Björk

TOTP 03 OCT 1997

I said in the last post that we hadn’t yet reached the Kate Thornton/Gail Porter/Jamie Theakston era of TOTP presenters and yet here was the last of those three names on our screens just the following week. Was I mistaken in my claim then? Not really. It turns out that Theakston’s appearance here was as a ‘guest presenter’ and he wouldn’t become a part of the regular roster of hosts until 1998. So kind of like an audition then, similar to what happened with Sarah Cawood the other week? Probably not as he was already an established BBC presenter being onto his second series of co-hosting Saturday morning kids TV show Live & Kicking alongside TOTP regular Zoe Ball so I’m guessing he was just filling in as no-one else was available? These days, Theakston hosts the Heart radio breakfast show with Amanda Holden though my first thought when his name is mentioned is that, like Angus Deayton, he was exposed by a tabloid newspaper for visiting a brothel and snorting cocaine in 2002. Two BBC presenters making the same misdemeanour in the same year. The Beeb was having a public relations nightmare!

Anyway, let’s see how Theakston did on his TOTP debut. We start with Oasis who are in the studio to promote their single “Stand By Me”. The second track taken from their “Be Here Now” album, it would peak at No 2 thus becoming another of those songs denied being a chart topper by the Elton John phenomenon. At the time, the album received mostly positive (and even gushing) reviews in the music press but, in retrospect, has come to be seen as the point where it all started to go wrong for the band. Criticisms of it being overproduced and bloated were given credence by the length of some of its songs. Ignoring the “All Around The World (Reprise)” outro, only two of the eleven tracks clocked in at under the five minutes mark. “Stand By Me” itself has a running time of five seconds off six minutes and we get nearly all of that 5:55 length in this performance. Was that a mark of the power and influence that Oasis held at that time? That they could command such an exposure on the BBC’s prime time music show? After all, “Be Here Now” was the best selling British album of 1997 and the fastest selling of all time in the UK.

Anyway, with some temporal distance and the revisiting of the album, although history hasn’t been too kind to it, people have generally… well…stood by “Stand By Me” which has been regarded as one of its standout tracks. I can hear why. It’s a bloody good song though it hardly broke any new ground and indeed, always reminded me of Mott The Hoople’s “All The Young Dudes” – that ascending scale at the end of the chorus? I’m not the only one who thinks that. Noel Gallagher was asked in a Q Magazine interview if he’d pinched the riff from the Bowie penned song and he admitted that he had! Not only that but that he’d used it for “Don’t Look Back In Anger” as well (though the chords for that are almost identical to “Streets Of London” by Ralph McTell). It’ll be interesting to see how many songs from “Be Here Now” that Oasis play in their 2025 reunion tour. I’m guessing not many but if there’s to be just one, my money would be on “Stand By Me”.

Theakston goes a bit un-PC in his intro for the next artist who is Louise giving it the whole Sid James steam-coming-out-of-his-ears look. Well, it was the era of ‘lads mags’ I guess so it was probably more acceptable back then. Now, continuing with the theme of pinching song ideas which we started with Oasis, Louise seems to have done a bit of appropriating herself as new single “Arms Around The World” sounds an awful lot like Janet Jackson’s “Runaway”. No, I mean like really an awful lot…

See? Anyway, “Arms Around The World” was the lead single from Louise’s second album “Women In Me” and would become her then biggest hit when it peaked at No 4 meaning five of her first six solo outings into the charts had gone Top 10. Not quite reaching the recent No 1 heights of her old band Eternal but pretty impressive all the same. There’s another (albeit more tenuous) link with the aforementioned Oasis whose next single would be “All Around The World”. “Arms Around The World”? “All Around The World”. As Sid James might have said “Cor, blimey! You lot are hard work!”.

We stay in the studio – there was a definite preference for studio performances under executive producer Chris Cowey – with No Doubt whose name allows Theakston to deliver the most woeful, lame and obvious line imaginable his intro. Like most people I’m guessing, my first encounter with Gwen Stefani and co was via super-hit “Don’t Speak”. What stands out to me about their subsequent releases is how they sounded so very little like that global No 1. “Just A Girl” and this one – “Spiderwebs” – were much more of that ska punk/pop fusion sound that characterised their origins. Of course, I’m not familiar with those origins – it’s just what I’ve read – as, despite working in a record shop, I’d barely heard the band’s “Tragic Kingdom” album from which the hits came. I did know said hits though and “Don’t Speak” seemed to me to bear little resemblance to what followed. Was it a deliberate attempt to go more mainstream or just a song that came about organically and ended up with a more wide reaching sound?

As for “Spiderwebs”, it’s a pretty cool track although it’s subject matter about Gwen Stefani receiving unwanted attention from a smitten suitor isn’t the most obviously appealing source material. Still, similar to No Doubt, there was another band who based their career on a post-punk/ reggae fusion sound and who scored the biggest hit of their career with a song about stalking so who am I to be the songwriting…ahem…police?

Now here’s a curious thing and I’m not just talking about the artist for whom the adjective ‘curious’ could always be applied. No, I’m referring to the fact that Chis Cowey found a place in the running order for Björk whose release “Jóga” was never going to make the Top 40. Why? Because it broke the chart regulation of being released in more than three formats. The lead track for third album “Homogenic”, it was only made available in the shops as a three CD and VHS Box Set, hence in four formats. It seems a curious (there’s that word again) marketing strategy to launch your artist’s next collection of new material – releasing the very first example of it in a format that broke chart rules. Did her record label One Little Indian not understand these rules and so it was a massive error on their part? Maybe so as Wikipedia says that they tried to argue that the VHS was bundled for free and so the release didn’t contravene the Official Chart Company’s three format restriction but the OCC weren’t having any of it. Host Jamie Theakston says in his segue that “Jóga” wouldn’t chart as only 3,000 copies of it had been made. Was that true? Or was that One Little Indian retrospectively trying to cover their backs? As I say, the whole thing is very curious.

As for what “Jóga” sounded like, well, I’ve had to revise my opinion about Björk in this blog many times from my initially derogative stance as I’ve leaned to appreciate her craft more but I’m going old school on this one – what a racket! Supposedly a love letter both to her best friend called Jóga and her native country Iceland, the story goes that Björk gave the concept of the track to her engineer Markus Dravs who then came up with a rhythm track that she felt was too abstract. Then producer Mark Bell took said track and added “some noises” which just about sums the whole thing up – a noise. No amount of strings can polish it up for me and Björk wailing away about being in a “state of emergency” wasn’t going to convince me otherwise.

Although M People hadn’t released anything since their cover of the Small Faces’ “Itchycoo Park” in 1995, their absence hadn’t been as pronounced as it might have been due to the use of their “Search For A Hero” song to soundtrack a series of TV adverts for Peugeot during 1996. Despite its exposure causing a clamour for the song all over again (it had already been a No 9 hit), the band resisted all calls to rerelease it. Working in a record shop in pre-digital times, it really used to annoy me when this sort of thing happened. An artificial demand for a track caused by an advert or a radio station deciding to add it to their playlists which wasn’t actually available as a single to buy. Another example was when a Manchester radio station started playing “Acquiesce” by Oasis* despite it not being officially released as a single. We had loads of people ask for that convinced it was their new single. Fortunately, in that case, we could flog them the “Some Might Say” CD single as it was an extra track on that and we always kept all the Oasis singles in stock at all times what with us being in Stockport. Another example where there was no simple solution though was when the film Mannequin was first shown on TV in the early 90s and the next day, we had a procession of people come in asking for “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” by Starship which had been a hit in 1987! None of this will mean anything to people that have grown up in the era of streaming platforms and digital music but those who were there will recognise my pain!

*”Stand By Me” itself would be used for a series of adverts for the Halifax bank between 2021 and 2023.

Anyway, back to M People and they finally did release a single (of new material no less) in “Just For You” from their fourth and final album “Fresco” in 1997 and although not one of their most instantly recognisable tracks, it’s a very pleasant sound all the same. Gone was that rather clunky production that characterised their early hits and in its place was a much more smooth soul sound. It was perfect for daytime radio scheduling but perhaps they missed a trick by not releasing it a couple of months earlier as it had a great Summer vibe to it. However, its chart peak at No 8 would be their penultimate Top 10 hit. The time of M People was coming to an end.

The aforementioned Janet Jackson now with, for the third artist in a row, a lead single from a new album. Having signed the then biggest record deal in history with Virgin Records, our first taste of the fruits of that deal was “Got ‘Til It’s Gone” from “The Velvet Rope” album. As indicated by its title, the track took inspiration the Joni Mitchell song “Big Yellow Taxi” with the copyright cleared sample running throughout it so majorly that it a credit was given to Joni on the song. Also featuring was Q-Tip (no, not Paul Young’s old band) from A Tribe Called Quest. I can’t say that it did much for me and I much preferred the original (excruciating laugh and all). I also didn’t think much to the over the top staging of this performance with Ms Jackson not being revealed from her backwards facing throne until nearly a minute in. Get over yourself Janet!

Now, just as Louise seemed to have stolen from Jackson’s “Runaway”, so Janet seems guilty of some musical thievery as she was on the end of litigation from UK soul singer Des’ree who claimed that “Got ‘Til It’s Gone” was very (meaning too) similar to her hit “Feel So High”. In 1998, she was awarded an out of court settlement of 25% of the publishing royalties equating to about £2 million. You can hear why she won…

Clearly it was felt that they’d been enough wailing and wringing of hands caused by the death of Princess Diana by this point and so we don’t get “Candle In The Wind ‘97” this week but the other song on the Elton John single. Yes, it was a double A-side single though that fact has been mostly forgotten now. The ‘other song’ was “Something About The Way You Look Tonight” and was essentially the lead single from his album “The Big Picture”. Wikipedia tells me that the track was released on its own without “Candle In The Wind ‘97” five days before the double A-side but I don’t remember that at all. Indeed, the official charts website makes no reference to this. Is it possible that it was just a case of bad timing and the single was all ready to go before the tragic car crash in Paris on 31 August and its release was just overtaken by events?

Whatever the truth, the song itself was a typical 90s Elton ballad which sounded like it could have been on the Lion King soundtrack to me. It wasn’t though and another song that wasn’t on an album was “Candle In The Wind ‘97” which did not feature on “The Big Picture”. I wonder how many people bought it thinking it was?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Oasis	Stand By Me	No, I’d given up on buying their singles by this point
2	Louise	Arms Around The World	Nope
3	No Doubt	Spiderwebs	Nah
4	Björk	Jóga	Definite no
5	M People	Just For You	Negative
6	Janet Jackson	Got ‘Til It’s Gone	I did not
7	Elton John	Something About The Way You Look Tonight / Candle In The Wind ’97	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/m0029vby/top-of-the-pops-03101997?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 08 NOV 1996

Posted on November 29, 2024 by 80stastic

Welcome back to TOTP Rewind where we have yet another ‘golden mic’ guest presenter hosting the show and this one was a rather unusual choice in that he was from the world of sport. Starting in March 1994, there had only been two other sporting celebrities up to this point – Chris Eubank and Ian Wright. What made this guy even more of a left field choice was that he was a jockey. Now, I don’t follow the horses so I don’t know who the current crop of jockeys are or what there personalities are like but back in the day when I was growing up, they weren’t all over the TV apart from on race days. They certainly weren’t presenting the BBC’s premier pop music show. They were jockeys not disc jockeys. However, this particular guy broke the mould somewhat. It can only be Frankie Dettori that I’m talking about and indeed it is. Now back in November 1996, the diminutive Italian wasn’t a captain on A Question Of Sport (that didn’t happen until 2002 and he hadn’t been on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here (that hadn’t been invented yet) and he hadn’t been given the This Is Your Life treatment (1998). However, what he had done and was most famous for in 1996 was to have ridden all seven winners on British Festival of Racing Day at Ascot on the 28th September. That famous image of him jumping from his horse? Yeah, that was after he’d won the seventh race. Suddenly it seemed, everybody knew the name Frankie Dettori. It wasn’t just his sporting achievements that set him apart though. He had a ‘cheeky chappie’ persona and that winning accent that endeared him to people and I’m guessing it was those traits that persuaded executive producer Ric Blaxill to give him a shot at hosting his show. I mean, can you imagine Lester Piggott for example introducing the latest chart sounds on TOTP?!

Frankie is still a name today having appeared on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here just last year. His fame touched my life in a rather shameful incident a few years back. The tale goes like this. There was an old Italian guy who lived on our street who didn’t speak much English but who was very sociable and would try and engage everyone he saw in conversation. At some point his health started to fail him and he had to have an operation which incapacitated him but he still liked to sit in his front garden so he could talk to passers by. One day, on my way back from the shop, it was my turn for a chat as he’d spotted me and beckoned me over. He started to talk to me but after some initial pleasantries I was starting to struggle to understand what he was saying. I think he was telling me about his operation but then he went off in a direction that I couldn’t fathom at all. Not wishing to appear rude, I tried to indulge his need for company by just saying the first thing that came into my head that had a vague Italian connection. I pulled out Pavarotti, the Pope, Toto Schillaci and finally my mind settled on Frankie Dettori. I know – how condescending of me. What was I thinking? At least I wasn’t shouting at him. By this point, he was as lost as I was with our conversation and so I did the only thing left to do – bid him farewell, good health and left. I never had another conversation with him and after a while he stopped sitting in his garden. Finally his house went up for sale at which point he must have passed away. I still feel bad about our interaction that day. Wherever he is now, I hope he’s having better conversations than he had with me.

So anyway, back to matters at hand and what’s the deal with the direct to camera piece at the start of the show? More specifically, why do Boyzone seem to be on it every week? This time they share the slot with…horror of horrors…Mick Hucknall! Let’s not think about that for now though as we switch to a very smartly dressed Frankie Dettori whose first job is to introduce Gina G. He manages to get a racing term into his segue immediately – is this going to set the tone for the whole show? Gina is here to perform “I Belong To You” which is at its chart peak of No 6. However, the TOTP caption says that it’s her second Top 5 hit! I mean, you couldn’t have a bigger clue than the big figure six next to her name! And it was the single’s first week in the chart – it couldn’t have possibly been higher than No 6! And while we’re at it, her last single was a No 1 record so saying it went Top 5 is underselling it rather. Honestly caption person! You had one job! In 1998, B*Witched would rearrange the words of the title of Gina’s hit and take “To You I Belong” to No 1. I don’t think you could do that with “Ooh Aah…Just A Little Bit” and remain grammatically correct if indeed that song title was grammatically correct in the first place.

And now for something completely different…so different in fact that the assembled studio audience don’t really know how to react to what they are witnessing. If the artist is a little bit out there then the chances are that said artist will be Björk. Seriously, watch this performance of “Possibly Maybe” and keep your eyes on the studio audience rather than Björk (she won’t like that). They look like they are completely nonplussed by the whole affair. You can actually see some of them thinking “When are Boyzone coming on?” or “Can’t Gina G do another song?”. To be fair to them, Björk’s song isn’t a natural toe-tapper so it would have been hard to know what an appropriate reaction to it was. Most opt for swaying along a bit which I guess is as good a response as any. I’ve come round to Björk a bit over the course of these TOTP repeats but “Possibly Maybe” is setting me back a bit. It’s just noise with some lyrics that have been described as melancholy though I would call them weird and miserable. References to joining a cult, car crashes, electric shocks and sucking your tongue as an act of remembrance are not for me.

Bizarrely, they were deemed a perfect fit for inclusion on an album for Childline that had just been released. Previous efforts by pop music to raise funds for the charity had been very conventional – that cover of The Beatles’ “With A Little Help From My Friends” by Wet Wet Wet in 1988 and a duet between Sonia and Big Fun in 1990 couldn’t have been more mainstream. However, in the era of Britpop, an approach with a bit more gravitas was deemed more suitable and so artists like Ocean Colour Scene, Menswear, Cast and Pulp whose “Different Class” artwork was co-opted for the album all contributed tracks. To be fair, the running order also featured Boyzone and Lighthouse Family but they were the exception rather than the rule. Even in that company though, “Possibly Maybe” feels an odd choice. Some artists did cover versions (Menswear did “Can’t Smile Without You” and These Animal Men offered “Wichita Lineman”) whilst a U2 / REM combo tackled the former’s “One”. But “Possibly Maybe”? It’s hardly an obvious choice for a charity album. The version on the Childline compilation was a remix by LFO but that was available on one of the three official Björk CD singles that were released so it’s not as if fans would have bought the Childline album for completist reasons. I shouldn’t really be criticising someone for supporting a charity should I? It just strikes me as an odd choice but maybe Björk was trying to fit in with the Britpop vibe. “Possibly Maybe”, “Definitely Maybe”? Funnily enough, Oasis didn’t contribute a track to the album.

I couldn’t understand a word of “1st Of Tha Month” by Bone Thugs–n–Harmony because they were rapping so fast so I rewatched it with subtitles on and guess what? I still couldn’t make head nor tail of what they were banging on about. Reading between the lines though, I think they’re using a load of drug references that I wasn’t familiar with and researching the track online, its title is a reference to when welfare checks were paid (getting your giro in our country). Interesting that they called it “1st Of Tha Month” and not “1st Of Da Month”. What’s the difference? I’m not sure but, as with Gina G, I’m not convinced either is grammatically correct.

When it comes to naming 90s boy bands, I’m not convinced that 911 trips of the tongue but if you check their chart stats they’re not too shabby. After small beginnings when their first two singles peaked at No 38 and No 21, this hit – “Don’t Make Me Wait” – began a run of ten consecutive Top 10 hits. Look at these chart positions:

10 – 4 – 3 – 3 – 5 – 4 – 10 – 2 – 1 – 3

Like I said, they stand up to scrutiny. I haven’t watched that Boybands Forever series on iPlayer yet so I don’t know what sort of review (if any) they get on there. Of course, selling a load of records is no guarantee of quality and 911, in my humble opinion, were not… how can I put this?…they are more quantity than quality. Oh alright, they were pants. Rubbish. Just no good. Their two biggest hits were predictably cover versions and there just didn’t seem to be much to them – a Dec from Ant & Dec lookalike as the singer and two backing dancers who you would have sworn had a sideline in being nightclub bouncers. Apparently those two had actually worked in a club but as dancers on The Hitman And Her TV show where Take That’s Howard Donald and Jason Orange had also been dancers. The 911 lads (Spike and Jimmy) thought they fancied a bit of that pop star lark and so formed a group with ~~Dec~~ Lee Brennan who had nearly had a football career with Carlisle United but was rejected due to being too small (something that never seemed to be a problem to Dec). Amazingly it worked as well and they weren’t made to wait as all those hits would be along soon.

So what connects 911 to legendary R&B producer Babyface? No he didn’t work with them (of course he didn’t) but he did collaborate with US pop/soul group Shalamar on this hit “This Is For The Lover In You” and which song did 911 release as their first single? Yep, “A Night To Remember” by Shalamar. They also recorded “There It Is” for their third album of cover versions. Blimey! I haven’t written so much about Shalamar in this blog for years! Not surprising really seeing as they hadn’t had a UK Top 40 hit since 1983. Suddenly though, 13 years later, they were back courtesy of Babyface and his reactivation of this track of theirs that was originally released back in 1981. I can’t say I knew it before and it obviously didn’t stick in my head the second time around as I don’t remember it at all but it did manage to reunite the three members of Shalamar (from its most famous line up). This exclusive satellite performance from Los Angeles was the first time they’d actually been in the same physical space together for over a decade (they’d recorded their backing vocals for the reworked track separately). Obviously, it wasn’t really my thing and the addition of LL Cool J on rapping duties want going to persuade me but my biggest disappointment was that we didn’t see Jeffrey Daniel perform his backslide/moonwalk steps.

In his intro to Babyface, Frankie Dettori pointed at his own fizzog and cheeky smile and he’s at it again when introducing this week’s ‘flashback‘ slot, telling us all that he was only a one year old when Slade were in the charts with “Coz I Luv You”. Yeah yeah Frankie, you were very fresh faced back in 1996 – weren’t we all? This was Slade’s first No 1 hit of six and also the first song to feature their misspelling gimmick. Their next six single releases all followed the same pattern. Am I right in thinking there was some criticism from schools in that the practice was encouraging poor spelling in children? Never mind that though – how did “Cum On Feel The Noize” get past the censors?

Like most people I’m guessing, if I think about Moby, his “Play” album comes to mind with all those singles released from it and their use in multiple films, TV shows and commercials. Or possibly his Twin Peaks inspired techno hit “Go”. I would never have come up with this awful noise called “Come On Baby” possibly because I don’t think it even made the Top 100 of the UK charts. Which raises the question, why was Moby granted a slot on the running order for this TOTP to promote it? The album it was from – “Animal Rights” – did nothing much in the charts so surely it wouldn’t have warranted being featured on the show and in any case, Boyzone occupied that slot this week. It’s billed as an ‘exclusive’ but that seems a bit over the top to describe Moby running around topless with ‘Porn Star’ daubed over his chest making a howling racket. It’s all a bit rum just like Moby’s song.

A howling racket Moby might have been but you couldn’t accuse him of being mainstream a category which the last three artists on tonight surely fall into. We start with Simply Red who had reached that point in their career where a Greatest Hits album was due and they duly delivered it in 1996, just in time for Christmas. Not cynical at all. Although the album went to No 1 and went six times platinum in the UK, for me, it slightly underperformed commercially. That statement sounds ridiculous given those numbers but if I give it the context that it was completely outsold by their studio albums “A New Flame” and “Stars” then maybe it carries a bit more weight. It was the eighth best selling album in the UK of 1996 but it was outsold by Celine Dion, Robson and Jerome and an album in “(What’s The Story) Morning Glory?” that had been released in October 1995.

Anyway, as was the trend, a new track was required to promote the album and “Angel”, a 1973 hit by Aretha Franklin, was chosen for that task. Covering Aretha might be seen as a heinous crime by some but I reckon Hucknall’s ego would have allowed him to back himself to take it on. Apparently the Fugees are uncredited contributors to his version which Hucknall acknowledges by shouting out “one time” midway through and almost chuckling to himself at his wit. He didn’t help himself sometimes did he? He must have been pleased with his treatment of “Angel” as the next Simply Red album called simply “Blue” included five cover versions. More Best Of albums followed including 2008’s “Simply Red 25: The Greatest Hits” which sold half the amount its 1996 counterpart. Maybe I did misjudge that album’s commercial performance after all.

And so to that album chart feature. In his intro, Frankie Dettori announces “It wasn’t much of a race in the album chart. These guys even beat The Beatles. No photograph. Boyzone!”. Frankie wasn’t wrong either. Boyzone had indeed gone straight in at No 1 with sophomore album “A Different Beat” whilst the much anticipated third volume of The Beatles Anthology project debuted at No 4. To celebrate, they are back on TOTP with a track from said album in the form of “Isn’t It A Wonder”. This syrupy ballad would eventually become the third single released from “A Different Beat” after “Words” and the title track both went to No 1. It just failed to make it a hat trick of chart toppers when it peaked at No 2. Watching this performance, I’m struck by how young they all look. Shane Lynch especially looks extremely fresh faced without all those horrible tattoos that were yet to be inked onto his neck. I’ve never understood that fashion but there are so many examples of it in the world of celebrity from Lynch to David Beckham to current Strictly contestant Pete Wicks. It just makes them look like they need a good wash to me.

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Well not me personally you understand – I never bought any Robson & Jerome records but plenty of people did not once but twice. After the nation lost its collective head in 1995 over the two actors from the TV drama Soldier Soldier and delivered Robson Green and Jerome Flynn the best selling single of the year in the UK in the form of their cover of “Unchained Melody” and a six times platinum album, those not under the duo’s spell must have hoped it was a short lived aberration that we could all agree to never talk of again. RCA and Simon Cowell had other ideas and the two actors were back just in time for Christmas (and I thought Simply Red were cynical) with a new single and album, the latter, rather aptly, called “Take Two”. The song chosen for the lead single was Jimmy Ruffin’s excellent “What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted” which I think I would have been made aware of initially by the cover by Dave Stewart and Colin Blunstone. That version was all about synths and 80s production which brought a different angle to the original soul classic. What I didn’t need was a sub par facsimile of it delivered by two actors thanks but that’s what we all got. In fact, what we actually got was a a triple threat of “What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted” alongside “Saturday Night At The Movies” and “You’ll Never Walk Alone” with all three tracks receiving equal billing – in effect a triple A-side. Apparently this was the first time this had ever happened. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me; fool me three times, shame on both of us.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Gina G	I Belong To You	No you didn’t
2	Björk	Possibly Maybe	I did not
3	Bone Thugs-n-Harmony	1st Of Tha Month	Negative
4	911	Don’t Make Me Wait	Nope
5	Babyface	This Is For The Lover In You	Nah
6	Slade	Cos I Luv You	I was only three at the time so no
7	Moby	Come On Baby	Hell no!
8	Simply Red	Angel	No
9	Boyzone	Isn’t It A Wonder	Not really no
10	Robson & Jerome	What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted	As if

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/p00fsvdz/top-of-the-pops-08111996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 22 FEB 1996

Posted on June 7, 2024 by 80stastic

Welcome to another instalment of TOTP Rewind, the blog where I, a man who turned 56 yesterday, reviews past episodes of the legendary pop music show and who, despite having lived through this era and worked in record shops for nigh on the whole of the 90s, often has zero recall of some of the acts and songs featured. Don’t let that put you off though! I remember some of it – honest! To help stimulate my brain into activity, and I haven’t done this in a while, I’m going to check in on what I was up to in early 1996 in my personal life (I will get to the music eventually I promise!). Well, I was working at the Our Price store in Stockport and had been there for about a year following the closure of the Market Street, Manchester shop. Retail was hard work but the product was exciting and the staff all pretty much got on with each other (usually) so there were regular after work drinks in the town’s hostelries.

My life was ticking along nicely then until it was rudely interrupted by me being called up for jury service. If you’ve never done it, I can say that it was both fascinating and terrifying. I don’t know if it’s still the same as I’ve not done it since but you were expected to serve for a minimum of two weeks with the courts meeting the costs of your wages. Two weeks off work might have sounded great and indeed day one was spent just sitting around waiting to be called onto a jury which I wasn’t. I remember I was reading Trainspotting by Irvine Walsh and pretty much finished the whole book that day. First thing on day two though I was selected for a jury. Watching the defence and prosecution making their cases in court was fascinating. It wasn’t until they’d finished and you had to go and discuss the case as a jury that it became real and that was the scary bit. That 17th century saying describing the make up of a jury as “twelve good men and true” was a load of bollocks I was to discover and I don’t mean the obvious flaw that women have been serving on juries since the 1920s. I vowed there and then never to get in trouble with the law because if my misdemeanour went to court, the calibre of people deciding your fate could not be guaranteed. I won’t go into any details of the case but one bloke came to his personal verdict straight away based on what the accused looked like, refused to consider any counter arguments and sat there reading his copy of The Sun for the rest of the day. As we couldn’t come to a verdict we were all agreed on by the end of play, we started to wonder what would happen. Would we have to stay overnight in a hotel like in the movies? Fearing this might be the case, The Sun reading bloke started to panic saying he was meant to be going out with the lads that night and so offered to change his mind if it would help! I was appalled! In the end, we were just told to go home and not talk about the case.

When we reconvened the following day, The Sun reader assumed his original stance and we were subsequently dismissed as a jury as we were taking to too long to come to a verdict for this type of case (an historical one brought years after the event with no physical evidence). The experience has stayed with me ever since. Back to the TOTP though and I wonder if there are any acts on tonight who should be tried for crimes against popular music?

Well, “I Wanna Be A Hippy” by Technohead must surely have some charges to face. As established in a previous post, this was an example of gabber dance music, a subgenre of hardcore techno and definitely not happy hardcore as I initially surmised. What it undoubtedly was, of course, was hideously irritating crap that, horror of horrors, also refused to shift from your brain for hours once heard.

I can think of no more of a condemnation of it than to point out that its chart peak of No 6 was actually bettered by a parody of it by The Smurfs later in the year retitled as “I’ve Got A Little Puppy” which got to No 4 despite featuring the lyric “I take it for a walk, pooper pooper scooper”. Talk about dog shit!

I seem to be getting very bogged down in definitions of dance music currently and here’s another one. After the gabber strand of Technohead comes the Dream house of Robert Miles. At least host Lisa I’Anson had the good grace to name check the sub genre in her intro meaning I didn’t have to do too much research into working out which category it belonged to. “Children” was another of those mid-90s hits like “Missing” by Everything But The Girl that stayed on the UK charts for months. Ten weeks inside the Top 10 (of which the first seven were spent at either No 2 or No 3) and sixteen in the Top 40 in total. Quite remarkable for a tune that initially was not included on Radio 1 daytime playlists. No matter though as the UK, just like the rest of Europe where it went to No 1 in twelve different countries, was unable to resist its charms. Characterised by a floating, ethereal piano riff, was it just Jean Michel Jarre for the 90s? I don’t know enough about the “Oxygène” and “Équinoxe” hitmaker to make an informed judgment but it was certainly worlds away from the headache inducing relentless beats of the likes of the aforementioned Technohead and thank god for that!

Apparently, Miles created “Children” to help combat a tragic consequence of rave culture, namely that of clubbers falling asleep at the wheel of their vehicles after a night of strenuous dancing combined with alcohol and drug use. Dubbed ‘strage del sabato sera’ (Saturday night slaughter) in Italy, Miles wanted to compose a a calming track to end a DJ set to help the crowd acclimatise before heading home. I had no idea about any of that until now. It was just that instrumental dance track that I sold over and over the counter in Our Price.

Here’s a question. How do you follow up the biggest hit of your career which knocked down barriers that had previously excluded you from a wider audience and brought you into the mainstream consciousness? Well, if you’re Björk, you turn your back on that breakthrough hit and return to your original style and principles and resume your rather experimental music career. Reading that back, it sounds rather glib and possibly inaccurate. Or is it actually correct? Let’s examine the evidence. The case for the prosecution is that surely anyone not previously familiar with Björk’s oeuvre but who loved and bought “It’s Oh So Quiet” were not going to be tempted to continue that purchasing trend by the next single “Hyperballad” were they? A skittering, jerky, bleeping track about throwing objects off a cliff in the early morning before your partner awakes to symbolise the parts of yourself you must sacrifice in order to make a relationship work, this was a return to the Björk of old wasn’t it?

The case for the defence is that the track was critically acclaimed by the music press. Look at these reviews:

“…excellent example of music meeting art”

Diver, Mike (2009). “Review of Björk – Post”. BBC. Retrieved 25 November 2020.

“…a delightful track that all fans of quality music will enjoy.”

Baltin, Steve (9 March 1996). “Pop Singles”. Cash Box. p. 7. Retrieved 14 November 2022.

“All fans of quality music” eh? Well, that’s me told. Added to that is the fact that “Hyperballad” was a UK Top 10 hit and that Björk had just won a BRIT award for International Female Solo Artist would suggest she was hardly a cult figure any longer and that she had already crossed over into the mainstream quite successfully thank you very much. The verdict? The blogger is guilty of anti-Björk bias m’lud.

Next a duo who were continually accused of committing the crime of making bland and unworthy pop music – will the Lighthouse Family please rise! In their defence, their hit “Lifted” was co-written by Martin Brammer who was the vocalist in the rather excellent 80s band The Kane Gang who knew his way around a tune and indeed is an Ivor Novello Award nominee. The prosecution would level the charges that he’s also written songs for Olly Murs and Nick Carter of Backstreet Boys. My verdict would be that though not a fan, there are much more heinous musical misdemeanours to be offended by although the claim on Smooth Radio’s website that Lighthouse Family are “one of the most popular duos of all time” may result in litigation from Simon & Garfunkel, Soft Cell, Erasure, Pet Shop Boys…

From a duo to a trio now as it’s yet another appearance on the show for 3T and their hit “Anything”. I’m so bored of this lot and their drippy ballad that the only thing that will keep me watching is to see if the one in the hat has brought his backpack with him and whether he’ll dramatically throw it down on the floor again…

*keeps watching…*

He’s definitely got it with him…

*still watching…*

Pow! He’s slam dunked it again! Now cart them all off to jail. It is beyond reasonable doubt that they are guilty of assault and battery of my ears.

It’s time for the Battle of Britpop Version 2.0 that nobody ever talks about (apart from me) probably because it wasn’t really a proper thing. We all know that Blur won said battle in the summer of 1995 but there was nearly a repeat the following year. Perhaps deliberately, Oasis and Blur missed clashing release dates of their first singles of 1996 by a week meaning there was not officially a rematch of the two bands duking it out for the No 1 spot. This was probably just as well in the case of Damon and co as they would have been stopped in the first round by their northern counterparts. “Stereotypes” was the third single released from “The Great Escape” album and its chart high of No 7 was pretty respectable. However, when “Don’t Look Back In Anger” came out seven days later, its sales dwarfed those of “Stereotypes”. Well, they did in Our Price Stockport anyway. I’m pretty sure I have these figures correct – by my memory we sold 429 CDs of the Oasis single in week one but just 13 of Blur’s. Ooof! No wonder Noel Gallagher felt cocky enough to give this message to camera at the top of the show:

“Good evening Top of the Pops. Best band in the world, live and exclusive…and it’s not Blur”

To rub salt in the wound, the TOTP producers have got both bands in the studio together tonight and are letting Oasis perform two tracks after they’d already walked off with three BRIT awards (to Blur’s zero) three days earlier but to Blur’s credit, they seem to have taken it all in good grace with Damon acting all playful around Lisa I’Anson as she introduces them. As for “Stereotypes” as a song, it’s not the band’s best work by any measure. A functional, Blur-by-numbers track to my mind but supposedly it had originally been earmarked as the lead single from the album. Now if that Battle of Britpop had been “Stereotypes” v “Don’t Look Back In Anger” instead of “Country House” v “Roll With It”, we might have had a different winner.

And so to those naughty Manc lads who, as previously mentioned, have been allotted two songs on the show which was not a regular occurrence then or at any point in TOTP history. As far as I’m aware, only The Beatles and The Jam were given that honour previously. The Fab Four’s double appearance was way before my time but I distinctly remember The Jam performing double A-side “Town Called Malice” and “Precious” in 1982 as my Weller obsessed elder brother sat watching transfixed. Fast forward 14 years and it’s self confessed Jam fan Noel Gallagher taking up the baton from his hero. “Don’t Look Back In Anger” was the second of eight No 1s for Oasis and in truth, its success was no surprise. With the album “(What’s The Story) Morning Glory?” having already been out four months and gone multiple times platinum, you might have thought that a fourth single being lifted from it was destined to not pull up any trees sales wise as so many people already had it. However, such was the buzz around this huge anthem and so long had we known that it would be coming out as a single (it was initially due out in early January but was delayed by five weeks) that there was huge anticipation for its release.

I understand the criticisms that are levelled at it (and many other Oasis tracks) that it’s so derivative and steals from other songs. There’s the “Imagine”-esque piano opening, the lyric pinch from the legendary John Lennon memoirs cassette that was stolen from the Dakota Hotel, the similarity to “All The Young Dudes” and my own personal discovery that the chords are almost the same as those of “Ralph McTell’s “Streets Of London” and yet…I still think it’s a great song, possibly their best. I think there’s a valid claim here that this song and 1996 in general was the high point of the band’s career. Sure they wouldn’t release any new material for another 18 months but this was the year of the Maine Road gigs (more of them later) plus the two nights at Knebworth House where they performed to 250,000 people but could have sold 10 times the amount of tickets. I don’t think they were ever bigger than at this point. 1997 would bring the difficult third album “Be Here Now” and the whole cringey ‘Cool Britannia’ nonsense and subsequent years would see the band change the line up though remain popular but not be the phenomenon that they once were.

I certainly recall thinking this double TOTP performance was a big deal. The way Liam goes “yeah, yeah, yeah” to the studio audience as he crosses over with Noel as if to say “settle down, of course we’re playing another and we’re the only band who can do this because we’re the best”. That second song was their cover of Slade’s “Cum On Feel The Noize” which was one of the three extra tracks featured on the CD single. For some this was a lazy, hammy choice of song to cover but I loved it especially the piss taking Black Country accents the band put in at the beginning and end of the track. Well, I was 28 years younger then and I guess my sense of humour wasn’t as mature (?) as it is (?) now. The other tracks on that CD single were “Underneath The Sky” which didn’t have that much going for it in retrospect but which I thought was perfectly fine back then and “Step Out” which was a gloriously effervescent song that unfortunately gave more credence to the claims of those who were not Oasis fans that Noel just kept stealing other people’s work when it was found to be so similar to Stevie Wonder’s “Uptight (Everything’s Alright)” that the soul legend had to be credited on the track.

So returning to those aforementioned Maine Road gigs, I did get to the Saturday one but I nearly missed out altogether. I knew that they were going on sale from the Manchester Apollo box office and the Apollo wasn’t that far from where we were living. As it happened, the day they went on sale was one of those when I was on jury service. This was great news as it meant I didn’t have to worry about getting to work and also gave me a bit of extra time as the courts didn’t open until about 10ish. Nothing could stop me getting those Oasis tickets now…except the monstrously huge queue that I found when I arrived at the Apollo. I thought I was getting there in time for the box office to open but hadn’t banked on the number of people who had camped out overnight to be at the head of the queue. I joined the back of it and looked at my watch. The queue wasn’t moving quickly and all that time that I thought I had was now not looking like nearly enough. So couldn’t I have just stuck it out and tuned up late at court? Not an option. On a previous day I’d witnessed a fellow jury member return late from lunch by a few minutes delaying the start of the afternoon session. The judge asked him how much his lunch had cost. “Five pounds” came the reply. “Add a zero to that and that’s how much your fine is for being late back” pronounced the judge. As I got closer to the box office window, the minutes were slipping away. I got to within six or seven people from the front of the queue before time ran out and I lost my nerve. I just walked away from the queue and headed into town to do my public duty. Fortunately for me, my mate Paul (the chef from last week’s post who liked to play rap music loudly while washing his whites in our flat) was on the case and got tickets for us all so I did go to the Oasis ball after all.

The “Spaceman”’s orbit has started to decay and he’s crashing back down to earth. Yes, it’s the fifth and final week at No 1 for Babylon Zoo and what a strange ride it was. The nation lost its head over the music on a 30 seconds jeans advert causing the full track to be released. Only then did the truth come out that it wasn’t what the advert had promised but we gave a collective shrug of our shoulders and went out and bought it in our droves anyway. Jas Mann got to be the pop star who he always believed it was his destiny to be for a little while before suffering a backlash that this country always reserves for people deemed to have been too successful. We might see Babylon Zoo on TOTP again in these repeats as there were a couple of minor hit singles in the wake of their No 1 but their time in the spotlight was waning faster than a shooting star across the sky. Unlike “Starman”, “Spaceman” didn’t blow our minds, at least not for long anyway.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Technohead	I Wanna Be A Hippy	Never
2	Robert Miles	Children	No
3	Björk	Hyperballad	I did not
4	Lighthouse Family	Lifted	Nah
5	3T	Anything	Nope
6	Blur	Stereotypes	No but I had The Great Escape album with it on
7	Oasis	Don’t Look Back In Anger / Cum On Feel The Noize	Yes sir!
8	Babylon Zoo	Spaceman	I am going to admit to buying it but not for me for a friend who was obsessed with it so she could use my staff discount – honest!

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/m001zj0c/top-of-the-pops-22021996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 14 DEC 1995

Posted on April 23, 2024 by 80stastic

As the 7th December show wasn’t repeated on BBC4 due to the issue of it being hosted by Gary Glitter, we’ve jumped a week and find that this week’s presenter is someone we hadn’t seen in that role for nearly nine years! John Peel was last seen on TOTP in February 1987 so why was he suddenly back on our screens? The answer would be revealed at the end of the show when Peel is ambushed by Michael Aspel who informs him that he is the subject for an episode of This Is Your Life. Supposedly, the whole thing had been orchestrated by the BBC but it begs the question of why Peel himself thought he had been brought in from the cold for what would prove to be a one off return to the show. Didn’t he suspect something was afoot? After all, this was the era of the ‘golden mic’ slot – surely executive producer Ric Blaxill could have wheeled in a current celebrity or pop star for hosting duties over plucking Peel from the dusky corridors of late night Radio 1? Wouldn’t that have occurred to the experienced, seen-it-all Peely? Perhaps not as he seems genuinely surprised by the appearance of Aspel at the close of the show.

As for what John made of the artists he was presenting on this particular episode, well, I cant speak for him but, you know what, I’m going to have a go anyway. We start with Everything But The Girl and “Missing”. Is this the third time on the show for this one? Or maybe the fourth? This was bound to happen when a hit has the staying power that this one did. Fourteen consecutive weeks inside the Top 10? TOTP couldn’t ignore that sort of chart run.

Just as all roads seemed to lead to The Beatles at this time, there’s an element of The Fab Four to the story behind this song. The Beatles were turned down by record label Decca on New Year’s Day 1962 with manager Brian Epstein being told that guitar groups were on the way out – a year later Beatlemania broke out across the world. In 1995, after the original version of “Missing” had failed to become a hit, Ben and Tracey were let go by their UK record label Warner who told them that it was time to call it a day despite being played the Todd Terry mix of “Missing” and the track “Protection” that they’d worked on with Massive Attack. That remix would sell 1.2 million copies in the UK alone. Bloody record labels – what do they know?

Would John Peel have liked it? Surely he’d have liked this one

On account of us missing that Gary Glitter episode, I fear we’ll be served up the same songs that we saw in the last TOTP repeat. That certainly seems to be the case with “The Gift Of Christmas” by Childliners and what an unfortunate case it is. They’ve got the ‘galaxy of stars’ that was this charity collective into the studio again which presumably was a logistical nightmare so I’m surprised that the TOTP producers went for this option again. Just to prove my point, Michelle Gayle is front and centre in the line up this time – I’m sure she was missing the first time around. Boyzone, at least, were booked on the show in their own right to make the scheduling slightly easier. After seeing PJ/Ant had nicked his spiky hairstyle which he was sporting last time, Ronan Keating has completely flattened his locks for this appearance slightly giving him the look of a choirboy. I’ve no doubt that wannabe pop star ex-EastEnder Sean Maguire didn’t need asking twice to turn up given his desperation to traverse from the world of acting to the charts. Look at him jumping up and down at the end of the song trying to get into shot as our host does his next link. Had he no respect for himself nor Peel?

Would John Peel have liked it? He’d have had no truck with this rabble, charity record or not

This is definitely a third time on the show for the video of “Free As A Bird” by The Beatles. Obviously the video had to be the promotional tool for this single. There was no way that Paul, George and Ringo were going to rock up to the TOTP studio and perform the song with – what? – an image of John projected onto a screen behind them and Jeff Lynne lurking about in the background? Never happening and would we have wanted that anyway? I’m not sure. Having said that, such an appearance might have upped the single’s sales enough to overtake Michael Jackson and make it the Christmas No 1. Talking of which, I’m sure that “Free As A Bird” would have been the favourite for the festive chart topper crown as soon as news of its release came out. However, as the chart announcement neared, predictably Boyzone were in the hunt with Björk being seen as the ‘out of left field’ decent each way bet. The Beatles’ chances were further undermined by the late emergence of the perhaps even more left field The Mike Flowers Pops and their version of “Wonderwall” (more of whom later).

Perhaps they were also hampered by the fact that once people had heard “Free As A Bird”, they realised that it wasn’t all that after all. Sure, the huge fan base were always going to buy it and those intrigued by its status as a piece of pop history maybe bought it for that reason and not what it sounded like but it was never going to sustain as a classic track. An appearance by the then remaining Beatles on TOTP twenty-five years after splitting? That really would have been a moment in cultural history.

Would John Peel have liked it? Tricky one this. He was born on the Wirral and was famously a massive fan of Liverpool FC so he must have felt a connection to The Beatles. Indeed, during his early career in the States, he was hired by Dallas radio station KLIF as their official Beatles correspondent. However, would he have liked this particular track. I doubt it.

After achieving their first and so far only No 1 single with their last release “Fairground”, Simply Red must surely have expected a bigger hit than this follow up – “Remembering The First Time” – gave them when it peaked at No 22. Or would they have? Mick Hucknall and co were always more of an album band when it came to shifting units. Of their twenty single releases before “Fairground”, only four of them made the Top 10 with seven not piercing the Top 40 at all. When it came to albums though, well, just look at these numbers;

Album	Released	Chart peak	UK sales
Picture Book	1985	No 2	5 x platinum
Men And Women	1987	No 2	3 x platinum
A New Flame	1989	No 1	7 x platinum
Stars	1991	No 1	12 x platinum
Life	1995	No 1	5 x platinum

I have to say I don’t recall this one at all but then it is almost instantly forgettable though its lyrics should live long in the memory for all the wrong reasons.

Sitting here looking at the table, it’s just like a photograph, there’s you and me, fruit, drink, good food

All the things we did, the things we did, from the shower we took to the very first look

Words and music Mick Hucknall
EMI Music Publishing Ltd/So What Ltd

Ugh! The notion of Hucknall in the shower should never be articulated! Then there’s the chorus which ends with Mick singing “diddly dip, diddly dip” which sounds like the musical equivalent of The Flowerpot Men’s catchphrase “Flobabdob” which is in no way any sort of endorsement. In short, this was a bit of a stinker. Maybe that shower was desperately needed.

Would John Peel have liked it? No way! No way did Peel like Simply Red. He confirms this in his undoubted piss take comments after the performance about how Hucknall is the master of melody and that he can’t get enough of him.

1995 gave us a whole pan full of shit music and in many varieties of stool but surely none stank the charts out more than The Outhere Brothers. These two arses somehow wiped up two No 1s in “Don’t Stop (Wiggle Wiggle)” and “Boom Boom Boom” and a further Top 10 hit with “La La La Hey Hey”. They rounded off the year by joining forces with Molella on “If You Wanna Party”. Who was/is Molella? An Italian DJ and producer of course (weren’t they all?) who, judging by his Discogs entry, has worked with a load of names from the world of dance that I’ve never heard of. Would his input make any difference to The Outhere Brothers’ sound? No chance. This was more of their usual call and response bullshit – the musical equivalent of “Oggy Oggy Oggy, Oi Oi Oi!”. Their hits were more like ringtones than songs. Thankfully, they will only have one more UK chart hit after this – 1997’s “Let Me Hear You Say ‘Ole Olé’” – with their final single being a remix of their debut release, a rather aptly titled little ditty called “Pass The Toilet Paper”.

Would John Peel have liked it? Bollocks he would!

It’s the aforementioned Ronan Keating and his Boyzone mates now as they’re back in the studio once more to perform their version of “Father And Son”. I think I’m right to give Ronan top billing as it really does feel like the rest of them are his backing band on this one, ‘oohing and aahing’ away behind him. As per his previous two appearances, Ronan takes it upon himself to address the studio audience mid song to big up the band, this time with a “we’ve had a great year” comment. I suppose they had; a No 1, triple platinum selling album and four huge hit singles, they were positioning themselves as the natural successor to Take That even though the lads from Manchester were still a going concern despite having very publicly lost a member. Maybe Boyzone or their management had some insider knowledge – literally just two months after this TOTP aired, almost to the day, Gary Barlow uttered these infamous words at a press conference “Unfortunately the rumours are true…from today there is no more”.

“Father And Son” would sell 600,000 copies in the UK peaking at No 2 and Ronan would revisit the song in 2004, recording a virtual duet with Cat Stevens to promote his solo Best Of album “10 Years Of Hits” and matching the chart position he achieved with Boyzone.

Would John Peel have liked it? The Cat Stevens original? Possibly. The Boyzone cover? I don’t think so

It’s another of those songs that had a long chart life next. Everything But The Girl, Boyzone and now Björk racked up a total of 32 weeks inside the Top 10 between the three hits on this show tonight – that’s well over half a year! I’m guessing that these singles experienced longevity of sales beyond what would normally be expected because of the time of year they they happened to be in the shops. The Christmas retail period would usually artificially inflate sales as members of the public, who wouldn’t normally frequent their local record emporium, would make an annual pilgrimage with shopping lists in hand. Even so, there was clearly something about these records that made them crossover into the mainstream consciousness. Boyzone’s single was always going to be a big hit I suppose but Everything But The Girl and Björk’s offerings were less obviously huge sellers.

In the case of “It’s Oh So Quiet”, I think the fact that it was a song from the 50s and had a big band backing helped it to appeal to an older audience despite Björk’s rather unique vocal stylings. The staging of the performance here works really well I think with the brass section hit by spotlights every time they burst into life and Björk cavorting about like a mischievous Nordic pixie sprinkled in fairy dust.

Would John Peel have liked it? Oh I reckon so don’t you?

And so to that late entrant to the race to be Christmas No 1. A complete outsider coming up on the rail from nowhere, with what was considered by many to be a novelty hit are The Mike Flowers Pops with their rendition of “Wonderwall” by Oasis. Despite working in a record shop at the time, I had no idea who this lot were or where they had come from but their backstory was that they’d been on the live circuit since 1993 and were seen by the producer of Radio 1 DJ Kevin Greening’s show who asked them to record easy listening versions of chart songs for a section called ‘Hits of 95’. “Wonderwall” was the first one they did and it was picked up by Chris Evans who told listeners of his breakfast show that it was the original version of the song. What larks! I heard a story that someone at Creation got spooked and rang Noel Gallagher to ask him if he was absolutely sure that he’d written “Wonderwall” and that he hadn’t just copied an obscure easy listening track because someone had discovered it and found Noel out! I didn’t listen to Kevin Greening’s show so just thought this was a case of someone finding a new angle to cash in on the success of Oasis*

*Tribute band No Way Sis would do a similar thing but in reverse when they bagged a chart hit in 1996 by releasing a version of easy listening classic “I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing” by The New Seekers in the style of Oasis.

To me, The Mike Flowers Pops version of “Wonderwall” was entertaining the first time you heard it and maybe a couple more after that but I couldn’t really understand why it turned out to be such a big hit going all the way to No 2. Maybe it was just that Christmas factor again. My wife liked it enough to go and see them live at the Manchester Academy though and enjoyed the evening. With their profile raised, the band would play at much bigger venues and were in demand for a while. Two more minor Top 40 hits followed in the new year but they will surely be defined by “Wonderwall”.

By the way, that Christmas Day TOTP that John Peel mentioned was shown on BBC4 in 2020 and in that repeat, they announced The Mike Flowers Pops as the festive chart topper. How so? Apparently, they’d recorded two chart rundowns as the Christmas chart wasn’t announced until December 24th and so they wouldn’t have known at the time of recording who was No 1. Somehow when they aired the repeat, they showed the wrong version with Michael Jackson not in pole position. Well, it was the Christmas of COVID so we were all a bit stressed out to be fair.

Would John Peel have liked it? I think he would have got on board with it at least initially anyway.

And so to the aforementioned Michael Jackson who is at No 1 and will stay there for Christmas with “Earth Song”. In total, it would spend six weeks stop the UK singles chart going on to sell over a million copies here. I have to say that I’m surprised it was such a success – it has always sounded so overwrought and the wrong side of melodramatic to me (and Jarvis Cocker too we would go into find out at the 1996 BRIT Awards but that’s all for a future post).

Would John Peel have liked it? No way. Peel stood with Jarvis on this one I reckon.

As John Peel does his sign off at the end of the show, Michael Aspel appears like the shopkeeper from Mr Benn at his side and does the whole This Is Your Life thing. Brilliantly, the sardonic Peel says that he was “rather looking forward to going home actually Michael”. Unbelievably, he’ll have been gone 20 years this October.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Everything But The Girl	Missing	No but I must have it on something surely?
2	Childliners	The Gift Of Christmas	Not even for charity
3	The Beatles	Free As A Bird	Nah
4	Simply Red	Remembering The First Time	I did not
5	The Outhere Brothers / Molella	If You Wanna Party	Not with you guys thank you – bo
6	Boyzone	Father And Son	No
7	Björk	It’s Oh So Quiet	Negative
8	The Mike Flowers Pops	Wonderwall	Nope
9	Michael Jackson	Earth Song	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/m001xz4g/top-of-the-pops-14121995?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 23 NOV 1995

Posted on April 10, 2024 by 80stastic

It’s all about ‘new’ songs on this episode of TOTP. To clarify, I mean songs we haven’t seen on these BBC4 repeats before (obviously). Of the ten hits on the show, only three have featured previously and of the new songs, one is a very big deal indeed. Yes, late November back in ‘95 was a very special time if you were a Beatles fan. Not only was there a single being released of new material under the name of The Beatles for the first time since 1970, not only had the compilation album “Anthology I” just been released containing rarities, outtakes and live performances from the period 1958-64 but the first episode of the documentary series The Beatles Anthology was about to air the Sunday after this TOTP was broadcast. We’ll see the video for the single at the end of the show. Before then though, there’s lots to get through so let’s get into it.

By the way, this week’s host is Nicky Campbell who seems to have toned down his barely concealed spite for everyone and everything on the show since returning to presenting duties after the ‘year zero’ experiment was officially shut down. He seems much more affable and blissed out as is shown by his intro to the opening act which is M People with their version of “Itchycoo Park” by Small Faces. By any measure, this didn’t seem like a good idea and indeed it wasn’t. ‘Why?’ is the word that springs to mind. Well, it all seems rather cynical when you look into it. Having bled five times platinum selling album “Bizarre Fruit” dry and with no new material on the horizon (next studio album “Fresco” wouldn’t be released until 1997), presumably someone at record label Deconstruction looked at the onrushing festive ‘95 sales period and thought “Hang on, we haven’t got a new M People album out for the punters to buy for Christmas. What are we going to do?”. The solution was to repackage “Bizarre Fruit”, tweak the track listing slightly, bundle it up with an extra disc of remixes and live versions and sell it to those same punters who had bought the original album just twelve months previously. On reflection, it seems fairly shameful though I don’t recall being outraged at the time.

To promote the misleadingly titled “Bizarre Fruit II”, a new track was required as its lead single. Enter the band’s version of “Itchycoo Patk”. It seems to me that some songs should just be left alone period. This is one of them. A No 3 hit for Small Faces in the Summer of Love that was 1967, its sound and groove (both enhanced by the then cutting edge technology of flanging) made for a perfect time piece of the period. I, for one, did not think the world needed another take on it and certainly not M People’s. It just doesn’t suit Heather Small’s powerhouse voice and the mid 90s production on it sounds so clunky now. I’m wondering if it’s chart high of No 11 was a slight disappointment to the band and label. Eight of their previous nine hits had gone Top 10 (only “Love Rendezvous”, the final single from the original “Bizarre Fruit” album spoilt that run). Though there were more hit singles and albums to come before they split (initially) in 1999, for me, “Itchycoo Park” was a line in the sand that signified the end of M People’s imperial phase.

After looking as though they might be seen as hoary old rockers who should have been locked in a cupboard labelled ‘The 80s’ as the new decade began, Bon Jovi had so successfully remodelled themselves that by 1995, especially in the UK, they were flying. On the back of that success, they had (ahem) flown into the UK to do a studio performance for TOTP of their new single “Lie To Me”. The third single from their 10 million selling album “These Days”, it would be the band’s seventh of eight Top 10 hits on the spin in the UK at this time. I have to stay that I don’t remember this one at all but listening to it now, it seems in keeping with this era of the band’s sound. They’d dialled back on the bombast and bluster of those stadium anthems that characterised their ‘poodle rock’ phase and gone with a more, toned down reflective type of rock ballad. Not bad but not destined to be one of their most well known tunes to the uncommitted or casual fan. The studio audience seem genuinely excited about the band (or more specifically Jon Bon Jovi) being before them in person or is it the work of a floor manager prompting the crowd with a sign with the words ‘scream now’ on it?

As highlighted by Nicky Campbell, five of tonight’s ten acts have names that begin with ‘B’. Four of them debut inside the Top 10 with The Beatles not joining that group only because their single wasn’t yet released. So, after Bon Jovi, we now get Blur who are attempting to follow up that No 1 with the second single from their album “The Great Escape”. Ultimately they would fail with “The Universal” getting no higher than its position here of No 5. It’s such a better song than its predecessor though. A wondrous, sweeping, panoramic track that showcased a maturity to the band that was sadly nowhere to be heard (or seen in the case of the respective videos) on “Country House”. It really is quite stunning. Ah yes, the video. Clearly an homage to A Clockwork Orange with the band styled as Droogs, Damon Albarn looks positively unsettling with his Alex DeLarge eyeliner.

It’s worth noting that, in the aftermath of The Battle of Britpop, Oasis, despite moving down the chart from No 2 to No 3 with “Wonderwall”, they were still outselling the Blur single. Also worth noting, just for its complete randomness, is that the golf ball speaker featured in the video for “The Universal” was bought at a charity auction by ex-footballer and now pundit Garth Crooks! What?! I mean, if it had been country singer Garth Brooks it might have made some sense but Garth Crooks?!

Nicky Campbell is totting up the Beatles references in his segues. We’ve already had “The Long And Winding Road” and now we get the use of the word ‘anthology’ when he jokingly predicts that Blur will have their own such collection out in 25 years time. Obviously, none of us knew then how long Blur would go on for back then but I don’t suppose many would have believed that they would be an ongoing entity to this day albeit with some lengthy sabbaticals in amongst their timeline. Campbell’s comment made me wonder if such a Blur product existed so I checked. There’s nothing called an ‘anthology’ but there are a couple of box sets – one is called (in a rather linear way) “The 10 Year Limited Edition Anniversary Box Set” which collected all the singles (plus extra tracks) from their first six studio albums. The second is “Blur 21” released in 2012 commemorating 21 years since the release of debut album “Leisure” and including everything the band had recorded to that point including a disc of bonus material for each album plus three DVDs, a book and a 7” single from when the band went by the name of Seymour. Although neither box set was released in 2020 (the 25 years mark pinpointed by Campbell), their existence does rather piss all over the intended humour of his remark.

Everything But The Girl have made it to No 3 in the charts equalling their biggest ever hit, their cover of “I Don’t Want To Talk About It” in 1988. However, “Missing” would prove to be much more enduring. Fourteen weeks on the Top 10 and nineteen inside the Top 40 and selling over a million copies in the UK. I think it’s only right that (presumably) “Missing” is the duo’s most well known song and not a bloody Rod Stewart cover (though they wear it well) as that would seem to be a complete misnomer as a calling card for them.

I certainly wouldn’t describe myself as a superfan but I’ve always felt an affinity for Everything But The Girl what with Ben and Tracey meeting and forming the band at university in Hull – my wife is from Hull and I have lived there for twenty years now. I also used to work at the university and suggested Tracey as being a suitable person to officially open the refurbished library building in 2015 but they went with then poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy (who was very good in fairness).

Just as they scored their first UK hit single with a ballad from the 70s at Christmas time, Boyzone repeated the trick just twelve months later but for The Osmonds read Cat Stevens (now known as Yusuf). Like “Missing” before it, “Father And Son” would prove to very chart durable spending a solid ten weeks in the Top 10 including three at No 2. It was certainly a contender for the Christmas No 1 before ultimately losing out to Jacko. They would finally get that first UK chart topper the following year with, you guessed it, another cover; this time of the Bee Gees classic “Words”.

This appearance is all about Ronan Keating as it was the last time they were on the BBC show performing “Father And Son”. What’s that you say? They’ve done this one on TOTP before? Yes, yes they have. How is this possible when this is the single’s first week in the Top 40? Ah well, they were on about three months back when Dale Winton hosted the show and they sneaked onto the running order via the album chart slot to promote their debut long player “Said And Done”. Back then, Ronan broke away from his singing mid performance to say to the audience “Boyzone live on Top of the Pops…ah”. He does the same thing during this second visit to the studio but this time says “Boyzone back on Top of the Pops…” and then cackles to himself. Was this really necessary? Weren’t they an established pop act by this point. Surely Keating didn’t need another ‘pinch himself moment’ as if to say “How did I get here?”. It was hardly Bob Geldof stopping in his tracks at Live Aid when singing the line “and the lesson today is how to die…” and then repeating that moment 20 years later at Live 8 was it?! Unlike their first appearance performing “Father And Son” when the group were all sat down on stools, they’re stood up this time. Not sure if this is significant but clearly a young version of Westlife sat at home watching preferred the stools version.

Back to Ronan though, and this was the time when he started doing something odd with his hair with it styled into punk-like spikes almost. Most peculiar. I think this might have also been the song that caused some of my Our Price colleagues to start doing Keating impressions by hitting themselves repeatedly in the throat with the sides of their hands to create his distinctive tremble. I think it was a technique also used for Belinda Carlisle impersonations. Work days must have been very long back then.

Now to one of the most poignant songs of the year and tragically its subject matter of the absurdity of war is still as prevalent and relevant today. The Siege of Sarajevo, as part of the Bosnian War following the break up of Yugoslavia, would last 1,425 days, the longest siege of a capital city in modern warfare. The heavy shelling of the city would lead to mass killings of civilians and a life of suffering and fear for those who lived with no access to transport, water, gas or electricity. American journalist Bill Carter travelled to Sarajevo in 1993 to help the humanitarian aid effort and having seen the cost of the conflict to human life and feeling that western media were ignoring the war, contacted U2 who arranged satellite link ups on their Zoo TV Tour to give a platform to the population of Sarajevo to the outside world. This relationship led to Bono agreeing to direct a documentary made by Carter about life during the siege and a collaboration between U2, producer Brian Eno and Luciano Pavarotti that resulted in the track “Miss Sarajevo”.

Inspired by the story of a beauty pageant organised by Bosnian women as an act of defiance of the war, the surreal nature of the act spoke to Bono and inspired the writing of the song. Considered a side project by the band and so released under the pseudonym of Passengers, the song is undeniably affecting. Epic yet understated, quintessentially U2 but with a vocal by opera giant Luciano Pavarotti woven in seamlessly with not a trace of incongruity, it towered above just about everything else on the chart. In my humble opinion, this would have been a much more worthy Christmas No 1 than Michael Jackson’s “Earth Song” in spite of the latter’s laudable green credentials. A simple ‘list’ style lyric structured around the question “Is there a time…?”, the stand out line was “A time for East 17”. I’m guessing that most of us on first hearing the song did a double take and asked ourselves “Did Bono just sing East 17?”. Now there was an incongruity in the song but I read it as Bono highlighting the contrast between the horrors of war happening under our noses but possibly being more aware of something as trivial as a pop band. I could be wrong of course.

The video we see here is a mixture of clips from Bill Carter’s documentary, the performance of the song at the traditional Pavarotti & Friends concert in Modena, Italy and images of the aforementioned beauty pageant described in the song. A superficial detail given the gravitas of the song is that The Edge performs without his usual headwear leaving it to Bono to uphold that particular tradition.

Another song now that looked like it had a shot at Christmas No 1 at one point and it came from the most unlikely source. Björk had made her name first as part of Icelandic indie band The Sugarcubes before going solo and releasing her eclectic debut album…erm…”Debut” to critical praise and substantial commercial popularity. Follow up album “Post” continued her pursuit of diversity with techno, trip hop, house and ambient dance genres all in the mix. However, the third single released from it, despite the smorgasbord of styles that was the album, still managed to surprise most of us. “It’s Oh So Quiet” – a cover of a 1951 tune originally recorded by American singer and actor Betty Hutton (whom was unknown to the majority of people including Nicky Campbell judging by his “No idea” facial expression in his intro) – was so out there as to almost seem like a novelty. Adding to the bonkers-ness of it all is this performance with the pantomime-esque costumed backing entourage.

None of this stopped it from crossing over into the mainstream causing people who’d never heard of Björk before to not just become aware of her but actively seek out her single to buy. Anyway, whatever it was about the extreme styles in the song – hushed, whispered tones and idiosyncratic little yelps and squeals give way to that huge big band chorus – “It’s Oh So Quiet” would become not just her highest charting and biggest selling single in the UK (it has been certified gold for 400,000 sales) but also her most well known. I wonder if that annoys Björk at all? If not, then maybe this…erm…tribute from Coronation Street actor Vicky Entwhistle from 2001 on Stars In Their Eyes does?

I’m guessing some thought went into the running order of this show as we go from one Nordic act to another with Swedish band Whale following the Icelandic avant-garde artist that is Björk. Yes, it’s a second trip to the TOTP studio for the “Hobo Humpin’ Slobo Babe” hitmakers which is not bad going for a single that only made No 15 in the charts. For this second performance, singer Cia Berg seems to have donned a platinum blonde wig since we last saw her. Maybe, inspired by Björk, she was channeling her inner Betty Hutton who had the image of what they used to describe I believe as a ‘blonde bombshell’ back in the day. There are other similarities with Björk like the quirky vocals and the over the top props of the band behind her (feather boas and Max Wall style wigs) but whereas her career as a recording artist is still ongoing today (her last album was 2022’s “Fossora”), Whale would be done by the end of the 90s.

The nation is still under the spell of Robson & Jerome whose “I Believe” single is No 1 for a third of four weeks. Doubling down on this inexplicable phenomenon, the British public also bought the duo’s album that was released this week in enough quantities to send that to No 1 as well. As the recently tragically departed Karl Wallinger once sang on the World Party hit “Is It Like Today?”, ‘How did it come to this?’

And so to the main event. As it’s The Beatles, despite being the play out video, we get nearly three minutes of “Free As A Bird” as opposed to the usual sixty seconds the closing song is quite often allocated. I guess the first thing to say about it is that it’s not very good is it? I wasn’t the only person who thought that; reviews were mixed to say the least. Most of the criticisms seemed to be about the fact that it sounded more like ELO or possibly The Travelling Wilburys than The Beatles but then it was produced by Jeff Lynne so what did people expect?

More of an issue for me was that it was a mechanical plodder devoid of any of the artistry and creativity that was prevalent in the Fab Four’s back catalogue. Based on a demo of a song John Lennon wrote in 1977 and donated to the ‘Anthology’ project by Yoko Ono, I wonder if he would have envisaged the studio recording turning out like this had he lived to see it finished? I understand that there was still a massive appetite amongst the fanbase for any new material but let’s be honest, it just didn’t stand up to any type of comparison. Put it this way, if you were on a blind date and the conversation turned to The Beatles and in answer to the question what’s your favourite song of theirs your date said “I think I’d have to say Free As A Bird”, you’d want to be sure that your tracker on your mobile phone was active, that’s all I’m saying. I think the definitive view on the track though comes from the record buying public. After weeks of press and buzz about the single (it wasn’t even released until the 4th December, eleven days after this TOTP aired), it was widely expected to go straight to No 1. After all, this was a first new single for twenty-five years by the biggest band the world has ever seen, something that perhaps we thought would never happen – how could it not top the charts? And yet it didn’t, entering the chart at No 2 but getting no further, it was unable to shift “Earth Song” by Michael Jackson from the throne. Ironically, Jackson had purchased the publishing rights to The Beatles catalogue ten years before.

As for the video that was made to promote the single, it was directed by Joe Pytka who, in another link to Michael Jackson, had already directed music videos for the King of Pop such as “The Way You Make Me Feel”, “Dirty Diana” and “Heal The World”. The sepia tint gives it a grainy feel which I’m guessing was to tie it into the 60s? Apparently there are over 80 visual references to the band’s songs, lyrics and story inserted into the promo for Beatles fanatics to pore over. I would describe myself as a fan rather than a fanatic so when I saw the car crash scene, I thought it was a reference to Paul McCartney’s RTA in 1966 that was the basis for the whole ‘Paul Is Dead’ conspiracy theory but it actually relates to the lyrics of “A Day In The Life”. That song references the death of John and Paul’s friend Tara Browne who was heir to the Guinness fortune. Maybe putting in a ‘Paul Is Dead’ reference would have poured to much petrol on the fire of that particular rumour? Watching the video back now, it doesn’t have the same impact as it did back in 1995 but it still stands up I think.

A second single called “Real Love” also based on a Lennon home demo and taken from the “Anthology 2” album was released in 1996 peaking at No 4 in the UK before the final ever Beatles single – based on yet another Lennon 70s home demo called “Now And Then” – was released in November 2023 which though making it to No 1, seemed to be less well received even than “Free As A Bird”.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	M People	Itchycoo Park	Nope
2	Bon Jovi	Lie To Me	Nah
3	Blur	The Universal	No but I had The Great Escape album with it on
4	Everything But The Girl	Missing	No but I must have it on something surely?
5	Boyzone	Farther And Son	Never happening
6	Passengers	Miss Sarajevo	No but could /should have
7	Björk	It’s Oh So Quiet	No
8	Whale	Hobo Humpin’ Slobo Babe	Liked it, didn’t buy it
9	Robson & Jerome	I Believe	As if
10	The Beatles	Free As A Bird	I did not

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001xqx8/top-of-the-pops-23111995?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 24 AUG 1995

Posted on February 12, 2024 by 80stastic

And the winner is…The Battle of Britpop has been fought and the outcome declared. On the Sunday before this TOTP aired, Mark Goodier announced the Top 40 chart on Radio 1 and that Blur had come out on top of this epic tussle that had captured the attention of the media and the public alike. As I recall, he did the usual rundown one place early so that he could make a big deal of who was No 2 and, by extension, reveal the No 1 at the same time.

Whether by accident or design, the host of the TOTP that reflected this particular chart was Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker in a ‘golden mic’ guest slot. Whatever the circumstances behind it, there seemed to be something satisfying and fitting about his presence on the show; his dry sense of humour somehow deflating the media constructed frenzy around the Oasis / Blur rivalry.

Before we‘re given a glimpse of Jarvis though, we get perhaps the most well remembered (by me at least) of the top of the show direct-to-camera pieces – Blur riding a milk float into camera shot and bassist Alex James declaring that they were No 1 and would be camping it up on Top of the Pops later on before doing an exaggerated “ooh matron” gesture. I wonder who’s idea that was? There was a milk float in the video for the single so I guess there was a valid connection there but you couldn’t imagine Oasis pulling such a stunt. Maybe that was the point though – to differentiate themselves from their Northern rivals. “We’re nothing like them you know!”.

To start the show though we have…yep…a dance track. Of course we do. It is 1995 after all. This one comes courtesy of Clock who had hit upon the cheesy but successful formula of recording Eurodance flavoured versions of old hits. They’d already taken versions of Harold Faltermeyer’s “Axel F” and Tag Team’s “Whoomph! (There It Is)” into the Top 10 and would accelerate their output throughout the decade with covers from the catalogue of artists such as The Four Seasons, The Jacksons, KC and the Sunshine Band and Hot Chocolate. However, this one – “Everybody” – they wrote themselves…sort of. There’s a sample of “Let’s Start The Dance” by disco artist Bohannon in there as well as a vocal sound from Norman Cook’s sample library collection “Skip To My Loops”. However, the lyrics (if you can call them that) were the work of Clock members Stu Allan and Pete Pritchard.

It sounds like a poor man’s 2 Unlimited to me but the one thing that did stand out was that elongated cry of “Everybody!”. Surely that was influenced by this…

Someone noted on social media after this TOTP repeat aired that the winner of The Battle of Britpop should have been neither Blur nor Oasis but The Charlatans. They had a point. “Just When You’re Thinkin’ Things Over” is better than either “Country House” or “Roll With It” to my ears. Indeed, it was the NME’s Single of the Week over either of those two more celebrated releases.

I’d not really been into Tim Burgess and co when they first broke through as part of the whole “baggie” scene at the start of the 90s but they were really getting into their stride by this point and I was swayed. From “Can’t Get Out Of Bed” to the end of the decade was their imperial phase in my book. I wasn’t the only person of this opinion. The eponymous album this single came from topped the chart as did their next “Tellin’ Stories”. Just typing that has made me realise how many of the band’s songs and albums have a ‘g’ missing from their titles. Aside from the two above, there’s also “Crashin’ In” and “Just Lookin’”. Not that it’s a big deal. Just sayin’.

Tim Burgess is on record as saying that “Just When You’re Thinkin’ Things Over” was the band trying to sound like “Ramble On” by Led Zeppelin. Well, I never got the boat going to Led Zepp island (I know, sacrilege and all that) so I couldn’t comment on that but there is another song that I’ve become aware of fairly recently that it has a resemblance to. At the start of 2022, I made a New Year resolution to try and listen to a song that I didn’t know every day for 12 months. It didn’t have to be a ‘new’ song per se, just ‘new to me’. I didn’t quite hit my target but I still managed to amass a playlist with over 10 hours of songs on it. One of them was this 1973 John Lennon track from the album “Mind Games”:

If you go online and search for “Human Nature” by Madonna, you’ll find lots of articles about the meaning behind the song and of course plenty about that video. I myself added a few words on the subject in a previous post the first time the promo was shown on TOTP. There’s lots of opinion about the song being a retort to those who criticised her for being overtly sexual in her Sex book and “Erotica” album and agreeing with Madge for rightly pointing out that she wouldn’t have got such a hard time for exploring sexuality if she were a man. However, I quite like Jarvis Cocker’s succinct summing up of it all in his intro as he whispers:

“Express yourself, don’t repress yourself”

Then in his down to earth Sheffield drawl he says:

“According to Madonna’s new video that involves kind of perving around in a giant ice cube tray. Anyway, have a look for yourselves while we count down numbers 40 to 11 inclusive.”

He pretty much nails it I think. I love the way he adds the word ‘inclusive’ at the end. There’s no need for him to do that and most presenters wouldn’t have but it’s a good example of Jarvis’s idiosyncrasy.

There’s more wonderful celebrity piercing wit from Cocker next as we get the rather obtrusive and unnecessary video piece from Diana Ross. In a flat, monotone and off screen voice we hear Jarvis say simply “There now follows an important message” before we cut to Ross sat on the bonnet of a car who informs us that she’s in Detroit at the Motown Sound Exhibition and will be performing on TOTP tonight. And that’s it. Did we really need that clip shoe horning into the show? “Cheers Di” lampoons Jarvis before his next intro. “Wow. What can I tell you about this next act. Not a lot really as I don’t know anything about them” he advises. Genius comic delivery!

In truth though, Jarvis should have had better knowledge of “Move Your Body” by Xpansions 95 not least because it had already been a substantial hit previously. Yes, it’s time for another reactivated dance hit, a practice that dominated the charts in 1995. Just like hits from JX, Felix and The Original which had all been on the show in recent weeks, this was yet another dance track getting a second chart life. Initially a No 7 hit in 1991 as “Elevation (Move Your Body)”, it would peak at No 14 four years later. Xpansions was a vehicle for producer Phil Drummond whose real name, unbelievably was Phillip Phillips – no wonder he changed it. Together with actress and singer Sally Anne Marsh – wait, didn’t she play Truly Scrumptious in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?!

*checks internet*

My bad. That was Sally Ann Howes. I thought the person on stage looked remarkably young in 1995 to have starred in a film that came out in 1968! Anyway Phil and Sally Anne Marsh proved a prosperous partnership. The latter had pop music form having been in the early 90s girl group Faith Hope & Charity alongside The Word presenter Dani Behr and she would add her vocals to Deconstruction label dance act Ariel as well as carving out a successful acting and voice over artist. The track itself followed a formula of the title lyric being repeated continuously over a piano house riff and did nothing for me but, as Jarvis said, went down a storm in the clubs. Is it just me or does Sally Anne have a look of “Immaculate Collection” era Madonna about her? Incidentally, Phil Drummond also went under the pseudonym of Marradonna.

With the cat out of the bag four days earlier, there seemed little point in TOTP trying to eek out any morsel of tension surrounding who was No 1 (hence the Blur piece at the top of the show) so we get Oasis slap bang in the middle of the show at No 2 with “Roll With It”. Diplomatically, Jarvis doesn’t take any sides declaring the record buying public the winner having access to so much great music. Obviously the Manc lads weren’t going to drag themselves into the studio for another performance after they’d lost out to Blur who were there in person so we get a replay of their turn from last week.

“Roll With It” would hold at No 2 for a second week and spend a further two within the Top 10. Like all the band’s other singles, it would have a protracted chart life spending 49 weeks within the Top 100. Not bad for a song who the person who wrote it once described as “shit”.

Taking the show in another direction completely now is Björk who is the first of three consecutive female solo artists on the show though that’s about all they have in common with each other. To be fair, is anybody else similar to Björk? Take this single “Isobel” for example. It’s been described by critics as a modern fairy tale, a fable and by Simon Williams in the NME as:

“Where tribal rhythms spiral into enormous swathes of galloping pop fluffiness”
Williams, Simon (10 June 1995) “Long Play” NME .p.46.

Well, quite. I haven’t got the words to rival Mr Williams so I’ll just say that this one was too divorced from the mainstream for me and that I’m surprised that Björk was given a slot on the show two weeks running, especially as it only made No 23 in the UK charts.

Think of the BRITS 1996 and inevitably the Jarvis Cocker / Michael Jackson incident comes to mind. Jarvis protesting at Jackson’s Christ mimicking performance of “Earth Song” by running across the stage and wafting his fully clothed bottom in Jacko’s direction followed by a complete overreaction from his security team and Cocker being questioned by police before being released. What I hadn’t clocked before rewatching this TOTP was the jibe that Jarvis makes about the King of Pop before introducing a satellite exclusive performance by Diana Ross saying that she’d influenced a lot of people including “Michael Jackson’s plastic surgeon for one”. Ooh! Is it possible that Jacko was aware of this remark and took revenge via his security detail on Cocker at the BRITS six months later? Nah. Surely not.

Jarvis does accord Ross some respect by referring to her as Miss Diana Ross (the Miss is obligatory). Her song though deserves zero acclaim as it’s a right old stinker. Ross’s back catalogue features some stone cold classics but “Take Me Higher” is certainly not one of them. It sounds like such a desperate attempt to stay relevant in the dance obsessed 90s, as if her management had shown her a video of Lisa Stansfield and told her to do her best impersonation of her. She does her best to sell the song in this performance with her engaging, face wide smile but it doesn’t win me over. She should have stuck to the big ballads that brought her success in the early 90s like “When You Tell Me That You Love Me” and “One Shining Moment”. “Take Me Higher” peaked at No 32.

OK so when I said earlier they there was nothing in common between Björk and the two female solo artists that followed her, I forgot about the acting. The Icelandic singer has featured in a number of movies perhaps most famously Lars Bon Trier’s Dancer In The Dark whilst (Miss) Diana Ross won a Golden Globe for her portrayal of Billie Holiday in Lady Sings The Blues as well as starring in Mahogany and The Wiz. Then there’s Michelle Gayle who’s on the show with her fifth consecutive Top 40 hit “Happy Just To Be With You”. Michelle, of course, was in Grange Hill (as part of rap duo Fresh ‘n’ Fly no less) and as Hattie Tavernier in EastEnders. Her later career included stage roles in Beauty and the Beast, the Dusty Springfield musical Son of a Preacher Man and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Back in 1995 though, music was Michelle’s priority and she was pretty successful at it too. Six of her seven UK chart entries went Top 20 including two Top Tenners.

“Happy Just To Be With You” borrows heavily from the bassline of “Good Times” by Chic but it’s not on its own – the whosampled.com website says that it’s been sampled in 227 songs although Michelle’s single interpolates rather than samples it. It’s a pretty competent R&B / pop song I have to say and Michelle does a good job of promoting it.

In the end it wasn’t even that close. Blur won ‘The Battle of Britpop’ with their “Country House” single with room to spare selling 274,000 copies to the 216,000 units shifted by “Roll With It”. However, it’s generally perceived that Oasis may have lost the battle but won the war. The numbers back up that view. “(What’s The Story) Morning Glory?” would go 17 x platinum in the UK whilst Blur’s “The Great Escape” would achieve 3 x platinum sales. In February 1996, there was almost a repeat of The Battle of Britpop when the two bands released singles from their albums within a week of each other (presumably both camps were wise enough not to put themselves through it all again). Oasis’s track was the iconic “Don’t Look Back In Anger” whilst Blur released “Stereotypes”. At the Our Price in Stockport where I was working we sold 279 copies of Oasis in week one. And Blur? We sold 13. That’s thirteen. Rumour has it that Damon Albarn fled to Iceland to get away from the onslaught of Oasis’s album which he heard everywhere he went.

But how are their legacies viewed now? Both bands would achieve further No 1 singles and albums (although I believe Oasis had more). For me, and I was more Oasis than Blur, the former went on longer than they should have and possibly made an anachronism of themselves. Despite all predictions to the contrary, if anything Liam’s post Oasis output has been more interesting than Noel’s (I’ve never really been into his High Flying Birds). Indeed, Liam’s recent collaboration with ex-Stone Roses guitarist John Squire is meant to be excellent. As for Blur, Damon’s virtual band project Gorillaz has produced some brilliant material and shows much more imagination than cranking out rock songs for an ageing audience à la Noel. Meanwhile, Blur guitarist Graham Coxon’s solo career has produced some really interesting albums leading Noel Gallagher no less to describe him as

“One of the most talented guitarists of his generation”
Live Forever: The Rise and Fall of Britpop. Bonus interviews

Oh and Alex James wearing an Oasis t-shirt in this performance – was that an olive branch extended towards their rivals or a dig at them?

The play out video is “Warped” by Red Hot Chili Peppers and guess what? I don’t remember this one either! For the record, this was the lead single from the band’s “One Hot Minute” album and made No 31 on the UK Top 40.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Clock	Everybody	Never!
2	The Charlatans	Just When You’re Thinkin’ Things Over	No but I have their Melting Pot Best Of
3	Madonna	Human Nature	Nah
4	Xpansions 95	Move Your Body	Nope
5	Oasis	Roll With It	YES!
6	Björk	Isobel	I did not
7	Diana Ross	Take Me Higher	As if
8	Michelle Gayle	Happy Just To Be With You	No
9	Blur	Country House	No but I had the Great Escape album
10	Red Hot Chilli Peppers	Warped	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/m001w2m3/top-of-the-pops-24081995

TOTP 17 AUG 1995

Posted on February 7, 2024 by 80stastic

Let battle commence! Yes, the historic Battle of Britpop is in full swing with both the Blur and Oasis singles having been released three days before this TOTP was broadcast. The battlefields of record shops up and down the land were swarming with punters pledging loyalty to one side or the other (though in all likelihood many had a foot in both camps). The covers of the singles were their flags of allegiance and they flew boldly in displays at the front of many a store. As I’ve said before, working in a record shop at this time was exciting and as fortune would have it, I found myself covering for the singles buyer this week of all weeks at the Our Price in Stockport. As such, I was constantly checking the sales figures for both titles and if memory serves, across the chain Blur were always just ahead of Oasis all week.

So why did Blur win the battle? Well, I always thought that Oasis were at a disadvantage for the simple reason that their rivals released two CD singles, the standard one but also a second featuring four live tracks (including “Country House”). Oasis never went in for that two versions business – all their singles were released as a solitary CD format. Maybe it was a working class thing of not wanting to fleece the fans? Anyway, surely Blur having two options for people to buy must have increased their chances? Recently changed chart rules only allowed for three formats to count towards official sales of a single so whilst Blur’s were spread across two CDs (the dominant format of the time) and a cassette, Oasis’s were aggregated over one CD, the cassette and a 7” (and who was buying those in 1995?). Both bands did release a fourth format (Blur a 7” and Oasis a 12”) but those pesky chart regulations meant that the sales for those had to be allocated a chart position independent of the main release. A curious footnote to the whole story and not one that I’m convinced made much sense but there you go. There was also a rumour that the barcodes of the Oasis single weren’t reading properly on the initial copies but I can’t recall if that was actually the case.

Both singles are featured on tonight’s show (the second time for Blur though it is only the video in the play out slot) but looking at the rest of the show’s running order, I’m struck by how many of the artists are dance acts and completely at odds with the Blur/Oasis contest. It’s interesting to revisit these moments in time because just focusing on the Battle of Britpop rather skews the view of the wider musical landscape.

Having said all of that we start the show with a rock band. I’d forgotten all about – if I ever knew about them in the first place – Moist (terrible, terrible name). This lot were Canadians from the same place as Bryan Adams though I can’t imagine ‘The Groover from Vancouver’ recording a song like “Push”. Listening to it now it’s better than I would have imagined; something about the guitar sound puts me in mind of Suede albeit a grungier version of them. There’s a decent tune in there I think which may explain why it was a hit twice – No 35 in 1994 and No 20 when rereleased here. However, they would prove to be Moist’s only UK chart entries. The band took a decade long hiatus as the millennium began but have reformed since and released an album as recently as 2022.

Lead singer David Usher also has a solo career and is the founder of an artificial intelligence creative studio. On one of his solo albums he did a version of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” which was in the news recently when Tracy performed it at The Grammy Awards alongside country star Luke Combs. Public reaction to this catapulted the 1988 original to the top of the iTunes chart. Given all this attention to “Fast Car”, do you want to hear David’s version? Course you do…

The first of the dance tracks is up next and guess what? Yep, it had already been a minor hit before being rereleased and becoming a massive one. This trend for reissued tracks mainly seemed to afflict dance acts but as we saw with Moist earlier, it was not exclusive to that genre. Anyway, “I Luv You Baby” by The Original was originally a No 31 hit at the start of 1995 but its continued plays in clubs the breadth of the country warranted a second spin and this time it hit the jackpot going all the way to No 2.

I didn’t really get its success at all. It was relentlessly repetitive with the song’s title being sung on a loop over a heard-it-all-before piano house backing. Listening to it now, it puts me in mind of “Love Can’t Turn Around” by Farley Jackmaster Funk, another track I couldn’t stand. Maybe it’s just that they share identical syllable count in their choruses?

The singer here is one Everett Bradley who doesn’t really strike me as one of the most natural of pop stars. Maybe it’s his suit and shirt combo or his glasses. Or maybe it’s his dance moves. In the instrumental break he goes a bit David Brent…

It’s another dance artist now but this one’s story involves real life tragedy. Yet again my memory has failed me when it comes to recalling Shiva but they were a band that were signed to the ultra successful FFRR dance label and they had already had a minor hit with “Work It Out” earlier in the year. With powerful voiced singer Louise Dean also having a very marketable image, they seemed destined for bigger things. All their ambitions were swept away on 18th June 1995 when Dean was killed in a hit and run incident near her home in Huddersfield. With new single “Freedom” due out, FFRR pulled it from the release schedules as a mark of respect but Dean’s family asked for that decision to reversed as a tribute to her. The track duly became a No 18 hit.

In the last post, I suggested that Mary Kiani’s “When I Call Your Name” could pass for an M People song and I return to that opinion again for Shiva. Louise Dean’s voice bears more than a passing resemblance to Heather Small’s and you can easily imagine the latter belting out “Freedom”. I guess these comparisons just go to show how popular and ubiquitous the M People sound was back in the 90s. I’m assuming that Shiva split after Dean’s death as there seems to be little information about them post “Freedom”. Another tragic case of what might have been.

This next one is disconcerting bordering on bizarre and yet somehow intriguing…and those are three descriptors I never thought I’d use when discussing Deuce. This lot were the stuff of throwaway, candy floss dance- pop weren’t they? A two boy, two girl quartet whose quality level was literally that of sub-Eurovision (their second single “I Need You” was entered into A Song For Europe but came third). And yet this song – “On The Bible” – has taken me by surprise rather. For a start they’ve got a seven strong gospel choir backing them in this performance and on the chorus which gives the whole thing a sliver of credibility. Said chorus is not only catchy but also solemn somehow. However, undermining all that is the group themselves who it’s impossible to take seriously. Why are the two women dressed in some sort of naughty bride outfits? The blonde one’s heavy eye make up makes her look a bit crazed – a hint of Bette Davis in Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? even. What the deuce was going on here?! As I said, disconcerting, bizarre yet intriguing.

“On The Bible” peaked at No 13 and was the band’s penultimate hit. They split in 1997 and if you’re wondering whatever happened to Deuce, Lisa Armstrong married (and divorced Ant of Ant & Dec) before becoming a make up artist for shows such as X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent. Craig Robert Young became a successful actor performing in such plays as Noël Coward’s The Vortex and as Charlie Chaplin in the Oscar winning film Mank alongside Gary Oldman.

Right, who’s up next? Guru featuring Chaka Khan? Nope, yet again I have zero recall of this one. How is it possible that so many of these tunes have escaped my long term memory banks given that I was working in a record shop at the time? I must have sodding sold many of them to the public. Maybe the answer lies in the fact that the shop stereo, contrary to popular opinion and certainly that of many of my colleagues, was meant to be a promotional tool to highlight chart and new release singles and albums which we had lots of and not to play whatever whoever was on the counter felt like playing regardless of how obscure or not it was. Our Price even had specially put together instore CDs narrated by Mark Goodier that highlighted new releases but it was hard work getting the staff to play them. Saturday afternoon? Busiest time of the week in the shop? A perfect time for some experimental ambient music courtesy of Autechre! Maybe this was the explanation – I just never heard some of these songs because we never played them in the store.

Talking of experimental music, Guru was a bit of a pioneer himself. Having been one half of hip hop duo Gang Starr, his solo work centred around the “Jazzmatazz” project which sought to create a new genre by combining jazz musicians, hip-hop productions and rap. The first volume had been a sleeper hit selling enough copies to convince Guru and his record label that there should be further instalments. “Jazzmatazz, Volume II (The New Reality)” duly followed and “Watch What You Say” was its lead single. As with the previous album, Guru asked various singers to add their vocal talents to the songs including Mica Paris, Shara Nelson, Jay Kay and Chaka Khan on this particular track. Ch-Ch-Chaka (you have to make at least one reference to “I Feel For You” when discussing Chaka Khan, it’s the law) hadn’t been anywhere near the UK Top 40 since 1989 so her TOTP appearance here probably wasn’t the seismic event it might have been back in the 80s. Did the kids even know who she was? As I said, I didn’t remember “Watch What You Say” at all and listening to it now, it’s OK but not really my cup of tea. It peaked at No 28. Guru sadly died in 2010 aged 48 from cardiac arrest after surgery.

At the top of the show we had a rare double message to camera; one from Björk who is in New York and will perform live by satellite from her gig there and one from Take That who will do a similar thing from Manchester. Björk’s song is “Isobel” which was the second single to be lifted from her “Post” album. As stated before, I used to dismiss Björk as not being able to sing but came to the conclusion that she can sing but that I don’t like her voice…most of the time. Some songs featured in these TOTP repeats I’ve surprised myself by appreciating – “Isobel” isn’t one of them. It’s all too ethereal and otherworldly for me. Maybe my tastes are just too mainstream as, like many others, I really liked her next release – her cover of Betty Hutton’s 1951 hit “It’s Oh So Quiet”. That single was so much more commercial than its predecessor.

Here’s something about “Isobel” that I find interesting though courtesy of @TOTPFacts:

The strings on “Isobel” were arranged by Eumir Deodato de Almeida (aka Deodato), perhaps best known for his jazz funk version of "Also Sprach Zarathustra”, a number seven hit in 1973. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) February 2, 2024

Why am I intrigued by this? Well, the name Deodato appears in the lyrics to “Up On The Catwalk” by Simple Minds which was the third and final single taken from their “Sparkle In The Rain” album. Said album has just passed the 40th anniversary of its release and that makes me feel very old as I bought it back in 1984 (on white vinyl no less!). However, having looked Deodato up, there appears to be multiple individuals of that name deemed worthy of a Wikipedia entry so I’m not sure which one the band were referring to. In addition to Eumir Deodato there’s Ruggero Deodato the Italian film director, Deodato Orlandi a 13th century Italian artist, Deodato Guinaccia an Italian Renaissance painter, Claudio Deodato a Brazilian footballer…phew! That’s a lot of Deodatos. Bizarrely, Eumir’s granddaughter is married to Justin Bieber! No, really.

And another dance track! I remember the song title and name of the artist but I couldn’t have told you how it went. I probably should have better recall of it though as it was a hit twice within 16 months. Yes, “Son Of A Gun” by JX was another of those singles like “I Luv You Baby” by The Original earlier that had already been a hit but would be rereleased a short time later going on to be an even bigger chart success the second time around.

Having listened to it back at a distance of nearly 30 years though, the hook of the line “A man just on the run, you dirty son of a gun” does ring a few bells. Not surprising really as apart from the words ‘oh’ and ‘yeah’ and a couple of derivatives from them, they are the only lyrics in the whole track.

“Son Of A Gun” would make No 6 in the charts in 1995 having peaked at No 13 in 1994. Later in the decade, we would see the emergence of superstar rapper Jay-Z. As far as I’m aware, we are yet to witness a JY or indeed Jay-Y having a hit record.

Finally the show addresses the elephant in the room – Blur vs Oasis, the Battle of Britpop. Before we get to the performance of “Roll With It” by Oasis, there’s an interloper in the studio. For some reason, Robbie Williams pops up next to host Wendy Lloyd to do the intro for the Manc lads describing them as “the band of the people”. Why was he there? Well, I guess he was trying to reinvent himself as a rock ‘n’ roll star as opposed to an ex-boyband member. Infamously, he’d started this process by hanging out with Oasis at Glastonbury that year sporting a peroxide blonde barnet and appearing to be under the influence of either drugs, booze or both. It all seemed very deliberate and calculated.

Anyway, back to Liam, Noel, Bonehead, Guigsy and Whitey. Yes, this was the first time we’d seen new drummer Alan White in situ after he’d usurped the sacked Tony McCarroll earlier in the year. He would stay with the band for nine years before being replaced by Ringo Starr’s lad Zak. This is the performance when Liam and Noel swapped places with the former donning a guitar and the latter taking centre stage on vocals. Obviously they were miming which I’m guessing is the reason for the switch, to highlight / send up the practice. Whilst Liam does his best Bonehead impression, Noel hams it up by poking his tongue out at one point and wearing shades throughout.

And so to the song. You don’t need me to tell you that “Roll With It” wasn’t Oasis’s best song by a country mile. In fact, it’s possibly one of their worst. Pedestrian and lumpen, it was so lacking in energy and creativity that it would prompt cries of “”Oasis Quo” from the Blur camp, referencing the famous three chord specialists. Either of the original extra tracks on the CD single (“It’s Better People” and “Rockin’ Chair”) would have made better choices as the lead track. They made a similar misstep with previous single “Some Might Say” – “Acquiesce” was an infinitely superior song. None of these opinions stopped me from buying it though. I was becoming rather committed to the cause by this point.

Unsurprisingly, there’s no sign of Robbie Williams when it comes to introducing his ex-band mates from Take That who are No 1 for a third and final week with “Never Forget”. This time, as previewed at the top of the show, we get a live performance of the track from the Manchester Arena date of their Nobody Else tour. Having checked their set list, “Never Forget” was the final number to end the show. The travelators prop is a nice touch, allowing the other three to literally take a step backwards to allow Howard Donald to take centre stage for the track on which he is lead vocalist. He does a decent job I think, even coming up with a falsetto at one point.

“Never Forget” would be the band’s penultimate hit in its first incarnation. We won’t see them again until 1996 when they released their cover of “How Deep Is Your Love” to promote a valedictory greatest hits album. However, that won’t be the last we see of Gary Barlow, Mark Owen and, yes, that man Robbie Williams in these BBC4 TOTP repeats as they all went on to solo careers (of varying degrees of success) post Take That. Talking of Williams, maybe we do get to see him in this performance after all. Towards the finale, the camera picks out one of the backing entourage and it’s a bloke with a peroxide blonde, spiky hairdo. It couldn’t be could it?

In the spirit of equity, the play out video is “Country House” by Blur. Of course, it is. Even host Wendy Lloyd acknowledges the inevitability of the situation in her intro of “We better play out with these guys I guess”. The promo is pretty memorable but maybe not for all the right reasons. The premise of the band transported into the board game they are playing is intriguing but the presence of all the glamour models and the Benny Hill style sequence of Matt Lucas chasing them was probably more palatable 30 years ago during the era of lads mags. Then there’s the treatment of that poor pig!

One of the aforementioned models is Jo Guest who was quite the star in the mid 90s appearing in The Sun as a Page 3 girl and various ‘top shelf’ publications. If you’re wondering what happened to her, it’s a sad story I’m afraid. Her health deteriorated and she was eventually diagnosed with fibromyalgia, a rheumatic and neurological condition. It devastated her life leaving her depressed, permanently exhausted and suicidal. Happily, after reaching out to the Samaritans, her health has improved and she is still with us.

Also taking a starring role in the video as the “city dweller, successful fella” of the lyrics is actor and presenter Keith Allen, five years on from featuring in the video for New Order’s “World In Motion” and three years away from the whole Fat Les project. An interesting character to say the least, if you ever get the chance, his autobiography is an entertaining read.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Moist	Push	We start with a no
2	The Original	I Luv U Baby	But I don’t love you - no
3	Shiva	Freedom	I did not
4	Deuce	On The Bible	A curiosity but of course not
5	Guru featuring Chaka Khan	Watch What You Say	It’s another no
6	Björk	Isobel	Nah
7	JX	Son Of A Gun	Nope
8	Oasis	Roll With It	YES!
9	Take That	Never Forget	No
10	Blur	Country House	No but I had the Great Escape album with it on

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/m001vvzf/top-of-the-pops-17081995

TOTP 04 MAY 1995

Posted on November 10, 2023 by 80stastic

These BBC4 repeats are coming thick and fast now after taking the Summer off and I’m getting behind. I need to whip through this post in double quick time just to keep up. Who’s on tonight’s show that I could skim over briefly?

*checks running order*

Hmm. Well, four of the songs on tonight have been on the show before so maybe they’re contenders for a short write up. Of the newbies, I can’t believe I’ll have much to say about Runrig or Joshua Kadison but let’s see.

It’s another ‘golden mic’ host tonight who is Whigfield of “Saturday Night” fame. Having watched the whole show from start to finish, I have to say that her presenting skills aren’t the best. She seems to get tongue tied on occasion and lose track of what she’s meant to be saying. Still, she certainly had more to offer than last week’s host Chris Evans in other areas if you know what I mean. Erm…anyway, the first artist she introduces are The Wildhearts who were only just on seven days ago performing “I Wanna Go Where The People Go”. Indeed, only Take That as the No 1 and that Weezer video as the play out track separate them from their last appearance.

As it’s another studio performance, this really does seem like a prime candidate for as few words as I can get away with. OK let’s go with the fact that lead singer Ginger looks ever so slightly John Lennon-esque here with his shades, shaggy hair and psychedelic design shirt and talking of John Lennon lookalikes…I once went to the Frog And Bucket comedy club in Manchester as part of a staff night out. The compère realised we were on a works outing and so asked us who we were. When we replied “Our Price”, he immediately came back with “there’s always someone in a group of people who work in a record shop who looks like John Lennon” and we all turned to our colleague Mike who did indeed resemble John Lennon with his glasses and hairstyle. How we laughed. Except Mike.

If you closed your eyes whilst listening to this next artist, you would be forgiven for thinking it was Elton John in the studio performing his latest single. Joshua Kadison looked nothing like Elton though he had radically changed his appearance recently. How do I know this? Well, because he (or more likely his record label) had been peddling his song “Jessie” for over a year by this point trying to make it a hit in the UK after achieving that status in the US way back in 1993. This was the third time the single had made a tilt at our Top 40 after peaking at Nos 48 and 69 in 1994. The promotion for those releases (including the official video) had Joshua in full on Curtis Stigers mode with shoulder length hair and clean shaven. Fast forward to May 1995 and he’d lopped off the locks and grown some facial hair. Like some sort of Samson in reverse, the image change worked and “Jessie” finally gained entry to the UK Top 40. Though not a runaway hit, it was a consistent performer peaking at No 15 but also staying solid at No 20 for three consecutive weeks.

“Jessie” would prove to be the peak of commercial success for Joshua (at least in the UK). A follow up single called “Beautiful In My Eyes” was a minor hit and his albums never really took off in terms of actual sales. He would carry on releasing material via his own website but his music career went quiet in 2012 and his only recent public appearance came in 2020 via a YouTube video in support of Black Lives Matter.

Paul Weller had been always been a part of my life due to the devotion to him by my Jam mad elder brother. By 1995, he was also becoming a part of the lives of people who maybe hadn’t been a disciple of The Jam and The Style Council but were discovering him for the first time due to the rise of Britpop. Named by many a band involved in that movement as being a huge influence, Weller was declared in vogue again though his army of loyal fans would claim he never went out of fashion. I think it was around this time that he also became associated with the title ‘The Godfather Of Britpop’ though I think that there were a few names in the hat for that particular accolade. Ray Davies of The Kinks, Steve Marriott of Small Faces, XTC’s Andy Partridge and even Adam Ant have all been mentioned in that conversation alongside Weller.

One label that certainly was allocated to him around now was that of ‘Dadrock’ but what was it? The most basic definition seemed to be any music that your Dad might have listened to in their youth. That, of course, gave the phrase the flexibility to be applied to fathers of all generations including future ones. Apparently, Sun 41 and Blink 182 are now considered to be ‘Dadrock’! A more sensible take seems to be that it refers to rock songs performed by elder statesmen of the genre in an earnest style. That, admittedly broad, definition could certainly include Weller’s “The Changingman”. Now I thought this was the lead single from Paul’s album “Stanley Road” but his discography informs me that it was in fact the second after “Out Of The Sinking” though I think my confusion may be due to the fact that “Out Of The Sinking” was rereleased as the final single from it in March 1996. It’s a decent song no doubt with a strident guitar riff which Weller admits was borrowed from ELO’s “10538 Overture”. The similarities can’t be denied.

Apparently the Labour Party wanted to use it alongside D:Ream’s “Things Can Only Get Better” for their 1997 General Election campaign but Weller refused despite his previous ties to the party dating back to his support for the Red Wedge movement in the 80s. I’m sure I read somewhere that he doesn’t even bother to vote at all these days which seems a sad state of affairs for someone once seen as an ‘angry young man’. “The Changingman” indeed.

Now here’s a rarity – a record I don’t remember from the nineties but which I do know from the noughties. Even more unlikely is that I prefer the noughties version. “Freak Like Me” was a No 1 for Sugababes in 2002 and deservedly so when it combined Adina Howard’s 1995 original with “Are “Friends” Electric?” by Gary Numan and Tubeway Army. The brainchild of producer Richard X, it was a genius idea, brilliantly executed. Adina’s version must have something to it to have supplied the source material for such a perfect mashup but it doesn’t really do it for me at all on its own. Apparently, UK audiences agreed with me as it only made No 33 over here but was a No 2 hit in America. Adina would replicate that chart position in the UK the following year though when she joined forces with Warren G for a version of “What’s Love Got To Do With It” made famous by Tina Turner. Don’t remember that either – Adina’s version not Tina’s obviously.

Now for that second act that I didn’t think I’d have much to say about. Somebody at TOTP must have really loved Runrig as they seem to be on the show a lot for a Gaelic rock band. It turns out that this song – “An Ubhal As Airde (The Highest Apple)” – was used to soundtrack an advert for Carlsberg Lager and that’s why it was in the charts. It had originally been recorded in 1987 for the album “The Cutter And The Clan”. I have to say I don’t remember the song nor the advert.

Watching this performance, it’s hard to think of a more tedious turn in the show’s history. Hardly anybody on stage moves and I can’t decide if they all look petrified or bored out of their brains. You know what? That’ll do for this one.

From a snooze fest to a wheeze attack or rather a Weezer attack. It’s that Happy Days video for “Buddy Holly” again. Just as Happy Days ran for much longer than my childhood memory informs me it did (1974-84 and 255 episodes), so Weezer’s career has racked up so many more miles than I would have guessed. In my head, they completely disappeared after “Buddy Holly” and its parent eponymous debut album. However, despite a five year gap between their second and third albums, they have continued to record and release material prolifically since then with fifteen studio albums to their name. They even had a Top 10 hit in 2005 with the Wheatus-like “Beverly Hills”.

Of course, Weezer’s track isn’t the only song to feature Buddy Holly in its title. Mike Berry had a hit in 1961 called “Tribute To Buddy Holly” but I don’t know that at all. The one that is prominent in my mind is by Alvin Stardust whose 1984 No 7 hit “I Feel Like Buddy Holly” was written by Mike Batt of Wombles fame. The lyrics include these lines:

… Well, I feel like Buddy Holly ’cause it’s raining in my heart
All the sad songs take me back to you now that we are apart
Now I know how Paul McCartney felt when he got up to say:
I wish it was yesterday
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Mike Batt
I Feel Like Buddy Holl lyrics © Dramatico Music Publishing Ltd

Yeah, that’s fine Mike except Paul McCartney doesn’t sing (or say) “I wish it was yesterday” in the Beatles classic does he? “I believe in yesterday”? Certainly. “I long for yesterday”? Indeed. “I wish it was yesterday”? Not once.

It’s another of those tracks that have been on the show before next…or is it? True, we did see Björk perform “Army Of Me” just the other week but this time she’s doing a remixed version of it alongside Skunk Anansie in a new slot TOTP called ‘Exclusive Mix’. This beefed up take on it sounds infinitely better to me than the radio edit and Skin looks genuinely disturbing as she looks down the camera lens into the living rooms of the nation. This mix was the third track on the second CD single and it really rips it up (and remember, I’m not a massive Björk fan). Skunk Anansie were relatively unknown at this point having only officially released one single which failed to make the UK Top 40. It wouldn’t be until “Weak” hit the charts early the following year that their profile raised dramatically.

It’s that event that crops up on TOTP (very) occasionally now, a performance of a single that never made the Top 40. The TV series Crocodile Shoes ushered in the third movement of Jimmy Nail’s pop career. Firstly, we had his 1985 cover of Rose Royce’s “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore” which made No 3. A seven year gap was surprisingly and spectacularly ended by his No 1 single “Ain’t No Doubt” (she’s lyin’) before the Crocodile Shoes project with its attendant album and single arrived in late 1994. That album gave Nail two hit singles; the rather mournful title track and the excellent “Cowboy Dreams” supplied by Paddy McAloon who recorded his own version of the song with his band Prefab Sprout on the “Gunman And Other Stories” album.

This third single – “Calling Out Your Name” – would only make it to No 65 and is nowhere near as strong as its predecessor to my ears. A decent enough song but a bit of a plodder. Jimmy took its lack of success in his stride though. In an unusual spurt of activity, he would be back before the end of the year with another album and hit single in “Big River” and just twelve months later he would unleash “Crocodile Shoes II” on us. There ain’t no doubt (ahem) that we’ll be seeing more of Jimmy on these TOTP repeats before too long.

And so to the new No 1. There was never, ever any way that Oasis wouldn’t get there with this release – their sixth single “Some Might Say”. The buzz around them was too big by then, almost unstoppable. They were the biggest band in Britain and it seemed only right and proper somehow that they had a No 1 under their belt to cement that status. Now, some might say that the fact that it came via one of their more prosaic singles besmirched that achievement rather but that didn’t matter to me much at the time even though I knew that it wasn’t even the best track on the CD single. For their part, the band’s (or rather Noel and Liam’s) swagger was now in full ascendancy – witness their cocky message to camera at the top of the show. Such was Noel’s belief in himself and his songs and his perception of his standing in the band that he presumably had felt no compunction about forcing drummer Tony McCarroll out of the band since their last TOTP appearance just the other week. Alan White was now in possession of the drum sticks and he would remain there until 2004. This appearance on TOTP came just a day after he had joined the band.

I duly bought “Some Might Say” and at the time took no notice of its frankly bizarre front cover. Set in a disused railway station with a man (sleeve designer Brian Cannon’s father) stomping up the platform with a sink / wheelbarrow full of fish and a homeless man with a sign reading ‘education please’ and a man pouring a watering can over a woman’s head. I’d never noticed before but watering can man is Noel and you can spy Liam on the bridge waving. All of these seemingly unlinked images were actually visual representations of the songs lyrics. Check these out:

‘Cause I’ve been standing at the station
In need of education in the rain
You made no preparation
For my reputation once again
The sink is full of fishes
She’s got dirty dishes on the brain
It was overflowing gently
But it’s all elementary my friend
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Noel Gallagher
Some Might Say lyrics © Oasis Music

See? Yeah, it’s probably not as clever as Noel thought it would be when he requested that Cannon’s sleeve make reference to all the track’s lyrics but it kind of hangs together well enough I think. The single would only stay at No 1 for a solitary week but certainly in the Our Price I was working at in Stockport, it would continue to sell steadily and would stay in the Top 100 for 83 weeks between 1995 and 1998.

I might not remember that Carlsberg advert featuring Runrig’s song but nobody who was around in 1995 can fail to recall the advert that tonight’s closing track was used in surely? That weird dancing man one for Guinness? Yeah, this…

The track used for it was “Guaglione” by Perez ‘Prez’ Prado which was recorded way back in 1958. Prez was a Cuban bandleader, pianist, composer and arranger who popularised the mambo sound in the 1950s with hits such as “Mambo No. 5” (yes that one covered by Lou Bega in 1999) and a cover of Louiguy’s “Cherry Pink (and Apple Blossom White)” (yes that one that Modern Romance covered in 1982). Its use by the Guinness marketing team would eventually lead to an official release of the song as a single that would go to No 2 in the UK and No 1 in Ireland (obviously). I couldn’t really be doing with either the song or the advert to be honest though I can appreciate the charms of a perfectly poured pint of Guinness occasionally.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	The Wildhearts	I Wanna Go Where The People Go	No
2	Joshua Kadison	Jessie	I did not
3	Paul Weller	The Changingman	No but I had the Stanley Road album with it on
4	Adina Howard	Freak Like Me	Nope
5	Runrig	An Ubhal As Airde (The Highest Apple)	Negative
6	Weezer	Buddy Holly	Liked it, didn’t buy it
7	Björk / Skunk Anansie	Army Of Me	Nah
8	Jimmy Nail	Calling Out Your Name	Never happened
9	Oasis	Some Might Say	YES!
10	Perez ‘Prez’ Prado	Guaglione	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/m001s1hy/top-of-the-pops-04051995

TOTP 20 APR 1995

Posted on November 2, 2023 by 80stastic

Those big BBC changes keep on coming in 1995. The day after this TOTP aired, both Bruno Brookes and Steve Wright presented their final shows on Radio 1. Brookes, of course, had hosted his last TOTP just the other week; Wright hadn’t been near the corporation’s flagship pop music show for years. Dear old Uncle Steve probably felt hard done by having been shunted from his natural habitat of Radio 1 afternoons to the Breakfast Show by new controller Matthew Bannister in the January of the previous year. The new time slot hadn’t worked out and the Monday after Wright’s departure, the era of Chris Evans commenced.

Whatever your opinion of Mr Evans, there’s no denying he created some noise around himself and his show. The first time I became aware of him was in 1992 when he presented a Sunday afternoon show on Radio 1 called Too Much Gravy and he genuinely sounded like a breath of fresh air. He had a feature where he asked listeners to suggest songs that were really long and really short in length as I recall. Later that year he would break into TV with The Big Breakfast and his fame (some may say infamy) was assured. Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush would follow (made by Evans’ own production company) before the call came from Matthew Bannister to renew his relationship with Radio 1. His breakfast show would add 600,000 new listeners possibly due to the controversy it created with innuendo-laden features and the regular questioning of a female member of his team called Holly Samos about her sex life. Over the next couple of years, Evans would become one of the biggest celebrities around aided by the rise of ‘lad culture’ and his Channel 4 show TFI Friday. This post isn’t about blowing smoke up Chris Evans’ arse though so on with the music and we start with Pato Banton and Ranking Roger and their duet “Bubbling Hot”.

Now, if like me you’re wondering why this sounds so familiar even though you weren’t aware that it even existed until it was featured on these TOTP repeats, then here’s @TOTPFacts with the reason why:

“Bubbling Hot” pinches a melody from Dave & Ansel Collins’s classic 1971 track “Double Barrel”: https://t.co/p5kVXVuuC9 #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) October 27, 2023

Roger, of course, is probably best known for his time as a member of The Beat though there is much more to his musical legacy including a band who never had a UK Top 40 hit though they did achieve some success in America. General Public were kind of a punk /ska supergroup comprising a line up of ex-members of The Specials, The Clash, Dexys Midnight Runners and the aforementioned The Beat’s Dave Wakeling and Ranking Roger. Though ignored at home, three of their songs would make it into film soundtracks resulting in hits on the US charts. The John Hughes pictures Weird Science, Sixteen Candles and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off plus the Alicia Silverstone starring Clueless all feature General Public tracks of which this is probably my favourite:

Wakeling and Roger reactivated General Public in 1995 and would score another US hit from another film soundtrack (this time Threesome) with a version of the Staple Singers’ “I’ll Take You There”. Sadly, Ranking Roger died of cancer in 2019 aged just 56.

Next up we have *checks notes* ah yes, some Eurodance. Of course we do. You couldn’t sodding avoid this soulless genre back then. Corona are this week’s exponent of the genre’s paucity of passion with their single “Baby Baby”. There are few if any redeeming features on display here. Even the singer isn’t the actual singer. Echoing Black Box’s vocalist deception, the woman fronting the whole sham here – Olga Maria de Souza – was just that, a front. The voice on the track belongs to someone called Jenny B. In fact, despite being the public face of the act throughout the 90s and beyond, Souza didn’t actually lay down her own vocals on any Corona recording until 2005! We’re talking Boris Johnson levels of building a career based on nothing but smoke and mirrors here. “Baby Baby” would somehow become a No 5 hit. The more I hear, the less I understand.

A genuinely arresting song now that would make you stop in your tracks the first time you heard it. Portishead had firmly been announced by the music press as the movement leaders of trip hop by this point though this wasn’t an image that the band themselves wished to promote. After “Glory Box” had made them bona fide Top 40 stars earlier in the year, a rerelease of their debut single “Sour Times” was deemed sensible and what a sound decision it proved to be.

After making No 57 in August of 1994, it would peak at No 13 second time around. Many a descriptor has been used to identify Portishead’s sound in general but on this track in particular, words like ‘haunting’, ‘melancholy’ and ‘cinematic’ are certainly not wide of the mark. That last one certainly rings true. “Sour Times” features a speeded up sample from a track from film composer Lalo Schifrin’s album “More Mission: Impossible”. Not only that but the video features footage from a short film made by the band themselves! I had no idea such a thing existed! Said film is called To Kill A Dead Man and a still from it formed the cover of their “Dummy” album. The theme from the film was an extra track on the CD single of “Sour Times” and gives off some serious 60s spy film vibes…

Of course, Portishead weren’t the first band to make their own feature film. ABC came out with Mantrap in 1983 and, like To Kill A Dead Man, it was a spy caper and had its own theme tune called “Theme From Mantrap”.

After that rather spine tingling interlude, we’re back to the cruddy, generic dance music. I say generic but there was something that set Real McCoy apart from their peers and that was that for some reason their particular brand of Eurodance crossed over to America. They had two No 3 hits over there with “Another Night” and “Run Away” not though with this one, “Love & Devotion”. Yes, I know the TOTP caption says “3rd UK hit and 2nd US Top 20 hit” but as far as I can tell, this isn’t true. This track wasn’t released as a single in America.

Anyway, so what was it about the Real McCoy version of Eurodance that succeeded over the pond where the genre generally didn’t prove to be popular? I think I may have said in a previous post whilst commenting on another of their hits that there seemed to be more of a classic pop song structure to their output than some of their contemporaries so was that a factor? Bizarrely, in the case of “Love & Devotion”, I could probably understand if that had been a major hit in the US (it wasn’t released there remember) as it has more than a passing resemblance to Ace Of Base whose Euro-infused cod reggae sound provided them with a No 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. I’ll say it again, the more I hear the less I understand.

When it comes to songs from films, Portishead, despite having their own short film to their name, had some way to go to catch the soundtrack master Bryan Adams. The Groover From Vancouver’ first had one of his songs featured in a film in 1983 when “Heaven” appeared in the largely unknown A Night In Heaven and by 2002 he had written a whole soundtrack album by himself for the animated western Spirit: Stallion Of The Cimarron but it was the 90s when he bestrode the genre mammoth like. Starting with that Robin Hood song, he followed it up by being part of a trio with Sting and Rod Stewart on “All For Love” from The Three Musketeers and then came “Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman?” from Don Juan DeMarco. Yet another ballad (all his film songs seemed to be of the love variety), the flamenco guitar gave it a differential to the others but for me it was always a bit of a damp squib. Sorry Bry but I’ve never really loved this song. Not one bit.

It’s the ‘album’ slot now but as is commonwith this feature, what we actually get is a very long preview of the artist’s next single. Wet Wet Wet’s latest album “Picture This” (as the TOTP caption says) was No 1 and had already sold 340,000 copies (it would go on to shift 900,000 units) so I guess it made sense to have the top selling artist on the show. The track they perform here is “Don’t Want To Forgive Me Now” which would end up being their next single when it was released in June. It’s an accomplished, well produced pop song but a little to formulaic and obvious for me. It would peak at No 7 when finally released.

If the track itself didn’t really intrigue me, I was struck by something about the performance of it, namely that bass player Graeme Clark and keyboardist Neil Mitchell have swapped places and instruments. Was that just some sort of band in joke or did they perhaps want to have a laugh by messing with the usual set up? Neither looks convincing in their new role. Neil hardly moves his fingers at all along the bass neck whilst Graeme literally bashes around on the keys like he was Bamm-Bamm from The Flintstones. It got me thinking though about other occasions in the show’s history where a classic band line up has been subverted. Later in the year we would get the classic Oasis performance of “Roll With It” when Noel and Liam exchanged places and didn’t Jimmy Somerville and Sarah Jane Morris mine each other’s vocal parts when performing “Don’t Leave Me This Way”? I think they did. Must be something about songs that begin with the word ‘Don’t’.

Ah, it’s Björk. Always a difficult review for me. I used to think I didn’t like Björk because she can’t sing. Then I came to the realisation that she can sing but I just don’t like her voice. Then I surprised myself when rewatching these BBC4 TOTP repeats by actually appreciating and even liking some of her material like “Venus As A Boy” and “Big Time Sensuality”. So how do I approach and revisit “Army Of Me”, the lead single of her second album “Post”? Well, I’m afraid this one doesn’t work for me. Too menacing, brooding and industrial sounding for my delicate pop sensibilities. However, even I couldn’t resist the charms of her version of “It’s Oh So Quiet” when she scored a massive hit with it over the Xmas period.

Björk is back on the show in a future repeat alongside Skunk Anansie to perform a remix of “Army Of Me”. Maybe I’ll like that version better. By the way, this was yet another song that featured on a film soundtrack – the big screen adaptation of the comic book character Tank Girl. The collection of songs was assembled by Courtney Love and included tracks by her own band Hole (of course) and the aforementioned Portishead. This is fast turning into a film soundtrack special!

Or is it a Eurovision special? With the song contest just three weeks away, the BBC was ramping up its promotion of the annual event. The UK’s official entry Love City Groove will be along shortly but right now it’s an act that came third to them in the selection competition A Song For Europe. Deuce had already had a No 11 hit with “Call It Love” earlier in the year but their Eurovision attempt “I Need You” would go one better giving them their biggest ever hit. Having listened back to this rather nasty slice of Eurodance, I can understand why it didn’t win. Deuce were like a second rate Steps prototype and nobody needed that in their lives.

Despite being well beaten at A Song For Europe by Love City Groove, Deuce did pip their victors in one chart battle – they made it to the Top 10 first. Whilst the rappers were at No 17 this week, Deuce went straight in at No 10. LCG would eventually supersede that feat by peaking at No 7 after Eurovision had aired.

Take That remain at No 1 for a third week with “Back For Good”. The black and white video of the band mooching about in the rain in slow motion in front of some classic American cars became almost iconic, perhaps because it was the last to feature Robbie Williams in the band’s first incarnation. A still from it would form the cover for their 2005 Best Of “Never Forget – The Ultimate Collection”.

And so to Love City Groove. Tacked onto the end of the show as an additional tenth track (most shows of this period had featured nine), this looked like a clear case of hype building for Eurovision by the BBC. I guess in this week in particular they could make the case that its inclusion was merited as it was the highest climber on the chart leaping from No 26 to No 17. My guess is that this won’t be the last TOTP appearance for “Love City Groove”.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Pato Banton and Ranking Roger	Bubbling Hot	Nah
2	Corona	Baby Baby	NO!
3	Portishead	Sour Times	No but my wife had the album
4	Real McCoy	Love & Devotion	Negative
5	Bryan Adams	Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman?	Nope
6	Wet Wet Wet	Don’t Want To Forgive Me Now	I did not
7	Björk	Army Of Me	It’s a no
8	Deuce	I Need You	But I don’t need you or your record
9	Take That	Back For Good	No but my wife did
10	Love City Groove	Love City Groove	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/m001rrzj/top-of-the-pops-20041995

TOTP 17 MAR 1994

Posted on February 23, 2023 by 80stastic

The era of the TOTP ‘golden mic’ is here! Well, not here as in the here and now but in March 1994 where we are up to with these BBC4 repeats and when the idea was first used. This was the brainchild of new producer Ric Blaxill to shake things up with some guest presenters from the worlds of pop and comedy (mainly) and he was certainly on the money with the first holders of the mic. Take That were the most popular band in the country and their two most popular members were Mark Owen and Robbie Williams (I’m guessing). Unfortunately, they weren’t the best at presenting (possibly due to the distraction of the attention of the young girls in the audience) but at least the change had been set in motion.

And so to the music and we start with a huge song whose legacy would far outlast its sales history. Not that it didn’t sell many copies (it did – 600,000 according to Wikipedia) nor that it didn’t achieve a high chart peak (its No 5 position easily outdid any numbers that the band had done previously) but it feels to me like it was really the start of something – we weren’t sure what it was or what it would look like but it was coming.

“Girls & Boys” by Blur surprisingly only remained on the UK Top 40 for five weeks and only two of those were in the Top 10 (hence my comment above about sales history) but that doesn’t detract from its impact. On first hearing this just sounded mental! What’s he singing about? Girls who want boys to be girls?! WTF?! It was bewildering and utterly transfixing at the same time. Then comes the realisation that this is Blur – the indie band who seemed to have struggled to find an identity for themselves after their first hit “There’s No Other Way” introduced them and their frankly silly haircuts. (apart from drummer Dave Rowntree of course) back in 1991. Sophomore album “Modern Life Is Rubbish” saw them reposition themselves as the second coming of The Kinks and The Small Faces with its theme of Englishness and stance of fighting back against the pervasiveness of American culture. It had also seen them settle into a pattern of middling sized hits – the three singles from it made Nos 28 (twice) and 26. Suddenly they were straight into the charts, week one at No 5 with this song that sounded like nothing they had done before. This was a seismic change.

Apparently inspired by the hedonistic clubbing scene in Magaluf, it was named single of the year by both Melody Maker and the NME. So what was it that the song was heralding? Britpop? I’m not sure but the impact of the song was made clear to me one morning at work when our shop cleaner who was lovely and always made me a cup of tea first thing asked me if she could buy the single on my staff discount before she finished her shift. This was totally against the rules of course but how could I refuse? Anyway, this was the first time she’d ever mentioned music to me despite the fact that she was working in a record shop every morning but something about “Girls & Boys” made her not only talk about it but want to buy it.

It was, of course, the lead track from the “Parklife” album which was released about six weeks later in late April. Many, many words have been written about that album and I’m not arrogant enough to think I have anything new and interesting to add to the collection of essays, articles and posts. However, for the record, my recollection of hearing it for the first time on the shop stereo was that it was loud. Yes, that was the extent of my critical faculties when it came to appraising Blur’s iconic masterpiece. It was loud. Sheesh!

Was this Alison Moyet’s last ever time on TOTP? I think it might have been. A twelve year run starting on 29th April 1982 with the debut appearance of Yazoo with “Only You”, through the big solo hits of the mid 80s to this last hurrah in 1994 with “Whispering Your Name”. Quite a ride.

I wrote about Alison’s struggles for artistic freedom with record company Sony in the last post. This single was a danceified version of a more acoustic take that features on her album “Essex” that Sony insisted on to make it a more commercial package. Those wrangles would lead to Alison eventually leaving Sony but it would take eight years before she was released from her contract with them. Wanting to maximise every bit of revenue out of Alison, Sony released her first Best Of album in 1995 called “Singles” which, somewhat surprisingly given that her last major chart hit prior to “Whispering Your Name” had been in 1987, went to No 1 selling 600,000 copies. Sony still weren’t finished there though. The following year they rereleased the album but with a bonus CD of live recordings taken from Alison’s last UK tour. The expanded album charted again inside the Top 20.

Freed from Sony, Moyet has gone on to record five solo albums including the critically lauded “Other” in 2017 and, to my mind (and ears), remains one of the finest singers the UK has ever produced. TOTP Rewind salutes you Alison.

https://youtu.be/owMkj-PjjAM

Despite his legendary rock status, by 1994 Bruce Springsteen had only visited the Top 10 of the UK singles charts three times and all of those entries came from his most commercial album “Born In The USA” (and one of those owed its success to being double A-sided with “Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town” if we’re being honest). Then came “Streets Of Philadelphia” which would take him all the way to No 2 becoming (and what surely will remain) his biggest ever hit here. Written specifically for the Jonathan Demme directed Philadelphia, it won an Oscar in the category of Best Original Song, four Grammys and a Golden Globe Award.

The film was one of the first mainstream Hollywood movies to address the issues of HIV/AIDS and homophobia and would earn Tom Hanks the first of two consecutive Best Actor Oscars for his role as gay corporate lawyer Andrew Beckett who believes he is fired from his firm as a result of his diagnosis with AIDS. I caught the film at the cinema at the time and found it a very affecting piece. Springsteen’s sombre song certainly added to its power. Even goofy Robbie Williams displays a moment of seriousness in his intro to the song when urging people to go and see it as they might learn something from it.

The video of Bruce walking along various Philadelphia locations is pitched just right to provide a visual montage for the song. It wasn’t, however, the first piece of music from a film that included such a visual tour of the city:

I’m on record a few times in this blog as stating that I’m not a fan of Björk mainly because of not being able to appreciate her rather unique vocals. I have to say though that revisiting her back catalogue via her TOTP appearances is starting to make me reconsider. This is the fourth single of hers that I’m quite liking. After “Venus As A Boy”, “Play Dead” and “Big Time Sensuality”, I presumed the run would come to an end with “Violently Happy” but not quite.

The fifth and final single released from her debut solo album…erm…”Debut”, whilst it isn’t the sort of thing that would ordinarily be top of my go to playlist, there’s something rather captivating about this hypnotic track. Simple but addictive House beats combine with Björk’s acquired taste delivery of lyrics that speak of a dangerous state of being when separated from an all encompassing passionate lover. It’s heady stuff. To paraphrase Howard Jones, these BBC4 repeats are challenging my preconceived ideas. “Violently Happy” peaked at No 13.

The second of three consecutive female solo artists on the show tonight as Tori Amos makes a quick return to the charts with “Pretty Good Year”. The second single from her “Under The Pink” album and the follow up to surprise No 4 hit “Cornflake Girl”, this was also a Top Tenner peaking at No 7. Tori was starting to become a big hitter in chart terms. However, nothing would ever come close to replicating those hits apart from the 1996 remix by Armand van Helden of “Professional Widow” which unfeasibly went to No 1.

“Pretty Good Year” is…well…pretty good but doesn’t have the kooky power of its predecessor although it does have a rather spooky eight bars near the end where Tori wails on about things melting and whether her baby is alright. Nothing to do with The Wizard Of Oz or the Wicked Witch of the West (“I’m melting, I’m melting!”), Tori is on record as saying that it’s about a letter she received from a fan called Greg who told her that he felt that the best parts of his life had already happened and that his future was finished despite being just 23. Tori stated that she saw that pattern repeated in young men in every country she visited. I guess learning to love yourself isn’t always easy but as George Benson once sang it “is the greatest love of all”.

After two let’s say left-field or perhaps outré or maybe even uncompromising female singer-songwriters in Björk and Tori Amos comes someone who it strikes me is currently desperately trying (too hard) to be all three of those things to remain relevant. Madonna was still one of the biggest names on the planet in 1994 but today she seems determined to provide the press with ammunition to knock her down. The whole Madame X project made for some unflattering headlines as has her appearance recently, raising concerns within her fans about hitting the cosmetic surgery a bit too hard lately. Maybe she can restore some of her former glories with her recently announced Celebration Greatest Hits tour though it’ll have to be quite a show to justify the ticket prices quoted online.

Anyway, back to 1994 and, as I said, Madonna was still a huge global superstar but she had rather upset a few people with her projects in the 90s so far. A coffee table book called Sex, an album entitled “Erotica” and a starring role in an erotic thriller called Body Of Evidence had lowered the tone rather so a rather safe ballad was released by Warner Bros. “I’ll Remember” was yet another song from a film soundtrack but Madonna, for once, was not in the movie it was from. After “Into The Groove” (Desperately Seeking Susan), “Who’s That Girl” (Who’s That Girl) and “This Used To Be My Playground” (A League Of Their Own) had all been from flicks with Madge herself in prominent roles, she was nowhere near the cast for With Honors which I’ve never seen but which sounds like a stinker from its reviews online. Its soundtrack however did sound interesting. Featuring the likes of The Cult, Lyle Lovett, Belly doing Tom Jones’ “It’s Not Unusual”, Kristin Hersh and Michael Stipe, plus a track by Seattle grunge rockers Mudhoney called “Run Shithead Run”, it might be worth seeking out. Next to that lot, Madonna sounds positively mainstream but maybe that was the intention.

“I’ll Remember” is a pleasant enough ballad being built around a choppy, synthesised keyboard part though it wasn’t a million miles away from her last single release “Rain”. The video is very similar to the promo for it as well with both featuring Madonna with black, short cropped hair in a recording studio. All seems a bit unimaginative and last minute to me. What do I know though as “I’ll Remember” was nominated for a Grammy and a Golden Globe award (she lost out to Springsteen’s “Streets Of Philadelphia” for the Grammy). The single did the business commercially as well going to No 2 in the US and No 7 over here.

New TOTP producer Ric Blaxill was tinkering with the show’s format rather than being the new broom in his early weeks. Yes, he had got rid of presenters Tony Dortie and Mark Franklin and brought back some Radio 1 DJs to replace them but other changes took their time to appear. The titles and theme tune were still the same and features like the Breakers and live by satellite performances were still there. However, all would change in time with the Breakers being first for the chop in just a couple of weeks. Another innovation was the showcasing of songs that weren’t actually in the Top 40. We’d already seen some play out songs at the end of the show not go on to be fully fledged chart hits and now here was a proper slot for a single not actually in the Top 40 at the time of the performance.

Roachford had struggled to match the success of their biggest hit, 1989’s “Cuddly Toy” in the years that followed it despite releasing some decent material. By 1994, they were onto their third studio album from which “Only To Be With You” was the lead single. The single was at No 41 at the time of this TOTP appearance but that exposure propelled it to a high of No 21 eventually as well as spending three weeks at No 22. It’s a lively, soul pop number with Andrew Roachford delivering a good vocal and parent album “Permanent Shade Of Blue” sold steadily if unremarkably off the back of it. I’m pretty sure I saw them live at The Academy in Manchester around this time but I think I only went as I got in for free thanks to the Sony rep John who used to sell into the Market Street store I was working at. He must have got me on their guest list or given me a free ticket or something.

Andrew Roachford is still making and releasing music to this day plus he was the vocalist for Mike + The Mechanics for a few years. He was awarded an MBE for services to music in 2019. By the way, I can’t find a clip of the TOTP performance so the official video will have to suffice.

Something odd is going on with the onscreen graphics in this TOTP. The show started off with each artist getting its own little description to go with its basic name and song title details. So Blur got ‘New entry in Top 5’, Alison Moyet got ‘Climber in Top 30’, Bruce Springsteen had ‘Highest New Entry Björk even received ‘Double Platinum Album Seller’! And then it pretty much stopped. Tori Amos got nothing at all (not even the basic artist/song title tile. Neither did Roachford and nor did the next act Roxette. What was all that about?! Did the graphics person get distracted and leave their desk for about 15 minutes?!

Anyway, Roxette are indeed back with a new single called “Sleeping In My Car”, the lead single from their fifth studio album “Crash! Boom! Bang!”. Although the album shifted 100,000 copies in the UK, it was nowhere near the double platinum sales of “Joyride” just three years before. That didn’t stop muggins here from completely over ordering it at the Our Price in Market Street, Manchester where I was working. Oh dear. What was I thinking?! The single did OK peaking at No 14 though all subsequent releases from it suffered from a case of diminishing returns.

“Sleeping In My Car” is orthodox Roxette although the lyrics are filthier than normal :

My heart is going boom
There’s a strange taste in my mouth
Baby babe, I’m moving real fast
So try to hold on
Try to hold on
Sleeping in my car, I will undress you
Sleeping in my car, I will caress you
Staying in the backseat of my car, making out
So come out tonight
I’ll take you for a ride
This steamy ol’ wagon
The radio is getting wild
Baby babe, we’re moving so fast
I try to hang on
Oh, I try to hang on
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Per Gessle
Sleeping in My Car lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Chappell Music, Inc

Blimey! I haven’t heard lyrics like that about sexual shenanigans in the back of a car since Bon Jovi’s “Never Say Goodbye”:

Rememberin’ when we used to park
On Butler Street, out in the dark
Remember when we lost the keys and
You lost more than that in my backseat, baby
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Jon Bon Jovi / Richard S. Sambora
Never Say Goodbye lyrics © Bon Jovi Publishing, Polygram Int. Publishing, Inc.

Marie looks like she’s had a haircut for this performance but that isn’t what really catches my attention. No, that would be the drummer who drops a stick midway through the song and sheepishly has to go and pick it up. Crash! Boom! Bang! indeed.

“Doop” by Doop? I’d rather have “Doot- Doot” by Freur or ‘squiggle’ as they were otherwise known. Yes, 10 years before Prince tried rebranding himself as a symbol, these Welsh synth poppers beat him to it. They gave in to record company pressure for a more pronounceable name and “Doot-Doot” was their biggest hit peaking at No 59. They would morph into Underworld of “Born Slippy” fame in the 90s.

What has this got to do with Doop?! Nothing but it’s far more interesting than that awful Charleston nonsense that was still at No 1.

https://youtu.be/jSySwTpTZG8

The play out tune is “U R The Best Thing” by D:Ream. This was the follow up to the No 1 single “Things Can Only Get Better” and in a rather unlikely twist of fate, was the second time it had been the follow up release to that single. Back in January 1993, TCOGB had made No 24 on its initial issue and “U R The Best Thing” outdid it by 5 places when it followed it in the April. In fact, this 1994 release was the third time it had been out after being D:Ream’s very first single in 1992 when it peaked at No 72. It was a very confusing time!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Blur	Girls & Boys	No but I bought Parklife (the album). Didn’t we all?
2	Alison Moyet	Whispering Your Name	Nope
3	Bruce Springsteen	Streets Of Philadelphia	No but I must have it on something
4	Björk	Violently Happy	I did not
5	Tori Amos	Pretty Good Year	No
6	Madonna	I’ll Remember	Negative
7	Roachford	Only To Be With You	It’s another no
8	Roxette	Sleeping In My Car	Nah
9	Doop	Doop	Of course not
10	D:Ream	U R The Best Thing	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/m001j656/top-of-the-pops-17031994

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 03 OCT 1997

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TOTP 08 NOV 1996

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TOTP 22 FEB 1996

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TOTP 14 DEC 1995

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TOTP 23 NOV 1995

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TOTP 24 AUG 1995

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TOTP 17 AUG 1995

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TOTP 04 MAY 1995

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TOTP 20 APR 1995

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TOTP 17 MAR 1994

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