – Bucks Fizz!)

What else? Oh yeah, it was written by Lulu more of whom later. The What’s Love’s Got To Do With It soundtrack would give Tina two further hit singles and she would return in 1995 with the theme tune to the James Bond film Goldeneye.

If it’s 1993 then Suede must be along in a minute and, right on cue, here they are with their new single “So Young”. The bright new hope for British music were confident enough in themselves to release a fourth and final single from their debut album that had already been out for two months and to be fair to them, they were right to have faith in the track. This was pure anthem, so sky-scraping in its stature that the press didn’t seem to notice the ‘chase the dragon’ heroin reference in its lyrics (wonder what The Shamen thought given the fuss over “Ebeneezer Goode” the previous year).

Watching this performance back, the band don’t radiate zeitgeist other than via Brett Anderson’s effortless other worldliness. Matt Osman’s enormous frame was always an obstacle to the notion of cool whilst Bernard Butler shakes his mane vigorously whilst rocking back and forth in away that suggests he might benefit from being sedated. Two years later though, he would let rip in similar fashion whilst performing “Yes” with David McAlmont on Later With Jools Holland and I would think it was one of the greatest things I’d ever seen. Such are the vagaries of music, taste and opinion.

“So Young” entered the Top 40 at No 22 and exited it the following week suggesting that they were a fan base phenomenon but by 1996, they would release the No 1 album “Coming Up” which would generate five Top 10 singles. The moral of the story? Don’t believe the hype but do trust the process.

Back to the aforementioned Lulu now as we find Louchie Lou & Michie One with their version of the Scottish singer’s most famous tune “Shout”. I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again – I despise “Shout” and have little time for Lulu. As such a ragga version of the song was not going to enthral me. Retitled as “Shout (It Out)”, I would have placed this as being released years earlier, say 1986, if asked but I think that’s my brain playing tricks on me again as that’s when a re-release of Lulu’s version was a hit all over again. If I’d thought about it and indeed listened to the track again then surely I would have come to the conclusion that 1993 was the optimal year for the Louchie Lou and Michie One version to have been a hit seeing as it was a ragga/rap restyling of it. Ragga had a grip on the UK charts in this year thanks to the deadly three ‘S’s of Shaggy, Shabba and Snow. In fact, it was probably a bit of cynical marketing from their record label – jump on the bandwagon but use a well known record to get a head start on the rest of the field. Or maybe I’m being too harsh on Louchie Lou and Michie One, casting them as record company puppets. After all, I don’t know anything about them and how they came to be on TOTP with a hit record. Wikipedia just says they met at a Rebel MC concert in 1991.

What I did find out though was that their album was full of similar ragga-fied treatments of well known songs with versions of Kool And The Gang’s “Get Down On It” and “Somebody Else’s Guy” by Jocelyn Brown. Their only other major hit though was when they appeared on Suggs’ hit cover of Simon And Garfunkel’s “Cecilia”. It might have been crap but it did give us this rather memorable TOTP intro from Chris Eubank:

I’m still in pursuit of some insight into how the musical changes over the course of the ten years of these TOTP repeats came to be but I’m not sure I’ll get any sense out of Lenny Kravitz given the psychedelic tip he seems to be on with his latest single “Believe”. This is a full blown, trippy wig out with Lenny channelling his inner “Hey Jude” and singing about the power of positive thought, self belief, God and, of course, love. The BBC producers have picked up on the vibe and added some kaleidoscope effects for good measure.

Lenny’s really thrown the kitchen sink at this one with strings and a lush orchestration all in the mix. It’s not that it doesn’t work or isn’t a decent tune but for me it just fails to be the soaring anthem it strives to be. Maybe I wasn’t the only person to think this judging by its chart peak of No 30. I’m guessing that wasn’t the high that Kravitz was hoping for given the effort and time that seems to have gone into its creation. Still, the whooping studio audience seemed to enjoy it but maybe that was less organic and more at the floor manager’s direction.

Three Breakers this week starting with the second cover version on the show tonight. Bryan Ferry wasn’t averse to doing his own version of other people’s songs – his first ever solo album “These Foolish Things” was a collection comprised entirely of covers – and in 1993 he returned to that blueprint with his “Taxi” LP. After lead single “I Put A Spell On You” had made decent head way up the charts by peaking at No 18, the follow up would surely have been expected to do the same. It nearly did when “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” made it to No 23.

It wasn’t the first Gerry Goffin /Carole King song Ferry had covered. The aforementioned “These Foolish Things” album contained his take on their song “Don’t Ever Change” and he revisited their canon of work for this single. The Shirelles scored a No 1 with it in 1961 but the version I prefer is Carole King’s herself as it appeared on her iconic “Tapestry” album. And Bryan’s take on it? Yeah, he does it justice I think.

As it’s Ferry, there is of course a glamorous model in the video with not many clothes on whilst he mooches about the set. This particular model was Anna Nicole Smith. If that name rings a bell it’s probably due to the 1993 Playmate of the Year’s controversial marriage aged 27 to 89 year old billionaire J. Howard Marshall who died just eighteen months after their wedding. Smith herself would die aged just 39 after an accidental drug overdose.

Yeah, look I’m behind with these reviews so I haven’t got the time to ponder about Megadeth and their “Sweating Bullets” single OK? I will say this though. If you’ve ever wondered what might have become of Ed Sheeran had he been into trash metal instead of his stultifying brand of pop music, here’s your answer.

We arrive now at the seventh and final* Guns N’ Roses single to be pulled from their “Use Your Illusion” albums a whole 22 months after the first single “You Could Be Mine” appeared. Amazingly, all six singles to this point made the UK Top 10 and this final one only missed completing the set by one place. “Civil War” was that track although it was actually the lead song from a UK only EP.

*The song “Estranged” from “Use Your Illusion II” was released after “Civil War” in January 1994 but not in the UK

“Civil War” had been in existence for a while initially featuring on the 1990 charity album “Nobody’s Child: Romanian Angel Appeal”, but it would also be included on the track listing for “Use Your Illusion II”. An anti war protest song, it features a sample from the film Cool Hand Luke starring Paul Newman in the titular role in its intro:

Feeling that the song still needed more embellishment, Axl Rose whistles the tune from American civil war song “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” in the intro and coda. In a presumably unintentional but rather neat act of symmetry, this final “Use Your Illusion” track was originally made available as the B-side to the aforementioned “You Could Be Mine”, the very first single released from that double album project.

The song itself is another epic sounding rock track which almost leaves you exhausted by the end of it. The spare, whistled opening could deceive on first listen that this was going to be a wistful, acoustic affair akin to “Patience” but it’s actually more in common with “November Rain” or “Don’t Cry”. Yes, you could level accusations of being overblown, bloated and lyrically naive at it but it works pretty well for me, even the corny, dumb closing line “What’s so civil ‘bout war anyway?”.

The band would release an album of punk covers called “The Spaghetti Incident” in November of 1993 and then there was precisely nothing (bar their much derided cover of “Sympathy For The Devil” from the Interview With A Vampire soundtrack) until that aforementioned “Chinese Democracy” album fifteen years later.

Look out Suede! You might be the hip, young band for disaffected youth in 1993 but here come the original purveyors of angst flavoured, doom pop who recorded the album for miserable, misunderstood and introspective teenagers in 1983 with “The Hurting”. Well, here they come sort of anyway. It’s not quite the Tears For Fears we knew and loved on show here for this is TFF without Curt Smith who left the band acrimoniously in 1991. I guess he was burnt out after the mind numbingly laborious process that was the recording of the “Seeds Of Love” album.

Left to his own devices, remaining member of the duo Roland Orzabal decided to carry on under the band’s banner and delivered the “Elemental” album and its leading single “Break It Down Again”. In direct contrast to the song and album titles, Roland didn’t break it down into elements, he threw everything at it including…what…is that five cellos being played on stage up there? And, unlike Lenny Kravitz earlier, he pulled it off. In fact, not having listened to “Break It Down Again” for a good while, it’s actually a far better tune than I remember. It’s got an interesting, choppy structure (shame the producers used it as a marker to cut the song off in mid flow in this performance) and Roland’s voice is bloody good. I don’t think he gets the credit probably for his vocal talents. Back in the 80s, I always preferred the softer, purer voiced Curt Smith to take on singing duties but I think he’s won me over finally here. As an aside, conversely I liked the idiosyncratic tones of Andy McCluskey’s voice to the angelic sounding Paul Humphreys’ in OMD.

Ah yes, that phrase ‘back in the 80s’ brings me full circle to the question in the intro as to how chart music had changed in the decade between 1983 and 1993. Maybe Tears For Fears encapsulate the whole discussion. Ten years on from “The Hurting” they were still going out to bat and knocking it out of the park. All that had really changed was the personnel and hairstyles. Too simplistic a view? Yeah probably.

“Break It Down Again” made the Top 20 (just) and the album went Top 5, a good enough return to convince Orzabal to carry on and release another Curt-less album, the much less well received “Raoul And The Kings Of Spain” before Smith returned to the fold in 2000. Their current album “The Tipping Point” is possibly my favourite of 2022 so far. And yes I think that’s the ubiquitous Gail Ann Dorsey up there on bass who was on the show with the aforementioned Bryan Ferry the other week.

1993 was turning out to be quite the year for Lisa Stansfield. She started it with a Top 10 hit in “Someday (I’m Coming Back)” from The Bodyguard soundtrack, scored a No 1 as part of the “Five Live EP” duetting with George Michael on “These Are The Days Of Our Lives” (still in the Top 5 at this point by the way) and now here she was with another hit from another soundtrack.

“In All The Right Places” was the song chosen to promote the film Indecent Proposal, an erotic drama starring Demi Moore, Woody Harrelson and Robert Redford. Erotic dramas were all the rage at the time with Basic Instinct and Sliver also doing the business at the box office in this period. It’s rumoured that Lisa Stansfield herself was considered for the Demi Moore role but that could be cobblers I suppose.

Certainly not cobblers was Lisa’s performance here as she just dons her stylish black dress and gets on stage alone to belt out the song. She appears to have copied Brett Anderson’s Bob haircut though (or is it the other way round). The song is an accomplished, sultry ballad that suits Lisa’s voice perfectly. As well as appearing on the soundtrack, it also made it onto her third studio album “So Natural” which was released in the November.

Oh and was there some actual thought put into the running order for this TOTP? Bryan Ferry’s version of “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” was also on the Indecent Proposal soundtrack.

Ace Of Base are at No 1 for the second of three weeks with “All That She Wants”. Just like the TOTP producers who seemed to have planned their running order this week, I’ve also put some thought into this post and not just thrown it together. Ace Of Base recorded a song called “Cecilia” (which I referenced earlier) for their third album “Flowers” which was written by them as a deliberate continuation of the Simon And Garfunkel song. Want to hear it? Nah, me neither.

The show ends with a weird outro from host Mark Franklin. Why on earth is he sat at a table with a random woman whom he does not introduce, both with a glass of red wine poured out before them whom he ‘cheers’ just before the credits roll. Wait. What? How? Why? Etc etc…

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Stereo MCs	Creation	I did not
2	Tina Turner	I Don’t Wanna Fight	No
3	Suede	So Young	No but I had the album
4	Louchie Lou & Michie One	Shout (It Out)	Never happening
5	Lenny Kravitz	Believe	Nope
6	Bryan Ferry	Will You Love Me Tomorrow	No but I had a promo copy of the album
7	Megadeth	Sweating Bullets	Sod off!
8	Guns N’ Roses	Civil War EP	No but I have a Greatest Hits album with it on
9	Tears For Fears	Break It Down Again	Didn’t but probably should’ve
10	Lisa Stansfield	In All The Right Places	Negative
11	Ace Of Base	All That She Wants	See 7 above

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/m001b6p1/top-of-the-pops-27051993

TOTP 21 MAY 1993

Posted on August 19, 2022 by 80stastic

A rare Friday night appearance for TOTP which has been shifted from its historical Thursday slot to accommodate the previous night’s FA Cup replay. This would be the last time it would ever happen after occurring three times consecutively in the 80s and a further time in 1990. Was it worth the extra 24 hours wait? Let’s find out but it does include nine ‘new’ songs so I guess that’s a good thing?

…or maybe not. Has there ever been a more lifeless opening to an episode of TOTP? “Stars” was the third hit for British DJ and producer Francis Wright aka Felix though I’m not entirely convinced that it even qualifies as a dance track so lacking in energy is it. It’s not helped by the guy fronting the song. Talk about a lackadaisical performer?! Seriously, put some effort into it!

I didn’t know this until now but apparently “Stars” is a cover version of a song originally recorded by Sylvester – yes that Sylvester, the disco ‘queen’ of “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” fame. I have to admit that’s the only track I know from his back catalogue and even then only via the Jimmy Somerville cover from 1990. As such, I had to look up his original version of “Stars” and, perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s superior to the Felix take on it in every way. I’m no disco aficionado by any stretch but a tone deaf music hating hermit can hear the difference.

“Stars” was already at its peak of No 29. Felix would have two more chart singles, both of which were remixes of debut hit “Don’t You Want Me”.

OK a dodgy start admittedly but the next song would turn out to be the second biggest selling single of 1993! Given the way the year has panned out so far though, I’m not sure that’s much of an accolade. The song is “(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With You”, the band is UB40 and both are protagonists in a tale as old of time of commercial popularity not always equating to cultural worth.

Without a Top 10 hit since the Robert Palmer collaboration “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” in late 1990, UB40 were suddenly back with their first ever single to enter the charts inside the Top 10. Well, 1993 was the year of reggae/ragga/dancehall I guess so why wouldn’t the UK’s most well known reggae band want a piece of that action? Except there was an element of the accidental about this future No 1 record that belies the notion that this was pure cynicism on behalf of the Brummies. Their cover of the Elvis 1961 hit was recorded for submission to the soundtrack of a rom-com starring Nicolas Cage called Honeymoon In Vegas with said soundtrack being made up of cover versions of Elvis tunes. What the band didn’t realise was that there version of the song wasn’t the only one recorded and a version by U2’s Bono was the one selected for inclusion.

In fairness, the soundtrack was a very country music affair with the likes of Trisha Yearwood, Dwight Yoakam and Willie Nelson featuring so UB40 would probably have been an outlier in such company. Their recording lay in the Virgin vaults unused and unloved (even by the band themselves most of whom didn’t want it put on their latest album “Promises And Lies”) until it was discovered by film music supervisor Tim Sexton who convinced director Phillip Noyce to use it in his erotic thriller flick Sliver. I think therein lies some of the problem for UB40 and their version of the song in that it is associated with a film that is generally perceived to be a duffer, hogwash, a right old stinker. Clearly all involved were hoping for a Basic Instinct 2 – Sharon Stone, who infamously made her name by crossing her legs in that film, was even on board. It was universally panned by critics and received nominations for the Golden Raspberry Awards in just about every category. Maybe subliminally, the brickbats the movie received tainted people’s view of UB40’s track.

Or maybe not. Maybe I’m the one spouting hogwash? After all, it topped the charts both in the UK and in America where it was No 1 for seven weeks. It’s just that retrospectively it doesn’t seem to have stood the rest of time too well. Compared to say Pet Shop Boys’ treatment of “Always On Your Mind”, it just doesn’t seem very cherished in the canon of Elvis covers. I’m not a fan I have to say. It’s all very clunky sounding and what was with the altering of the song title and the adding of brackets? Was that meant to imply that this wasn’t just a cover and that they had in fact literally made it into another song entirely or as the infernal Louis Walsh would say ‘made the song their own’? Do you know what, I think that’s enough time spent on it for one post. After all, it’ll be back on soon enough.

We stick with the new songs with a man who, despite being famous for having one of the sweetest of soul voices, had never pulled up many trees when it came to having big hit singles in the UK. Prior to his No 2 duet on “The Best Things In Life Are Free” with Janet Jackson the previous Autumn, Luther Vandross never had a Top 10 hit in this country. Sure his albums had sold well but somehow it has never quite translated into singles success. Given that Janet Jackson boost though, could “Little Miracles (Happen Every Day)” bring him a huge hit under his own steam? Well, ‘No’ is the blunt but honest answer as it topped out at No 28 making it the second single on this TOTP that an appearance on the show failed to propel any further up the charts. Was the programme losing its power to generate sales or were these just anomalies?

Luther Vandross has never done anything for me I have to say, either his uptempo numbers or slow ballads of which this single falls into the latter category. It sounds like a vocal exercise in search of a tune to me. Maybe if they’d spent the budget for the performance on a gospel backing choir (which clearly exists on the record) instead of his Showaddywaddy style jacket then maybe things might have turned out better.

Next we get to gatecrash that Bon Jovi party as host Tony Dortie promised at the start of the show but quite what did he mean by that? Surely not exclusive access backstage or to the after show party at some swanky nightclub. Well, no of course. It’s as another of those ‘live’ crossovers to a concert date, this time in Glasgow. Wasn’t the last time they did this for Bruce Springsteen also in Glasgow? I think it was. Must have had some sort of arrangement with the venue which Wikipedia tells me was the SEC Centre. Jon Bon Jovi’s singing on “In Your Arms” here sounds a little bit strained like he’s singing from his throat rather than his diaphragm but Richie Sambora is always reliable with his double neck guitar to the forefront. Attaboy Richie!

After using up my Jon Bon Jovi waxwork story in the last post, I’ll have to resort to pulling out the tale of my disgrace on the dance floor of a Sunderland nightclub this time. Having imbibed too much alcohol on a night out when a student at Sunderland Poly, I crashed out in the toilets of Rascals club and made rather a mess of a toilet bowl. My friend Robin came to check out if I was OK and, seeing the state of me, suggested we call it a night and leave. “I’m not going home ‘til I’ve danced to the Jovi” came my reply from the cubicle. “OK, let’s get back out there” encouraged Robin. “I can’t stand up” I declared in a sorrowful tone.

“In Your Arms” peaked at No 9.

Another new song and another turkey. What do Charles And Eddie have in common with the aforementioned Luther Vandross? Nothing really except they both recorded songs called “House Is Not A Home”. Well, almost. Luther’s was a version of the marvellous Bacharach and David tune which actually includes an indefinite article ‘a’ in its title and which Dionne Warwick famously had a hit with. The Charles and Eddie song was written by the latter and was a bit shit. Oh come on! It was! Some nondescript soul on a faux Motown tip? No thanks.

The whole Charles And Eddie phenomenon was basically a one trick pony revolving around that horribly catchy “Would I Lie To You” chart topper. Nothing else they released came close to its success and six months on from it nobody was that interested in the duo any more as evidenced by the No 29 peak of this single. Still, at least they could say incontrovertibly that they were not a one hit wonder.

Someone in the TOTP production team must have been a big Runrig fan! The Celtic rockers bagged (or maybe blagged) themselves a first ever appearance on the show with previous hit “Wonderful”, a single that only made it to No 29 in the charts, and now they were back in the TOTP studio with the follow up “The Greatest Flame” and this one only made it to No 36! Surely these were Breakers at best?!

What’s that you say Tony Dortie? They were at No 2 in the album charts? Oh, is that why they made the show’s running order? They were in the album chart feature? Only, the onscreen caption doesn’t say that and, having checked the chart record of parent album “Amazing Things”, something else doesn’t quite add up. Yes, it did go to No 2 in the charts but that was in its first week of release in March. By the time of this TOTP show it had dropped out of the chart altogether so it would appear Tony was telling some porkies.

As for the song, it’s so laboured and slow. It never picks up at any point – just one monotonous dirge. And I thought Felix were bad. They look like the most uncomfortable, unconvincing band ever to play the show. Last time the lead singer wore a leather jacket but he’s outdone himself this time in the naff stakes with a sleeveless version. I’m sorry if this sounds harsh but they look so out of place. Was this really what the kids wanted?!

Some Breakers now starting with Dire Straits and a taster from their live album “On The Night” which I’d forgotten all about (I was quite prepared to stay in utter oblivion of its existence to be fair). The “Encores EP” was recorded to capture the band’s On Every Street Tour and included four tracks including “Your Latest Trick” which was the fifth and final single from their iconic “Brothers In Arms” album. Yes, despite my previous derogatory comments, it is an iconic album whether we like it or not. Looking at the track listing for “On The Night”, four of the ten tracks on it were from “Brothers In Arms”, the same amount as from the “On Every Street” album the tour was promoting. Make of that what you will.

Of the other three tracks on the EP, I only know the theme from Local Hero. I’ve tried with this film, I really have but I just don’t get it. I have a friend who swears by it but I can’t see it. Literally. Nothing happens. I mean, yes there’s a plot but it’s so slow. Look, I can appreciate nuances and that not everything has to be all bangs and crashes like a Jerry Bruckheimer film but come on! I need something a bit more engaging.

Anyway, back to Dire Straits and I’m wondering if they’d have been better off choosing “Money For Nothing” to promote the EP. Surely more well known than “Your Latest Trick”. I mean, if the EP was purely designed just to help sell the live album. I’m basing that on the fact that the “Encores EP” only made it to No 31 in the charts. All part of the walk of life I suppose.

A song now that instantly reminds me of 1993 and which I think probably gets an unjustified bad rap. The Spin Doctors looked a bit like Nirvana and sounded a bit like a poppier version of Extreme when they weren’t doing acoustic ballads – too glib and uninformed? Probably but I’ve only got so much space in one blog post to describe these things so needs must. This lot were one of those bands that we cottoned on to long after the US audience had shown an interest – their debut album “Pocketful Of Kryptonite” had been released nearly two years prior to this appearance with the singles “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong” and this one “Two Princes” both having been hits months before they transferred over here.

The latter was the first and biggest hit the band had over here ultimately peaking at No 3. A funky, jumping number with an instant hook that attached itself to your brain immediately refusing to let go, it was a genuine crossover hit that allowed the band to traverse from their alternative rock trappings into the mainstream. It was a great airplay hit as well helping it to swell sales. I liked it a lot. So did a friend of mine who was so enamoured he asked me to purchase the album for him on my Our Price store discount – I’ve never asked him what he made of the album.

A few more hits followed but “Two Princes” would be the song that the band would be remembered for and it seemed to me that they paved the way for a number of American rock bands with an alternative edge but pop sound to make inroads into our charts like Gin Blossoms, Semisonic and Hootie And The Blowfish.

Somehow though “Two Princes” became an albatross around the band’s neck. It was rated No 21 in Blender magazine’s 50 Worst Songs Ever poll and featured in a sketch on the Sarah Silverman Program as evidence of someone having something wrong with them when “Two Princes” is the only song on their iPod which they’ve owned for five years.

Some songs are just so ingrained in our brains/hearts/cultural lives that it’s hard to remember their initial impact on us or even their backstory. For instance, I had totally forgotten that “Jump Around” by House Of Pain was originally released in October of 1992 and had only made No 32 in the UK charts. It was rereleased seven months later and went Top 10.

This was literally a huge record both in its sound and reach. I heard this played at every Manchester nightclub I went to around this time (not that many admittedly but a few) and was guaranteed to fill the floor, turning it into a heaving, sweaty mass moving in cohesion just like the scenes in the single’s video. It’s the high pitched squeal that is repeated 66 times during the course of the record that makes it. The origin of the source material is disputed. Some say it’s from Prince’s “Gett Off” while others have posited the theory that it’s “Shoot Your Shot” by Junior Walker And The All Stars. The band themselves say it’s actually Divine Styler’s “Ain’t Sayin’ Nothin’” which samples “Shoot Your Shot”. Whatever the truth, it made “Jump Around” one of the most instantly recognisable tracks of the 90s.

An American hip-hop trio comprising Everlast, Danny Boy and DJ Lethal, they styled themselves as Irish-American urchins both in their music (their follow up was called “Shamrocks And Shenanigans”) and their image and branding (their logo included a shamrock and the legend ‘fine malt lyrics’). They never came close to replicating the success of “Jump Around” and split in 1996. Everlast forged a successful solo career and the band gave reunited in 2010 and again in 2017.

Tina Turner is on the rise with “I Don’t Wanna Fight” after her TOTP appearance last week. Taken from the soundtrack to her film biopic What’s Love Got To Do With It, it will peak at No 7. That soundtrack did even better going all the way to No 1 and selling 300,000 copies in the UK alone. I was surprised at the time about its success given that Tina’s “Simply The Best” compilation had been a huge seller over Xmas of 1991.

However, the music supervisors of the film were clever as the soundtrack wasn’t just another Greatest Hits under a different name. The track listing was mostly made up of re-recorded versions of songs from the Ike And Tina Turner era rather than her massive rock hits from the mid 80s onwards so there was very little overlap with “Simply The Best”. The film’s plot is mainly based around that part of Tina’s life leading up to the climax of her finally leaving her abusive relationship with Ike. Only two tracks feature on both albums – “What’s Love Got To Do With It” (unsurprisingly) and “Nutbush City Limits”. Add to that the power of a popular film and its ability to sell soundtracks (look at how The Bodyguard OST flew off the shelves) and I don’t really know why I was surprised at its success at all.

There were two sets at Glastonbury this year that I watched in full (on TV you understand as we established weeks ago that I’ve never actually been to Glastonbury). One was Paul McCartney (along with millions of other people) but the second was a bit more of a surprising choice – to me as much as anybody – and that was Saint Etienne. I found myself alone in the house on the Saturday afternoon with wife and child out and so I tuned into the Glasto coverage. Saint Etienne were on and I watched their whole set from start to finish and enjoyed it.

I was surprised at how deep their catalogue was and that they had far more decent tunes than I remembered but more than that I enjoyed their live performance which was a huge improvement on the last time I saw them 30 years previously. Yes, around 1993 I caught them in Manchester on the So Tough tour. They were supported by a pre-mainstream Pulp who were by far the better band on the night. Sarah Cracknell and co played for 43 minutes with backing tapes and at the end of their set Sarah said “We don’t do encores, we’re not a rock band”. I wasn’t impressed.

Fast forward to 2022 and Sarah seemed in a much better mood and genuinely happy that the band could still command an audience. She was even still rocking the feather boa look she wore on this TOTP and her backing singer still had the same bob haircut. The song they perform on the show here – “Who Do You Think You Are” – was actually a double A-side with “Hobart Paving” with the former actually being a cover of a 1974 hit from Opportunity Knocks winners Candlewick Green. No really. I mean that most sincerely folks (ask your parents, kids!).

The single peaked at No 23 but they would return with the wonderful but cruelly ignored Xmas single “I Was Born On Christmas Day” with national treasure Tim Burgess of The Charlatans.

Oh and one final thing. Why is Ian ‘Mac’ McCulloch* of Echo And The Bunnymen on drums in this performance?!

* I know it’s not really him

That didn’t take long! Ace Of Base are No 1 already with “All That She Wants”. After the second best selling single of the year made its debut earlier in the show via UB40, here comes 1993’s third best selling single. Not surprising really as it was No 1 in just about every country in Europe and also in the US.

I didn’t get it though. Sure it was catchy but it was also intensely annoying which is not something I’m looking for in a record. Apparently though Ace Of Base have quite the legacy with artists like Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Clean Bandit and even Beck have quoted them as an influence.

Perhaps rather stupidly I always thought the line ‘all that she wants is another baby’ meant that the song’s protagonist literally wanted another baby (i.e. becoming pregnant). It turns out – and I surely would have realised this if I’d bothered to listen to the lyrics more closely – the word ‘baby’ referred to a sexual partner and perhaps more explicitly a one night stand. The clue is in the very next line ‘she’s gone tomorrow’. How did I misunderstand this?!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Felix	Stars	As if
2	UB40	(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With You	Nah
3	Luther Vandross	Little Miracles (Happen Every Day)	No
4	Bon Jovi	In Your Arms	No but I had the album as a CD promo
5	Charles And Eddie	House Is Not A Home	Never!
6	Runrig	The Greatest Flame	Nope
7	Dire Straits	Encores EP	Not for me thanks
8	Spin Doctors	Two Princes	Thought I did but can’t find it anywhere
9	House Of Pain	Jump Around	My wife had the 12″ single
10	Tina Turner	I Don’t Wanna Fight	I did not
11	Saint Etienne	Who Do You Think You Are	No – that 1993 gig put me off
12	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/m001b0cd/top-of-the-pops-21051993

TOTP 13 MAY 1993

Posted on August 17, 2022 by 80stastic

These TOTP repeats are bloody relentless! If you get a bit behind with them like I did last week as I was away for a few days, it takes a real effort to get back up to date. It’s the double bills with two shown every Friday on BBC4 that makes it so hard to keep up. Why can’t they just show one a week like they would have done when originally broadcast?

*checks schedule for next week*

That’s what I’m talking about! There’s only one show on this coming Friday for some reason. Why can’t they do that all the time?! For now though, I’m still on catch up so time to get writing…

What can I tell you about this week in May 1993. Well, on this very day Chris Waddle was voted the Football Writers Association’s Player of the Year. Waddle had returned to English football after a spell in France with Marseilles and helped his new club Sheffield Wednesday to both domestic cup finals that season. In fact, the second of those took place two days after this TOTP broadcast. A 1-1 draw with Arsenal meant a replay was required (the last one ever in an FA Cup final) the knock on effect of which was that TOTP was shunted to the Friday the following week to allow for BBC’s coverage of the second match on the Thursday. Waddle even scored in that replay but his team still went down 2-1 to a last minute extra time winner.

Waddle, of course, wasn’t just known for football. No, there was that mullet hairstyle and his own dalliance with being a pop star in the 80s alongside his then team mate Glenn Hoddle. Yes, three years before Gazzamania saw Paul Gascoigne become a chart star, Glenn and Chris beat him to it with “Diamond Lights”, a genuine contender for the title of the worst record of all time.

Waddle stayed at Wednesday until 1996 before the inevitable descent down the leagues which had him seeing out his playing career in non-league football with the likes of Glapwell and Stockbridge Park Steels. To paraphrase that famous milk advert, “who are they?!”. He also entered popular culture as a comedy reference (not for his hairstyle though) but for this…

Excellent stuff! Anyway, on with the ‘proper’ music. Now I would count myself as a fan of OMD but I don’t remember this track at all. In fairness, the band’s career had been a series of boom and bust periods so there were always going to be some singles that slipped under the net. “Architecture And Morality” was a definite boom time whereas “Dazzle Ships” was misunderstood and misfired. “Junk Culture” took them in a more mainstream pop direction resulting in chart success but “Crush” and “The Pacific Age” mustered just one Top 20 hit between them. With the band splintering at the end of the 90s, that could have been that but a remarkable resurrection took place in 1991 with Andy McCluskey masterminding two consecutive Top 10 singles on the bounce and a successful album in “Sugar Tax”.

With their comeback officially confirmed, another album for the new look band was required. “Liberator” was that album with “Stand Above Me” its lead single. Even McCluskey isn’t keen on it describing it as “busy and messy” in a 2019 Record Collector interview. He went on to say “I was aware that Britpop was approaching and I didn’t know what I should do”. In the end, he basically rewrote “Sailing On The Seven Seas” and called it “Stand Above Me”. In fact, quite a few of their songs had started to morph into one at this point. There wasn’t much between say, “Dreaming”, “”Call My Name” and “Pandora’s Box” – all good pop tunes but a million miles away from those more experimental early hits like “Enola Gay”, “Joan Of Arc” and “Genetic Engineering”.

Still, Andy McCluskey gives the impression of being happy with his lot in this performance although his opening shout of ‘Kick it!’ was ill judged. There’s something that doesn’t compute watching three of them on stage swinging guitars around with a banner behind proclaiming them to be OMD. With three guitars on display? No wonder McCluskey said it had all got a bit messy.

“Stand Above Me” peaked at No 21.

What?! Shabba Ranks again?! No, I absolutely refuse to talk about him anymore. I’d rather watch Maxi Priest play football which is handy as here he is…

OK, he’s no Chris Waddle but check out this about him courtesy of @TOTPFacts…

In March 2003, at the age of 43, Maxi Priest played for non-league club Southall FC, after the club struggled to field a squad because of injuries and suspensions. He came on as a second-half sub during a 3-0 loss to Feltham. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) August 12, 2022

“Housecall” peaked at No 8.

Ah, I thought we hadn’t seen her for a few shows but she’s back with yet another of a seemingly infinite number of singles from her album “So Close”. Seeing as it’s 1993, it can only be Dina Carroll that I am referring to. “Express” was the fifth single released from the album in just under twelve months and yet surprisingly was the biggest hit of the lot to that point peaking at No 12.

I’ve said it before in just about every post that’s featured Dina but her chart history is really intriguing. The fact that she could get her biggest hit of five with the fifth release is odd enough on its own but when you throw in the massive curveball that is “Don’t Be A Stranger”…there’s so much to be explained. Why did A&M wait five months after “Express” before releasing it? They’d released three singles in the same time period up to that point. Why was it left to being the sixth and final single to be released when they knew they had it up their sleeves all along? I read somewhere recently that so many singles were taken from the album as it wasn’t crossing over from the limited UK soul market and A&M were trying to promote it to the mainstream market. That theory doesn’t really add up though as it spent fourteen weeks in the Top 10 between January and September before slipping down the charts. True, when “Don’t Be A Stranger” was a huge hit, the album rocketed up the charts again spending three consecutive weeks at No 2 but the idea that the album wasn’t a success before that doesn’t really hold water for me. God, I sound a bit obsessed by all this don’t I? I don’t even have any of Dina’s records so I don’t know why I should be.

As for “Express”, it stood out from some of her other mid tempo soul singles as it was a definite attempt to incorporate some funk into proceedings including a parping sax noise that just about avoided being annoying. I think the kids today would call the song ‘sassy’.

A second studio appearance for Robert Plant now whose “29 Palms” single is this week’s highest climber (he’ll go no further than this peak of No 21 though). Not a lot of thought seems to have gone into the staging of this performance by the TOTP production team. There’s a couple of palm trees at either end of the stage (palms – geddit?) and some neon signage that’s meant to give the impression of an American diner (do you get diners on beaches?). To add to the imagery, one of Robert’s band has come dressed as a surfer dude/beach bum.

Another of the band (the guitarist in the green shirt) is Kevin Scott Macmichael whom, seven years prior to this appearance, I interviewed when he was in the band Cutting Crew. They were riding high in the charts with “(I Just) Died In Your Arms” and I’d just become a student at Sunderland Polytechnic and interviewed them for the student newspaper before a gig that they were playing at the Poly. As I recall Kevin was quietly spoken and generous with his time to an 18 years old me who didn’t really know what I was doing. Kevin sadly died of lung cancer in 2002.

By 1993, it had been ten years since Tina Turner’s music career comeback began with “Let’s Stay Together” and the “Private Dancer” album. More huge hits followed – 1989’s “Foreign Affair” album sold six million copies worldwide whilst her “Simply The Best” Best Of collection two years later went eight times platinum in the UK alone. Despite all this success and profile (or maybe because of it), the world still needed to see and hear more of Tina and so a biopic was the next logical step. What’s Love Got To Do With It was that film starring Angela Bassett as Tina. I watched it on TV once – it wasn’t bad. Obviously given its subject matter, the film would have a soundtrack album and promoting it was this single “I Don’t Wanna Fight”. Written by Lulu (no, really) it’s actually a pretty accomplished soul pop ballad which would go Top 10 both here and in the US, the last time she ever achieved that feat in the latter territory.

The normally reliable Mark Franklin gets the song’s title wrong in his intro referring to it (I think)) as ‘I Don’t Want To Go Fighting’ making it sound like her reply to Elton John’s rallying cry of “Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting”. Tina seemed as keen on song titles beginning ‘I Don’t Wanna…’ as Sting did for those starting with the word ‘Every’. “I Don’t Wanna Lose You” was a No 8 hit for her in 1989. She should have done one called “I Don’t Wanna Perform This Song In A Virtually Empty Theatre Venue In Monte Carlo” as this ‘exclusive’ was yet another example of TOTP thinking they were bringing us something special when it really wasn’t. An empty venue devoid of atmosphere in an exotic location like Monte Carlo is still an empty venue devoid of atmosphere.

There’s a good mix of Breakers this week according to Mark Franklin so let’s put that claim to the test. We start with The Waterboys who were last in the charts two years earlier when a rerelease of “The Whole Of The Moon” finally got the chart placing it deserved when it peaked at No 3. The single promoted a Best Of album that was released by EMI as one final attempt to milk the cash cow before their artist jumped ship to Geffen. The first new material of that move was the album “Dream Harder” which was preceded by the lead single “The Return Of Pan”. This was the second time that Mike Scott had written a song about the Greek deity after “The Pan Within” from 1985 album “This Is The Sea”.

I remember the album coming out but I’m not sure it ever got a spin on the shop stereo in the Our Price store in Rochdale where I was working. I probably should have found a quiet Tuesday afternoon to give it a proper play. After all, my association with The Waterboys stretched back to 1983 when I heard their very first single “A Girl Called Johnny” which I had on a compilation album called “Chart Stars”. If that makes me sound like I was a very cutting edge 14 year old, I really wasn’t. That album also included Galaxy, Bonnie Tyler and (gulp) The Kids From Fame! Quite how the first single by The Waterboys made it in to the running order I’m not sure but a flop single by The Teardrop Explodes was also on there so it was an odd thing. Presumably the compilers filled it with whatever they could get licences for.

Anyway, supposedly “Dream Harder” had a much more of a rock guitar vein to it than their previous work but then I’ve always struggled to describe their musical style. When I went for my initial interview at Our Price for a Xmas temp position in 1990, there was a music quiz and one of the sections was to identify the musical genre of an artist. One of those artists was The Waterboys. My answer? ‘Folky/bluesy type thing’. The correct answer was, of course, Rock/Pop.

“The Return Of Pan” peaked at No 24.

Well, in terms of ‘a mix’ of music, Mark Franklin was right but ‘a good mix’? That’s surely not the right word if one of those records in the mix is this. “The Jungle Book Groove” by The Disney Cast was presumably released to cash in on the fact that The Jungle Book had been made available on VHS this year. As I remember, Disney employed a very strategic release strategy around this time. They’d deleted all their classic film titles and then rereleased them one at a time so as to focus full attention on that one product as opposed to just making them all available on mass. This created a discounting price war with retailers looking closely at what everyone else was doing to guide their pricing policy. Whilst we all nipped into each other’s shops to see what they were selling the video for, one of the supermarkets stole everyone’s thunder (was it Asda?) by selling it at the cheapest price but with the added gimmick of qualifying for a free banana in the process! Genius!

There’d already been a Disney medley single by The UK Mixmasters called “Bare Necessities Megamix” which had been a hit over the Xmas of 1991 but that didn’t put off the Disney money men from selling it to us all over again by releasing “The Jungle Book Groove” on the Disney affiliated label Hollywood Records. Now look, I don’t mind a Disney film nor the songs in them but I do mind them being cynically packaged and turning up in the Top 40. No Disney, I don’t wanna be like you.

The final Breaker comes from Bon Jovi who have released a third (of six in total) single from their “Keep The Faith” album. This one was “In Your Arms” and was pretty standard Jovi fare that sounds like they could have knocked it out in a couple of hours with their thumbs up their bums, minds in neutral as my old History teacher was prone to saying. Perfect daytime radio fodder though.

My main memory of this song is hearing a news feature on Radio 1 whilst travelling in a car with my work colleague Andy on the way to a concert in Sheffield.* “In Your Arms” had just been released and the feature covered the story that, presumably in a coordinated promotional move by the record company, The London Trocadero had just installed a waxwork of Jon Bon Jovi and a crowd of fans had gathered for the unveiling. I think Jon was there in person at the event as the crowd were chanting “We want the flesh, we want the flesh…”.

A couple of years later, I found myself alone and at a loose end in London on a visit to my friend Robin who lived down there. I decided a trip to The Trocadero was in order and found myself having my photo taken with the waxwork Jon. For some reason, I thought this would be a good souvenir of my visit and purchased said photo! So proud was I of it that I put it on display on the staff room wall in the Our Price in Stockport where I was working. What was I thinking?! My work colleagues didn’t half take the piss and, to be fair, I absolutely deserved it. No idea where it is now – the photo not the waxwork which must have surely been melted down by now.

“In Your Arms” peaked at No 9.

*Yes, it was that concert, the Michael Bolton one and no, I’m not about to go into how that came about all over again.

After the Breakers come the Abominations or Inner Circle as I like to call them. “Sweat (A La La La La Long)” is up to No 5 on its way to a peak of No 3 and so another studio performance is in order. The thrifty TOTP producers have recycled the stage that Robert Plant used with its palm trees to made it look like a beach party.

If you search for Inner Circle on the internet today, one of the results is for an online dating app. It’s a good job that online dating wasn’t around when Inner Circle the band were in the charts. I don’t think having these lines on your profile would win over potential partners:

Girl I’m want to make you sweat, sweat ‘till you can’t sweat no more

And if you cry out, I’m gonna push it some more

Just nasty.

Another week at the top for the “Five Live” EP and another different track from it on the show. This time it’s George Michael’s take on “Killer” by Adamski which is mashed up with “Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone” made famous by The Temptations. This wasn’t from the 1992 Freddie Mercury tribute concert but was recorded at Wembley Arena the year before.

By my reckoning, this is the third time “Killer” had been a hit. The Adamski original was No 1 in 1990 and then Seal took his own version into the Top 10 in late 1991. As for “Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone”, aside from The Temptations’ 1973 US No 1, it was a Top 20 hit for Was (Not Was) in 1990.

There’s a little bonus clip before the credits roll as the BBC promote the Eurovision Song Contest that took place two days after this TOTP aired. As such, we get the video for the UK entry who in 1993 was Sonia with “Better The Devil You Know”. Sonia came second taking the result to the final set of points allocated before losing out to Ireland’s Niamh Kavanagh. Her performance meant that the single got a small boost sales wise and reversed its descent down the charts meaning its seven week run looked like this:

22 – 18 – 25 – 17 – 15 – 40 – 57

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	OMD	Stand Above Me	I did not
2	Shabba Ranks / Maxi Priest	Housecall	Do one will ya!
3	Dina Carroll	Express	Nope
4	Robert Plant	29 Palms	No but I had that promo CD of the album
5	Tina Turner	I Don’t Wanna Fight	No
6	The Waterboys	The Return Of Pan	Nah
7	Disney Cast	The Jungle Book Groove	Never happening
8	Bon Jovi	In These Arms	See 4 above
9	Inner Circle	Sweat (A La La La La Long)	As if
10	George Michael	Five Live EP	Don’t think I did
11	Sonia	Better The Devil You Know	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/m001b0cb/top-of-the-pops-13051993

TOTP 06 MAY 1993

Posted on August 13, 2022 by 80stastic

When I decided to carry on doing these TOTP reviews into the 90s repeats, the one year I really wasn’t looking forward to revisiting was 1993. In my mind’s eye, it was all nasty Eurodance anthems, the dreaded three ‘S’s of Shaggy, Shabba and Snow and the worst Xmas No 1 of all time. Well, we’re into May now and whilst the horror of Mr Blobby is still a way off, we’ve already had plenty of the of the other flavours of shite. Let’s hope a new month brings new hope of better things to come…

Well, that hope didn’t last long did it! FFS! Straight off the bat we have some more Eurodance nonsense courtesy of one of the genre’s biggest acts. After driving us all insane with the abomination that was “No Limit”, 2 Unlimited have not been able to resist the temptation to do it all over again with a tune that is so similar they should have just called it “No Limit 2.0” and be done with it. In truth, all their tunes pretty much sounded the same though didn’t they? And yes by saying that, I now sound just like my Dad speaking to me about pop music circa 1983. “Tribal Dance” was the latest of their musical oeuvre to annoy the shit out of us and it would rise to No 4 in this, the biggest year of their career. This track supposedly includes more of Ray’s raps than usual but still less than the version that the rest of Europe would get. I have to say that I don’t feel short changed.

There was a lot of talk online about this TOTP performance and it mostly revolved around the words ‘inappropriate’ and “cultural appropriation’ and you can see why? What the hell were those costumes the backing dancers were wearing all about?! Yes, obviously somebody was trying to pursue a theme of ‘tribal’ as per the song’s title but this?! Of course, it’s quite possible that nobody made any sort of dissenting comment back in 1993 but you like to think we live in more enlightened times these days. Or perhaps we don’t. I’m sure I could be accused of being too ‘woke’ about it by someone. In truth though, all you need is Michael Caine a red tunic and you’ve got a re-enactment of the film Zulu.

The official video for “That’s The Way Love Goes” by Janet Jackson soundtracks the Top 40 countdown to No 11. It’s also the second of three new entries inside the Top 5 this week that we will see on the show tonight. Reading some of the online comments about the video, I’m now wondering if I’m missing something. People seem to love this promo and describe it as being “a timeless classic”, “visually stylish” and “one of the most creative videos ever made” with the protagonists “chillin’ and vibin’ out together”. And yet. All I’m seeing is Janet surrounded by some sycophants (including a very young Jennifer Lopez) in a loft apartment imploring her to play a tape of her new single before mooching and smooching about with each other. I’m probably just a grumpy, middle aged man who’s forgotten how to have fun and enjoy anything anymore though.

“That’s The Way Love Goes” peaked at No 2 in the UK and was a No 1 record in the US.

After starting the show with some frenetic Eurodance beats before sliding into some slinky R&B vibes we now arrive at a huge slice of stadium house courtesy of Utah Saints (U-U-U-Utah Saints)*. “Believe In Me” was the third of their trilogy of Top 10 hits and although I thought it was OK, it didn’t quite have the immediacy of “What Can You Do For Me” and “Something Good”. After turning to Eurythmics and Kate Bush for source material for those two tracks, they’ve stuck with the 80s by sampling The Human League for this one. It works but doesn’t seem as clever as its predecessors, a bit too obvious somehow.

*Sorry, contractually obliged to do that

In their wisdom, the TOTP producers have decided to overlay the whole performance here with a green wavelength graphic which probably seemed like a good idea at the time but which feels intrusive in retrospect. And what on earth is that the guy with the tied back dreadlocks playing? It looks like a key-tar but has some sort of built in computer where a keyboard should be. It’s like a prototype for the controller in the Guitar Hero computer game. Oh and the “This is the Utah Saints calling all humanoids” line is entirely lame. Reminded me of this sketch:

I wasn’t wrong about 1993. It really was the year that kept on giving – the problem was that it was serving up huge dollops of horseshit. Here’s another steaming clump – “All That She Wants” by Ace Of Base. This was one of those songs that came from nowhere and was suddenly huge immediately. That’s how it felt anyway. It must have been picking up plenty of airplay before it went massive as I’m sure we kept getting asked about it in the Our Price I was working in before it was in the charts. We didn’t have a clue what it was the punters were talking about but Head Office soon cottoned on and ordered it in for stores in bulk. How this cod reggae/ lowest common denominator Europop mash up made *SPOILER ALERT* three weeks at No 1 is as mystifying as the rise and rise of Liz Truss. I always hated that little sax parp that introduced the chorus and also the way the vocalist sang the line ‘She’s the hunter, you’re the fox’ with that elongated, descending stress on the last word. Heinous isn’t a strong enough word for it. The performance here didn’t help to endear me to the song either. Who did the two women arm dancing think they were? Susan and Joanne from the aforementioned Human League?

Ace Of Base were, of course, from Sweden and are the third biggest selling band from those shores after ABBA and Roxette but when the competition for that particular bronze medal includes the likes of Rednex (of “Cotton Eye Joe” fame), Dr. Alban and Europe, it rather undermines the achievement of a place on the rostrum.

I really feel the need for something decent in this week’s Breakers to lift the mood, nay standard. We start with something unusual though. I knew Sounds Of Blackness were a gospel group but that’s all that I knew and I certainly couldn’t have named any of their songs.

However, having looked them up on Wikipedia I do remember the cover for their 1993 album “Africa To America: The Journey Of The Drum” from which this single – “I’m Going All The Way” – came. It was produced by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis who were nothing if not versatile – they were also the producers behind Janet Jackson who was on the show earlier of course. Look, I can appreciate gospel music but back in 1993 I don’t think it was what I was looking for and I certainly wasn’t expecting to find it in the Top 40.

In my head, there’s a definite line drawn in 1985 that marked the end of Depeche Mode as, for want of a better description, a pop band and their going forwards as, for want of another better description, a rock band. Now I do know that those terms are far too simplistic to do justice to the career of the band. I think it’s just that 1985 saw the release of their first Best Of album “The Singles 81>85” and that felt like a real marker in the sand that said, ‘OK, here’s a a physical reminder of everything we’ve done up to this point but from here on in, we’re going in a new direction”. The following year “Black Celebration” was released and everything did feel different starting with its dark lead single “Stripped”.

By 1993, Depeche Mode had perfected that new, harder sound into something massively commercial. The 1990 ”Violator” album sold seven and a half million copies worldwide and housed four classic singles. Then came “Songs Of Faith And Devotion” starting with strident lead single “I Feel You” which we didn’t get to see on TOTP for some reason. The follow up single was “Walking In My Shoes” and this little snippet on the Breakers was all we got of it. What was going on here? It’s another great track, doomy yet melodic and the video sees Dave Gahan in his full on rock god phase. Tragedy of course struck the band in May this year with the unexpected death of Andy Fletcher. Just today though, photos have been released of Gahan and Martin Gore back in the studio which is good news.

The second hit for Rage Against The Machine now. After “Killing In The Name” had been a No 25 hit earlier in the year (sixteen years before its Xmas No 1 sideshow), “Bullet In The Head” did even better piercing yer actual Top 20.

The band have been nominated for induction into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame on four occasions (2017, 2018, 2019 and 2021) but failed every time to get voted in. Rage Against The Machine there, the Nigel Farage of funk metal. And yes, I know their political views couldn’t be more diametrically opposed but I need to put this post to bed and a cheap line is all I’ve got for this lot.

Oh do f**k off! Even in 1993 at the height of his infamy, nobody needed any more Shabba Ranks surely?! After the Top 3 success of “Mr. Loverman” (itself a rerelease), record company Sony were always going to give 1991 single “Housecall” another tilt at the charts. It peaked at No 31 on its initial release but a remix saw it leap into the Top 10 second time around. A collaboration with Maxi Priest (whom I have no beef with BTW), it gave rise to the “Shabba!” sample on “Mr. Loverman” that was both ubiquitous and pilloried in 1993.

Finally some genuine relief from all this musical crud! Kingmaker hailed from Hull (my home for these last eighteen years) but in 1993 I was living in Manchester and working in Rochdale so I missed what surely must have been a sense of excitement in the band’s hometown at having the first authentic chart act since The Housemartins in the 80s.

“Ten Years Asleep” was their third Top 40 hit and came from their sophomore album “Sleepwalking”. Unbelievably, its lead single “Armchair Anarchist” which is a fab tune had stalled at No 47 in October of 1992 but its follow up did the trick rising to No 15, the band’s joint highest chart placing. True, it wasn’t a million miles away from the sound of acts like The Wonder Stuff and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin but at a time when decent indie pop tunes were at a premium, this was wonderful. Dealing with the vexing and existential subject of the passing of time and the inevitable conforming behaviours that seem to affect all of us, the lyrics showed what a great writer Loz Hardy was even though his hand had been forced by the band’s record label demanding that he essentially write a hit record. In this performance he looks like Ian Hart playing John Lennon in The Beatles biopic Backbeat.

It seems odd to consider it now but Kingmaker had been a bigger deal than the likes of Radiohead and Suede both of whom had supported them on tour in 1992. However, disputes with their record label about approaches to writing, recording and formatting of their music hampered their progress and by the time that third album “In The Best Possible Taste” came out in 1995, they’d been sunk by the good ship Britpop. They split soon after but reformed briefly in 2010 without Hardy as Kingmaker MMX.

Oh dear. In fact, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. This is just cringe (the kids don’t use the ‘worthy’ suffix do they?). Nobody can deny Elton John his place in musical history (except my mate Robin who once told me that he didn’t like even one of his songs) but this is just…wrong.

“Simple Life” was the fourth and final single from his 1992 album “The One” and it failed to make the Top 40 despite this ‘exclusive’ TOTP performance from Atlanta. Literally, what was the point of this? The song is turgid enough but the sight of Elton all togged up on a stage with just a black backdrop for company and deprived of his piano thereby forcing him into attempting to (gulp) ‘dance’…well, it’s just cruel. He even flicks his wig at one point as if to say ‘look I’ve got hair’ even though we know he didn’t. Please, I know I said spare me from all the Eurodance crap earlier in the post but this really wasn’t the lifebelt I was hoping for.

While Elton was struggling around the edges of the Top 40, his mate George Michael was still at No 1 as part of the “Five Live” EP. Last week we had his version of Queen’s “Somebody To Love” but this time it’s his duet with Lisa Stansfield on their 1991 Xmas No 1 (double A-sided with “Bohemian Rhapsody”) “These Are The Days Of Our Lives”. Recorded at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert of the previous year, I’d never liked the original but in the hands (or rather mouths) of George and Lisa it sounds pretty good. The former wouldn’t release any new music after this until 1996’s “Older” album but the latter would return later in 1993 with her third studio album “So Natural”.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	2 Unlimited	Tribal Dance	Definitely not
2	Janet Jackson	That’s The Way Love Goes	Nah
3	Utah Saints	Believe In Me	I did not
4	Ace Of Base	All That She Wants	As if
5	Sounds Of Blackness	I’m Going All The Way	No
6	Depeche Mode	Walking In My Shoes	Good song but no
7	Rage Against The Machine	Bullet In The Head	Nope
8	Shabba Ranks and Maxi Priest	Housecall	Away with you!
9	Kingmaker	Ten Years Asleep	I seem have been asleep as it’s not in the singles box
10	Elton John	Simple Life	Hell no!
11	Queen / George Michael / Lisa Stansfield	Five Live EP	Don’t think I did

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/m0019tp2/top-of-the-pops-06051993

TOTP 29 APR 1993

Posted on August 6, 2022 by 80stastic

What happens to pop stars when the fame slides away and, as that infamous Bros documentary put it, when the screaming stops? Well, some stay in the world of entertainment but reinvent themselves as actors or DJs. Statistically there must be some I guess who can’t handle it and slide into a world of drink and drugs. There must also be a large number who just get ‘ordinary’ jobs like the rest of us. There can’t be many though that became even more famous as a professor of particle physics and the public face of anything scientific. I talk, of course, of Professor Brian Cox who famously was also, in his youth, the keyboards player in D:Ream. And yes, D:Ream are on the show tonight. And yes, I didn’t mention Brian Cox in the last post when his band were in the Breakers section knowing I could leave that discussion for this week. Seen by many as the natural successor to the likes of David Attenborough (even though their fields aren’t remotely the same), he’s certainly more famous now for making science hip than making hit singles. I wonder if they’ll be any more pop stars on tonight’s show who became famous for something other than pop music?

So we start with Prof Cox and D:Ream who are having a mini career before they go massive next year. It’s a curious chart history. 1993 brought them four hit singles yet none got any higher than No 19. The following year, they also had four hit singles but two of them were included in those hits from 1993. This time those repeated singles went to No 1 and No 4. In total there were nine single releases from their “D:Ream On Vol 1” album but across just six tracks with “Things Can Only Get Better” being released twice (once for the Labour General Election campaign of 1997) and this song “U R The Best Thing” three times! I guess their record label must have had unshakable faith that they really were going to be big.

Cox looks unrecognisable here with a mane of long hair which he keeps swishing from side to side and a sleeveless tartan suit (God in heaven! What was he thinking?!). Mind you, wasn’t lead singer Peter Cunnah partial to a tartan suit as well? Maybe we’ll see that it a future TOTP. I used to work with someone who had a drinking mug with Brian Cox’s face on it as she was a fan. The slogan emblazoned all around the mug? Me Love Cox. When I pointed out the obvious double entendre, it had genuinely never occurred to her!

It’s that REM single next that even if you weren’t a fan of the band or even pop music in general had to admit was a pretty good song. “Everybody Hurts” had that elusive quality to be able to cut through all different strata of society and be affecting. With its themes of dealing with depression and suicidal thoughts and its melancholy sound, it was an obvious choice for it to soundtrack a 1995 awareness campaign by The Samaritans.

Fifteen years on, it was covered to raise money for victims of the Haiti earthquake. Multiple artists were involved in the project including Mariah Carey, Rod Stewart, Take That, Kylie Minogue and Westlife and, with a nice link to D:Ream, was the idea of then Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown who contacted Simon Cowell to put it together. It became the fastest selling charity record of the 21st century in Britain. Somehow I can’t imagine Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak (whichever one ends up in No 10) initiating something similar. Raising money for suffering people that don’t even live in the UK? That wouldn’t go down well with the Tory membership at all. “Ooh bit of politics!” as Ben Elton would have said back in the day.

I don’t think you could make a case that any of the members of REM eclipsed their fame as rock stars after the band dissolved but Michael Stipe has branched out into film production acting as executive producer on movies such as Being John Malkovich and Velvet Goldmine.

SWV were in the charts in 1993 with a song that wasn’t “Right Here”? Really? The Michael Jackson sampling hit is my only memory of the trio from that year but here they are with a different hit called “I’m So Into You” which would make No 17 on our charts. After En Vogue and latterly Jade, here were the Sisters With Voices as the latest US R&B import seeking to replicate their success at home across the pond.

Listening back to this track hasn’t stirred my grey cells into action – zero recall of it – but then I was distracted by their decision to turn up for the show dressed as Shaky in double denim. Quite extraordinary. One of the trio, Tamara ‘Taj’ George, became a model after the band split and then found fame as a reality TV star on Survivor in 2009.

Anyone fancy some panpipe techno? Nah, me neither but there is some on the show courtesy of Dance 2 Trance and their hit “Power Of American Natives”. In later life, the backing dancer on the right found fame as bad boy Darren Osbourne in Channel 4 soap Hollyoaks. OK, I’m made that shit up but he does look a bit like him doesn’t he?

I’ve talked long and hard before about the three ‘S’s of shite that blighted the charts in 1993 – Shabba, Shaggy and Snow. There was though another artist that I could have shoehorned in to make this unholy trio a frightful foursome of crud if I’d allowed songs instead of artists beginning with ‘s’ to be included. The song I speak of is “Sweat” or rather “Sweat (A La La La La Long)”. This heinous piece of cod reggae by Inner Circle could rot your brain when exposed to it for just a few minutes with its infuriatingly catchy drone-a-long chorus. The good people of the UK had resisted its dark arts when originally released six months earlier but a rerelease due to it being No 1 all over Europe proved overwhelming and it duly went to No 6 in our charts.

The band themselves had been around in various incarnations since 1968 (!) but had only grazed the UK Top 40 once in 1979 with something called “Everything Is Great”. Talk about a misnomer. They came up with a song with a much more apt name in “Bad Boys” (where bad means crap and not good as per Michael Jackson) which became a big hit when it was used as the theme song to US TV series Cops and later to soundtrack the Will Smith / Martin Lawrence Bad Boys film franchise.

It’s three Breakers this week starting with Big Country. No if we thought D:Ream were into recycling with their multiple rereleases of tracks as singles, then what do we make of the bagpipe guitar rockers? Where D:Ream simply got the in demand remix team of Paul Oakenfold and Steve Osborne aka Perfecto to come up with a new version of “U R The Best Thing”, Big Country did the spade work themselves and totally re-recorded a song that had already been on a previous album.

“Ships (Where Were You)” was originally a track on poorly received and underselling 1991 album “No Place Like Home” but Stuart Adamson and co weren’t happy with the piano led, string quartet enhanced version that they had laid down and so went back into the studio to add those guitars. Now sounding more like a recognisable Big Country track, it became the band’s second consecutive Top 40 hit when released as the second single from “Buffalo Skinners”, the first time they had achieved that feat since 1986.

The video is a pretty pedestrian affair with the fans looking like they’ve caught the MTV Unplugged bug with all of them sat down for the entire performance. Surely that would have worked better with the string quartet 1991 version?

Next a band at a careers crossroads. It seems strange to recall now but in 1993 Blur we’re not in a good place. The glory of their 1991 breakthrough single “There’s No Other Way” had long since dimmed to be replaced by a press backlash. The band themselves were miserable after an unhappy experience touring the US to apathetic audiences. The possibility of being dropped by record label Food was real. A decision was taken to take a new direction that channeled the spirit of English 60s bands like the Small Faces and The Kinks as a reaction to the grunge era that they’d witnessed on their American tour. The result was the album “Modern Life Is Rubbish”, a collection of songs that didn’t generate massive sales but which have retrospectively been bestowed with love and respect and a sense of importance in configuring the rise of Britpop.

“For Tomorrow” was the lead track and was written with the intention of being a hit single as it was felt by Food that the album didn’t have any. Written about Primrose Hill the top of which affords a view of the whole of central London, it peaked at No 28, the band’s third lowest charting single until 2012. However, it is a fan favourite being voted the fifth best Blur song ever in a fanbase vote.

Whilst the album underperformed commercially, it was an essential and necessary step on the way to their most celebrated album “Parklife”. Oh and Inner Circle? That’s how you write a song with a ‘La La La La’ chorus!

Now here’s an artist I never really got…at all. However, she was very much seen as the darling of the indie world around this time and her career has been littered with accolades. Her trophy cabinet (presuming she has one) houses three Rolling Stone Magazine awards, two Mercury Music Prizes – she remains the only artist to have won it twice – an NME Outstanding Contribution to Music award and an MBE for services to music. Who am I taking about? PJ Harvey of course.

Back in 1993, she’d already made a name for herself with her debut album “Dry” which had made No 11 in the charts and would end up selling 60,000 copies. It was also extremely well received in the ‘serious’ music press. Maybe that’s what put me off her. I never really felt a part of that scene. While I was coming to the conclusion that she wasn’t really for me, PJ (Polly Jean) was already onto her next album. Sophomore release “Rid Of Me” came out the week after this TOTP aired and was trailed by the single “50ft Queenie”. This sounded like a racket to me back then and the intervening thirty years have done nothing to change my mind. I wasn’t the only person who wasn’t a fan. My mate Robin who worked at the BBC had got himself into the audience for a Later…with Jools Holland when one of the guests was PJ Harvey. So unimpressed was he by what he saw that as the camera panned round the studio audience during her performance, he gave his verdict with a double middle finger gesture (or ‘the rods’ as Robin described it). I’ve looked through a number of Later…shows featuring ol’ PJ but have not been able to spot Robin’s rods. He has a particularly bad track record of being at BBC music shows. He once found himself stranded at a recording of TOTP – he’d thought that Morrissey was on but it turned out to be Kenny Thomas instead.

“50ft Queenie” peaked at No 27.

A genuine rock god next. Robert Plant needs no introduction from me mainly because I’m not qualified as I never really got the boat to Led Zeppelin island but just to give this some factual context, this was Robert’s third solo Top 40 single over a ten year period. His first had come in 1983 with the paean to toilet humour “Big Log” whilst his second was 1988’s “Heaven Knows” which I don’t remember at all. “29 Palms” though I do recall as the album it was taken from – “Fate Of Nations” – we had a CD promo copy of at the Our Price store where I was working at the time. I wouldn’t normally have been interested in a Robert Plant album but I took this one as me and my wife had just purchased our very first stereo that had a CD drive! Yes, just a mere eight years (!) after Dire Straits’ “Brothers In Arms” was single-handedly driving the adoption of the CD as the format of choice for music buyers, we finally joined the digital recording revolution. The problem was we didn’t have any actual CDs to play on our newly acquired stereo. All our music was either on vinyl and then latterly cassette. Given this, I figured I’d claim the Plant promo CD to test out the CD player. To be fair, I don’t think anybody else I worked with was likely to want it.

And so it came to pass that one of the first CDs I ever had was a Robert Plant solo album. I had it for years and maybe played one track on it once (the single obviously) and in the end I gave it away to a friend who liked, yep, that one song. So about “29 Palms” – did I like it? I wouldn’t have changed station if it came on the radio but I certainly wouldn’t have bought it either (remember, the CD I had was a free promo – no monetary transaction was necessary). I think I preferred “Big Log” though from my school days. There’s a bit in it that’s been bugging me because it reminded me of another song but I couldn’t place it but I’ve got it now – it’s “Heaven” by Bryan Adams. That’s probably heresy to Led Zep fans but that’s what I’m hearing. It’s rumoured to be about Canadian singer Alannah Myles of “Black Velvet” fame whom Plant toured with. Alternatively, it’s about the town of Twentynine Palms in the Mojave desert or more specifically its radio station. Either way, at least Robert ensured there was no room for any “Big Log” style faeces innuendo with this one…unless you can think of any.

“29 Palms” peaked at No 21.

The 1993 Eurovision Song Contest is only two weeks away so it’s about time we got another glimpse of our entry for this year who is of course Sonia. The UK was in a run of runner up finishes with three of the previous five contests seeing us finish in second place. Sonia would make it four out of six with “Better The Devil You Know” but we would come nowhere near winning again until 1997 when Katrina And The Waves brought the crown back to the UK despite Katrina herself being American.

Back in 1993 though, Sonia found herself unlucky enough to be competing in an era where the contest was dominated by Ireland who were in the middle of a trio of wins between 1992 and 1994. A bit like Andy Murray playing elite tennis when Nadal and Federer were in their pomp. Well, sort of if you can get on board with the idea of music being competitive. Then again, what was the Top 40 singles chart if not a competition?

Not only did Sonia miss out on Eurovision glory but “Better The Devil You Know” was also her final ever Top 40 hit. She had eleven in all but I’m betting most of us would struggle if she was the ‘Three In Ten’ artist on Ken Bruce’s Popmaster. After the hits stopped, Sonia starred as Sandy in the West End revival of Grease and also as Lily Savage’s wayward daughter Bunty in The Lily Savage Show. I don’t think any of those projects outdid her fame as Sonia the pop star though. Certainly appearing in Channel 5’s Celebrity 5 Go Caravanning was unlikely to be people’s abiding memory of her.

P.S. Did Sonia and SWV plan their Shaky style outfits beforehand?

There’s a new No 1 as The Bluebells are no more and are replaced by George Michael and Queen with the “Five Live” EP. A charity record in support of The Mercury Phoenix Trust that fights HIV/AIDS around the world, the five tracks were:

“Somebody To Love” – George Michael and Queen
“Killer” – George Michael
“These Are The Days Of Our Lives” – Queen, George Michael and Lisa Stansfield
“Calling You” – George Michael
“Dear Friends” – Queen

Tracks 1 and 3 were recordings of the live performances from the 1992 Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert with the first being the one that received all the airplay. The EP went straight in at No 1 making it the eighth charity record to do so at the time since Band Aid in 1984. It was also George Michael’s third No 1 single as a duet after “I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)” with Aretha Franklin in 1987 and “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me” with Elton John in 1991. It would become the 11th best selling single of 1993. It also was top of the charts for three weeks so I’ll leave it there for now. Oh, one more thing. We’re all agreed that George’s fame post Wham! outstripped his pre Wham! fame yeah?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	D:Ream	U R The Best Thing	No
2	REM	Everybody Hurts	No but I had the Automatic For The People album
3	SWV	I’m So Into You	Nah
4	Dance 2 Trance	Power Of American Natives	As if
5	Inner Circle	Sweat (A La La La La Long)	God no!
6	Big Country	Ships (Where Were You)	I did not
7	Blur	For Tomorrow	No but I had the Modern Life Is Rubbish album
8	PJ Harvey	50ft Queenie	Never happening
9	Robert Plant	29 Palms	No but I had that promo copy of the album
10	Sonia	Better The Devil You Know	Nope
11	George Michael and Queen	Five Live EP	Don’t think I did

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/m0019tp0/top-of-the-pops-29041993

TOTP 22 APR 1993

Posted on August 4, 2022 by 80stastic

Ever broken an arm or a leg? I once had a hairline fracture of my forearm when somebody pushed me down the stairs at school. I had a plaster cast on it and everything. My injury however was nothing compared to what happened to Arsenal footballer Steve Morrow four days before this TOTP aired. The unfortunate Belfast born utility man managed to break his arm after a game had finished! He’d just scored the winning goal in the League Cup final versus Sheffield Wednesday and in the jubilant celebrations afterwards his captain Tony Adams tried to carry him on his shoulders. Adams slipped, Morrow fell and fractured his arm so badly he needed oxygen and was rushed to hospital. He missed the rest of the season.

That got me thinking of accidents that had befallen pop stars. There’s been a few. For a start, there’s the nicest man in rock Dave Grohl who fell off stage during a Foo Fighters gig in Sweden. He famously finished the gig after the medics patched him up and played the rest of the tour sat down in a chair. Or how about Jessie J who fell off stage whilst rehearsing in 2011, broke her foot and required a bone transplant. Then there’s the youngest Hanson brother who broke his collarbone and cracked three ribs and his scapula when he came off his motorcycle in 2019. Possibly most famously, Ed Sheeran broke his right wrist and left elbow after coming off his bike in 2017. Ed was hardcore though and went to the pub after the accident before giving into the pain in the early hours and undertaking a trip to A&E. I wonder if any of the acts on tonight’s TOTP have any broken limbs stories…

We start with something that I not only don’t remember but that I couldn’t really conceive of happening. Voice Of The Beehive and Jimmy Somerville anyone? So what was this all about? Well, it was a project by the record label Food Records to support the charity Shelter’s ‘Putting Our House In Order’ homeless initiative. Not only did they get Jimmy and VOTB together, they got various other artists (many as duets) to perform versions of “Gimme Shelter” by The Rolling Stones. The recordings were put on four separate singles sorted by musical genre – pop, rock, alternative and dance. I’m not going to list them all here but there’s a few intriguing ones like New Model Army and Tom Jones…

How about Cud and Sandie Shaw…

Surely the oddest though must be Hawkwind and Samantha Fox….

Bizarre doesn’t quite cover it. Anyway, there were some more obvious takes on the song mainly on the rock CD with the likes of Thunder and Little Angels doing their bit for charity but it was Voice Of The Beehive and Jimmy Somerville that were chosen to promote the project on TOTP and there’s a bit to unpack here:

I quite like it
Why does Jimmy sing his opening verses in such a low register?
Jimmy’s T-shirt is right. Shabba Ranks is a bigot
Why was Woody not on the drums?
I have no information on whether any of the people on stage have ever broken any bones

All formats of the single included a live version of “Gimme Shelter” by The Stones to keep on the right side of chart eligibility rules enabling it to get to No 23. It was officially credited to Various Artists and each format had the same catalogue number meaning it counted as one record sale whichever version you bought.

The Bodyguard cash cow was still going strong in April 1993. Not only had the film being doing the business at the box office but the soundtrack album was No 1 around the world and there seemed to be a single lifted from it permanently in the charts. “I Have Nothing” was the fourth such single and the third by Whitney Houston (the other coming courtesy of Lisa Stansfield). In truth, it could have come from any of Whitney’s albums up to this point as it was a classic power ballad the type of which she had made a number of times previously. I’m thinking “All The Man That I Need”, “One Moment In Time”, “Where Do Broken Hearts Go” etc. I mean she did it very well and could knock these out in her sleep but it was all a bit Whitney by numbers for me. She also seemed to have a penchant for songs with ‘I’ in the title. There was “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)”, “I Will Always Love You” (obvs), “I’m Your Baby Tonight” – she even did a version of “I Know Him So Well”. All those ‘I’s put me in mind of when Dr Who regenerated from Peter Davison to Colin Baker…

The single went to No 3 in the UK and No 4 in the US where, due to the stagnant nature of their chart, her previous two singles were still selling and it meant she became the first artist since 1991 when their chart compiling software changed to have three songs in the Top 11 chart positions.

The video follows the format of “I Will Always Love You” and is basically a trailer for the film with lots of clips of it all thrown together around Whitney performing to camera. Not content with this power ballad, the next release was also one (and also from the soundtrack album) with “Run To You” being released in June.

It’s a third consecutive appearance on the show for New Order with “Regret” next. After the Baywatch incident then the official promo video, they are finally in the TOTP studio. Despite the live vocal policy in place on the show at this time, this isn’t a shambles of a performance as with “Blue Monday” ten years earlier. It all feels pretty slick although Hooky’s unique bass playing technique and stance never looked slick. It’s as if it weighs a ton and he stretching every sinew to keep it off the ground. He might not have broken it in an accident but as @TOTPFacts says:

Peter Hook's back must be absolutely fucked. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) July 29, 2022

Talking of guitars, it feels quite odd to see Bernard Sumner with one in his hands. Now I’m no Eric Clapton and am just a bit of a chord strummer but it looks like his fingers never change from that one chord shape (‘C’ if I’m not mistaken or derivatives of it). Was there really just one chord in the song? And they used to take the piss out of Status Quo!

We swoop over to America next for a live satellite performance of the country’s No 1 record. You’ll probably know the song but not the group. How come? Well, “Freak Me” is the track in question and it will go to No 1 here as well but not for another five years and it won’t be sung by the people we see here but by some chancers called Another Level. Yep, them. Dane Bowers and his mob. Anyway, that’s way down the line. For the moment it’s all about Silk… or rather it’s not as their version of this Keith Sweat written and produced song never even made the Top 40 over here despite this performance.

Slik were from Atlanta, Georgia and had given themselves some truly terrible nicknames. There was Tim ‘Timzo’ Cameron, Gary ‘Big G’ Glenn, Gary ‘Lil G’ Jenkins and my favourite Jonathan ‘John-John’ Rasboro. The lyrics to their big hit are…well kind of explicit and leave the listener in no doubt as to what they are singing about. For example:

Let me lick you up and down till you say stop, let me play with your body baby, make you real hot

Then there’s:

I love the taste of whipped cream, spread it on, don’t be mean

Blimey!

Meanwhile back in the TOTP studio we find Sub Sub featuring Melanie Williams and their big hit tune “Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use)”. Melanie’s come with a big, zebra print floppy hat that she didn’t wear last time. Maybe it was meant to be in keeping with the tune’s retro disco feel?

It’s suddenly struck me that Sub Sub were a bit like Deee-Lite. One huge, crossover dance anthem then pretty much nothing in terms of further chart success. I know that’s not strictly true in that Deee-Lite had one minor hit single after “Groove Is In The Heart” before all you chart enthusiasts get on to me but you get my drift.

Mick Jones (he of the Man Utd score update story the other week) has informed me that when Melanie Williams was in her previous band called Temper Temper, she did a PA at the Our Price store in Piccadilly, Manchester and was absolutely lovely with all the male members of staff under her spell. Thought I’d pass that on. By the way, I have no info on whether she’s ever broken her arm or leg but there is a Melanie Williams serious injury solicitor based in Fitzrovia, London but that’s probably not the same person is it?

There’s four Breakers again this week starting with a band who I genuinely never realised had more than one hit in this country. Aussie rockers Midnight Oil had a huge global hit in the late 80s with “Beds Are Burning” and although they continued to have success back home, they did zip in the UK until this track – “Truganini” -made our Top 30. As with “Beds Are Burning” which was about the territorial rights of native Australians, the song carried a political message (a debate over the future of the Australian monarchy) whilst name checking Truganini who was an Aboriginal Tasmanian woman and one of the last native speakers of the Tasmanian language.

The track came from their album “Earth And Sun and Moon” which is nearly exactly the same title of an album my very own country music loving Dad made a few years back. He included ‘the stars’ in his title though.

You wouldn’t have believed that I worked in a busy record shop at this time as here’s yet another song I don’t remember. What was I doing whilst I was there? Listening to football on the radio if the Mick Jones story is anything to go by.

Anyway, this is a bit weird as after Midnight Oil, we get another song about indigenous people. “Power Of American Natives” was by Dance 2 Trance and was a big club hit that broke through to the mainstream chart. It’s all a bit techno (don’t tell The Bluebells!) and frenetic for me but incredibly there’s another (tenuous) link with Midnight Oil as the album this was taken from also has the word ‘moon’ in its title (“Moon Spirits”). OK, you got me. I’m filling desperately here.

“Power Of American Natives” peaked at No 25.

Despite some considerable album sales, Sting (the solo artist) had never really made many inroads on the singles chart. In the early 90s though, he was finally doing something about that. After just three Top 40 hits in the entire previous decade, by April 1993 he was already up to five. “Seven Days” was the third on the spin if you include “”It’s Probably Me”, his collaboration with Eric Clapton from the Lethal Weapon 3 soundtrack.

This was the second single from his well received “Ten Summoner’s Tales” album and would peak at No 25. It’s quite a nice tune but the lyrics seemed very familiar. And then it struck me. He’s rewritten “Can’t Stand Losing You”. I mean not exactly but there’s a theme of violence arising from a failed relationship in both. In The Police tune the threat comes from a brother who’s gonna kill the protagonist and “he’s six feet ten”. In “Seven Days” it’s from a love rival who’s…yep…”over six feet ten”. I see you Sting! To try and throw us off the scent he’s added in a breakdown of the week Craig David style and then actually goes off into “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” at the end with the exact lyrics included. Didn’t he do that on another of his solo songs as well?

*thinks for a bit*

Yes he did! Right at the end of “Love Is The Seventh Wave” he slips in a line from “Every Breath You Take” and then…and I love it when the artists on the show are in sync with the theme of the post…he changes the lyrics and sings “every cake you bake, every leg you break”. Excellent! Nice one Sting!

“Seven Days” peaked at No 25.

Now when I think of D:Ream (which isn’t often) I think of 1994 not 1993. 1994 was the year they had a No 1 with “Things Can Only Get Better” or perhaps even 1997 when that song was used as the official anthem for Labour’s successful General Election campaign. But 1993? I had nothing down for that. I’m completely wrong though as here is Peter Cunnah in the charts with “U R The Best Thing”. I thought that came out after “Things Can Only Get Better”. It turns out it did but that was a re-release. Hang on, a rerelease when it had already been a hit earlier? How did that work? Well, simple really. The 1993 single only made it to No 19. After their No 1 in early 1994, a Perfecto remix was put out and it went to No 4. Seems sometimes they did know what they were doing these record labels.

It turns out that D:Ream we’re all about rereleases. This was already the second time “U R The Best Thing” had been out as it was initially released in 1992 when it limped to No 72 in the charts. The ‘94 version made it a trio of releases for the track. Not to be outdone, “Things Can Only Get Better” racked up four goes at the chart. It had already been a hit earlier in ‘93 (it can’t have made it into the show) when it peaked at No 24. Then came that No 1 a year later, a No 19 placing in ‘97 due to the election and then a final release in 2014 (not sure why) when it peaked at No 66. Phew!

Oh and in an interview in the Belfast Telegraph last year, Cunnah said that he’d broken his foot once but that was it and he’d been injury free for most of his life. The things you can find out online!

I’m kind of surprised that the next artist got granted a full performance slot on the show rather than a place in the Breakers. Not because I don’t think they were any good (I always liked them) but because they seemed to be going through a difficult, experimental phase that wasn’t bringing in the big hits. Deacon Blue’s last six singles had resulted in just one Top 10 hit with all but one of the rest not cracking the Top 20. Now you could argue in their defence that they were more of an album band than a singles one but even their album sales were in decline. Their current album at this time (“Whatever You Say, Say Nothing”) wasn’t a disaster commercially but it certainly sold less than all its predecessors.

“Only Tender Love” was the latest single taken from it to try and boost its fortunes but I don’t think it was ever up to the task. It’s a bit overwrought and laboured and the band’s performance here doesn’t help as they seem to be taking it all far too seriously. Where had the band that had whooped it up on “Real Gone Kid” gone?

“Only Tender Love” made it to No 22 whilst one final single from the album peaked one place higher. A Greatest Hits album appeared the following year and actually went to No 1 which made the relative failures of their singles even less fathomable.

Tony Dortie is giving it the big ‘un in the intro to the penultimate act on tonight’s show and why not? After all she had recently signed a recording contract with Virgin worth between $32 and $50 million. It made her the world’s highest paid recording artist at the time. I talk of Janet Jackson of course who had fulfilled her obligations to A&M which left her free to sign to Virgin. I recall there being a big fuss about all of this at the time which only heightened the expectations of her first material with her new record company. “That’s The Way Love Goes” didn’t disappoint Virgin as it went to No 1 in the US for eight weeks. Not a bad initial return on their investment. To date it holds the record for the most weeks at the top of the charts for any single released by a member of the Jackson family. It fell one place short of repeating that chart position in the UK.

The track had a much smoother R&B feel to it than some of the harder sounds from her last album “Rhythm Nation 1814” like “Miss You Much”, “Black Cat” and the title track. The lead single reflected the more sensual nature of parent album “Janet”. Just in case anybody was still in any doubt of Janet’s new direction, then the picture on the back cover of her naked from the waist up with her breasts cupped from an unseen man’s hands from behind her surely made it clear.

As with much of Janet’s work, the track was produced by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and featured that sample from “Impeach The President” by The Honey Drippers that I mentioned in the last post. As for injuries resulting in broken limbs, I’m not aware of anything in particular relating to Janet but there was of course that Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction incident in 2004 otherwise known as ‘nipplegate’.

It’s the last of four weeks at No 1 for The Bluebells with “Young At Heart”. It’s as if the band knew the game was up and have decided to go out with a bang as they’re all dressed in white top hats and tails. The set is like a scene from a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers film complete with cane wielding dancers.

Although a Singles Collection album was released to cash in on the renewed interest in the band, nothing else from their back catalogue was rereleased which I think demonstrates the band’s relaxed attitude to their unexpected second go at pop success. As much as I would have loved to see “I’m Falling” and “Cath” back in the charts, I think it was the right decision to literally make it a one off exercise.

The band still perform sporadically at specific events including supporting Edwyn Collins at a 2009 Glasgow gig.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Voice Of The Beehive and Jimmy Somerville	Gimme Shelter	I didn’t
2	Whitney Houston	I Have Nothing	Nope
3	New Order	Regret	I regret that I did not
4	Silk	Freak Me	Never happening
5	Sub Sub featuring Melanie Williams	Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use)	See 3 above
6	Midnight Oil	Truganini	No
7	Dance 2 Trance	Power Of American Natives	Not my bag at all
8	Sting	Seven Days	Nah
9	D:Ream	U R The Best Thing	Negative
10	Deacon Blue	Only Tender Love	No but I have that ’94 Greatest Hits album with it on
11	Janet Jackson	That’s The Way Love Goes	Didn’t do much for me
12	The Bluebells	Young At Heart	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/m0019mbq/top-of-the-pops-22041993

TOTP 15 APR 1993

Posted on July 31, 2022 by 80stastic

Sometimes I genuinely feel sorry for the kids of today. Sure they’ve got stuff that we never had thanks to the developments of technology – mobile phones and the internet alongside platforms like Spotify have given them access to endless swathes of music at the touch of a button. On the other side of the coin though there’s cyber bullying and trolling and a relentless stream of images of what they are told they should look like. Plus, of course, we didn’t have to go through a global pandemic as kids and teenagers – we still don’t know the full extent of the damage to their collective mental health that COVID lockdown and associated restrictions has caused.

If that all sounds a bit heavy for a blog about TOTP then fear not – I’m not talking about any of that. No, I’m talking about the fact that they never experienced the joy of watching Saturday morning kids TV, not properly anyway. Yes, these days they have their own dedicated TV channels showing programmes designed to appeal to their age groups leaving the schedules for BBC and ITV clear to be filled with cooking shows. That’s not right though is it? When I was a kid, Saturday mornings involved choosing between Tiswas and Multi Coloured Swap Shop – the anarchic fun of Chris Tarrant, Lenny Henry and the object of many a schoolboy crush Sally James or the more respectable and bigger budgeted entertainment offered by Noel Edmonds, Cheggers and Maggie Philbin. I wonder if the BBC won the ratings war in the end? After all, their presenting trio even had a hit record as Brown Sauce with “I Wanna Be A Winner”.

As the 70s gave way to the 80s, both shows were replaced. The new vehicles were Saturday Superstore (basically a continuation of Swap Shop) on BBC1 and No 73 (with its legendary Sandwich Quiz section) on ITV. Five to six years seemed to be the shelf life of these shows and so in 1987 Saturday Superstore was no more being usurped by Going Live and it’s that show that is the reason for this intro as two days after this TOTP aired, the 179th and final ever episode of it aired after a run of six years. Hosted by Philip Schofield and Sarah Greene, it saw me through many a hungover Saturday morning as a student but by the 90s I was working every weekend at Our Price and so rarely saw it. The pop star guests that would come on the show would be very much of the mainstream variety and usually those who would have a large teen fanbase like Bros or A-ha but they sometimes had artists a bit less obvious on like Squeeze and Transvision Vamp. After the show’s finale, it was replaced just six months later by Live And Kicking which was exactly the same format but with different presenters. It would run for a very solid eight years but couldn’t compete in the end with Ant and Dec’s SMTV Live. There’s a good chance some of the acts on this TOTP appeared on Going Live. Let’s see…

We start with East 17 who my research tells me were on Going Live just two weeks before the final episode, presumably performing this single “Slow It Down”. I wonder if they did it like this then? This performance must surely go down in the annals of TOTP history as one of the most awkwardly staged appearances by a group ever! What were the other two blokes doing in the background?! Were they have meant to have ‘slowed down’ so much that they’d actually stopped?! They were literally just sat around twiddling- one with a keyboard and the other with a microphone. If mobile phones had been invented then, they would have had those as props instead. Talk about sidelining! They were always seen as ‘the other two’ who did nothing anyway so this really wasn’t helping their profiles. Who decided on this arrangement? Their management? Were there plans afoot to ditch Terry Coldwell and John Hendy (to refer to them by their proper names and avoid accusations of sidelining myself) and relaunch the band as a duo? It looks so deliberate. Why did they go along with it?!

Their nemesis Take That also had a couple of members in Jason Orange and Howard Donald who were very much seen as ‘the dancers’ in the group’s early days but they were never subjected to public humiliation like this! Take That always seemed a tight unit (until the Gary Barlow / Robbie Williams tension split the band) with each member having fan attention of their own but poor old Terry and John always seemed superfluous to say the least.

As for the song itself, “Slow It Down” always seemed a poor choice of single being nowhere near as accomplished as “Deep” or later single “It’s Alright”. Supposedly it’s about sex (slow it down, don’t rush it – geddit?) but that probably went over the heads of the younger elements of their fanbase.

“Slow It Down” came to a halt at No 13.

As far as I can tell, Dr. Alban never appeared on Going Live – maybe the Tampax ad association scared the producers off – but many a ‘doctor’ has been on TOTP before. There was Dr Hook and Dr. Feelgood in the 70s, Doctor and the Medics and Dr. Robert of The Blow Monkeys in the 80s and tons of songs that featured a doctor. Just off the top of my head there’s “Doctor Doctor” by The Thompson Twins, “Dr. Beat” by Miami Sound Machine and “Doctorin’ The TARDIS” by The Timelords. Any and all of these (and it’s not a great list is it?) are preferable to my ears to Dr. Alban and his song “Sing Hallelujah!”. I mean just listen to him! His voice is so flat and monotonous. Then after you’ve finished listening to him, look at him. Have you ever seen such a spiritless, passionless and lifeless performer? He just aimlessly wanders around the stage, occasionally shrugging his shoulders as some sort of substitute for a dance move and even nips around the back of his gospel choir a couple of times as if he’s trying to hide from the camera. Staggeringly awful.

“Sing Hallelujah!” peaked at No 16.

Duran Duran seemed to be on Saturday Superstore every other week around ‘82 to ‘84 but I’m not sure if they were ever on Going Live as that show’s run coincided with a downturn in the band’s commercial fortunes. By the time they were reviving with “Ordinary World” and the “Wedding Album”, Going Live was nearly dead. “Come Undone” wasn’t though and kept their rejuvenating success going by rising to No 13.

The video has the guys seemingly reverting to their New Romantics heyday with ruffled shirts and frilly sleeves on display. I’d always wanted Simon Le Bon’s hair when I was a callow youth but had failed dismally to recreate it. However, his 1993 locks never seemed to suit him, like he was in between styles and in a constant state of growing out a haircut gone wrong.

“Come Undone” was followed by a third single from the album called “Too Much Information” which I thought was great but it only made No 35 on the UK charts. For shame.

There’s no way that Cappella were ever on Going Live surely? How would the public phone-in have worked? Would anybody have been arsed to ask them a question? The only one I would want to ask them is “Why?”

“U Got To Know” peaked at No 6.

Now this next bloke was on twice in the early days of Going Live. Terence Trent D’Arby appeared in Episode No 4 in October ‘97 and episode No 16 in January’ 88. This would have been in his first and most successful period of his career after he burst onto the pop scene with his eight million selling debut album “Introducing The Hardline According To Terence Trent D’Arby”. The album spawned four hit singles. I’m guessing that he was promoting the third and fourth of those on his Going Live appearances – “Dance Little Sister” and “Sign Your Name” with the latter only missing the top of the charts by one place.

What followed two years later has come to be seen as possibly the most infamous example of career sabotage ever. Sophomore album “Neither Fish Nor Flesh” was nothing like its super commercial predecessor. It produced zero hit singles, it spent a paltry four weeks on the charts (“Introducing The Hardline According To…” spent nine weeks at No 1 in comparison) and was widely regarded as self indulgent tosh. Now I’ve never heard any of it so I’m just repeating what I’ve read about it but then the fact that I’ve never heard a single minute of the album speaks volumes of its inability to resonate with pop music fans. By way of contrast, I reckon it would only take 15 minutes of listening to a retro 80s radio station before you would hear “Sign Your Name”. Terence himself says of the album that it was “the project that literally killed TTD and from those molten ashes began the life of Sananda”. Ah yes, I’m sure you know this but D’Arby goes by the name of Sananda Maitreya these days. Although his new identity has no religious significance, Maitreya believes it means ‘rebirth’ in Sanskrit.

His version of the story of his name change doesn’t quite tell the whole story though as he released a further two albums as TTD before taking on his new identity. The first of these was 1993’s “Symphony Or Damn” the lead single of which was “Do You Love Me Like You Say”. The first of four hits from the album, I have to say I don’t remember this one much. It sounds like a song in search of a tune, trying a bit too hard to be a knockout track without finding that crucial punch. There’s a lot going on in it but none of it is very cohesive. Terence / Sananda looks every inch the star up there though, like a soul brother to Lenny Kravitz’s rock persona.

A No 14 hit was a very respectable return to the charts though. The album made the Top 10 and featured a few good tracks like “She Kissed Me” and the theme song from the Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer film Frankie And Johnny which my manager Ian at the Our Price store in Rochdale loved.

It’s that time again! Four Breakers this week starting with a song that would become one of the most well known of this band’s entire catalogue of work despite being the fourth single released from an album that had been out for six months by this point. “Everybody Hurts” is the song and the band is, of course, REM. Written to offer understanding and hope to those with suicidal thoughts, it’s an understated yet powerful piece with Michael Stipe’s vocal completely on point. Many critics used the word ‘melancholy’ in their descriptions of the track which it is but the crucial element to its success is that it wasn’t ‘maudlin’. It was pure and people could identify with it for that very reason.

The video was shot by Ridley Scott’s son Jake and although the band are in it, there’s virtually no performance element to their appearance. Instead they are sat in a traffic jam with the camera picking out other drivers and car passengers whilst their inner thoughts are displayed on screen via subtitles. It sounds as boring as hell but it’s actually very affecting and if you watch to the very end, there’s an even bigger pay off.

“Everybody Hurts” peaked at No 7 in the UK, their second biggest ever hit after “Shiny Happy People” which in many ways was the exact antithesis of the song.

My God, Rod Stewart was all over the charts at this time. “Shotgun Wedding” was the third single taken from his curious compilation album “Lead Vocalist” which was a combination of songs from his own back catalogue (including his work with The Faces) and cover versions. This song was written by one Roy C who may not be a familiar name (he wasn’t to me) but he was actually a great musical influencer. How come? Well, Roy C (Roy Charles Hammond in full) wrote a song called “Impeach The President” that was recorded by The Honey Drippers in response to President Nixon and the Watergate affair. That song included a distinctive drum pattern that would become the template that was used by every big name you can think of in the hip-hop / R&B field. I’m talking Public Enemy, N.W.A, LL Cool J, De La Soul, Ice Cube, 2Pac, TLC etc etc.

See what I mean? Anyway, “Shotgun Wedding” was another of Roy’s tunes. Here’s his original set to a scene from The Monkees for some reason:

Rod’s version is predictably vile and soulless yet it still made it to No 21 in the charts. One month after this single, he released his “Unplugged…And Seated” MTV album that would go to No 2 in the UK. Like I said, he was all over the charts like a cheap (wedding) suit at this time.

The Prodigy are up next with a fifth single from their debut album “Experience” none of which – including this one “Wind It Up (Rewound)” – peaked lower than No 11. Quite a feat. I kind of get the impression though that this one was released just to maintain their profile in between albums. There was nearly two years separating “Experience” and “Music For The Jilted Generation” with the first single from the latter not due to appear for another six months from now.

A radically different remix of the album version, this release would signal the end of the band’s ‘kiddie rave’ era and they would reject that formula in favour of a commitment to pioneering dance music with next release “One Love”.

Now I’m pretty sure none of the Breakers so far ever appeared on Going Live and the final band in this section were unlikely to change that sequence. New Order had of course been on TOTP just last week in the now legendary Baywatch performance but this week we get the official video for the “Regret” single. Apparently labelled by bassist Peter Hook as “the last good New Order song”, it would also be the band’s last Top 5 hit.

Having checked the schedule, I can see they are on the show again next week as well so I’ll leave it here for this one except to say that the video is exceedingly dull (though I think it’s meant to be arty) and I’d rather have watched the oddity of the Baywatch performance again.

If it’s April then there must be a whiff of Eurovision in the air and indeed there is with the next act being the UK’s entry for 1993. This year we’d all known for a while that Sonia was our official entrant though we didn’t know what song she’d be singing until six days before this TOTP aired. You see, in the weeks before, Sonia appeared in four separate preview programmes in which she showcased two potential songs that would go forward as the UK entry. A Song For Europe was broadcast on April 9th and a viewer vote determined the winner. The track that came out on top won easily and so it was that “Better The Devil You Know” was picked as Sonia’s song. Nothing to do with Kylie, this track was written by Brian Teasdale and Dean Collision and here’s a young Dean aged 10 playing guitar with Burt Weedon and then 21 in his own pop group Blue (not them) again, improbably, with Burt Weedon. Apologies in advance for the glimpses of Sa-vile:

Why am I going out of my way to make a big thing of Dean Collinson? Well, in her youth orchestra days as a teenager, my wife knew him. Not very well but there paths crossed due to that musical connection. That’s the whole story. Not very interesting but a story nonetheless.

Anyway, Sonia and Dean (and that Brian bloke) were the team flying the flag for the UK in Ireland and a pretty good job they did too coming in second with 164 points behind the winners Ireland (yep, them again). What was the song like you ask? Oh, it was awful – a horrible, plastic sham of a mockery of an attempt to sound like “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go” (Collinson even admitted that had been his intention). It made it to No 16 in the UK charts.

Oh and though I was sure that Sonia was absolutely the type of pop star that was perfect for a spot on Going Live, I can only find one instance of her on the show when she appeared remotely for the Video Vote section.

Ah, finally! Despite being a going concern since 1986, World Party are finally on TOTP! That it took so long is plain criminal. So many great singles had come and gone – “Private Revolution”, “Ship Of Fools”, “Way Down Now” and their one and only Top 40 entry to this point at No 39 “Message In The Box” and yet none had resulted in a hit big enough to warrant a performance on the show. Suddenly and unexpectedly there was “Is It Like Today” peaking inside the Top 20 at No 19. That wasn’t all. Parent album “Bang!” was a No 2 hit. Their previous album “Goodbye Jumbo” had got no higher than No 36 despite being named Q Magazine’s album of the year. What had changed? Well, rather than just being the name of a vehicle for prime mover Karl Wallinger, World Party were now a proper band with David Carlin-Birch and ex-Icicle Works drummer Chris Sharrock becoming permanent and full time members. Even so, it was quite the turnaround.

As quickly as the success had come, so it also left. The album spawned just one other Top 40 hit (the No 37 peaking “All I Gave”) and World Party retreated to the world of critical acclaim but small commercial inroads. Wallinger saw the royalties roll in when Robbie Williams covered his song “She’s The One” but most people believed it was written by either Williams or song writing partner Guy Chambers (who helped produce the original) including my Robbie worshiping sister. Wallinger suffered an aneurysm in 2001 but recovered to tour again. That I never saw them live despite their playing Sunderland Poly whilst I was studying there remains an eternal embarrassment to me.

Oh and as for appearing on Going Live, it seems unlikely given their struggles to get on TOTP.

The Bluebells still have command of the No 1 spot with “Young At Heart”. After the original 1984 video was aired last week, they’re back in the studio this week and have clearly put some thought into what they would do. The result was The Bluebells disco complete with record decks and something I’ve never seen at any wedding reception disco I’ve been to, a quartet of female backing dancers. This is the show where we they did the ‘Shabba!’ shout out that we all found hilarious at the time but I’m not sure it’s aged that well. The 2 Unlimited parody didn’t either.

P.S. Has Karl Wallinger copied Bobby Bluebell’s hairstyle or was it the other way round?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	East 17	Slow It Down	No but my wife had the Walthamstow album
2	Dr. Alban	Sing Hallelujah!	As if
3	Duran Duran	Come Undone	Not the single but I have it on a Greatest hits CD
4	Cappella	U Got To Know	Never happening
5	Terence Trent D’Arby	Do You Love Me Like You Say	No
6	REM	Everybody Hurts	No but I had the Automatic For The People album
7	Rod Stewart	Shotgun Wedding	NO!
8	The Prodigy	Wind It Up (Rewound)	Nah
9	New Order	Regret	I regret I didn’t but I should have
10	Sonia	Better The Devil You Know	It wasn’t better. I knew Sonia and I was never buying her single
11	World Party	Is It Like Today?	No but I have their Best In Show CD with it on
12	The Bluebells	Young At Heart	Nope

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0019mbn/top-of-the-pops-15041993

TOTP 08 APR 1993

Posted on July 27, 2022 by 80stastic

Right, I haven’t done this for a while and it doesn’t always go down well as this is a music blog but I’m just going to delve quickly into what was happening in the football in April 1993 as I have a specific memory of this time. The race for the very first Premier League title is hotting up as Manchester United, Aston Villa and surprisingly Norwich City are all in with a shout. It’s all a bit nip and tuck with United just behind Villa as they head into the weekend fixtures two days after this TOTP aired. I’m working in the Our Price store in Rochdale still and around 4.30 ish on a Saturday I would find some reason to nip upstairs into the back room where the shop radio was located to try and catch the last bit of action and results from the footy. This Saturday was no exception and the big game being covered was Man Utd against Sheffield Wednesday. It’s a crucial game in the title race and United find themselves 0-1 down late into the game – a disaster for their title challenge if the score stays the same.

Meanwhile, in another North Western Our Price store (Bury I think) is one Mick Jones. I knew Mick from when he worked in the other Manchester store in Piccadilly whilst I was down the road in Market Street. Mick was/is a big United fan but he had a problem that day – he had no access to finding out the score. Now this sounds ridiculous in 2022 where everything is at our fingertips and available on our mobile phones. Need to know the score? No problem- there’s plenty of score update apps available or there’s the goals as they go in coverage of shows like Sky Sports’ Soccer Saturday with Jeff Stelling or the BBC’s Final Score with Jason Mohammad. Back in 1993, such resources were not around and so we all relied on the good old radio. Sadly, poor old Mick couldn’t get a signal for the shop radio where he was and so was left completely in the dark.

Somehow I became aware of his predicament (a phone call about work presumably) and, taking pity on him, was phoning him up with score updates. As the game reached the 86th minute and with United still behind, an unlikely saviour appeared in the shape of centre back Steve Bruce. A header from a Dennis Irwin cross pulled United level and so I was straight on the blower to Mick. Relief but they really needed a win. In the final minute Bruce did it again and I was back in the phone with the good news for Mick. Salvation and although it wasn’t my team Chelsea winning (we lost 0-1 at Southampton that day), I felt like I had been a Good Samaritan at least with my score update service. The win sent United top and they would stay there until the end of the season winning their first league title for 26 years.

The football theme continues (very tenuously) with the first band on tonight’s show who are called Sub Sub (geddit?). Their single “Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use)” was one of those records that had no choice but to be a massive hit. Imprinted on your brain from the very first hearing it was immensely immediate and yet also had a baked in credibility courtesy of being released on the Rob’s Records label. Rob, of course, was the late Rob Gretton, former manager of Joy Division and New Order and co founder of Factory Records. I’m pretty sure that a work colleague called Paul introduced me to this track as he was intent on buying anything that the label released. Their other acts included Mr Scruff and A Certain Ratio.

Anyway, Sub Sub were brothers Andy and Jez Williams and school friend Jimi Goodwin who had become regulars at the legendary Manchester club The Haçienda in the early 90s and were inspired to record music of their own. Their 12” single “Space Face” was an underground club hit but it was “Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use) that the band’s name would become associated with. And what a tune to be known for! A retro disco sound that sounded box fresh at the same time featuring Philly soul strings, wah-wah guitar and the vocals of Melanie Williams, it was just impossible to ignore. That lolloping bass line was courtesy of a record the Williams brothers won at a fair (no really) and it was this from the musical Hair (you can hear it if you listen closely enough)…

Sub Sub went to No 3 and stayed inside the Top 10 for six weeks. I could have sworn that the record came out in 1994 but here I am showing that my memory isn’t what it once was again. Now I was very careful with my words earlier when I said that “Ain’t No Love Ain’t No Use)” was what Sub Sub are best remembered for as the Williams brothers and Jimi Goodwin are surely more well known for something else. After a fire burnt down their recording studio in 1996, they literally rose from the ashes and reinvented themselves as rock band The Doves who would go onto have three No 1 albums and score hit singles like “There Goes The Fear” and “Pounding”.

It’s the Sybil video for “When I’m Good And Ready” that gets to soundtrack the Top 40 rundown to No 11 this week. This is the third time this song has been on the show so I’m kind of out of things to say about it. The normally reliable @TOTPFacts has taken the week off as well so I can’t even pinch any of his content.

Erm…how about this? Twelve years on, Sybil performed on the ITV show Hit Me Baby One More Time which showcased pop stars of yesteryear singing their biggest hits alongside a cover of a (then) contemporary song. The watching TV audience voted for a weekly winner to go through to the grand final. In her heat, Sybil was up against Kelly Marie of “Feels Like I’m In Love” fame, the lead singer from Cutting Crew, those three Cleopatra girls and Chesney Hawkes. The winner? Nobody but nobody could defeat the legend that is Chesney Hawkes! If you’re interested though (and I’m certainly not) here’s Sybil doing her contemporary cover of Shania Twain’s “I’m Gonna Getcha Good!”…

Another song we’ve seen before next as Jade are back in the studio to perform their hit “Don’t Walk Away”. I can’t find a clip of this performance but it’s almost identical to the previous one even down to the long white drapes set. The only difference is that the trio have black, customised hot pants on this time as opposed to full length black leggings.

This uniformity didn’t translate into everlasting unity though. After the group petered out in 1997, the three members formed their own careers. However, when a reunion was planned last year as part of a retro concert called 90s Kickback, original lead vocalist Di Reed wasn’t invited to perform. No explanation was given by her former band mates Tonya Kelly and Joi Marshall who instead recruited one time The Voice contestant Myracle Holloway and rebranded themselves as ‘The Ladies Of Jade’. Attempts by Reed to contact Kelly and Marshall went unanswered and Reed was said to be considering action about the legality of her band mates use of the name Jade but remained hopeful it wouldn’t come to that. It all sounds a bit Spandau Ballet/ Bucks Fizz esque to me where they all ended up in court. I guess it just goes to show that bands of the longevity and democratic nature like U2 are the exception and not the rule.

Woah! Wasn’t expecting this! David Essex on TOTP in 1993! Right, I need to fess up straight away that I love David Essex mainly due to his starring role in the two wonderful films That’ll Be The Day and Stardust which are two of my favourite movies of all time. He’s also made some great pop tunes and seems like a thoroughly decent sort. By the 90s though, the hits had dried up. Indeed his last Top 40 appearance had been in 1985 with “Falling Angels Riding”. So why was he suddenly back on the show? Well, it was due to an unexpected hit album called “Cover Shot” which was, unsurprisingly, a covers album that, with the aid of a TV ad campaign, would rise to No 3 in the charts, his biggest hit since his mid 70s heyday. The album featured some fairly uninspired choices of songs by the likes of The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, Cat Stevens and this one – “Here Comes The Night” by Van Morrison’s band Them.

Despite my stated admiration of Essex, I have to admit this isn’t his finest hour. His distinctive voice just about holds up but the whole thing felt like a big anachronism in 1993. David still had his long locks back then but never mind his barnet, check out the mahoosive mullet on his bass player. He still thought it was 1985 apparently. I’m glad David found some success at this time but I just wish it had been with a better project.

Wasn’t Robin S on the same show with Sybil the other week as well? I think she was. Back then, Sybil had a trio of backing dancers/singers to enhance her performance whilst Robin S took to the stage in complete solitude. This time however, she seems to have half inched Sybil’s entourage as she’s now got three dancers behind her. I wonder how the logistics of these things were decided upon? How was it deemed OK for Robin S to have no backing singers one week but three the next? Who sorted all this stuff out? The TOTP production team? The artist’s management? The label? Whatever the mechanics behind it all, “Show Me Love” was up to No 6 which would be its peak position despite this performance.

The Breakers section is jam packed with four tunes this week meaning each of them hardly get any airtime at all. As with the thought process behind the number of backing singers earlier, I wonder how the amount of Breakers was worked out each week? Sometimes it’s as low as two and I’m sure it’s been as high as five on occasion. Was it all just down to Head Producer Stanley Appel to have the casting vote?

However it was worked out, Dr. Alban was the first artist to make the cut this week. Yes, “It’s My Life” wasn’t the only hit he had. There was another one but only one. “Sing Hallelujah!” was its name and it was actually a hit on four separate occasions around Europe including in Hungary this year. In the UK though, once was enough and no wonder as this was a steaming pile of horseshit. I think the thing about the good doctor was that he was actually a really bad rapper. His voice was monotone and he garbled his words. This track had a gospel choir added to some perfunctory Italian house piano lines which we were somehow expected to be wowed by. Hadn’t (MC) Hammer already done that trick with the infinitely better “Do Not Pass Me By”?

“Sing Hallelujah!” made it to No 16 on the UK charts but surely Dr Alban’s legacy is his association with a Tampax advert.

Not only do we have David Essex on the show tonight but there’s also one of his 70s contemporaries. Yes, after last week’s in the flesh performance, Barry Manilow has crashed into the charts at No 22 with “Copacabana (At The Copa) 1993 Remix”.

Copacabana is of course a real place being a neighbourhood located in the Brazilian city of Rio De Janeiro and is famed for its 2.5 miles of beaches . Its New Year’s Eve celebrations are renowned across the world and in 1994 included a concert by Rod Stewart that was attended by…this can’t be right surely?…3.5 million people!

As for Manilow , Bazza’s no slouch in the touring department. Wikipedia lists twenty seven tours in his own right not including residency shows nor his early career stints as the opening act for the likes of Helen Reddy and Roberta Flack.

Encouraged by the success of the “Copacabana” remix, a follow up single was released, this time a remix of “Could It Be Magic” which grazed the charts at No 36. Maybe in 1993, people had become to used to the Take That version? This was Barry’s last UK Top 40 entry. Similarly, David Essex would only have one more visit to the charts in 1994 when a duet with Catherine Zeta Jones covering “True Love Ways” made No 38. Both would continue to be big live draws to this day though.

Next to a legendary US rock band but one which had a curious relationship with the UK charts. My knowledge of Aerosmith was non-existent until 1986 saw them team up with Run-DMC for their genre-bending hit “Walk This Way” but in my defence, they’d never had a song in the UK Top 40 to that point. That hit revitalised their career in the US and they released their “Permanent Vacation” album to commercial and critical success the following year.

Meanwhile, back in the UK we had returned to our habit of steadfastly ignoring them. None of the singles from “Permanent Vacation” were hits here. Fast forward a couple of years and we finally saw fit to give them another hit in the form of “Love In An Elevator” which was taken from the “Pump” album and which made No 13. After that had been and gone though, we reverted to type and ignored all the other singles from the album. As the new decade dawned, UK record buyers decided that maybe we’d made a mistake in not buying some of their previous stuff and so a rerelease from the “Permanent Vacation” album became a Top 20 hit. That song was “Dude (Looks Like A Lady)” and was possibly rereleased off the back of it featuring heavily in the Robin Williams movie Mrs Doubtfire. And so to 1993 and it was time to indulge Steven Tyler, Joe Perry et al in another hit single. This time it was “Livin’ On The Edge” from the album “Get A Grip”. Was that the one with the cow’s udders on the cover?

*checks Wikipedia*

Yeah, thought it was. Anyway, the single was written in response to the Los Angeles riots incited by the acquittal of the white police officers who beat black motorist Rodney King. Nearly thirty years later and the world was to witness such tragic scenes again in America with the killing of George Floyd. Aerosmith had already made their position clear on the political and societal mood in the country that the Donald Trump era had ushered in when they sent a cease and desist letter to the president after “Livin’ On The Edge” had been played at one of his rallies in 2018. Good on ‘em.

As for how the song sounded, it didn’t seem too dissimilar to “Love In An Elevator” to me but it was criticised in the press for sounding too much like Bon Jovi! The single made No 19 at which point the UK decided it did rather like Aerosmith after all and made five of the six singles released from “Get A Grip” Top 40 hits. We seemed to have taken the album’s title to heart.

The final Breaker sees the the Lazarus like return of Duran Duran carry on at a pace with the release of “Come Undone” which would furnish the band with another hit following the surprise success of “Ordinary World”. A further example of their new, mature yet radio friendly sound, it wasn’t as immediate as its predecessor to my ears but became a rapidly established ear worm once heard a few times.

The track was actually a very late addition to their eponymous album referred to as the “Wedding Album” and was cooked up musically by Nick Rhodes and Warren Cuccurullo with the lyrics hastily developed by Simon Le Bon. I always quite liked the line “Happy Birthday to you was created for you” a lyric that Le Bon literally inserted as it was his wife Yasmin’s birthday at the time. Despite appearances to the contrary in the video, apparently John Taylor doesn’t play on the track as the bass line was created by a synth in his absence.

As I write this, the band have just played at the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games in their home city of Birmingham. Not everyone was watching though. Here’s comedian Mark Lamarr…

I'm reliving my youth tonight. Ah, those wonderful nights throughout the 80s when I avoided watching Duran Duran at all costs. Takes me right back.
— Mark Lamarr (@lamarr_mark) July 28, 2022

Harsh! If you follow the thread, Lamarr doesn’t hold back on his dislike of the band. “Come Undone” peaked at No 13 in the UK and No 7 in the US.

Wait! What? There was more than one hit from The Beloved’s “Conscience” album? I’ve been thinking these past thirty years that only “Sweet Harmony” had made the charts but here’s indisputable proof that I was wrong. “You’ve Got Me Thinking” made No 23 and was actually a double A-side with “Celebrate Your Life” (which I had no idea about either). Watching this performance back though, I’m realising that it’s quite the tune. Understated yet hypnotic, it perfectly fits Jon Marsh’s idiosyncratic vocal style. Yes, the performance is hardly scintillating with everyone on stage sat down throughout but that kind of feels right for such a blissed out tune somehow. A nice little find I think which you don’t get to say too often in these TOTP repeats.

To rack up one infamous TOTP appearance would be enough for most bands but two? I guess New Order weren’t most bands. Their 1983 appearance on the show to perform “Blue Monday” live has become almost legendary and will often appear on those When TV Goes Wrong list type programmes. It was a shambles but the band’s reputation came out of it intact on account of them being seen as edgy, daring heroes for trying to subvert the show’s by then stuffy, established format. Fast forward ten years and they were back with another turn that would go down in the annals of TV history for being…well…just bizarre.

After the collapse of the aforementioned Factory Records in 1992, New Order signed with London Records, something they were able to do without impediment as they didn’t actually have a formal contract with Factory. Indeed, the reason that a proposed buy out of Factory by London failed to happen was due to the fact that Factory didn’t own their artists’ material. The first release on their new label (indeed their first since “World In Motion” in 1990) was “Regret”. The lead single from their sixth studio album “Republic”, it’s surely one of their most well known songs thanks in part to that distinctive, stop start intro. It easily fitted into daytime radio playlists just as “True Faith” had done six years earlier and ended up being a huge hit when it peaked at No 4.

But aside from all that, there was this…the TOTP performance from Venice Beach, LA on the set of Baywatch. What. The. F**k? How did this happen? Well, the band were touring America in support of the album and wanted to keep the single selling as it was helping to get their Haçienda nightclub out of the financial shit. TOTP were always keen on a performance they could promote as an exclusive and so the band plotted and planned about what was the most extreme and ludicrous setting they could come up with for their appearance. They settled on the TV series Baywatch, a show as ludicrous as New Order’s proposal. Most of the cast bailed out that day except one man, a man of no inconsiderable musical career himself – David ‘The Hoff’ Hasselhoff. Rumours abound (though denied by the band) that he wanted to somehow join in musically with the performance – possibly the only thing that could have made the whole shebang even more out there. As it was, the sight of four pasty skinned Mancs miming next to extras in thong bikinis on a golden beach with frisbees flying about and a game of volleyball going on behind them was ludicrous enough. I’m sure I read somewhere that The Hoff proved to be a lovely guy and when some photos were taken with the band afterwards for posterity, he stood in a hole dug in the sand so as not to tower over the band too much.

Did I think the performance was mad at the time? Probably not. I probably just foolishly thought well, David Hasselhoff is famous and New Order are famous so why wouldn’t they know each other? With the hindsight of thirty years, it was all clearly bonkers!

It’s a second week at the top for The Bluebells and “Young At Heart” but instead of being in the studio as they have been on both previous appearances, we get the video this week. I actually like the fact that they didn’t bother making an updated promo and we just get the original from 1984, Clare Grogan and all. There’s also a cameo from Scottish actress Molly Weir who would have been known back in 1984 for her role as Hazel the McWitch in barmy childrens show Rentaghost. In 1993, I doubt she would have been as widely recognised. And is that Craig Gannon in the band line up who would go onto replace Andy Rourke in The Smiths briefly and whom Morrissey would label as ‘undiscussable’? I think it is.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Sub Sub	Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use)	Thought I did but singles box says no
2	Sybil	When I’m Good And Ready	Nah
3	Jade	Don’t Walk Away	No
4	David Essex	Here Comes The Night	Not released as a single
5	Robin S	Show Me Love	Not my bag
6	Dr. Alban	Sing Hallelujah!	Never happening
7	Barry Manilow	Copacabana (At The Copa) 1993 Remix	Nope
8	Aerosmith	Livin’ On The Edge	Negative
9	Duran Duran	Come Undone	No but I have it on something I think
10	The Beloved	You’ve Got Me Thinking	No but it’s a lost gem
11	New Order	Regret	No but I regret it now
12	The Bluebells	Young At Heart	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/m0019dvp/top-of-the-pops-08041993

TOTP 01 APR 1993

Posted on July 24, 2022 by 80stastic

We’re up to April Fool’s Day 1993 in our BBC4 TOTP repeats but in a surprising turn of events, the biggest prank pulled that year actually came two days later when the Grand National that never was happened. This was the year of the false start that the majority of the field hadn’t realised had been called and therefore carried on running. Seven of the field even finished the race. I had that Saturday off work for some reason and as me and my wife walked into Manchester City centre, we popped into a Ladbrokes on the way to watch the race – I’m guessing I must have put a bet on. It was a weird experience with the committed gamblers all going crazy about whether the result would stand or would/could the race be rerun and if so, when. They were all to be disappointed as it was eventually declared void with the Jockey Club deciding that it couldn’t be rerun and the bookies had to refund an estimated £75 million in bets staked. As I said, a surprising turn of events. I wonder if tonight’s TOTP has any surprising turns on it?

We start with a tune that could possibly be the moment when Italian House music morphed into Eurodance. Or something. Look, I’m no expert on dance music despite working in record shops for the whole of the 90s just about. What I do know is that Cappella were Italian and they had first come to prominence during the late 80s when Italian House music was in its pomp, brought to the masses by huge hits like “Ride On Time” by Black Box. They had a UK hit of their own when “Helyom Halib” peaked at No 11. It took three years for them to feature in our charts again when they returned to that Black Box blueprint and sampled Loleatta Holloway’s “Love Sensation” on their Top 30 single “Take Me Away”.

This stealing other people’s work to grab a hit of your own idea obviously appealed to the guys behind Cappella (actually just one guy essentially, producer Gianfranco Bortolotti) as it happened again for this hit “U Got 2 Know”. Taking the riff from “Happy House” by Siouxsie and the Banshees and completely butchering it to make it fit into a Eurodance anthem was crime enough but they compounded that by not crediting Siouxsie and Steve Severin and ended up getting sued. Good!

“U Got 2 Know” managed to crash the Top 10 despite its legal issues and they would follow it up with the No 2 hit “U Got 2 Let The Music”. Cappella there creating texting language years before we knew what it was.

Nothing very surprising about the next artist being on the show as Madonna was one of the most famous people on the planet at the time. Does she still hold that status in 2022? I don’t know how you measure these things. Back in 1993 though, she seemed to have a new single out every other week. This latest one “Fever” was the fourth of five tracks taken from her “Erotica” album. A cover of the old Peggy Lee hit, it would continue Madonna’s run of Top 10 hits from the album by peaking at No 6. Despite that consistency of success, I hadn’t liked any of them that much. The one I did have time for hadn’t been released yet – “Rain” wouldn’t be released for nearly four months in direct contrast to the four weeks between “Bad Girl” and “Fever”. What was the reasoning behind that? It feels like it was just an afterthought.

The video shown on TOTP isn’t the official promo for “Fever” but a compilation of clips of previous Madge videos which I originally thought must have been because some scenes in the proper release were deemed too racy for pre-watershed viewing. However, having watched the official version, although Madonna is spray painted silver Goldfinger style, I don’t think there’s anything in there too provocative. I think the reason for it not being shown on TOTP was simply that it hadn’t been made yet. According to Wikipedia, it was filmed on 10-11 April 1993 so ten days or so after this TOTP aired.

Sound wise, I think I would have preferred a straight Peggy Lee style cover rather than the housed-up version we got here. As a rule I think cover versions shouldn’t be replicas of the original but Madge’s take here just sounds antiseptic and sanitised. As so many of us have been wishing in the recent heatwave, bring on “Rain”!

When I saw the running order for this show and that Mica Paris was performing a song called “I Never Felt Like This Before”, I immediately thought that it was yet another cover, this time of that song by Stephanie Mills. I was quite mistaken though as that was called “Never Knew Love Like This Before”. Easy mistake to make in my defence. Mica’s tune was actually written by American singer- songwriter and producer Narada Michael Walden and was the lead single from her third album “Whisper A Prayer”. It sounds very generic 90s R&B the likes of which we’d heard before and would do so again many times over and also the lyrics are rubbish. Look at this:

Ooh baby, used to be a bird inside a cage but now I’m free, I’m flying higher

Baby, my skies are blue since you came into my life

Dear oh dear. How much time did Narada put into coming up with those? 30 seconds? 20? Mica herself seems to be going through an identity crisis as she’s come dressed as Seal but is singing in the style of Michael Jackson with every line seeming to end with an ‘Oww!’. All very disconcerting. A poor effort from all involved.

“I Never Felt Like This Before” peaked at No 15.

Not Sunscreem again! Like the Tory party leadership contest, their run of appearances on TOTP at this time seemed never ending. We’ve got one of those excruciating interviews with the band beforehand explaining why they can’t perform on the show in person due to one of their number being ill. TOTP seemed very keen on this rather niche activity. I’m sure they’ve done it a few times now though I don’t know why. It might make more sense if the reason for their crying off wasn’t the usual sore throat or, as in this case, the common cold. Something a bit more unforeseen and unlikely might have made an interview worth it like dropping a bottle of salad cream on your foot. Actually, a footballer did that once. Goalkeeper Dave Beasant missed eight weeks of a season after severing the tendon to his big toe when he dropped a 2kg glass bottle of salad cream on his foot. Now that might seem like an unexpected turn of events but then Dave Beasant was also capable of these howlers…

“Pressure US” peaked at No 19.

Talking of howlers, there’s a couple in this week’s Breakers starting with Coronation Street actor Bill Tarmey and his version of the Barry Manilow song “One Voice”. We all knew him as Jack Duckworth of course as he’d been on our screens in that role for over a decade by 1993. However, Bill had been a club singer (you don’t say!) in the late 60s before his time on the cobbles of Weatherfield so perhaps it was inevitable that this moment would arrive at some point. After all, soap actors had become interchangeable as pop singers in the 80s with the likes of Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan and…erm…Stefan Dennis from Neighbours all making the transition whilst EastEnders had given us Nick Berry and Anita Dobson. So why not Coronation Street?

Unfortunately for us all, this trend would go into overdrive in the 90s with a list of soap stars as long as Phil Mitchell’s rap sheet clogging up the charts. By the end of the decade we’d have seen huge hits by Adam Rickitts (Coronation Street), Will Mellor (Hollyoaks), Sean Maguire, Sid Owen and Martine McCutcheon (EastEnders) and, if you widen the net to include dramas, John Alford and Steven Houghton (London’s Burning) and of course, the dons of the whole family, Robson and Jerome (Soldier Soldier). Gee, thanks everyone!

Bill Tarmey’s own contribution to this genre was not limited to this one single. He made five (!) albums and also did two duets – one with Ruth Madoc of Hi–de–Hi! fame and, inevitably, one with his Coronation Street partner Liz Dawn (Vera Duckworth). The terror didn’t end there as “One Voice” was produced by Stock & Waterman (who seemed to be taking any old job since the break up of the SAW trio) and was performed with the St. Winifred’s School Choir – yes, the little darlings that brought us “There’s No One Quite Like Grandma” and “It’s ‘Orrible Being In Love When You’re Eight And A Half”. A combined canon of quality and distinction there I’m sure you’ll agree. Should have stuck to pigeon fancying Jack.

Some proper music next as we get a third consecutive hit from Arrested Development with the inevitable rerelease of “Tennessee”. We saw a performance of this track on the show almost a year prior as part of the US chart feature but it failed to make the Top 40 over here. After “People Everyday” and “Mr Wendal” were massive hits back to back though, “Tennessee” was shoved back out and managed a peak of No 18 this time.

The track uses a sample – just the word Tennessee – from Prince’s “Alphabet Street” which was uncleared. The band heard nothing from Prince until it had been a huge hit in the US and had started to descend the charts. Once it had peaked, Prince’s legal team swooped in and began proceedings knowing that they could make a claim for royalties against an optimum amount of sales. The cost of that one word sample? $100,000! Think that qualifies as an unexpected turn of events.

And now… back to the bollocks and just like with Bill Tarmey, it was all a devilish plot by Mike Stock and Pete Waterman who were joined by a third witch at the cauldron of shit in Simon Cowell. The phenomenon of American wrestling that had already spawned one UK hit single in “Slam Jam” was back for another bout with a track called “WrestleMania”. Bizarrely, that first single had been credited to The WWF Superstars but this follow up was officially by The World Wrestling Federation Superstars. I’m guessing it was a legal thing. Thankfully, this No 14 hit was the final time the US wrestling fraternity troubled our chart compilers and the whole craze petered out.

I’m not sure what I was doing whilst working in a record shop at this time but it doesn’t appear that I was taking note of the singles I was selling to punters as here’s another one I don’t remember. “Go Away” by Gloria Estefan anyone? Apparently this was taken from her “Greatest Hits” album that was a big seller over Xmas ‘92 and was the follow up to the “Miami Hit Mix /Megamix” single that promoted it.

It’s an uptempo mamba infused number and was also used in a film I have never come across in my life before entitled Made In America starring Ted Adamson, Whoopi Goldberg and a fledgling Will Smith in a very early big screen role. There’s some clips of it in the video for “Go Away” and it looks dreadful. The plot description for it in on Wikipedia only confirms its awfulness. One to avoid I think.

“Go Away” made it to No 13 on the UK charts and Gloria’s next release in the Summer of this year was a Spanish language album called “Mi Tierra”.

We arrive at the show’s exclusive element which is, as host Mark Franklin advised at the top of the show, gatecrashing a Bruce Springsteen concert. Was this a live link up? Wikipedia tells me that the Glasgow date of Bruce’s world tour where this performance comes from was on March 31st, the day before this TOTP aired so it wasn’t live as we watched it. However, the show was recorded on a Wednesday before transmission so presumably it was all just edited together after the event to make it look seamless. Surely the recording wasn’t scheduled to coincide with the Springsteen gig? Wouldn’t the BBC just have got permission to record that one track for broadcast and put it all together in the editing suite? I know Bruce introduces the performance with a shout out to TOTP joining the gig but that could have all been prearranged surely? Oh I don’t know.

What I do know is that the song being promoted by all this was “Lucky Town” which was the title track of one of his two albums released simultaneously in March 1992 (the other being “Human Touch”). Only one single from that album had been a hit – “Better Days” had struggled to a peak of No 34 – but this live version of “Lucky Town” was actually to promote not that album but his “In Concert / MTV Plugged” set which was released eleven days after this TOTP aired. No, that’s not a typo; the album was called “MTV Plugged” not Unplugged as was the usual format as The Boss wasn’t happy with the acoustic arrangements of the songs in rehearsal and so only agreed to the recording if it was with amplified instruments. So, if I understand it correctly, you couldn’t buy this live, in concert version of the track that we saw on TOTP but the MTV Plugged version? It all seemed an overly complicated bit of promotion which didn’t really work as the single failed to make the UK Top 40, bottoming out at No 48. I guess his label Columbia would argue that the album was a success by peaking at No 4. However, Wikipedia tells me that it only made No 189 in the US. That can’t be right can it?!

As for the song itself, I like Springsteen but this isn’t a particular favourite. I know some people who are huge Bruce fans though who are very excited about his UK tour next year. I’ve seen some reports of extortionate ticket prices though – an average of over £200 each with some even going for £4,000! I say again, that can’t be right can it?!

Now this really is an exclusive! Barry Manilow on TOTP! The target of many a music snob’s put downs over the years, Bazza still retains an iconic status especially amongst his devoted fan base. Despite his success in the US where he notched up three No 1 singles, his hits over here were rather more sporadic and…well…unlike his nose (sorry – had to!) rather small. He managed just one UK Top Tenner (the innuendo laden “I Wanna Do It With You” in 1982) and yet his songs are just as well known in this country. Why, in this very show his song “One Voice” was covered (albeit by Jack Duckworth) and just a few weeks prior to this Take That had a huge hit with their version of “Could It Be Magic”.

Why was Barry having a hit in his own right at this time though? Well, it was to promote a Best Of collection of course. If it was good enough for 70s contemporaries like Boney M and Sister Sledge than why not Manilow? “Greatest Hits: The Platinum Collection” included this single – “Copacabana (At The Copa) The 1993 Remix” – which is just brilliant and ridiculous at the same time. A remix of the 1978 story song telling the tale of Lola the showgirl and Tony the bartender, it’s gloriously camp but fun with it even if the song’s denouement ends in tragedy. The song inspired a 1985 made for TV film in which Bazza himself plays the part of Tony but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it. It also became a musical which ran in London’s West End for two years.

The staging in this TOTP performance is not quite convincing mainly because Barry sits down for the whole song – I wonder if he had a bad back or something? There’s a lot of fast cuts of stock footage padding it out as well which adds credence to my theory that Manilow maybe couldn’t move that freely plus the secretarial image for the two backing singers looks a bit dated now.

I once worked with a colleague called Justin at Our Price and this song always reminds me of him. Juzza used to call me Rico sometimes (what with me being a Richard and all) and so occasionally he would sing me the line ‘his name was Rico’. Ah, good times.

The 1993 remix of “Copacabana (At The Copa)” peaked at No 22.

The Bluebells have knocked Shaggy off his perch to claim the No 1 crown with “Young At Heart”.

For what is quite a slight song for me, this track has had a hell of a long life. Originally recorded by Bananarama (with whom Bobby Bluebell wrote it as Siobahn Fahey’s then boyfriend) for their debut album “Deep Sea Skiving”, it became a Top 10 hit in 1984 before its use in a car advert sent it to the top of the charts in 1993.

It didn’t stop there though. Here it is again in the wonderful Scottish sitcom Still Game in 2019:

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Capella	U Got 2 Know	I did not
2	Madonna	Fever	Nah
3	Mica Paris	I Never Felt Like This Before	No
4	Sunscreem	Pressure US	Nope
5	Bill Tarmey	One Voice	As if
6	Arrested Development	Tennessee	No but my wife had the album
7	The World Wrestling Federation Superstars	WrestleMania	Never happening
8	Gloria Estefan	Go Away	I wish she would – no
9	Bruce Springsteen	Lucky Town (Live)	Negative
10	Barry Manilow	Copacabana (At The Copa) The 1993 Remix	No but I think my wife had that Best Of album
11	The Bluebells	Young At Heart	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/m0019dvm/top-of-the-pops-01041993

TOTP 25 MAR 1993

Posted on July 16, 2022 by 80stastic

I’ve spent a lot of time recently banging on about the unholy trinity of the three S’s of Shaggy, Shabba Ranks and Snow dominating the charts. Well, guess what? I’m still doing it in this post as two of them are on the show again this week. It’s come to my attention though that they weren’t the only members of the ‘S’ brigade. This week’s show is jam packed with them and no I didn’t like a single one!

We start with an ‘S’ and it’s ‘S’ for Sybil, she of the hit “When I’m Good And Ready”. Sybil was never as popular again as she was at this moment in terms of sales. Her run of two consecutive big hits comprising this single and previous No 3 smash “The Love I Lost” with West End was brought to an abrupt halt when the next single “Beyond Your Wildest Dreams” peaked outside of the Top 40 at that most unfortunate of places No 41. It wasn’t for the want of trying though. She even did two different versions of the song- a pop ballad version for the UK market…

And a hip-hop remix with a rap in the middle for the US territories…

It made no difference as neither version was a hit. Off the top of my head I can only think of Climie Fisher also doing a similar thing where there was a straight ballad version of their single “Rise To The Occasion” and a hip-hop remix complete with the ubiquitous and annoying ‘aaah yeaaah’ sample.

The track had also previously been recorded by Lonnie Gordon and released as a follow up to her “Happenin’ All Over Again” hit but had also missed the chart peaking at No 48. All of this despite the claim by writers Stock, Aitken and Waterman that it is one of the best songs they ever penned. And if you thought the chart performance of “Beyond Your Wildest Dreams” was unlucky, Sybil followed up taking it to No 41 in the charts by releasing another single from her “Good ‘N’ Ready” album called “Stronger Together” and that peaked at…yep…No 41.

No S’s in sight next as we once again witness the power of an advert to make us buy a song that had already been a hit once all over again. This time the product being soundtracked by an old hit was the Volkswagen Golf and the song that benefited from it “Young At Heart” by The Bluebells. Normally I don’t go back and see what I’ve already written about a chart hit that I’ve reviewed in a previous blog post for fear of just regurgitating the same words but I did in this case. I think it’s because I view their chart histories separated by nine years as almost completely different entities, relating to two disparate records.

Originally a hit in the Summer of 1984 when I had not long turned 16, “Young At Heart” was never off the airwaves. Radio 1 seemed to play it four or five times a day at least which was not good for me as I couldn’t stand it. In my post on the track in my 80s TOTP blog, I made a point of saying I liked the band but hated this song and I stand by that. I still have a soft spot for The Bluebells but their most well known song is also their worst to my ears. Back in 1984, they followed up “Young At Heart” with the wonderful “Cath” but it only just scraped into the charts at No 38. A final single called “All I Am (Is Loving You)” was released which missed the charts completely and the band fizzled out.

The song’s second coming seemed nothing to do with the band and indeed it wasn’t. They weren’t actually even together in 1993 and hadn’t been for some years. I think I’m right in saying that the story behind its 1993 reactivation was that the person working for the ad agency that was looking after the Volkswagen account had come up with a song for the advert but that there were some issues with copyright and it couldn’t be used and so she had to come up with another song fast. Thinking back to her childhood, she remembered that jolly song that she used to hear on the radio. The rights owners were sought out and contacted and the rest is history.

For many record buyers though, they may not have known anything of the record’s past or the career of the band who made it. They just knew it as the song from that car advert with the twist at the end when instead of getting married, it turns out that the ‘bride’ is actually celebrating getting divorced. The single’s cover was just a still of said actress from the advert reinforcing this new identity for the song as something separate and somehow itself divorced as it were from the band. It even has the Volkswagen logo in the corner. It was corporate and false and in some way, it devalued the original even though I hadn’t liked it.

On hearing of the success of the rerelease (it outstripped the original’s chart peak easily in the first week) the members of The Bluebells reconvened and agreed to reform to promote the single with appearances like this one on TOTP. They look like they’re treating it as a laugh which is probably the correct attitude to have taken. They weren’t under any record company pressure to maximise sales presumably. Whatever it did commercially was a bonus. Subsequent performances would be taken even less seriously as the band struggled to come to terms with this unexpected turn of events. “Young At Heart” would go to No 1 for four weeks and be the twelfth best selling single of the year in the UK in 1993.

We’re back with the S’s now and it’s the most hateful of the lot – Shabba Ranks with “Mr Loverman”. I could never understand the appeal of this record. I mean, I didn’t like Shaggy nor Snow’s songs either but I could just about appreciate why they were successful. “Mr Loverman” though? Nah, that was just nasty. Aside from Ranks’s own despicable views which were enough to put any sane thinking person off anyway, I just couldn’t take the song seriously with all those ridiculous ‘Shabba!’ shout outs. Now I learn it’s not even Ranks name checking himself but Maxi Priest sampled from their “Housecall” single.

The whole stupid business was parodied in a sketch by the team behind the US comedy TV series In Living Color to whom I shall leave the last word…

All female US R&B groups seemed to be everywhere in the 90s. At the start of the decade we had En Vogue and then as the years passed we saw the likes of SWV, TLC and Brownstone right up to the titans of the genre Destiny’s Child. And those were only the ones that crossed over to the UK. Back in America there were groups who never managed to translate acclaim at home into huge overseas success. I’m thinking of Xscape, 702 and Total. Here’s one for you that did manage to straddle the pond as it were but who rarely get talked about anymore.

Jade were Joi Marshall, Tonya Kelly and Di Reed from Chicago who are best remembered for their hit “Don’t Walk Away” though they did have a few others. In 1993 they were always going to be compared to En Vogue who were having transatlantic hits at the time and I guess their sound wasn’t too dissimilar. “Don’t Walk Away” was a radio friendly piece of sassy R&B that enabled the trio to pull out some slinky dance moves when performing it. It rose to a lofty No 7 position in the UK charts and an even higher peak of No 4 in the US selling 2.5 million copies worldwide. Their album “Jade To The Max” racked up substantial numbers and a lengthy tour had them looking fair set for superstardom. They appeared in both film (The Inkwell) and TV (Beverly Hills 90210) and contributed tracks to a couple of soundtracks as well. A second album followed in 1994 and then…nothing. Everything just seemed to stop. Were they dropped from their label? Did they just decide themselves to jack it all in?

I think they all stayed in music one way or another and two of them reunited in 2021 with the improbably named Myracle Holloway (a finalist on The Voice). The curious tale of Jade – a gemstone amongst the Brownstones.

We’re back amongst the S’s now and it’s another stone related artist – Robin Stone better known as Robin S. This New York singer songwriter’s legacy would be formed upon and based around this one track, the house anthem “Show Me Love”. We sold loads and loads of this in the Our Price store in Rochdale where I was working. And then we went home, had a sleep, came back to work and sold some more of it the next day. I’m surprised that it wasn’t a bigger hit than its final chart placing of No 6 though it did return to the Top 40 a further two times as remixes. In fact, it seems to have been released eight times in total. See what I mean about Robin’s legacy being totally built around this one track? I’m sure there are some Robin S super fans out there who would dispute that claim but it’s true. And there’s many would say that being known for “Show Me Love” would be recognition enough. It regularly appears in lists of the best dance tunes of all time and its influence is still felt today in the music of the likes of Clean Bandit and is sampled in Beyoncé’s latest single “Break My Soul”.

Interesting to note the difference here between Sybil’s performance at the top of the show with her three backing singers and Robin’s with nothing but some dry ice for company while she belts her tune out. I recall the cover of the single was just a very basic generic design in green with a cream header with the label’s name (Champion) repeated in lines all over it. Very poor. Maybe they didn’t expect it to be a big hit outside of the clubs and so didn’t bother designing a cover to be shipped in huge quantities to retailers?

Oh Hell! Cliff’s back again. Yes, despite the charts being jam packed with dance tunes of every hue and genre, a little corner of them was still reserved for Cliff Richard and whatever piece of garbage song he was peddling in 1993. “Peace In Our Time” was the offending article this time and it was at its peak of No 8. This is just a horrible tune with its backing that sounds like a speeded up version of “The Living Years” by Mike And The Mechanics and its insipid lyrics but it’s Cliff’s performance which really grabs the attention.

As with his last time on the show the other week, I can’t find a clip of it on YouTube. Unlike then, Cliff has ditched all his entourage of backing singers and has done a Robin S and gone solo albeit that he still has the remnants of the Sting set from the other month with him for company. It’s Cliff’s movements that are so spellbinding though – spellbindingly awful that is. They’re just so weird and unnatural. Plus he’s turned up in the bloke from Runrig’s leather jacket and trainers combo. It looks…completely unconvincing and actually very safe. In the 50s he would have been seen as a danger to the moral well being of the nation’s youth in that get up but in 1993, he just looked lame. The 90s weren’t kind to Cliff. Yes, he had two Xmas No 1s at the start and end of the decade but they were both gut wrenchingly awful and the intervening years were populated by instantly forgettable singles like this one. Those great airplay hits of the late 70s and early 80s like “We Don’t Talk Anymore”, “Carrie” and “Wired For Sound” seemed like a life time ago even then.

And onto the Breakers and I’ve realised that we have arrived at a rather poignant moment as this blink and you miss it moment is the last we’ll see of Bananarama on TOTP for twelve years! Regulars on the BBC show since their first hits in 1982, this was, by my calculations (I make host Tony Dortie wrong with his figure of thirty-one) their twenty-third Top 40 hit, ten of them being Top 10 hits. None of those Top Tenners had been in the 90s though and their commercial appeal was definitely on the wane. The decision to leave the Stock, Aitken and Waterman stable to make records with hip producer Youth had not resulted in healthy sales of the “Pop Life” album and so a revamp was required for next album “Please Yourself”.

That revamp took the form of jettisoning ‘new girl’ Jacquie O’Sullivan (who had actually been in the group since 1988) and re branding themselves as a duo. To quote one of their previous album titles, wow! Would it work, could it work and indeed should it work? To give themselves some extra insurance on this bold move, Sara and Keren returned to their previous producers who were now a duo themselves, Stock and Waterman. It was the latter who came up with the theme that the album should promote a new hybrid sound of ‘ABBA -Banana’. It would turn out to be a good idea but not for Bananarama.

The album was poorly received and limped to a chart peak of No 46. It produced just two hits, a pair of No 24s, in “Movin’ On” and this one, a cover of the Andrea True Connection song “More More More”. I’m guessing this was released as previous single “Last Thing On My Mind” had missed the charts completely and as we all know, if you find yourself in need of a hit, what do you do? Altogether now… you release a cover version! It’s a pretty faithful take on the disco classic and probably made sense as a choice of single given the resurgence of disco songs in the charts at that time from the likes of Boney M and Sister Sledge. In fact, the Bananas would maybe have done better with a whole disco themed album than an ABBA one. Maybe the ABBA revival had been sooo 1992? Either way, it gave them a chart hit, the last they would have for twelve years by which time TOTP itself was on its last legs.

As Bananarama seemed to be slipping into pop oblivion, Pete Waterman looked for another vehicle for his ‘ABBA-Banana’ concept – thankfully though the era of Steps was still four years off. As for the Nanas, they would continue to perform live as a duo before pulling off the event that their fans had almost never dared to hope could happen- a reunion tour with Siobahn Fahey in 2017. The tour was a huge success and led to Keren and Sara being revitalised to write and record new material. “In Stereo” was well received on its release in 2019 and they have a new album called “Masquerade” due out literally in a few days time.

Another ‘S’ now as the band called Sunscreem are on the show with yet another hit. Sunscreem are becoming quite the curiosity for me. I was always aware that there was a band called Sunscreem because they were a chart act and I worked in a mainstream record shop and we stocked their music. I could even tell you that they were a Sony artist. What they sounded like though was a different matter. I haven’t recognised any of their tunes that have featured in these TOTP repeats so far and “Pressure US” is no different. Apparently this was a remix of the band’s debut single which had been a No 1 hit on the US Dance chart. Given its success across the pond, it was rereleased in the UK with the ‘US’ suffix added to make it clear it was a remix.

In the nicest possible way, Sunscreem were my ghost poo*. You know when you know you’ve had a poo but there is absolutely no evidence on the toilet paper or in the toilet bowl that anything actually took place. So it was for me with Sunscreem. I knew they existed but my memory banks have zero evidence about what they sounded like.

“Pressure US” would peak at No 19, a whole forty-one places higher than the original version from 1991.

*There is no nicest possible way is there?

Now I might have been pushing it earlier to suggest the existence of Robin S super fans but I know for a fact the next artist has a multitude of them so I need to tread carefully here. David Bowie spent much of the very early 90s dicking around with (no, think of the fanbase – definitely not dicking around, think of something else) ‘experimenting’ with his side project rock band Tin Machine the results of which had failed to convince many of their merits. However, 1993 saw the first proper Bowie album for six years with the last being the poorly received “Never Let Me Down”. Expectations were high for a return to form though with “Black Tie White Noise” and it duly went to No 1 though it got a mixed reception in the press.

Lead single “Jump They Say” though was pretty good I thought and it would provide Bowie, rather unbelievably, with his first Top 10 hit since “Absolute Beginners” in 1986. Inspired by the tragic story of his half brother Terry who committed suicide in 1985 by walking out in front of a train, it also had a powerful video that has been described by some critics as Bowie’s finest hour as an actor in a music promo. Bowie’s acting credentials though are a mixed bag. Brilliant in The Man Who Fell To Earth but hammy in Labyrinth and downright awful in Jazzin’ For Blue Jean (Shush! Remember the fan base!). “Jump They Say” was easily the biggest hit of the three singles released from the album but my favourite of his in 1993 was none of those but the theme song he wrote for the TV adaption of Hanif Kureishi’s Buddha Of Suburbia novel.

In a post a few weeks back, I admitted to my complete dislike of Lulu. Imagine my delight then when I read the running order for tonight’s show and saw that she’s on again. I remembered her single “Independence” that she performed then but I really thought we were shot of her until much later in the year when she would pop up on Take That’s “Relight My Fire” single. I was wrong as she literally sings “I’m Back For More” on her duet with Bobby Womack. I have zero memory of this song probably because it is so unmemorable. A complete drag. Don’t get me wrong, Bobby’s vocals are as great as you’d expect them to be but Lulu’s scratchy, annoying voice really grates.

Of much more interest are the dance moves of the studio audience members positioned behind the pair. I’m especially drawn to the guy extreme right of the screen who’s turned up in clobber as if he’s expecting a call up to be the sixth member of the aforementioned Take That. That ‘curtains’ haircut and waistcoat combination is oh so early 90s.

“I’m Back For More” peaked at No 27. The parent album “Independence” stalled at No 67. It was Lulu’s only studio album of the decade and yet bizarrely her record label saw fit to release a collection album in 1999 called “I’m Back For More: The Very Best Of Her Nineties Recordings”. Eh? Isn’t that just the “Independence” album then? Well (or rather ‘wellllllllll’) I checked and yes, it pretty much is. If she could sell that then maybe she was the woman who sold the world.

It’s a final week of two at the top for the final ‘S’ of the night – Shaggy and his “Oh Carolina” single. I’d forgotten that the track appeared on the soundtrack to the film Sliver, a erotic thriller starring Sharon Stone (wait, add another three S’s to the tally!). That soundtrack would also feature another No 1 song which would become the second biggest seller in the UK of 1993 – UB40’s version of “Can’t Help Falling In Love”.

As it’s the final week for Shaggy, I’m going to shoehorn in another and much more tenuous link between “Oh Carolina” and Sliver. Shaggy of course was also the name of a character in the legendary cartoon Scooby Doo the theme tune of which includes these lyrics:

Come on Scooby Doo, I see you pretending you got a sliver

But you’re not fooling me ‘cause I can see the way you shake and shiver

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Sybil	When I’m Good And Ready	Nah
2	The Bluebells	Young At Heart	Not in 1984 and not in 1993 either
3	Shabba Ranks	Mr Loverman	Mr Dickhead more like – NO!
4	Jade	Don’t Walk Away	Nope
5	Robin S	Show Me Love	Not my thing
6	Cliff Richard	Peace In Our Time	As if
7	Bananarama	More More More	No No No
8	Sunscreem	Pressure US	Nope
9	David Bowie	Jump They Say	I didn’t…jump or buy it
10	Lulu and Bobby Womack	I’m Back For More	No
11	Shaggy	Oh Carolina	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/m00196dt/top-of-the-pops-25031993