Blur | TOTP Rewind – the 90s

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 31 AUG 1995

Posted on February 15, 2024 by 80stastic

OK, so given the news about the passing of Steve Wright recently and that this blog is based around a show that he was synonymous with, I think I should spend a bit of time talking about the late DJ. First of all, I should own the fact that I haven’t always had the kindest words to say about Steve in these TOTP reviews. I didn’t always feel this way. Growing up as a rather cautious teenager and unsure of myself, I’d spend hours on my own listening to Radio 1 in the mid 80s. Steve Wright’s afternoon show was definitely a part of that and my still as yet undefined sense of humour latched on to the characters he created such as Dave Doubledecks and Mr Angry from Purley. Wright’s show was the boiling point in the day’s schedule which the previous programming had been steadily creeping towards on the entertainment thermometer. After Steve’s stint, the content would reflect a calmer tone via Peter Powell’s drive time show and then Janice Long in the evenings both of whom were clearly more about the music. I liked them all for different reasons.

Wright was a permanent presence for all of my youth – even after I’d stopped listening to him I knew he was still there if required. I have a distinct memory of being in the Sunderland Polytechnic library one day and overhearing a fellow student saying to his mate that he’d done enough studying for one day and was off home to listen to Steve Wright. Sure this was the pre-digital late 80s and there weren’t the multiple choices of entertainment available as there are in this day and age but I can’t imagine a student in 2024 being susceptible to the pull of appointment radio (if such a thing still exists). Steve Wright in the Afternoon (in its original incarnation) ran until 1993 at which point new station controller Matthew Bannister switched Wright unsuccessfully to the breakfast show slot. He left Radio 1 in 1995.

Steve started to lose his appeal for me during his time at Radio 2. I was coming to the end of my 20s when he joined and I guess I just couldn’t make him relevant to my life anymore. As we moved into the new millennium I found his Sunday Love Songs show repetitive and lazy – I think I even sent an email into the show expressing my views. I know! I clearly had too much time on my hands. Rightly, I didn’t receive a reply. My dissatisfaction carried on though, disproportionately. If I ever caught any of his daily Radio 2 show, it sounded to me like he was phoning it in, relying on and recycling his past glories. When I started writing this blog, I found fault in his appearances in the BBC 4 TOTP repeats (he hosted 56 times between 1980 and 1989) – he seemed all over the place and I outrageously suggested he might have spent too much time in the Green Room pre-recording. More likely he was just not as comfortable with being on TV – his talent and affinity was for the medium of radio. Given his profile and longevity of career, we might have expected him to crossover into television like Terry Wogan but as far as I can tell his only other on screen* excursion was the very short lived Steve Wright’s People Show that lasted four episodes in the mid 90s.

*He was the off screen narrator for TOTP2 for twelve years.

In the days following his death, the accolades from those that knew him told of how he forged the shape of UK radio by bringing the ‘zoo format’ to our shores. More than that though, he seemed like a genuinely lovely fella. BBC4 changed their TOTP repeats schedule to pay tribute to him by showing four** shows in which he featured as presenter. RIP Steve Wright.

** They included one which was originally missed from being repeated (the 13 December 1984 edition). I considered writing a review for that show but decided that it would ruin the chronology of my TOTP 80s blog and in any case, I’m too lazy.

With a twist of tragic coincidence, it so happens that in tonight’s ‘golden mic’ slot is someone who also died far too early. Dale Winton was just 62 when he died in 2018. I liked Dale. His Supermarket Sweep show was marvellously silly, knock about fun and his contempt for Lulu was always going to endear him to me. I also appreciate that despite being on a pop music show aimed at a youth audience, he’s still in his standard suit and tie apparel.

OK, so the first act tonight looks and sounds familiar and no wonder – this was a Top 40 hit just 10 months prior. Except…the artist name has been changed and not to protect the innocent either. Back in November 1994, “The Sunshine After The Rain” was a hit for the mouthful that was New Atlantic/U4EA featuring Berri and they even appeared on TOTP which means…I’ll have reviewed it in this blog. Wonder what I said?

*checks blog archive*

Well, that hasn’t helped much. I just wrote about how I was always confusing it with “Sunshine On A Rainy Day” by Zoë from earlier in the decade and guess what? I’m still suffering from that conflation even though I wrote a post detailing said conflation fairly recently. OK, for the second time, this is not that song but a dance cover of the song Elkie Brooks had a Top 10 hit with in 1977. Seventeen years later, a No 26 hit for the aforementioned New Atlantic/U4EA wasn’t deemed a big enough success and was reissued but just under the slimmed down banner of a solo Berri. Why? I dunno – did Berri sign to a different record label who wanted to repromote their new artist but with a tried and tested hit? I really can’t be bothered to do any more research than that which has revealed Berri’s real name of Rebecca Sleight so if you’re still wanting an answer, do your own Google searches.

Did the two releases sound any different from each other? Well, I’ve watched back both TOTP appearances so you don’t have to and can report back that they are both the bloody same! Berri has changed her image a bit in the intervening months so that she looks even more like a prototype Sophie Ellis Bextor but that’s about it. Both have that interpolation of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” as their backing and both have that annoying scratch effect around the line “I wanna” towards the end. Really, what was the point?! Well, obviously it was to sell some records and make some money and so it did going to No 4 and selling 200,000 copies in the UK. Berri would have one further hit and still performs on the UK festival circuit.

You know me, dance isn’t really my thing which probably explains why in the bpm obsessed mid-90s, lots of tunes that were hits passed me by despite the fact that I was working in a record shop at the time and so had more access to them than many. I thought “Hideaway” by De’Lacy would be another such track but I did actually remember this one once I’d watched this TOTP repeat back. A huge slice of US garage in the same vein as Robin S or Rosie Gaines, it topped the UK dance chart and peaked at No 9 in the Top 40. What I didn’t remember (if indeed I ever knew in the first place) was that De’Lacy wasn’t the singer (who was one Rainie Lassiter) but the name of the band like Toyah or Nena. De’Lacy was though named after one of the people in the band – De’Lacy Davis who was the percussionist.

As with many of these dance hits, there were multiple remixes of the track but the one that spearheaded the commercial release on deConstruction records was the Deep Dish radio edit. Apparently the label was miffed that a slew of imports via an Italian licensee hit specialist dance shops before the deConstruction imprint was available claiming that this impinged on the sales of their release. Rumour has it that they wanted those imports to be withdrawn from sale – that’s right; they wanted them hidden away. I’ll get me coat.

A record breaking track now. “You Are Not Alone” by Michael Jackson was the first ever single to go straight in at No 1 in the US Billboard Hot 100. This seems incredible given that chart had been going since 1958 and also that this phenomenon was hardly a rare event in the UK. The Beatles did it in 1969 with “Get Back” whilst Slade took over the baton in the 70s with “Cum On Feel The Noize”. In 1982, The Jam achieved this feat with “Town Called Malice” and by the mid 90s, going straight in at No 1 was becoming de rigueur with the likes of Take That, Blur and Oasis all having done so. So why did it take so long in America? Not being a US charts expert, I don’t know the answer to that. I do know that the Billboard Hot 100 was a ratio of sales and airplay so maybe that had something to do with it? I’m sure someone out there will have a better explanation.

What I do know is that “You Are Not Alone” was also Jackson’s final US No 1 single and was taken from the “HIStory: Past, Present And Future Book 1” album. Although it was written by the now completely unpalatable R. Kelly who also sings backing vocals on it, the convicted sex offender was deemed far enough removed from the track for it not to need to be omitted from these BBC4 TOTP repeats.

Inevitably, the single was accompanied by a big budget video though the special effects in this one are toned down a bit compared to previous promos for the likes of “Black Or White” and “Scream”. There are however some sick inducing scenes with his then wife Lisa Marie Presley including the pair of them appearing semi nude against a temple backdrop. Their marriage ended the following year with Lisa Marie claiming coercive behaviour from Jackson and that he orchestrated their public appearances, the aforementioned scene in “You Are Not Alone” being just one example. As for the song itself, for me it’s one big, drippy ballad that’s so wet as to be unlistenable – its paucity of passion makes the song beyond redemption. Most of the UK failed to share my opinion once again and would ensure that our American cousins were (ahem) not alone in their love of the track by also sending it to No 1.

With the passing of Matthew Perry last year (what is it with this post and celebrity deaths?), the Friends story was ultimately put to bed. I really can’t imagine that there would be any appetite amongst fans or the cast for a revisiting of the show without Chandler. Back in 1995 though, the US sitcom was in its infancy. It premiered in the US in September 1994 but wasn’t broadcast in the UK until April the following year after Channel 4, who had a good track record for bringing American sitcoms to our shores, bought up the rights. Airing at 9.30 on a Friday evening, my wife was an early adopter and soon had me watching as well. By the end of its first season run on Channel 4 in September 1995, it was a resounding success. Inevitably, there was demand for the catchy theme tune that accompanied the credits. The tale behind “I’ll Be There For You” is a remarkably short one in reality though it wasn’t the original choice of song by the studio Warner Bros. Television. Look at this…

When REM turned down the request to use their song, the studio turned to the only band who were signed to Warner Bros. Records Inc. (the music division of the studio). Danny Wilde and Phil Solem, who had been in bands together since 1981 and had scored a decent sized hit as The Rembrandts in 1990 with “Just The Way It Is, Baby”, had achieved little commercial success thereafter. However, Friends producer Kevin S. Bright hadn’t forgotten the band and called their manager with a view to them recording the theme tune. Within a week of an initial meeting the song was written, laid down in the studio and airing on US television as Friends launched on 22nd September 1994.

Initially unavailable in America as a single (the band only recorded a one minute version of the song specifically for the credits), a Nashville DJ made a loop of that version thereby extending its length to three minutes and played it continuously. The clamour for a full length version caused the band to re-record it and it finally got a full release.

As with Deep Blue Something who would claim a UK No 1 with “Breakfast At Tiffany’s” in 1996, I don’t think the performance here by the band actually aids the record that much. They’re fairly unmemorable (sorry guys). Wasn’t there a video which included the cast members made that could have been shown instead?

*checks YouTube*

Yes, here it is…although…was this made in 1995 or was it put together for the 1997 rerelease. Yes, as Friends became a global phenomenon, the merchandising for the show went into overdrive. Mugs, calendars, T-shirts etc were all licensed and when the first series was released on VHS (remember them), they flew off the shelves. As such, it was a perfect time for the theme tune to be made available once more and it became a hit all over again. For statistics sake, “I’ll Be There For You” peaked at No 3 in 1995 and No 5 two years later disproving the lyric that it wasn’t their day, week, month or even their year.

Next, another of those pesky album chart slots which features a single that will eventually be released as a single anyway further down the line. Filling the spot this week are Boyzone who give us their version of “Father And Son” by Cat Stevens which is not only a track from their No 1 album “Said And Done” but will also become their next single when released in the November. After breaking through with a cover of a 70s ballad in “Love Me For A Reason” by The Osmonds a year previously, the group clearly thought it was worth another go using that same blueprint. And they were right; “Father And Son” would go all the way to No 2 selling 600,000 copies in the process and becoming not just the 13th best selling single of the year in the UK but surely one of Boyzone’s best known hits.

Talking of blueprints, the performance here with the five lads all sat on stools was surely the model for subsequent Irish boyband Westlife who seemed to spend their whole career sat on their arses singing indistinguishable love songs. Back to Boyzone though and this is really all about Ronan Keating who does all the heavy lifting vocals wise while the rest of them bill and coo around him. Stephen Gately* does attempt some harmonising at one point but the rest of them are stuck on “ooh” mode. In the middle of the song, Ronan addresses the studio audience by saying “Boyzone live on Top of the Pops” before exhaling in a ‘who’d have believed it’ kind of gesture. Do you think that was spontaneous on Ronan’s part or a deliberate, prearranged move to try and build the group some credibility?

*Stephen was another who died tragically young at the age of just 33. What is it with this post and death?

I can’t hear the Boyzone version of “Father And Son” without this scene from Max and Paddy’s Road To Nowhere coming to mind…

Heres some ropey old shit and no mistake! A second hit for Montell Jordan (who knew?). After “This Is How We Do It” was a US No 1, a follow up was required and so he gave us “Somethin’ 4 Da Honeyz”, a little tale he wrote about picking up women. How nice. This is nasty with Jordan informing us that if he sees a female worth his while (!) he knows that he can get ‘it’ and he’ll “hit it if she’s wit it”. He follows this up by saying if a woman is ugly, fat or skinny, it doesn’t matter as long as she likes to shoop (shoop shoop). Bloody hell! What a bellend! At one point he name drops soul singer Aaron Neville but, as someone remarked on Twitter, it sounds like he’s singing “could very well be the next Gary Neville”. Ha!

Jordan is now a born-again Christian and has become a worship leader and ordained minister at the Victory World Church in Atlanta, Georgia so presumably has learned his lesson and has a better attitude towards women.

Oh this is more like it! Echobelly had some excellent songs – in fact, their trio of singles that were “Insomniac”, “King Of The Kerb” and this one “Great Things” stand up alongside anything else that was labelled ‘Britpop’ at this time. Coming on like a more exotic Sleeper, at the height of their fame, they notched up two Top 10 albums and five Top 40 singles, their fast track to success certainly not hindered by lead singer Sonya Madam’s image. With so much attention being paid to Madan, comparisons with Blondie were always likely (something also experienced by No Doubt later in the decade and played up to in their “Don’t Speak” video).

Watching this performance back though, it’s not Debbie Harry I’m put in mind of but rather Britney Spears. A whole three years before the ‘Princess of Pop’ exploded around the world with “…Baby One More Time” and that video with the schoolgirl uniform, here was Sonya beating her to it. Not quite as provocative as Britney’s outfit maybe but still causing a stir, apparently Madan hadn’t anticipated all the fuss and saw her school clothes look as more Grange Hill than St.Trinians. Hmm. Anyway, Echobelly’s popularity dwindled as the decade progressed and by 2004, a protracted hiatus took place. They reconvened in 2009 and last released an album of new material in 2017.

Oh dear lord. What the f**k is going on here?! Michael Bolton hadn’t had a Top 10 hit in this country since 1991 when his version of “When A Man Loves A Woman” made No 8. So what do you do when your career needs reviving? Well, in Michael’s case a TV advertised Best Of was deemed the best plan of action and as was the emerging trend for such a collection back then, a new track was required to promote it. “Can I Touch You…There?” was co written and produced by Robert ‘Mutt’ Lange whose charge sheet of criminal songs includes tracks by Celine Dion, Bryan Adams and Billy Ray Cyrus. This one was right up there with any of those though. I’m guessing Bolton was searching for a new sound because this is a complete hotchpotch of a song. It’s as if Ace Of Base have taken the melody from Carly Simon’s “Why” and then roped in old Bollers to sing some double entendre lyrics over the top. It even goes a bit panpipes at the end! Who thought all of that was a good idea?! Well, plenty of people judging by its chart peak of No 6 meaning Michael got one final Top 10 hit after all. By the way, have you ever seen a woman with a bigger sax than the one on stage here has? Well if Bolton can be risqué…

It’s a second week at the top for Blur with “Country House” which has beaten “Roll With It” by Oasis into second place again. I don’t recall there being anywhere near the media frenzy that existed for the first week though. Blur would achieve another chart topper 18 months later when “Beetlebum” returned them to pole position. As for Oasis, they would go to No 1 a further seven times (making eight in total) with their final one being 2005’s “The Importance Of Being Idle”.

The play out video is “Scatman’s World” by Scatman John. The follow up to his novelty hit “Scatman (Ski Ba Bop Ba Dop Bop)” which combined jazz scatting, rapping and a dance beat, this was, regrettably, more of the same. And this is the question – did we really need any more of the same? I have the answer – NO!

Scatman John (real name John Paul Larkin) died at the age of 57 from lung cancer and he brings to an end one of the most haunted by death posts I’ve ever written.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Berri	The Sunshine After The Rain	I did not
2	De’Lacy	Hideaway	Not for me
3	Michael Jackson	You Are Not Alone	Never happening
4	The Rembrandts	I’ll Be There For You	YES! I bought it for my wife but we ended up passing it onto our Friends obsessed Goddaughter
5	Boyzone	Father And Son	Nope
6	Montell Jordan	Somethin’ 4 Da Honeyz	NO!
7	Echobelly	Great Things	No but I had a Best Of CD with it on
8	Michael Bolton	Can I Touch You…There?	Never!
9	Blur	Country House	Not the single but I had The Great Escape album with it on
10	Scatman John	Scatman’s World	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/m001w2m5/top-of-the-pops-31081995

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 03 AUG 1995

Posted on January 9, 2024 by 80stastic

Back in August 1995, our lives were about to change. Well, for those of us who were partial to a pint or two. You see, the Sunday after this TOTP aired, public houses in the UK were permitted to remain open throughout Sunday afternoons for the first time ever. Wa-hey! Get the beers in! I have to say it’s hard to recall the effect that this may have had on the nation given our current all day licensing laws but I assume it was quite the seismic cultural shift. I wonder if I can get some alcohol references into all of the artists on this TOTP? Anyone fancy a pint?

We start with my nemesis Therapy? Now, it’s not that I can’t stand them but rather that they kind of passed me by at the time and I never really know what to say about them when they appear on these TOTP repeats which feels like it’s all the time. It makes sense chart-wise –“Loose” was the band’s ninth UK Top 40 hit in under three years but even given how prolific they were at releasing hit singles, I kind of get the impression executive show producer Ric Blaxill must have been a fan for them to have been invited on the show so regularly. Anyway, here they are but they don’t sound like I was expecting. “Loose” – to my ears at least – seems almost…well, like a Busted tune. OK, I’m exaggerating – call it artistic licence – but it’s certainly more Green Day than Nirvana but then Therapy?, according to my online research, forged a career of longevity out of adapting their sound to challenge their fanbase and indeed themselves so maybe nobody should have been surprised.

Perhaps what did take people by surprise though was lead singer Andy Cairn’s appearance. Quite the change from his previous trip to the TOTP studios – he’s gone full on rocker complete with greased back barnet, facial hair and sideburns. It’s a look that is used as the cover art of their album “Infernal Love” so a change in image that was presumably part of a bigger promotional rebrand. I’m probably reading far too much into it – he probably just got bored of his old look. We’ve all experimented with different styles haven’t we? I tried growing a goatee beard myself around this time. When I tired of it, I booked myself an appointment with a hairdresser to shave it off. When I got to the salon, I was greeted by hoots of derision by the guy who was going to do it. He pointed at my face and exclaimed “That’s not a beard!”. I never felt so emasculated!

Alcohol association: Well’ ‘loose’ can be slang for being inebriated can’t it?

It seems to me that Italian Eurodance project Corona managed to amass more UK chart hits than they had any right to. “The Rhythm Of The Night” was a decent example of the genre but did we really need subsequent watered down facsimiles of it that got weaker with each release? No, no we didn’t and yet the hits kept coming. “Baby Baby” made No 5 whilst this one – “Try Me Out” – would peak at No 6.

“The Rhythm Of The Night”, of course, shared its title (save for a definite article) with a famous hit from the 80s. DeBarge took their song to No 4 in the UK but unlike Corona, had the decency to be one hit wonders (over here at least). As well as a link to the 80s, the group also share a connection with the 00s. Do you remember the ITV show Popstars that gave us Hear’Say? Yes? OK, do you recall the five hopefuls that fell at the final hurdle but decided to form their own group anyway (or more likely at the prompting of a rival record label) called Liberty? Still with me? Good. So Liberty had to change their name to Liberty X as there was already a band called Liberty who objected. So what has any of this to do with Corona? Well, they amended their moniker in 2001 to…yep, Corona X. It’s not a great anecdote I admit but then Corona weren’t a great act so it’s all they deserve in my book.

Alcoholic association: Has to be the Mexican beer called Corona.

Next, the first of two tracks on the show that were originally recorded in the 80s. The life and times of “Blue Monday” by New Order is quite the tale. We all know the track but here’s some facts and stats behind it:

Originally released March 1983 on 12” only peaking at No 12
Returned to the chart in August 1983 surpassing its previous chart high by making No 9
Remixed by Arthur Baker in 1988 and released in UK in 7” format for first time. Peaks at No 3
Remixed by Hardfloor and released in 1995. Peaks at No 17
Spent 89 weeks on Top 100 chart over three releases spanning 12 years selling 1.16 million copies
Best selling 12” record of all time

This 1995 release was, rather unimaginatively, officially titled “Blue Monday–95” and was released as a single to promote “The Rest Of New Order” compilation. The band themselves were on a hiatus following the difficult recording of the 1993 album “Republic” and were showing no signs of wishing to work together again anytime soon. Their new record label London clearly wouldn’t have been too jazzed about the lack of any new material from their artist so turned to the back catalogue that they brought with them. We’d already had “The Best Of New Order” album in 1994 which had been a big seller so London wasted no time in trying to repeat the trick with an album of remixes. Having used “True Faith” and “1963” to promote the first compilation, it made sense that they would look to their best known track to advertise the follow up. What a horrible incarnation of an iconic song this remix was though. Maybe that sound was where it was at in 1995 but for me, this version strips away all the power and intrigue of the original replacing it with fuzzy bleeps and beats and turns Bernard Sumner’s vocal into a disembodied, distant ghost of itself. As I write this, we’ve just had the other ‘Blue Monday’, the third Monday in January which has come to be known as the most miserable day of the year but even that day has nothing on the misery of the 1995 remix of New Order’s classic song.

Alcohol association: In 2016, New Order launched their own brand of beer called Stray Dog after a track on their album “Music Complete”.

Black Grape are back with their second single “In The Name Of The Father”. The follow up to their debut “Reverend Black Grape”, this was very much more of the same which was no bad thing in my book. Some funky grooves and nonsensical lyrics (Neil Armstrong having bigger balls than King Kong indeed!)? Yes please!

Kermit’s crutch (he’d broken his ankle at the T in the Park festival) puts me in mind of the infamous Extreme Noise Terror / The KLF BRIT Awards performance…but without the machine gun fire at the end obviously.

Just as I was writing this whilst listening to Radio 2 (no, you do one! I’m 55!), Shaun Ryder appeared as a guest on the Dermot O’Leary show and they were talking about this incident on TFI Friday from back in the day. God, I miss being young(er).

Alcohol association: Black Grape? Wine? Cabernet Sauvignon? Yeah, that’ll do.

Something out of leftfield now from…well…Leftfield. Despite having a No 3 album in debut “Leftism”, huge single success had eluded the electronic duo of Neil Barnes and Paul Daley. “Afro–Left” couldn’t change that though it was pretty interesting. Featuring gibberish, African sounding spoken vocals and a trippy, hypnotic backbeat, it wasn’t your average chart entry. The supplier of those vocals was listed on the record as Djum Djum. In my first draft of this review – and I swear this is true – I referred to Djum Djum as the African Stanley Unwin, the comic actor who was famous for creating ‘Unwinese’ (essentially a gobbledygook version of English). I deleted the comparison though thinking it might be too niche but on researching Djum Djum further, I came across a piece which suggested that he was, in fact, the son of Stanley Unwin! Other ‘facts’ about him was that he also went by the name of Neil Cole and that he was the originator of Jum Jum which is the sound you make whilst chewing an elastic band! I’m not sure I’m having any of this though. I mean, come on! Jum Jum? I should Coco!

Alcohol association: I thought I might struggle with this one but it turns out that there is not only a Left Field Beer company but also a Leftfield vineyard and a Left-Field whiskey distillery.

Next, the second of those songs that were recorded in the 80s. Originally released as the B-side to their 1986 hit “Suburbia”, I first became aware of this Pet Shop Boys track around 1987 when my girlfriend (now wife) bought me a cassette of their remix album “Disco”. “Paninaro” was the fourth of just six songs on said album but always stood out even against the remixes of all the singles from their debut long player “Please”. Starting off with a drum sound that is reminiscent of the J. Arthur Rank gong, it then takes off with an excoriating synth sound before the almost unique happens – a Pet Shop Boys vocal by Chris Lowe. OK, he’s speaking rather than singing but it works perfectly as the normally motionless one of the duo recites just eight words on a loop that speak of the very essence of the human experience interspersed with name checks for Italian designers like Armani and Versace. How so? It turns out that the ‘paninari’ were a 1980s Italian youth subculture who were into designer clothing, pop music and hanging out in fast food restaurants (‘panino’ is Italian for sandwich). Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe identified with the movement which inspired the song.

All very interesting but why was it put out again in 1995 you might well ask? Well, “Paninaro ‘95” was a bunch of remixes including one by Tin Tin Out that was used to promote the B-sides compilation album “Alternative” that was released the Monday after this TOTP aired. Very much like New Order before them I guess.

The performance here is obviously memorable for the role reversal which sees Neil behind the keyboards and Chris up front and centre. The latter clearly isn’t used to the spotlight and looks like he doesn’t know where to put himself even turning his back on the studio audience at one point. To make up for Chris’s shortcomings as the focal point, there’s some serious overcompensating going on with the two oiled up male dancers behind him. Was that really necessary? They could have done with some more clothes on them and talking of clothes, that “Alternative” album that I mentioned earlier featured the track “In The Night” which was adopted as the theme tune to the old BBC fashion programme The Clothes Show…

Alcohol association: Tricky one this…the only thing I’ve got is that in the book Literally which documents the duo’s first ever tour in 1989, there’s plenty of references to the consumption of alcohol with champagne being a favourite tipple.

Talking of tricky…in 1995, trip-hop was a big deal spearheaded by the holy trinity of Massive Attack, Portishead and, yep, Tricky. Having been an early member of Massive Attack but not fancying the idea of fame and fortune, Tricky (real name Adrian Thaws) branched out on his own and found…fame and fortune. His seminal debut album “Maxinquaye” went gold and made No 3 in the charts. The music press lavished it with praise and it topped many a publication’s album of the year poll. It received a Mercury Music Prize nomination losing out to, you guessed it, Portishead’s “Dummy”. As a consequence of this success, Tricky’s face adorned the covers of magazines like…erm…The Face and Wire but he was never comfortable with his celebrity though he did rather court publicity by dating Björk. He also had a relationship with the vocalist on “Maxinquaye” Marina Topley-Bird.

This song- “Hell Is Around The Corner” – was taken from “The Hell E.P.” which was a collaboration with US hip-hop group Gravediggaz though they didn’t contribute to this particular track. It would prove to be Tricky’s biggest ever hit peaking at No 12. The man himself stated that he didn’t like the term ‘trip-hop’ and shied away from claims that he invented the genre. His stance was reinforced by him releasing a song that sounded very similar to Portishead’s “Glory Box” that was released six months earlier. The fact was though that both artists had sampled the same track – Isaac Hayes’s “Ike’s Rap II” – though who actually recorded their song first (as opposed to releasing it) is disputed.

Alcohol association: There is a dessert cocktail called The Grave Digger which is a coffee liqueur comprising brandy, Grand Marnier and is topped with crushed Oreo biscuits on whipped cream with a tiny shovel accessory to signify a freshly dug grave. Tricky stuff.

And suddenly it is upon us. When people talk about the pop music story of 1995, one event dominates. Not just the biggest story of the year but possibly the whole decade. We have arrived at a defining moment in time – the ‘Battle of Britpop’ is here! Now I don’t intend to rehash this story in detail – so much has been written about it already that it’s all out there and easily accessible from just a basic search of the internet. However, I was working in a record shop at the time (Our Price in Stockport) and during that week in the middle of August that saw the dual release of “Country House” by Blur and “Roll With It” by Oasis, I stood in for the singles buyer who was on leave which brought a certain amount of pressure – to run out of either release would have been unforgivable. I was checking stocks of both on what seemed like an hourly basis.

It was though an unbelievably exciting time to be working in record retail with news crews dispatched to shops (not ours sadly) to film pieces that would make headlines on the national evening news. Such was the intense media speculation that the story transformed from the tale of two singles to a class war with Oasis cast as working class northerners and Blur as arty, southern softies. The narrative constructed was that you were either on the side of one or the other and your choice of which single to buy was akin to casting a vote with record shops remodelled as polling stations. The truth is, of course, that plenty of people bought both though not necessarily in the same purchase. I worked with someone who bought one in the first week of release and the other in the second – she liked both tunes but had a preference for one to be No 1 over the other. I can’t recall which way round it was but I guess this was the record shop equivalent of tactical voting.

Anyway, it’s Blur we’re concerned with in this show who have the ‘exclusive’ performance slot to promote the lead single from their new album “The Great Escape”. Now the TOTP caption says that “Country House” was to be released on 14th August which was also the date that “Roll With It” was due in the shops. As such, the decision by Blur (mainly Damon from what I can ascertain) to go head to head with their rivals had already been taken. Reportedly wrong footed by Creation pushing forward the Oasis release date by weeks and fearing that they would trail in the wake of a second successive No 1 for the Mancs, the battle was set up by “Country House” having its own release date shifted to 14th August as well. I’m guessing I would have been aware of all this what with working in a record shop and all but it’s hard to recall at a distance of nearly twenty-nine years.

So what of the actual song itself? Received opinion is that “Country House” is not actually very good and certainly is not a good representation of the band’s canon. Whilst there is some credence to that conventional wisdom, I think history has shown that there was more to the tune than it being what Liam Gallagher described as ‘chimney sweep music’. Yes, the band themselves seemed to disown the song, refusing to play it live for many years but accusations of it being a throwaway pop song are wide of the mark I feel. There’s a sense of unruliness to it but it also has layers. The knockabout fun coexists with some standout melancholy moments like the “blow, blow me out, I am so sad I don’t know why” line when the song pauses for breath. Whether it can ever escape the connotations of that time or not I don’t know but it’s probably better than it is remembered as. We’ll get the whole denouement of the ‘Battle of Britpop’ soon enough but then we all know who won don’t we?

Alcohol association: Bassist Alex James developed more than a liking for champagne to supplement his cheese obsession and he did call his autobiography “Bit Of A Blur”.

Take That are No 1 this week with “Never Forget”. I went into all the Robbie Williams leaving the group stuff the last time I wrote about this one so I’m not going to go over all that again. Suffice to say, due to a clause in his Take That contract, he wasn’t allowed to release any solo material until six months after the band was officially dissolved meaning that the first Robbie Williams single – a rather weak cover of George Michael’s “Freedom” – didn’t see the light of day until the end of July 1996. That will either be a relief or totally infuriating to viewers of these BBC4 TOTP repeats depending on your inclination. I will say though that I recall catching Williams appearing on a breakfast TV show (possibly The Big Breakfast) not long after he had left the group where he was his usual bullish self (no sign of any regret or self reflection) where he kept going on about how brilliant his little bit of singing was on “Never Forget”. What a class act!

Alcohol association: Gary Barlow launched his own range of organic wine in 2021.

The play out video is “Waterfalls” by TLC. I don’t think I ever quite realised quite how much of a big deal this trio was until I checked their discography. Four American No 1 records! Wow! Their level of success over here was a bit more tempered but they still racked up four Top 10 hits including this one which made No 4. A groundbreaking track in many respects, its lyrics made reference to drugs related violence and HIV/AIDS which was one of the very first mainstream chart songs to do so. It’s hard not to fall for the sonic charms of “Waterfalls”. It’s the very definition of ‘slinky’ with a smooth beat that oozes class aligned with some gorgeous vocal stylings and a killer rap from Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes. Those attributes earned it two Grammy nominations for Record of the Year and Best Vocal Performance and a Soul Train Music Award for Best R&B / Soul single.

If the song itself wasn’t enough to tempt you to dive right into it, then there was the video. A combination of literal retelling of the lyrics visually and special effects, it would win four gongs at the MTV Video Music Awards. If the image of the trio performing whilst seemingly standing on water in an ocean wasn’t striking enough then their liquefied, ‘water sprite’ forms dancing in front of a waterfall couldn’t help but make an impression. This seemed like cutting-edge stuff in 1995.

Lopes would tragically die in a car crash just seven years on from “Waterfalls”. The lyrics of her rap from it were engraved on her casket.

Alcohol association: There is a sobriety support group called The Luckiest Club who use the abbreviation TLC as part of their identity. There’s also a non-alcohol beer company called Tropical Lager Coral’ation.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Therapy?	Loose	No
2	Corona	Try Me Out	As if
3	New Order	Blue Monday – 95	I did not
4	Black Grape	In The Name Of The Father	No but I had the album
5	Leftfield	Afro-Left	It’s a no from me
6	Pet Shop Boys	Paninaro ‘95	Nope
7	Tricky	The Hell E.P.	Nah
8	Blur	Country House	See 4 above
9	Take That	Never Forget	Negative
10	TLC	Waterfalls	Liked it, didn’t buy it

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

TOTP 23 FEB 1995

Posted on October 5, 2023 by 80stastic

We’re four weeks into a make over that saw TOTP adopt a new logo, set, title sequence and theme tune but we should probably remind ourselves that this was nothing compared to the changes going on at Radio 1 under controller Matthew Bannister at this time. Determined to rid the station of its Smashie and Nicey image, Bannister had overseen the exits of such names as Gary Davies, Dave Lee Travis, Simon Bates, ‘Whispering’ Bob Harris and Paul Gambaccini in the 18 months since his appointment and had also made the decision that the station would not playlist any ‘old music’ (typically anything recorded before 1990).

However, there was still a dinosaur clinging on to its very existence that had somehow avoided succumbing to Bannister’s hatchet. Hiding away in the early hours slot was 80s throwback Bruno Brookes. I used to listen to this guy back in the mid-80s when he did the drivetime show and quite liked him but then I was a callow, know-nothing youth. As I matured though, he became irritating to me – the older I got, the more annoying I perceived him to be. And yet, when he was one of the Radio 1 DJs brought back into the TOTP fold by Ric Blaxill in 1994, his presence was almost reassuring and he actually seemed like a safe pair of hands. This wasn’t the view shared by Matthew Bannister and his Head of Production Trevor Dann though. In the 2001 documentary Blood on the Carpet: Walking with Disc Jockeys, Dann recalls how he asked the question “…why is Bruno on?” if there was meant to be a cull on all the dinosaur DJs. Apparently, he did have a loyal audience of truckers tuning in to his early morning show but it wasn’t enough to save him. The day after this TOTP was broadcast, Brookes was sacked by Dann. Brutal stuff.

There were also no Radio 1 DJs on this edition of the BBC’s prime time music show as it was another ‘golden mic’ week, this time filled by D:Ream’s Peter Cunnah. I’d have to say, he’s not a natural presenter. I think his nerves got the better of him to the extent that he overly relies on the prop of his microphone and almost obscures his mouth. The first act he introduces are Perfecto Allstarz with “Reach Up (Papa’s Got A Brand New Pigbag)”. I spewed out a rant about how egregious I found this track recently when compared to the glorious 1982 original and I haven’t changed my mind in the meantime. For this performance they’ve ditched the guys in the skeleton outfits and replaced them with dancers who are dressed like they’ve just hot-footed it from Janet Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation” world tour. Were combat trousers a thing in 1995? Oh, I can’t remember. The vocalist tries to join in with some of the dance moves but can’t keep up and so styles it out with some vague arm waving and a toss of her hair. Not entirely convincing, a bit like the track itself. Not many agreed with this assessment of mine though. The single spent five weeks inside the Top 10 even going back up the charts after dropping the previous week. It eventually peaked at No 6.

Excellent! Another PJ & Duncan hit! Just what we needed! Obviously not but clearly the record buying public of the time couldn’t get enough of them. “Our Radio Rocks” was the duo’s fifth consecutive Top 40 hit and sixth single released from their album “Psyche”. After trying to exploit the Christmas market with a slushy, romantic ballad (“Eternal Love”) last time out, they’re back to the familiar rap/pop formula as typified by “Let’s Get Ready To Rhumble”. An homage to the the power and appeal of radio (sort of), the ‘lyrics’ are primary school level of word play. It begins badly with a chant of “Here we go” and never really recovers. I once started an essay at school with the sentence ‘Thud, thud, thud, thud, his footsteps echoed around the empty street’. My English teacher was appalled but even he would surely agree that my composition was intellectually superior to PJ & Duncan’s effort. The rap starts with an obvious paraphrase from a classic pop hit:

“Video never killed the radio star“
Written by: DENI LEW, MICHAEL OLTON MCCOLLIN, NICKY GRAHAM
Lyrics © Wixen Music Publishing, Warner Chappell Music, Inc.

before moving onto the ‘killer’ rhyming couplet:

“DJ are the shepherd and we are your flock, you holler we follow our favourite jock“
Written by: DENI LEW, MICHAEL OLTON MCCOLLIN, NICKY GRAHAM
Lyrics © Wixen Music Publishing, Warner Chappell Music, Inc.

Oh. I may consider my schoolboy writing a cut above Peej and Deej’s lyrics but when it came to sartorial choices, I’m sad to report I was no better than them. I too once wore a gilet like Dec/Duncan in a moment of fashion madness. My friend Robin, who was staying with us at the time, thought it was marvellous and ripped the piss out of me mercilessly. I bet Ant/PJ would never have done that to his mate!

For Bon Jovi’s last single “Always”, TOTP producer Ric Blaxill had the band perform the song against the stunning backdrop of Niagara Falls. It worked so well that the show repeated the clip a couple of times. The band were at it again for the follow up single “Someday I’ll Be Saturday Night” with them playing in the New York Giants Stadium. Known alternatively as The Swamp, it was also home at the time to the New York Jets but Peter Cunnah doesn’t mention that in his intro. Maybe the Jets weren’t as big a name as the Giants? I’ve no idea. Obviously it doesn’t work as well as a backdrop as Niagara Falls in the wow factor stakes. The stadium lighting doesn’t help as they seem to dazzle too much to me and undermine the shot. Still, credit should be given for trying something different at least.

Like “Always”, the single was another new track taken from their Best Of album “Crossroads” and has proved to be a pretty durable Bon Jovi tune. It’s a crowd favourite live and its flexible structure has enabled the band to perform it in lots of different styles. The style on display in this TOTP here though was that of censorship. The line “all the good shit’s gone” is sung by Jon Bon Jovi as just “All the good is gone”. He could have at least replaced ‘shit’ with the word ‘stuff’ surely?

The problem with these in studio exclusive performances that would showcase a single that hadn’t even been released yet is that they’d crash into the charts the following week thereby requiring another TOTP appearance. Back in the day, only the No 1 record could have guaranteed appearing on consecutive shows. Come 1995, it seemed to be happening all the time. I know it wouldn’t have troubled Ric Blaxill but it’s playing havoc with my blog writing 28 years later. It’s hard to come up with new content on a subject I might have only just posted about a few days earlier. Plus these are events that happened in the past that are immovable; I’m not commenting on Rishi Sunak changing his mind on HS2!

Anyway, all of the above is leading me to Elastica and their single “Waking Up”. Fortunately, the band have provided me with an alternative angle for a write up. Conveniently, they’ve roped in Justine Frischmann’s then boyfriend Damon Albarn of Blur to appear on stage with them. Damon was in the TOTP studio anyway with his own band who followed Elastica in the running order so it probably wasn’t that hard to arrange. The interesting point here though is who’s idea was it? Was it a cross label agreement to help promote both bands? How about a devilish plan by Blaxill to spice up the show? Or perhaps just an impromptu decision between a boyfriend and girlfriend because it would be a laugh? Certainly Albarn seems to be playing his role for comedic effect with his goofy stare from behind his heavy rimmed glasses. There’s no denying that the celebrity couple generated publicity for Elastica but wouldn’t Justine have not wanted to ride on the coat tails of her boyfriend? Perhaps the biggest question of all was what was the deal with the motionless male model looking guys wearing just a towel that were positioned around the stage? They looked like they needed waking up. Ahem.

The inevitable segue into Blur happens immediately. Now bearing in mind that the band’s last single release was “End Of A Century” the previous November and that they wouldn’t release their next for another six months when they squared up to Oasis in The Battle of Britpop, it seems likely to me that this appearance to perform a track from their “Parklife” album (“Jubilee”) was a record label engineered exercise. Billed as an ‘album performance’ by the TOTP caption, it was supposedly to celebrate the band winning four awards at the recent BRIT awards. Well, maybe. It’s true that the show introduced an album chart section during the ‘year zero’ revamp but this wasn’t highlighting a new entry into said chart or the No 1 album. Having checked the officialcharts.com archive, “Parklife” was at No 12 and going down and guess what? After this TOTP appearance, it went up the charts the following week to No 2! Hmm. Is it just me or does all that sound ever so slightly cynical? Or maybe Ric Blaxill could see which way this was all going and decided to be an early adopter of the Britpop movement and embrace and celebrate it?

As for the track, it’s a banger but not the best on the album which is probably “This Is A Low” in my opinion. I’m guessing that the downbeat, melancholy of the song wasn’t seen as suitable for the high octane nature of TOTP not to mention that it was almost double the length of “Jubilee” which might have played havoc with the show’s timings.

Special mention should go to drummer Dave Rowntree for his piss take of Prince’s ‘slave’ stunt where the purple one had the word written on the side of his face to protest at his struggles with record company Warner Bros. Well played Mr Rowntree!

Back in the 80s, I could probably have listed all of Madonna’s singles, possibly in release order but by the mid 90s I’d completely lost my way with her. This despite having worked in record shops since October 1990. Her 90s output just didn’t appeal to me that much. Between 1984 and 1989, Madge was the queen of the pop single, churning out doozy after doozy but for me, something changed after we entered the new decade. It was as if she decided that she was done with all that pop stuff and wanted to develop a more mature sound and be seen as an artist rather than a pop star. Now of course, that was totally within her remit to do so. The Beatles sound changed dramatically from the lovable moptops to the material released from say “Revolver” onwards. George Michael totally reinvented himself after leaving his Wham! pop origins behind. Why shouldn’t Madonna be allowed to take her creativity in a different direction? Absolutely. I’m just saying I didn’t like her 90s hits as much as her 80s ones. That’s not to say she didn’t release anything good during the decade. “Vogue”, “Ray Of Light”, “Justify My Love” are standouts from those years but some of her stuff just didn’t cut through with me.

“Bedtime Story” is a case in point. The title track from her album and co-written by Björk (not a selling point for me), it just seems what we would have called ‘pseudy’ back in the day. A tale of the delights of the unconscious world, it’s far too arty for my pop sensibilities with its ethereal trance beats and pulsing bass. Oh and then there’s the lyrics. Whereas PJ & Duncan’s were lowest common denominator crap, “Bedtime Stories” are painfully highbrow. Check these lines which are spotlighted in the video:

“Words are useless, especially sentences. They don’t stand for anything“
Writer/s: Björk Gudmundsdottir, Marius De vries, Nellee Hooper
Publisher: Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd., Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner Chappell Music, Inc.

Hmm. One in the eye there for linguists everywhere. Talking of the video, my God! Pretentious? Moi? It was the most expensive video ever made at the time (though it was outdone by Janet and Michael Jackson’s “Scream” just one year later). Channelling the imagery of surrealist painters like Frida Kahlo and Remedios Varo, it includes scenes such as Madonna giving birth to doves, in a pool with skulls and finally the unnerving sight of her with her mouth where her eyes should be and vice versa. That final image brought to mind the dark fantasy horror of Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth taking the video into the realms of high art. Maybe that’s what Madonna wanted all along. “Bedtime Story” peaked at No 4 thereby banishing for the moment the memories of Madonna’s last single (“Take A Bow”) being the first to not make the UK Top 10 since “Lucky Star” in 1984.

Right, I’m just going to put this out there now. I like Del Amitri. Always have. Not in a superfan type of way but I like what they do in the same way that I like Deacon Blue. Both bands, it seems to me, have something in common and it’s not that they’re both Scottish. No, it’s that they both suffer from being perceived as unfashionable, not edgy enough and, in some people’s minds, even dull. This seems grossly unfair to me. Both have forged longstanding careers (albeit with not insubstantial sabbaticals at times), both have written some pretty darn good songs and both have musicality to spare. So what’s the issue here then? Their images? Sure, they’re not that much to look at (except Deacon Blue’s Lorraine McIntosh who I’ve always had a thing for plus I have female friends who regard Ricky Ross similarly) but surely Del Amitri lead singer Justin Currie’s lambchop sideburns weren’t a deal breaker were they? So what is it that people object to so much? Their lyrics? What’s wrong with writing from the heart about things that you know about? Whatever the reason for the looks of scorn when you admit to liking them, I’ll not be apologising for liking good songs.

Take “Here And Now” for example. The lead single from their fourth album “Twisted”, it’s a great tune. Melodic, excellent laid back Summery feel, lyrics that stick in your head, nice guitar fade out. There’s even some falsetto vocals in there just to mix things up a bit. It’s a nice song. Ah, I’ve answered my own question haven’t I? Nice. That dreaded word that no musician wants to be described as. Oh, I don’t care. I still like it and it’s fairly simple chords mean I can just about strum it on the guitar which is always a bonus.

“Here And Now”only got to No 21 but then Del Amitri have never been about huge selling singles have they? Fifteen Top 40 hits but not one of them got higher than No 11 with most peaking somewhere in the 20s. Albums are a different story though. Of their seven studio albums, only two peaked lower than No 6. The band are back together again now with their last album being as recent as 2021 and they have a tour booked for 2024 as support for Simple Minds. Oh and you can stop that sniggering at the back about the credibility of Simple Minds while you’re at it!

I quite often use this phrase but who the hell were this lot?! Seriously, anybody remember The Glam Metal Detectives? Well, too be fair to us all, they weren’t a proper band but a fictional group in a BBC TV series of the same name. I can honestly say that I never watched any of its episodes but then there were only seven ever made as it only lasted for one series. Wikipedia tells me it was some sort of comedy which combined sketch and sitcom elements. Ah, the BBC trying to be all innovative and subversive eh? No wonder it was shown on BBC2 then. It did have some decent names in the cast including Phil Cornwell and Doon Mackichan both of whom appear in this performance. Their song – “Everybody Up” – was the show’s theme tune and was dreadful despite being written and produced by Lol Creme and Trevor Horn yet somehow managed to spend a whole week inside the Top 40 at No 29.

I think what we have here is a case of TOTP being used not as a reflection of the country’s musical tastes but as a promotional tool for a new show (the first episode was broadcast just an hour after this TOTP aired). There was certainly some manipulation going on this week what with this and the Blur appearance.

Celine Dion is at the top of the pile again this week with “Think Twice”. Despite it being No 1 in half a dozen countries around the world, in the US it only managed to get to No 95. Obviously, with the power of blockbuster film Titanic behind it, they were powerless like the rest of the world to resist “My Heart Will Go On” three years later.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Perfecto Allstarz	Reach Up (Papa’s Got A Brand New Pigbag)	Nope
2	PJ & Duncan	Our Radio Rocks	As if
3	Bon Jovi	Someday I’ll Be Saturday Night	Negative
4	Elastica	Waking Up	No
5	Blur	Jubilee	Wasn’t released as a single but I had the Parklife album . Didn’t we all?
6	Madonna	Bedtime Story	Nope
7	Del Amitri	Here And Now	No but I have it on a Best Of CD
8	The Glam Metal Detectives	Everybody Up	Buy it? I can’t even remember it!
9	Celine Dion	Think Twice	Definite 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/m001qwqy/top-of-the-pops-23021995

TOTP 17 NOV 1994

Posted on June 16, 2023 by 80stastic

Woah! Hold on a minute! What happened to November?! Yes, we’ve time jumped and missed the shows broadcast on the 3rd and 10th of that month. Why? Well, they feature R.Kelly and Gary Glitter who, given the charges brought against them and subsequent convictions in later years, have been removed from the schedules on the grounds of sensitivity. I’ve checked online archives to see what we missed and can report that they were presented by Kylie Minogue (dammit!) and Bruno Brookes (meh) and featured a fair few hits that we’d already seen so no loss there but also performances by the likes of Terrorvision (“Alice, What’s The Matter”), Eternal (“Oh Baby I”) and The Beautiful South (“One Last Love Song”). I guess we’ll all have our opinions on whether missing these is a shame or a relief.

There was certainly relief in my work life at this time. After spending five months working at the Our Price store in Piccadilly, Manchester where I’d pretty much hated every minute, I’d got a return move back down the road to the Market Street store from where I’d come. I think I’d made it clear to area management that I wasn’t happy a few times and they finally took pity on me and arranged a transfer for me. I can’t remember the exact details of the move in terms of who went where on the managerial merry-go-round but what I do recall is that the Sunday before I started back at Market Street on the Monday morning, me and my wife went to see an Elvis Costello gig at the Manchester Opera House which was a great distraction from my nerves of starting over again at Market Street. Yes, I’d pushed for a move and yes I knew the store as this would be my third time working there but I was moving right up against Christmas and I hadn’t done one there since I was a sales assistant in 1991. I needn’t have worried – it would turn out to be one of the smoothest Christmases I ever worked. However, I would be on my travels again in the new year as the store closed down and was sold.

In more nationwide news, on the Saturday after this TOTP aired, the UK’s first National Lottery draw took place. Years behind other countries who’d had such a scheme in place for years, it seems strange now to imagine that there was a time when the UK didn’t. These days, of course, there all sorts of different draws and games for us to pursue the dream of phenomenal wealth but in 1994, this was a huge deal. As I recall there was a deluge of advertising and promotion for the lottery and it seemed like everyone you knew was going to buy a ticket. It became a national obsession. I remember a work colleague being absolutely convinced that the number 1 would come up and so was definitely going to choose it as one of his six numbers (it didn’t come up). I’m pretty sure my wife and I bought a ticket and like everyone else – except the seven lucky winners who shared a jackpot of just under £6 million – won bugger all.

The fact that most of us are never going to win a substantial amount didn’t stop the notion of the lottery from becoming completely embedded in our culture. Workplace syndicates became commonplace. Certainly at one of the Our Prices that I worked in, someone was always allotted the task of doing the lottery for the whole shop. It was a horrible responsibility; there would always be a somebody who didn’t have the money to chip in their pound so then you were into the issue of whether another person would put in for them and keeping a tally of who had paid and who still owed. The real dilemma though was the idealogical one of what would happen if the syndicate won; should the person who hadn’t put in that week and technically hadn’t bought a ticket share in the spoils? One of my managers used to refer to putting into the lottery syndicate as ‘sanity money’ – what if you were the only member of staff who hadn’t bothered and then the syndicate won big and all gave up working at the shop and you were the only person there on Monday morning? It was a persuasive argument.

That’s quite a lengthy intro and I haven’t even started on the music yet! Tonight’s ‘golden mic’ host is Michelle Gayle who just the other week was performing her hit “Sweetness” on the show. That’s some clever diversifying right there. Opening tonight are M People who are still in their imperial phase with new single “Sight For Sore Eyes” being the sixth of eight consecutive Top 10 hits for the group. It was also the lead single from their third album “Bizarre Fruit” which had been released on the Monday before this TOTP aired. In fact, so confident were they in their success continuing that they would re-issue the album with a slight re-jigging of the tracks (their version of “Itchycoo Park by the Small Faces was added) and doubled it up with an extra CD of live versions and remixes, called it “Bizarre Fruit II” and sold it all over again! “Sight For Sore Eyes” was the opening track on both albums though and you can hear why. It’s a strong song even if it sticks to the successful M People template a tad too much – parts of it sound like they’d just rewritten “Moving On Up” – with Heather Small’s powerhouse vocals to the fore. Has there ever been a singer with such a misnomer as Heather who possesses one of the biggest voices around.

Now I wasn’t the only one moving on around this time and like my transfer to Market Street, Suede’s was also born out of a period of unhappiness. After the breakdown of the working relationship between Brett Anderson and Bernard Butler had resulted in the latter’s departure earlier in the year, the band had moved quickly to recruit 17 year old Richard Oakes to help take the band forward. Their sophomore album “Dog Man Star” was released in the October and it’s perhaps no surprise that, given its difficult gestation (aside from the issues within the Anderson/Butler axis, Brett was also deep into a drug habit) that it was a heavy, dark record with themes of tragedy and self loathing. And yet, in amongst the gloom was the song that Brett regards as Suede’s best ever. “The Wild Ones” was the second single taken from the album and really should have been a bigger hit than its No 18 peak. Maybe it just got caught up in the busy pre-Christmas release schedules? An epic ballad recounting the tale of a withering romance, it was at turns dramatic yet not histrionic and full of passion and melody. Brett says he’d been listening to artists like Scott Walker and Jacques Brel at the time of writing it and was named after the Marlon Brando film The Wild One. Yet for all those stated influences, the very first line of the lyrics is straight out of the Roxy Music songbook:

There’s a song playing
On the radio
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Brett Anderson / Bernard Butler
The Wild Ones lyrics © Kobalt Music Services Ltd Kms

Change just one word and you’ve got the chorus of “Oh Yeah”. Later on, there seems a line that is almost pinched verbatim from the Pet Shop Boys:

Running with the dogs today
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Brett Anderson / Bernard Butler
The Wild Ones lyrics © Kobalt Music Services Ltd Kms

Again, change one word and it’s the hook from “Suburbia”. I’m not criticising – surely there’s an element of soaking up influences (either consciously or subconsciously) attached to every songwriter but those two lines did leap out at me.

Suede would release just one single in 1995 (a third from “Dog Man Star” called “New Generation”) and then they would retreat and regroup for 18 months before returning in 1996 with the massive selling and much more mainstream album “Trash”.

Ah, it’s another of those dance floor bangers (or something). We started 1994 with a rerelease of a dance track that would shoot to No 1 and we end the year (just about) with another one. “Let Me Be Your Fantasy” by Baby D was originally released in 1992 when it peaked at a lowly No 76. It remained popular in the clubs though and a rerelease saw it catapulted to the top of the charts for two weeks in November 1994. Now, I certainly had no idea about this at the time but my reaction had I known this bit of music trivia would have been the same as it is now that I do know and that is “No f*****g way!”. What am I talking about? The fact that Baby D was formed by Production House Records which itself was set up by one Phil Fearon who, if you know your 80s music, you will remember as fronting Galaxy who had hits with “Dancing Tight”, “What Do I Do”, “Everybody’s Laughing” and “I Can Prove It”. Yeah, that Phil Fearon! I know! Who would have thought the man behind those fairly lame pop hits would be responsible for what is widely regarded as one of biggest dance anthems ever. Indeed, one of the reasons “Let Me Be Your Fantasy” was even rereleased was because a poll of listeners to Kiss FM ranked it as their favourite tune of all time. Baby D herself (as in the vocalist) was Phil Fearon’s wife Dee Galdes-Fearon who had been one of the two women in Galaxy with him. Talk about keeping it in the family!

The track was presumably recorded with one eye on crossing over into the mainstream – that would explain the huge shout-a-long chorus that made it stand out from every other break beat house tune. I can imagine many a clubber hollering it at the top of their voices on the dance floor at the time (though not myself of course). One person who did give a rousing rendition of said chorus was a guy called Al who was the housemate of my friend Robin. They lived together for a while in Ruislip Manor in the London Borough of Hillingdon, West London. It’s towards the end of the Metropolitan line, zone 6 – miles from central London and a bugger to get back to from basically anywhere. One night, Al had been out on the lash and had managed to find his way home in the early hours of the morning. He crashed in through the front door waking Robin up in the process who came to the top of the stairs to see what was going on. The sight that met his eyes was Al, off his tits, shouting “Let Me Be Your Fantasy” before passing out and collapsing onto the hall floor. I think Robin’s comment was “Good work, sir” and indeed, it was a fine effort by Al, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Baby D will be at No 1 soon enough and for two weeks but, even with just a short amount of time to go until Christmas, it was never going to hold on to claim the position of festive chart topper.

Just as “The Wild Ones” is Brett Anderson’s favourite Suede song then “End Of A Century” has a shot at being one of my favourite tracks by Blur. I think they were really getting into their stride with this one. More melodic and subtle than the brashness of the in-yer-face “Parklife”, it was the fourth and final single from that album. Damon Albarn is on record as saying it was the wrong choice of track for a single and they should have opted for “This Is A Low” instead. However, as much as I like that song (and it is superior in nearly every way), in terms of radio play, I think “End Of A Century” is much more suited as a single. Just my opinion.

I think I was won over with this one from the opening two lines:

She says, “There’s ants in the carpet”
The dirty little monsters, eating all the morsels, just pickin’ up the rubbish
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Damon Albarn / Graham Leslie Coxon / Alexander Rowntree David / Alexander James Steven
End of a Century lyrics © Warner/chappell Music Ltd, Kobalt Music Services Ltd Kms, Sony Music Publishing (uk) Ltd

Excellent stuff. As far as I can work out, the rest of the song seems to be about how a relationship can fall into a malaise when routine and the mundane are allowed to dominate and that even an event like the then forthcoming new millennium won’t make any difference just because said relationship is now in a new century. I think.

I’m guessing the brass player dressed as a pearly king was a tongue in cheek addition by the band, playing up to their Britishness which the album (and its success) was perceived to be based upon. I think The Jam may have beaten them to it by a few years though:

Never mind that Four Weddings And A Funeral was the top grossing film in the UK in 1994, surely one of the most significant of the year (Schindler’s List aside) was Pulp Fiction. Quentin Tarantino’s highly stylised crime story set new standards for the use of the phrase ‘cultural phenomenon’. Its lines of dialogue have passed into common vernacular and its disruption of the convention of narrative showed that storytelling doesn’t have to be linear (it surely influenced the Christopher Nolan directed Memento from 2000).

Then there was its soundtrack which would go three times platinum in the UK. Breaking with tradition, the film didn’t have a conventional score but instead featured songs from genres such as rock ‘n’ roll, surf music, pop and soul. One of those tracks was a cover of Neil Diamond’s “Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon” by American alternative rockers Urge Overkill. Formed in Chicago in 1986, their contribution to Tarantino’s soundtrack was surely their defining moment. Did I know this was originally by Neil Diamond at the time? No but it sounded so familiar even after just the first listen that I was pretty sure it wasn’t an original composition. To appreciate Urge Overkill’s version though, I think you need to listen to Neil Diamond’s. Now, they’re not a million miles apart but there’s something eerie and haunting about Urge Overkill’s interpretation that’s actually quite affecting. However, despite this TOTP appearance, they never got any higher than this week’s peak of No 37.

Looking at their Wikipedia entry, their roll call of band members is quite astonishing; not just because of how many names there are on it but also the nature of said names. Admittedly, some look like nicknames but check out some of these nomenclatures:

Nash Kato
Nils St. Cyr
Chris Frantisak
Grumpy “Crabnar”
Carnitas
Watt
Jack ‘The Jaguar’
Kriss Bataille
Onassis Rowan
Chuck Treece
Burf ‘Sandbag’ Agnew (my favourite)

However, watching this performance, if the lead singer had shown his hippy hair to be a wig and revealed himself as Christopher Walken, I wouldn’t have been surprised.

As we near Christmas (in 1994), there’s the inevitable glut of Best Of / Greatest Hits albums being released. Look at this list of artists that had such a product out around this time:

INXS
Bon Jovi
Chris Rea
Sade
Aerosmith
Sting
The Beautiful South

You can add to that New Order whose Best Of album was perhaps the most obvious of the year. Why? Well, they’d only recorded one album for new label London Records (1993’s “Republic”) and yet there were already stories emanating from within the band’s camp that relations were faltering and that there was no sign of them recording together again any time soon. Given that, it’s understandable that London wanted to do something with their new charges back catalogue and so a compilation album was always likely. However, there already was such an album in existence. 1987 had seen the band release their retrospective “Substance”, spearheaded by a new track called “True Faith”. Both the album and single were big successes with the former going platinum and the latter becoming their then highest charting single at No 4. I don’t suppose that was going to dissuade London from maximising profit on their act though and so a second Best Of was released four days after this TOTP aired.

Curiously titled “(the best of)” – no brackets, no points- and with the band’s name styled as NewOrder (all one word), its chart peak of No 4 showed there was still lots of appetite for the band out there. Like “Substance”, it was promoted by “True Faith” (albeit a remix officially titled “True Faith -94”). Unlike “Substance”, its track listing had some omissions. Where was “Temptation” and “Confusion” and why had they gone with the 1988 remix of “Blue Monday” instead of the original? I’m guessing it was the band’s decision rather than the label’s as, owing to never having signed a formal contract with Factory Records, they owned the rights to their songs and not Factory so when the latter went bankrupt nothing really changed copyright wise? Oh, I don’t know I’m not a music industry lawyer. What I do know is that the ‘94 version of “True Faith” peaked at No 9, that I can’t really tell the difference between that and its 1987 counterpart and that the accompanying video still looked great seven years on. The following year, a collection of remixes was released called “The Rest Of New Order” that did include versions of “Temptation” and “Confusion” and that was pretty much it from the band until the new millennium dawned.

Here’s a first view of an artist that I must admit a fondness for and although she has sold 50 million albums worldwide, won nine Grammys and was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame just this year, I’m never quite sure that she gets the credit she deserves. I suppose she must be respected by the industry given the final accolade on that list.

I’m talking about Sheryl Crow who is really the musical equivalent of Jamie Vardy in that success came to her at a relatively late age in the same way that Vardy’s elite football career did (he didn’t play in the Premier League until he was 27). Crow was even older at 32 when this single – “All I Wanna Do” was a hit. She’d been at it for years before this breakthrough though. She’d sang on commercial jingles for McDonalds and then toured as a backing vocalist for Michael Jackson no less on his Bad tour as well as recording backing vocals for Stevie Wonder, Barbara Carlisle and Don Henley. An aborted attempt at laying down her debut album meant that she returned to the drawing board before joining a songwriting collective who would help write songs for her actual debut LP “Tuesday Night Music Club”.

“All I Wanna Do” was the fourth single released from the album but the first to break through on any meaningful level in both the UK and US. In the former it would peak at No 4 which in the pre-Xmas rush was quite the achievement for a new artist whilst it stayed at No 2 for six weeks in the latter. You can hear why I think. A rambling yet joyous tune with a hopeful message and a killer hook in the chorus well delivered by Sheryl. It was, rather lazily, compared to “Stuck In The Middle With You” by Stealers Wheel but that does make a rather nice link with an earlier act on tonight’s show as that 1973 hit featured heavily in the Quentin Tarantino film Reservoir Dogs.

As I recall, “All I Wanna Do” attracted masses of airplay but despite its success, subsequent singles failed to scale its heights and it wasn’t until “If It Makes You Happy” and “Everyday Is A Winding Road” from her eponymous sophomore album that she would become a chart regular on these shores. As for this performance, Sheryl sells the song well and I like the fact that a fake bar has been set up to reflect some of its lyrics. A good effort all round.

From one solo female artist in the first flush of success to one who had been a household name since 1978. However, Kate Bush’s run of chart hits was coming to an end and it would take an American sci-fi drama series to reverse that trend in spectacular style 28 years on. Back in 1994 though, “And So Is Love” was, rather surprisingly, released as the fourth single from an album that had already been out for a year. Rather unsurprisingly then, it would peak at a lowly No 26 and would be Kate’s last single release for 11 years.

Apparently the guitar parts on “And So Is Love” were played by Eric Clapton (who dated Sheryl Crow for a while in the 90s) but it puts me in mind more of “Brothers In Arms” by Dire Straits. In truth though, the song is hardly there at all – it’s all trademark Bush breathy vocals and has an ethereal feel to it but it just sort of exists without really doing anything or going anywhere. I’m kind of surprised that it warranted an appearance on the show but I guess head producer Ric Blaxill was trying to restore the reputation of TOTP with huge, grandstanding gestures of having massive names appear and Kate Bush certainly fell into that category. As Michelle Gayle pointed out in her intro, it was Kate’s first time in the TOTP studio for nine years and would turn out to be her last. She would release two albums of new material since the turn of the Millennium and also a “Director’s Cut” album of remixes of tracks from “The Sensual World” and “The Red Shoes” projects before that rejuvenation of “Running Up That Hill (Deal With God)”. Who saw that coming? I suppose Stranger Things have happened.

Despite the two missed shows, Pato Banton is still No 1 with “Baby Come Back” though this would be its final week at the top. It’s the video again – did Pato ever get to perform his hit in the TOTP studio? I know he was there one week but he only got briefly interviewed by the presenter and gave the rather weak excuse that Ali and Robin Campbell of UB40 weren’t available and so he couldn’t do the song without them. Ah well.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	M People	Sight For Sore Eyes	No
2	Suede	The Wild Ones	Liked it, didn’t buy it
3	Baby D	Let Me Be Your Fantasy	Nope
4	Blur	End Of A Century	Not the single but I had the album
5	Urge Overkill	Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon	No but I had the Pulp Fiction soundtrack
6	New Order	True Faith – 94	No, nor the Best Of album but I had the Substance compilation
7	Sheryl Crow	All I Wanna Do	No but my wife did
8	Kate Bush	And So Is Love	No but my wife had The Red Shoes album it came from
9	Pato Banton	Baby Come Back	Nah

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/m001mnyk/top-of-the-pops-17111994

TOTP 01 SEP 1994

Posted on May 18, 2023 by 80stastic

OK, before we get into the music, there’s a bit of housekeeping to take care of. Firstly, we’ve missed a whole episode which hasn’t happened for quite some time. Nothing to do with Operation Yewtree nor presenters who hadn’t signed the waiver for BBC4 to broadcast the repeats they featured in – no this was a matter of a technical nature. The tapes for the TOTP shown on 25 August 1994 held in the BBC archive were deemed to be not of broadcast quality and so we miss out on what was surely one of the more interesting guest presenters in Malcolm MacLaren. Despite being a bit of an arse I’m sure, I’ve always had a soft spot for Malcolm and could listen to his drivel for hours. At least he led an interesting life. I’ve checked the running order for that show and I don’t think we missed much. Many acts we’d already seen before including Red Dragon, Shampoo and unbelievably Let Loose again! We did however miss Dinosaur Jnr which might have been distracting at least plus the return of Kylie Minogue with her first new material since leaving PWL as she entered her ‘Dance Kylie’ phase. Oh well.

The other bit of housekeeping is regarding tonight’s host who we haven’t seen before. So who was / is Claire Sturgess? Well, she’s a voice over artist and DJ currently working on Absolute Radio where she’s been since 2015. Back in 1994 though, she was a Radio 1 DJ presenting the rock show on Sunday evenings. She would stay at the BBC until 1997 but only hosted TOTP one more time before being replaced by Lisa I’Anson.

Right, on with the tunes and we start with one that perhaps more than any other (with the possible exception of “Common People” by Pulp) has come to be associated (rightly or wrongly) with the Britpop movement. Think of “Parklife” (the song) by Blur and what comes to mind? Phil Daniels? Of course. The “vorsprung durch technik’ line? Yep. The iconic video with Damon in that tracksuit top camping it up whilst an ice cream van drives by. Without doubt. They’re all woven into the fabric of the time but sometimes I think we forget what a strange song “Parklife” really is. A track where all the verses are spoken in a cockney accent, a chorus that you could imagine Dick Van Dyke singing in one of those musicals he starred in and lyrics about brewer’s droop, dirty pigeons and habitual voyeurs. And yet it all hangs together perfectly to the point that we didn’t bat an eyelid when it was released but instead accepted it as another example of Blur’s pursuit to celebrate ‘Englishness’. Except it wasn’t. Here’s Graham Coxon courtesy of @TOTPFacts:

Graham Coxon on "Parklife": "A lot of people thought it was a celebration of Englishness, but it was actually very sarcastic. [It] wasn't about the working class, it was about the park class: dustbin men, pigeons, joggers – things we saw every day on the way to the studio." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) May 5, 2023

In this performance, Daniels is word perfect and Damon, relieved of the stress of doing all the heavy lifting vocals wise, seems to be enjoying his freedom to ham it up on stage more than usual. My personal memory of this song though would come three months later at Christmas. I was asked to co-coordinate the works Christmas do for all the Our Price shops in the area. I found a venue and we got one of the staff at the Piccadilly, Manchester store to do the DJ-ing (if you worked in a record shop there was always someone who was either in a band or a DJ on the staff). The manager I organised the shindig with (Rick) was a bit nervous on the actual night about whether people were having a good time or not and especially about the music being played. Our DJ put on “Girls & Boys” which seemed a safe choice but which only served to agitate Rick into shouting at him “Give ‘em Parklife Will, give ‘em Parklife!”. Such was the influence of Blur and that song in particular in 1994.

P.S. I think Will did indeed give ‘em “Parklife” at some point in the evening.

Oh great! Another soap star turned pop star. This time the actor is from EastEnders reviving bad memories of Nick ‘Wicksy’ Berry and Anita ‘Angie’ Dobson. Sean Maguire’s stay in the soap had been short (January to December 1993) but he had been a big hit with the audience (especially the teenage female section of it). It was almost inevitable then that he’d give the old pop star lark a go and here he was, eight months after leaving EastEnders, back on our screens on the BBC’s premier music show. Unbelievably, despite not being able to shift any meaningful amount of units of either of his two albums, he would rack up eight Top 40 singles over a three year period. The first of those was “Someone To Love” and it’s a decent slice of late summer pop which seems to have pinched a bit from Kool And The Gang’s “Celebration”. Maguire sells it well enough and there’s been less likely pop stars (Stefan Dennis anyone?) but I’m guessing that his record label couldn’t have envisaged another six hits after this one. They were all pretty consistent as well. Look at these chart positions:

14 – 27 – 18 – 22 – 16 – 12 – 14 – 27

They’re not too shabby for a soap actor turned pop star. Maguire played Irish wannabe footballer Aidan Brosnan in EastEnders. Hmm. A footballer called Maguire who went onto have a career as a singer. Man Utd’s Harry Maguire as a pop star anyone?

I referenced this record the other week but it wasn’t really pre-planned – it just sort of played out that way. I’m talking about “Endless Love” by Mariah Carey and Luther Vandross. I mentioned their version as the record that knocked Boyz II Men off the No 1 spot in New Zealand but I’d already referred to the Lionel Richie / Diana Ross 1981 original when stating that I hadn’t heard a song basically regurgitated as a different track as I believed Boyz II Men had done with “End Of The Road” and “I’ll Make Love To You” since Lionel Richie rewrote “Endless Love” as “Truly”. I’d actually forgotten that this duet existed until these TOTP repeats aired but exist it does so I’ll have to discuss it. It came from a whole album of covers recorded by Luther called, rather blandly, “Songs” which already had a Lionel Richie song on the track listing in “Hello” but Sony president Tommy Mottola and his then wife Mariah decided that they could boost the album’s chances of success by having her appear on it and so the cover of “Endless Love” came to be. It was a sound business strategy – Mariah was perhaps at the very peak of her popularity with her latest album “Music Box” achieving huge global sales and indeed her contribution helped “Songs” to platinum sales and a No 1 chart position in the UK alone. The single also performed well going to No 2 in America and No 3 here. For me though, it’s a very faithful reproduction and rather pointless and anodyne. I suppose there was a gap of 13 years between the release of the original and the cover so maybe it’s possible there were people out there who didn’t know the Richie / Ross version and so came to it as a brand new song? Or perhaps people did know it and were reminded how much they’d liked the original but in those days before streaming and Spotify, they couldn’t just get access to the song and so bought what was available, the Vandross / Carey remake? I don’t know. I’ve given up trying to work out how some of these songs managed to be hits – and I wrote a dissertation about it whilst a student at Poly.

Next we find Terrorvision having a very steady year of consolidating their success and building their fanbase as they are back on TOTP performing their fourth Top 40 hit of the year “Pretend Best Friend”. And when I say steady, I mean incredibly consistent. Look at these chart peaks for those four singles:

29 – 21 – 25 – 25

A fifth single was released before 1994 was out and it made it to No 24. Their first single of the following year peaked at No 22. Like I say, incredibly consistent. As for the song itself, I don’t recall it but it kind of sounds how I expected it to with Tony Wright launching into a high speed rap that is vaguely reminiscent of “Ant Rap” before the almost shouted chorus. There’s also a bit where it all slows down and Tony wields a megaphone which is all rather incongruous. Good song title though.

After the exclusive of a double live by satellite section in the show last week, head producer Ric Blaxill has gone in hard on the idea by repeating the ‘satellite segue’ (as they’ve named it) for this week. We start off in Philadelphia with a curiously dull performance by the aforementioned Boyz II Men of “I’ll Make Love To You”. Now, my knowledge of the geography of Philadelphia is mostly limited to the scene in Rocky where Sylvester Stallone runs up the 72 steps leading to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the iconic training scene. Luckily for me, I think that’s near to where this performance takes place with the mini stage erected in the Benjamin Franklin Parkway right in front of the Washington Monument. The whole set up seems to be adhering to Blaxill’s stated desire to get the live by satellite slots to feature well known landmarks that have nothing to do with the music per se but which are a step up from the performances in empty theatre halls we have seen previously. It’s all a bit odd though. The parkway has people wandering through it minding their own business or joggers doing their own version of the Rocky training regimen whilst four guys are singing “I’ll Make Love To You” whilst they pass by. Shouldn’t be allowed really.

The second part of the satellite segue stays in America but transports us to New York and specifically to The Bottom Line club in Greenwich Village where we find Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories. Now it might not be recognisable as a landmark like the Washington Monument before it but this venue was legendary in its own right. Owners Allan Pepper and Stanley Snadowsky put on a huge amount of musical talent in the 30 years the club was open including the likes of Prince, The Police, Benatar, Daryl Hall & John Oates, Miles Davis, Dolly Parton….and in the fall of 1994 Lisa Loeb. But who was she?

Well, for someone who is a one hit wonder in the UK (she managed a few more hits in the US), Lisa has quite the biography and discography – her Wikipedia entry is sizeable to say the least. She had been recording music and performing live since the late 80s but it was a friendship with neighbour and actor Ethan Hawke that gave Lisa her lucky break. Having met through the NYC theatre community, Hawke gave Loeb’s song “Stay (I Missed You)” to Ben Stiller who was directing the film Reality Bites that Hawke was starring in and he made the decision to use it over the end credits. The rest really is history. The track’s pretty, folk-infused pop melody proved irresistible to the American public who sent it to No 1 making Lisa and her band the first ever artist to top the chart there without being signed to a label.

Lisa looked a bit like Nana Mouskouri’s hipper younger sister but there was more to her than her trademark glasses. As well as being a musician, she also runs a number of businesses including one for fair trade coffee and, making use of that glasses association, the Lisa Loeb Eyewear Collection with each frame being named after one of her song titles. She’s also written children’s books and done some acting though one of her credits is for one of the worst films of all time – Hot Tub Time Machine 2. If you haven’t seen it and stumble across it whilst channel flipping then heed my advice – Don’t stay (you’ll be glad you missed it).

One of last week’s satellite segue acts are in the TOTP studio this week as Youssou N’Dour and Neneh Cherry move up to No 3 with “7 Seconds”. The staging of this one starts out simple yet effective with a single spotlight centred on first Youssou and then Neneh as each takes the vocal lead in turn. However, the production team can’t have been totally won over by the idea as by the time the first chorus comes around, they’re both floodlit and there’s a multi screen video installation behind them showing the official promo film that accompanied the single. Shame. I thought a more paired back, minimalist setting would work best for this particular track but the show disagreed and went for Youssou N’More.

It would take a braver man than me to start a political rant about this government’s despicable deportation to Rwanda scheme in a pop music blog but I am inevitably put in mind of it by the next song which is “Love Can Build A Bridge” by Children For Rwanda which was a charity single to raise money for Save The Children. If this all sounds familiar but not quite how you remember it then it’s quite possible you’re thinking of the version by Cher, Chrissie Hynde and the aforementioned Neneh Cherry that was released for Comic Relief just 6 months on from this and which went to No 1 for a week. Sadly for the Children For Rwanda single, it failed to sell nearly as well and peaked outside the Top 40.

We’ve reached week 14 of 15 (we missed week 13 due to the broadcast quality issue discussed earlier) for Wet Wet Wet’s reign at No 1 with “Love Is All Around” and whilst I’m really struggling to say anything of interest about it after so many appearances on the show, it seems like Ric Blaxill might be finding it difficult to keep us all interested as well. To shake things up a bit, he’s doubled down on the live by satellite feature and has the band beaming in from LA. This definitely falls into the category of performing in front of a world famous landmark with the Hollywood sign prominent in the background. The end is coming though. There’s only one more week and the story behind it’s demise will be discussed in the next post.

The play out song is “We Are The Pigs” by Suede. 1994 was a year of massive upheaval for the band most notably due to the departure of guitarist Bernard Butler who formally left their ranks on 8th July following tensions whilst recording sophomore album “Dog Man Star”. As if that wasn’t enough, difficult second album syndrome raised its ugly head. Not that the band didn’t make the album they wanted to; they did, but the direction they took confused critics and some of the fans after their electrifying eponymous debut. Many saw its grandiose soundscapes as pretentious and although it sold well enough, it was seen as a bit of a step backwards commercially in comparison to its predecessor. History has been kind to the album though and revisionism has it hailed as an under appreciated and misunderstood at the time classic. When the band played five nights at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in 2003 with each night dedicated to one of their studio albums, it was the tickets for the Dog Man Star show that sold the quickest.

As for its lead single, “We Are The Pigs” is certainly dark in nature and tone but it’s still a huge tune. There’s even a bit in it which sounds like that reverb sound in “Peter Gunn” by Diane Eddy and subsequently The Art Of Noise. Do you think that’s totally innocent or knowingly inserted?

The almost post apocalyptic video with burning crosses, cars afire and masked gangs roaming the streets puts me in mind of the climax of The Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes, the ending of which had to be reshot as audience reaction at test screenings deemed it to violent and pessimistic. Similarly, the promo for Suede’s single got little airplay due to it being banned for being too violent. This may have contributed to the track only making it to No 18 in the UK Top 40.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Blur	Parklife	Not the single but I had the album obviously
2	Sean Maguire	Someone To Love	No
3	Mariah Carey and Luther Vandross	Endless Love	Never happening
4	Terrorvision	Pretend Best Friend	Nope
5	Boyz II Men	I’ll Make Love To You	Nah
6	Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories	Stay (I Missed You)	Nice song but no
7	Youssou N’Dour and Neneh Cherry	7 Seconds	I did not
8	Children For Rwanda	Love Can Build A Bridge	Negative
9	Wet Wet Wet	Love Is All Around	Another no
10	Suede	We Are The Pigs	Could have done but 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/m001ln6m/top-of-the-pops-01091994

TOTP 09 JUN 1994

Posted on April 9, 2023 by 80stastic

OK, so this ‘golden mic’ feature of TOTP producer Ric Blaxill’s that saw celebrities, pop stars and comedians brought in to host the show has stepped up a gear in recent weeks. After the rather obvious choice of Take That’s Mark Owen and Robbie Williams and the ‘it just about worked’ decision to give the over the top Meatloaf a go, Blaxill had gone in the opposite direction by inviting the sardonic wit of Jack Dee into the studio recently. Of the three guest turns, it was Dee’s deadpan delivery that worked best for me. Maybe it did for Blaxill as well as he’s opted for not one but two comedians this week. Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer were fast becoming household names by 1994. Having broken through with Vic Reeves Big Night Out on Channel 4 in 1990/91, the duo had made the move to BBC2 with their latest show The Smell Of Reeves And Mortimer. The first series had aired in the Autumn of 1993 and brought us some brilliant new characters like Uncle Peter (“Donkey!”), The Bra Men – Pat Wright & Dave Arrowsmith (“Are you sayin’ I’ve got nowt”) and the wonderful Slade parody Slade In Residence. Vic had himself become a pop star of course in 1991 with the hits “Born Free” and “Dizzy” (a No 1 record no less) so maybe with feet in both camps, Vic & Bob were a logical choice to host TOTP?

Anyway, if Blaxill was hoping for some zany comedy to add some zoom to the show, what he got was a whole lot of controversy courtesy of opening act Manic Street Preachers. After becoming somewhat disillusioned with the direction that they had taken with the radio friendly, melodic rock of sophomore album “Gold Against The Soul”, the Manics decided a back to basics return to their origins was required. Where they ended up though was a very dark place indeed. With 75% of their third album “The Holy Bible” being written by Richey Edwards whose mental state was fragile to say the least, the songs were bleak. Where previously we’d had “Motorcycle Emptiness” and “Little Baby Nothing” from first album “Generation Terrorists”, now there was “Archives Of Pain” and “The Intense Humming Of Evil”. And yet the songs were valid. This was no death metal nonsense. The tracks spoke of the extremes of the human condition detailing suicide, anorexia, serial killers and the holocaust.

When ABC released “Beauty Stab” in 1983 as the follow up to the iconic “Lexicon Of Love”, it was seen as a the ultimate example of killing your career. Eleven years later it seemed like a case of the Manics saying “hold our beers” but although the sales of “The Holy Bible” were initially disappointing, its legacy has far overtaken its chart achievements. Routinely voted as one of the best albums of the 90s if not of all time, it is also the album held most dearest by the band’s fanbase.

The lead single from it was “Faster” which certainly sounds rawer than any of the singles from “Gold Against The Soul” but it was the choice of James Dean Bradfield to where a balaclava on this TOTP appearance that caught the headlines. The IRA connotations led many a viewer to believe the band were IRA sympathisers which the band, of course, vehemently denied. The BBC received 17,500 complaints and the band’s record company Sony were concerned that they would not be allowed on the show again. They were eventually invited back but not for another two years when they were a trio following the disappearance of Richey Edwards on 1st February 1995. My own opinion of balaclava -gate? I believe their defence detailed by @TOTPFacts below but for such a politically switched on band, it seemed a bit naive to not have foreseen such a reaction.

"Because we were all dressed in army regalia, it felt like we were parodying the use of legitimate power, like the special forces. It didn't enter our heads that people would see it as an Irish paramilitary symbol." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) March 31, 2023

As for “Faster”, I couldn’t engage with this era of the band. Maybe I was just that bit too old at 26 but I know people who swear by “The Holy Bible” album. Maybe I should explore it further.

As the camera switches back from the Manics to Vic and Bob, we get an unintentional piece of comedy gold when the former asks an unsuspecting member of the studio audience if she had liked the last performance. Having not been listening but suddenly confronted with a microphone in her face, she answered in the only way she could and with a belief that this was what was required of her, she whooped. Marvellous stuff.

The next act is a kind of diva supergroup. Kind of. I suppose a collaboration between disco/Hi-NRG heavyweights Kym Mazelle and Jocelyn Brown was as inevitable as it was obvious but the fact that it was the idea of Simon Cowell kind of discredits it slightly. Why were they doing a cover of the disco classic “No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)” made famous by Barbara Streisand and Donna Summer? The aforementioned Cowell alongside producers Matt Aitken and Mike Stock (working together for the first time since the split of SAW) had heard the version made by Erasure’s Andy Bell and k.d. lang for the Coneheads movie and thought they could do it better. And better in their eyes meant Kym and Jocelyn.

It made sense though. Jocelyn was the voice behind 80s club classic “Somebody Else’s Guy” and in the 90s had supplied vocals on Top 10 hits for Incognito and Right Said Fred. Meanwhile, Kym had duetted with Dr. Robert of The Blow Monkeys on Top 10 dance hit “Wait” in 1989. More recently, she’d been in the Top 30 in 1993 with Rapination on “Love Me The Right Way”. Put them together on a legendary disco track and you’ve got a sure fire, gigantic hit on your hands yes? Well, sort of. Despite entering the charts at No 15 and the exposure of this TOTP appearance, the single topped out just two places higher. The only country where it was a bigger hit than that was The Netherlands. By comparison, the Streisand/Summer original was an American No 1 and UK No 3. Why wasn’t it a bigger success second time around? Did the kids not know the original? Was it seen as too retro compared to the contemporary sounds of, say, Eurodance? Who knows but let’s just hope it pissed off Simon Cowell.

It’s that bloody “Absolutely Fabulous” song again! I think this is the third time it’s been on the show. There was no Comic Relief live event in 1994 so maybe the single was being given an extra push by the BBC? The song is of course the work of the Pet Shop Boys and seeing as I have nothing else left to say about what must be their worst ever single, how about I squeeze in a link between it and the aforementioned Barbara Streisand? Neil Tennant is on record as saying that after he and Chris Lowe had shot the video with Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley, they all went for a meal at a restaurant in Holland Park and got pissed. Right at the end of the evening, into the restaurant walked John Cleese, Joan Collins and Christopher Biggins who had all been to see Barbara Streisand who had been playing at Wembley Arena. Naturally, Tennant had already been to see her the previous week. So that’s Cleese, Collins, Biggins, Saunders, Lumley and the Pet Shop Boys all in the same place at the same time. It sounds like the best Blankety Blank line up ever! Absolutely fabulous darling!

Meanwhile, back in the studio, Vic and Bob are weaving their particular brand of comedy magic via the gift of scotch eggs. “Would anyone like a scotch egg?” they ask the studio audience on the gantry to which one game girl, with an unshakable desire to get herself noticed, shouts in Vic’s face, “I’ll have a scotch egg! Hiya Mum!”. Excellent work!

After that classic example of letting your parent know that you’re on TOTP, we get Blur who are in a much more sombre mood with the second single from their “Parklife” album. I’m guessing that the images and sounds that come to most of our minds when we think of the “Parklfe” era of the band, it’s Damon and Phil Daniels lord marching it up on the title track or the hypnotic, non sequitur chorus of “Girls & Boys”. However, there are also some majestically understated songs on the album too. “End Of A Century” falls into that category for me and then there’s “To The End”. The obvious choice of second single would surely have been the title track but then Blur weren’t always obvious and had depths to them that it could be argued their Battle of Britpop opponents Oasis didn’t. “To The End” was such a change of mood from “Girls & Boys”. A dramatic ballad with a full orchestral accompaniment, did it wrong foot record buyers after the faux hedonism of its predecessor? Certainly, it was nowhere near as big a hit peaking at No 16.

A year or so later, the band would release an even grander ballad in “The Universal” from their “The Great Escape” album. It put me in mind of Madness from a decade earlier when The Nutty Boys broke from their hits formula to release two wistful, pensive pieces in “One Better Day” and “Yesterday’s Men” in 1984 and 1985 respectively.

The performance here is suitably melancholy. The black and white camera tint, the formal suits the band are wearing and the deliberate lack of movement on stage (Alex James seems almost Ron Mael-esque). Damon just about pulls off the vocals but who was the woman sat on stage with them? Apparently, Lætitia Sadier from Stereolab adds some vocals on the recording but I’m not convinced that’s her next to Damon. Whoever she was, as Vic Reeves noted afterwards, she didn’t do much did she?

Acid jazz was in the air (waves) back in 1994. After Galliano appeared on the show the other week, here were label mates The Brand New Heavies with their sixth consecutive Top 40 hit “Back To Love”. I was never that much of an Acid Jazzer though my wife was quite keen and I think she bought the album that this track came from (“Brother Sister”). However, I quite liked the breezy Summer feel of this one – a real daytime radio winner. The band doubled down on that vibe with their next release, a cover version of Maria Muldaur’s “Midnight At The Oasis” which I would suggest would become their best known hit. Meanwhile, “Back To Love” would peak at No 23.

Here’s a rather nice thing. A 50s doo-wop song given the hard rock treatment. The first era of Guns N’ Roses was coming to an end and it did so with a rather unexpected finish. The band’s decision to record an album of cover versions in 1993’s “Spaghetti Incident” seemed a bit odd to me but I guess it was to plug the gap between albums of new material. Nobody could have known that gap would be 17 years long. It sold well enough but in nowhere near the numbers of the “Use Your Illusion” albums and “Appetite For Destruction”. A collection of mainly punk and hard rock songs by the likes of New York Dolls, The Stooges, The Damned and Nazareth, it also included “Since I Don’t Have You” by The Skyliners.

Easily for me the stand out track on the album, it really shouldn’t work but somehow it does. Axl Rose’s angular, throat throttling vocals should decimate the song but actually it’s safe in his hands…erm…mouth (?). Being the hard rockers they are though, the band can’t resist adding their own imprint on the track so in the middle we get the line “Yep, we’re f****d”. I’m guessing that didn’t feature on any radio edit of the song.

Now I would have bet money that this had been released around Christmas in 1993 but clearly not. However, it had been planned to put it out then and subsequently in February but was pulled both times so that might explain my confusion. “Since I Don’t Have You” peaked at No 10. The band’s next single – another cover, this time of “Sympathy For The Devil” by The Rolling Stones for the film Interview With The Vampire – would be their last for 14 years.

Another one of those dance records next that hung around the Top 40 for weeks on end like one of those floater turds that won’t flush away without the need to resort to a literal shitty stick to break it up. Apologies for the excrement metaphor but I really have had enough of having to find something to say about these ‘club anthems’ that lingered like a nasty fart (see also Reel 2 Real’s “I Like To Move It”). “Get-A-Way” by Maxx was one such record. It stayed on the Top 40 for 10 weeks of which 5 of them were inside the Top 10 peaking at No 4 for 2 weeks.

The last time this lot were on the show they performed against the backdrop of a police car for no discernible reason and this time their dancers are jigging away behind some wire mesh fences. Why? Were they meant to have been caught by the fuzz and now be in some sort of detention centre? Just ridiculous.

A classic one hit wonder (huge hit then nada) next as Dawn Penn takes to the stage with her song “You Don’t Love Me (No, No, No)”. Back in 1994, my reaction would have been the same as Vic Reeves – who? As it happens, Dawn was part of the ‘rocksteady’ movement of the late 60s that was a successor to ska and a precursor to reggae (Wikipedia tells me) and she’d originally recorded the track (then just titled “You Don’t Love Me”) in 1967. Dawn then took a Guns N’ Roses style 17 years off from singing before returning to the track and doing a dancehall version of it. Thanks to her appearance at an anniversary show for her original label Studio One Records, the song was released as a single and with plenty of radio support became a huge hit in the UK peaking at No 3.

The UK had always been susceptible to one hit wonders from out of the leftfield like this one. I’m thinking Althea and Donna, Phyllis Nelson, Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley etc and just like those acts, Dawn seemed an unlikely pop star. She was already 42 when she appeared on TOTP which I guess is fairly old to be having your first hit. “You Don’t Love Me (No No No)” entered the charts at No 9 and spent the next four weeks inside the Top 10. Despite Dawn’s protestations, the UK did love her.

It’s the second of fifteen (gulp!) weeks at the top for Wet Wet Wet and “Love Is All Around”. They’re in the studio pretending to be hippies again but this time scenes from Four Weddings And A Funeral have been interspersed into the performance. I’m guessing the production company or distributors pushed for that though the film didn’t need any more promotion as it was top of the box office charts for weeks. I have to say I do like the film – it’s one of those that I always tend to end up watching if I stumble across it whilst channel flipping. Its appeal may have waned over the years but I still think the acting performances are good (apart from a rather wooden Andie Mac Dowell) and the pacing works really well. I wonder if some of the negativity that it attracts now is related to the Wets single putting people off by being No 1 for so long? I’m bound to refer to the film agin over the next 13 weeks but I think I’ll leave it there for now.

The play out tune is back after being omitted last week and it’s yet another dance tune, this time “Harmonica Man” by Bravado. I can’t tell you much about this as I don’t remember it and I can’t be arsed to research it online but it seems to have been inspired by The Grid’s “Swamp Thing” with its banjo theme but they’ve used an harmonica instead. Apparently it spent one week inside the Top 40 peaking at No 37.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Manic Street Preachers	Faster	I did not
2	Jocelyn Brown and Kym Mazelle	No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)	No
3	Pet Shop Boys	Absolutely Fabulous	Not even for charity
4	Blur	To The End	No but I had the Parklife album. Didn’t we all?
5	Brand New Heavies	Back To Love	No but my wife had the album
6	Guns N’ Roses	Since I Don’t Have You	No but I have it on their Greatest Hits album
7	Maxx	Get-A-Way	Hell no
8	Dawn Penn	You Don’t Love Me (No, No, No)	No, no and indeed no
9	Wet Wet Wet	Love Is All Around	Nope
10	Bravado	Harmonica Man	Nah

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/m001kkld/top-of-the-pops-09061994

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.

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.

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