Boyzone

TOTP 18 SEP 1998

There was something going on with the scheduling and timing of shows at this point in TOTP history. The programmes were less than 30 minutes long it seems because the BBC had embarked upon a programme of repeating episodes of Fawlty Towers straight after our weekly dose of chart songs. As they were 35 minutes long, TOTP was truncated to allow them to fit. The Fawlty Towers episode being shown following this particular show was ‘Waldorf Salad’ which is one of my favourites. The scene where the American guest tells Basil to lay it on the line to his chef (who Basil has let go home early) that he’ll “bust his ass” if he hasn’t got the ingredients to make a Waldorf salad is just brilliant.

The other thing happening was that TOTP was being repeated in a late night slot, after midnight on Sunday morning, similar, I guess, to how these BBC4 repeats get shown again in the early hours. There’s something odd about the late night repeat of this show but we’ll get to that in time. Kate Thornton is our host and guess what? The first song of the night is last week’s No 1 which is no longer No 1 but which is being shown anyway. This was a standard and established Chris Cowey tactic by now as he fought to battle the constant flow of changing chart toppers. I get it (sort of) – why only show a big selling record just once especially if it hangs around the Top 10 for a while after debuting at No 1? However, the optics of this practice are odd – ending one show and beginning the next with the same song (and in some cases the same performance). Maybe that’s exaggerated though in these BBC4 repeats with two shows aired back to back. Was it not so noticeable at the time of original broadcast when seven days of viewers’ lives had passed since the last time they’d seen a performance of that song?

This week’s last week No 1 (if you get my drift) is “Booty Call” by All Saints who have dropped from the summit to No 7 in just one week which doesn’t bode well for a long lasting hit. Hang on, let me check the official charts database…

…no, it didn’t hang around the charts long at all. Just five weeks in the Top 40 in total and only two of those inside the Top 10. In fairness, it was the fourth single lifted from their album which had been out for about 10 months by this point so the fact that they’d got to No 1 at all was an achievement (or clever first week of release price discounting you might argue). The group (or record label London) weren’t done with that album just yet though and an improbable fifth single was released from it in late November and it made it to No 7. Presumably, this was to give the album a sales boost just before Christmas and also allowed them to add a promotional sticker to saying something along the lines of ‘includes the No 1s Never Ever, Under The Bridge/Lady Marmalade and Booty Call plus the Top 10 hits I Know Where It’s At and War Of Nerves’. I seem to recall that reorders of the album at this point did actually have such a sticker applied to them and it was green in colour to match the cover artwork. The things you remember. Now, where did I put my house keys?

Next up an American band whom I’m guessing, traditionally wouldn’t have had the ingredients for a Waldorf salad at the top of their rider list for their gigs. Anyway, Kate Thornton is suggesting to us that Aerosmith have put on a concert just for TOTP which can’t be right can it? She seems pretty convinced though; in fact she’s “full on” sure about it as she’s says the phrase twice in the space of a few seconds in her intro to “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing”. Come on Kate – I thought you were a safe pair of hands.

As with All Saints, this was only on the show just last week as well. Now, after double checking the chart stats in this one, I can confirm that despite all the success this single had globally, in the UK it actually went down the charts from No 12 to No 14 this week in 1998. Despite that fall, Chris Cowey had it back on the show and this extra exposure would catapult it into the Top 10 where it would spend the next two months, peaking at No 4. So, the question is, would the worldwide success the song received have been replicated in the UK without Cowey’s decision to ignore them descending the charts and have them on the show again for a second consecutive week? And what was the reasoning behind that decision? Here’s a third question though – am I overestimating the influence and pull that TOTP wielded at this point? I fear I may be. Back in the 80s, the show could make or break a hit but in 1998 was that still the case? I’m not sure. Probably the fact that the film it was taken from – Armageddon – had been released in UK cinemas by this point maybe had something to do with the song’s success. Still, it’s best to consider all angles with these things. I wouldn’t want you to miss a thing after all.

Returning to Fawlty Towers, a writer in The Guardian once described Jarvis Cocker as having “long Basil Fawlty legs” and you can see where they were coming from as the two do share a similar physicality. Said physicality is centre stage in this performance which would prove to be a valedictory one for Pulp for the 90s. Yes, “Party Hard” was their last hit of the decade and also the final single to be released from their “This Is Hardcore” album. Following “Different Class” was always going to be a big ask but I’m not sure anybody would have predicted the disparity in sales that would unfold. “Different Class” went four times platinum selling over a million copies whilst “This Is Hardcore” would sell a tenth of that. This was reflected in the chart positions of the latter’s four singles which achieve the following peak positions:

8 – 12 – 22 – 29

In the case of “Party Hard”, its chances were hamstrung by the second CD single including remixes of the track that were too long to count as sales according to recently introduced chart eligibility regulations. Talk about an own goal. Written about clubbers having to come to terms with ageing out of the nightlife scene, it’s a decent song but hardly one of their most memorable. All the reviews I’ve read about it point to Jarvis’s vocal sounded (deliberately?) like David Bowie but if I hadn’t read that beforehand, I’m not sure I would have picked up on it. Maybe I’m just not a big enough Bowie aficionado. I did pick up on the strange look this performance has with the cheerleading-type dancers and the studio audience holding helium filled balloons behind the band which lends the balloons an unnatural look as if they were lollipops or something. I’m not completely convinced that it all hangs together cohesively to be honest. And talking of honesty, when was the last time I was in a nightclub? I think it was in Manchester in 1999 when I would have been 31 which does seem to be too old for that type of thing on reflection.

There are plenty of examples of music stars whose offspring have followed their parents into the charts. Off the top of my head there’s Billy Ray Cyrus/Miles Cyrus, Bob Marley/Ziggy Marley, Frank Sinatra/Nancy Sinatra and John Lennon/Julian Lennon. There’s a sub genre though that isn’t so easy to name examples from. Parents who were in a pop group whose children also went on to be in bands with their own siblings. How many are there out there? There’s Wilson Phillips, 3T and…erm…The Osmond Boys? Well, add to that list Alisha’s Attic who were sisters Shelley and Karen Poole, the daughters of Brian Poole of Brian Poole and The Tremeloes fame. Having established themselves as a bona fide chart artist in 1996/97 with four hit singles and a Top 20 album, the time had come to progress that success with a second album and they had a very consistent yardstick to live up to. Look at these chart peaks for those first four singles:

14 – 12 – 12 – 12

As it turned out, the lead single from that sophomore album would continue the streak admirably by going to No 13. “The Incidentals” was its title and it was more, thoughtful, tuneful, well constructed pop on which they had made their name. However, it didn’t really push any musical boundaries and was reliant on their fanbase wanting more of the same. Initially they did with parent album “Ilumnia” also going Top 20 but by the time of third album “The House We Built” in 2001, times and tastes had changed and it disappointed commercially with the duo splitting soon after.

Both sisters went on to be very successful songwriters for other artists including Kylie Minogue, Lily Allen, Rita Ora, Sugababes, Boyzone and Westlife. Shelley is also a member of alt-country band Red Sky July with her husband Ally McErlaine (ex of Texas) who my wife caught recently as support for Eddie Reader at the Cottingham Folk Festival. Very good they were too apparently.

Whilst looking into the career history of the Honeyz, I discovered that they had appeared on ITV’s The Big Reunion show in 2013. The premise of the show was to get seven acts who were big in the 90s to reform and rehearse for a comeback show at the Hammersmith Apollo. Basically, it was a steal of MTV’s Bands Reunited from a decade earlier. Anyway, some of The Big Reunion episodes are on YouTube so I checked the Honeyz one out and one of the revelations that came out was that one of the members of the band couldn’t really sing, used to have her microphone turned off when performing and was only recruited for her looks! I’ll leave you to guess who that was but it got me thinking about members of bands throughout musical history who didn’t really do anything. Now, I’m not saying I agree that the people on the list below contributed nothing at all but that in some people’s/the media’s perception, they didn’t:

Sid Vicious (Sex Pistols)
Andrew Ridgeley (Wham!)
Bez (Happy Mondays)
Paul Rutherford (Frankie Goes To Hollywood)
Craig ‘Ken’ Logan (Bros)
Anyone in Boyzone who wasn’t Ronan Keating or Stephen Gately

OK, the last one is a bit facetious but you get my point. As for the Honeyz, OK it was Naima Belkhiati who had her microphone turned off (allegedly), the one on the left in this performance. There, she’s been “Finally Found” out.

No! Surely not?! It can’t be?! The aforementioned Boyzone are on the show AGAIN?! WHY?! That’s five out of the last six weeks they’ve featured. Yes, OK “No Matter What” was No 1 for three of those appearances and it stayed at No 3 for three consecutive weeks after that but even so!

Look, I’ve nothing else to say about this one. Instead, here’s Basil Fawlty to describe my frustration at its reappearance with actions saying much more than my words ever could.

Right, this is the point where this episode gets a bit complicated as previously mentioned. The version of the show that I watched and that exists currently on iPlayer featured T–Spoon and a track called “Sex On The Beach” which was at No 2 in the charts. However, back in 1998, the version that aired in the show’s usual early evening slot had Steps “One For Sorrow” on in place of T-Spoon. When the late night repeat aired in the early hours of Sunday morning, it was T-Spoon and not Steps who featured. So what gives? Well, apparently the BBC had received complaints from listeners to the Radio 1 Chart Show the previous Sunday when “Sex On The Beach” was played having debuted at No 2. Apparently, the lyrics “I wanna have sex on the beach, come on move your body” which are repeated throughout were the cause of the offence and so the BBC took the decision to not show it in the pre-watershed show at 7.30 as originally intended. However, presumably to pacify all those involved in the T-Spoon hit, a performance was recorded and it was shown (instead of Steps) in the late night rerun. Was the BBC right to take such action? On reflection, it seems a peculiar hill to die on. There have been far more controversial records to have charted and appear on the show than this one surely?! Just recently, a 1998 TOTP repeat included “Horny” by Mousse T – was that not cut from a similar cloth? Or was it the use of the word ‘sex’ that rattled the BBC powers that be? If so, how come “Generation Sex” by The Divine Comedy was on the very next week? I’ve checked out the rest of the lyrics and I’m not convinced they were a danger to the moral well being of the nation’s youth to be honest. Most of it I can’t understand anyway but there’s a reference to ‘ding-a-ling’, a term which didn’t stop Chuck Berry having a No 1 hit in 1972 based on the double entendre. Anyway, what’s surely more offensive is the way the thing sounded which was atrocious. I think I spotted the following influences in its composition:

The naffness of Peter Andre
The ‘toasting’ style of Chaka Demus and Pliers
The hollow production of Ace Of Base
The inane sing-along chanting of Inner Circle’s “Sweat (A La La La La Long)”

It’s hardly a ringing endorsement. As for T-Spoon, they defended themselves by stating that “Sex On The Beach” referred to the name of the infamous cocktail but nobody was really buying that. The whole thing was a sorry episode from start to finish.

Robbie Williams has bagged his first No 1 single with ”Millennium” and to celebrate that he’s performing the song in a dress and not just any dress but a sheer, floor length gown through which you could see his undergarments. I guess the obvious question is ‘why?’. So I asked AI. It had an answer for me which I could have guessed if I’d thought about it a bit more. According to AI it was a “provocative and attention-grabbing choice…designed to be memorable and push boundaries”. Yes, probably. Or was he just copying David Beckham wearing a sarong skirt just a few months earlier which caused a tabloid frenzy? In any case, he wasn’t the first nor the last music star to don a dress. David Bowie was famously photographed in a cream and blue satin dress whilst reclining on a chaise lounge for the cover of the UK release of his “The Man Who Sold The World” album. In 2020, Harry Styles was the first male to feature on the cover of Vogue magazine and he did so wearing a Gucci dress and just to come full circle on this post, although I don’t think Basil Fawlty ever wore a dress, I’m pretty sure John Cleese has at some point in his career.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	All Saints	Booty Call	It’s a no from me
2	Aerosmith	I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing	Negative
3	Pulp	Party Hard	I did not
4	Alisha’s Attic	The Incidentals	Nope
5	Honeyz	Finally Found	Nah
6	Boyzone	No Matter What	Big NO
7	T-Spoon	Sex On The Beach	As if
8	Robbie Williams	Millennium	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/m002lvjr/top-of-the-pops-18091998

TOTP 04 SEP 1998

Posted on November 10 by 80stastic

With Jo Whiley having vacated her seat in the TOTP presenter merry-go-round recently, it’s time for Kate Thornton to take centre stage. Having already passed the audition with her guest stint back in July (when Jayne Middlemiss was ill supposedly), here she was as a fully fledged member of the team. I quite liked her – she seemed like a safe pair of hands and, crucially, didn’t do that knowing head tilt/smirk thing that Middlemiss did ALL THE TIME!

Speaking of things that happened on the show all the time, here are Boyzone singing “No Matter What” for the fourth week in a row. Yes, I know they were also the last artist we saw on the previous show thereby making a curious set of bookend appearances but that was no unusual occurrence in the Chris Cowey era. And yes, I know they had slipped from No 1 to No 3 but again, that was no obstacle to consecutive appearances under Cowey. However, he was really taking the piss this time though as this was literally just a reshowing of the same performance that ended last week’s show! Unlike their previous appearances, the lads weren’t all in matching outfits this time – it was hardly dress down Friday stuff but it was a more casual approach all the same. According to Kate Thornton, the reason for them being on the show again was to acknowledge that that their latest album “Where We Belong” had gone back to No 1 in the album charts off the back of “No Matter What”. Having checked, this is true – it had debuted at No 1 back in June and then spent three months kicking around the upper end of the charts before jumping from No 21 to the top again this week. OK, so you could argue that was, indeed, reason enough to grant them another slot in the running order (I don’t agree as it goes).

What doesn’t make sense here though is that “Where We Belong” originally didn’t include “No Matter What”, the song that was sparking all this interest in the album and generating all those sales. A special edition came out in the November that included it plus “I Love The Way You Love Me” which was subsequently released as a single but back in September, the original UK version of the album didn’t feature “No Matter What”. This clearly didn’t matter to the record buying public as they helped create a Joe Cocker / Jennifer Warnes* moment for the lads pushing “Where We Belong” up to the top spot.

*”Up Where We Belong”? No? Please yourselves.

Steps weren’t helping themselves when it came to dispelling those ‘ABBA on speed’ accusations were they? Third single “One For Sorrow” actively encouraged those comparisons with its pure pop confection ways. I know I’ve previously dismissed them as bubblegum/ candy floss but time retrospectively seems to have been kind to this particular track with the Official UK Chart inducting it into their ‘Pop Gem Hall of Fame’. Clearly taking inspiration from the traditional children’s nursery rhyme about counting magpies, it would peak at No 2 becoming their then biggest hit. For any one of my age though, the phrase ‘one for sorrow’ will always be associated with the legendary kids TV programme Magpie…

For those who don’t know it, Magpie was the delinquent cousin to BBC’s Blue Peter. Way cooler and with much hipper (and attractive) presenters, it was to Blue Peter what Tiswas was to Multi Coloured Swap Shop. So would Steps have been Magpie or Blue Peter viewers?

Next up is one of the shortest chart hits of the year. Clocking in at just two minutes long (though Kate Thornton gets her maths wrong by calling it “178 seconds of pure Mansun action” which by my reckoning is nearly three minutes – maybe she wasn’t such a safe pair of hands after all?) “Being A Girl (Part 1)” was Mansun’s ninth consecutive Top 40 hit. Taken from their “Six” album, in its original format it was 7:53 long but it was chopped up and its opening two minutes were released as the lead track from their “Nine EP” (hence the “Part 1” suffix). Its frenetic, almost pop-punk pace was at odds with the band’s previous output. Apparently, “Part 2” is of a much more experimental rock nature though I can’t say I’ve ever listened to it. Now, when I said that “One For Sorrow” by Steps was inspired by the children’s nursery rhyme about counting magpies, I hadn’t bargained on it being completely trumped by the origin of one of Mansun’s lyrics. Check these out:

The lyric “A frog, it cannot comprehend the sea” is a riff on a fable by fourth century Chinese philosopher Zhuang Zhou, from the Zhuangzi, one of the foundational texts of Taoism. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) October 31, 2025

Blimey! I reckon Zhou would have been a Blue Peter fan rather than a Magpie viewer then.

Before the revolving door of members that was/is (?) the Sugababes, there was the Honeyz. Yes, perhaps the most notable thing about this lot was the times that their line up changed with individuals leaving and returning multiple times. Here though, they were in their infancy with their original members and debut hit “Finally Found”. Its smooth production and sound with a trip-off-the-tongue chorus was always going to find a home in the upper echelons of the charts at this time when you couldn’t move for all girl groups peddling a pop infused R&B sound. However, I did find myself asking whether saturation point was being reached? I mean, they weren’t really offering anything new were they? It could have been Eternal up there on stage singing that song couldn’t it?

Just like Eternal, the Honeyz had a member leave the group just as their success began but for Louise Nurding read Heavenli Roberts (formerly Abdi) who dropped out after just two singles. Unlike Louise though, she would rejoin the group, leave again, rejoin again, leave again, rejoin, leave one more time before finally rejoining with her current status being a fully paid up member of Honeyz. Confused? You will be. Her replacement the first time she left was Mariama Goodman who we saw on TOTP just the other week as part of Solid HarmoniE. Her time with her new group was short lived (about 14 months) before she left and was replaced by the retuning Heavenli Abdi. She would remain with the group until 2003 when they spilt following diminishing commercial returns and being dropped by their label. However, following an appearance by the original line up on ITV’s Hit Me, Baby, One More Time show in 2005, the group was reactivated and went back out on tour. However, Naima Belkhiati wanted to pursue an acting career and so was replaced for said tour by Candace Cherry, sister of lead vocalist Célena. By August of 2006, it was all change again as Heavenli Abdi departed for the second time and was replaced by Mariam Goodman (again). They continued with this line up until 2010 when the group went into hibernation. Two years on and Honeyz were back once more, lured together by another ITV show The Big Reunion and for this convening, the trio was Cherry, Abdi and Goodman, the first time that the latter two had been in the same line up together. The trio toured throughout 2013 before Abdi left for a third time in 2014. The duo of Cherry and Goodman released the first Honeyz single for 14 years in 2015 but it failed to chart. Over the next few years the duo would appear in reality TV shows such as Celebrity Coach Trip and Pointless Celebrities before, in 2023, Abdi announced she had rejoined the group. Within a year Goodman left again was replaced by Candace Cherry which is the current state of the line up. Phew! I’ve finally found the end of the story of the Honeyz group changes. Got all that? Good.

“Now watch out Songs Of Praise. The big fella’s got a new job. Haven’t you heard? God’s a DJ”. So says Kate Thornton in her intro to the next hit which can only be “God Is A DJ” by Faithless. I can’t recall such casual blasphemy since football commentator Alan Parry called Liverpool legend “the creator supreme” back in the early 80s. As Danny Baker said in his Match Of The 80s series, “The creator supreme? One in the eye for Christians everywhere there”.

Apparently, the inspiration for the track’s title came from a slogan on a T-shirt that the band’s guitarist Dave Randall used to wear to rehearsal if you were wondering. This was the lead single from the band’s second album “Sunday 8PM” and whilst there appears to be a lot going on sonically, my main take away from re-listening to it was that it seemed like there was a void where maybe some lyrics could/should have been. I get that it’s a dance track and so maybe words aren’t the thing but if you call said track a provocative title like “God Is A DJ”, I was hoping for a bit more than the late Maxi Jazz repeatedly telling us “This is my church, this is where I heal my hurts”. I know he says (and literally says, not sings nor raps) more than that and that there are fuller lyrics to be found on the internet that maybe exist in different remixes to the edit we get here but still. Is the message as simple as ‘music is my religion’? Conversely you could say it’s full of words and meaning if, as I suspect, Maxi was doing some sign language of what he was saying in this performance. Was that what he was doing? I think I’m just confused by the whole thing and better move on to…

…The Corrs…for the second time in consecutive weeks with “What Can I Do” despite dropping from No 3 to No 7. The technique of superimposing the presenter over the artist in the intro is already starting to look really tired and jaded, probably even back in 1998. When Kate Thornton moves towards the camera at one point, it really emphasises the clunky nature of the technology and looks like a special effect from a 70s episode of Dr. Who or something. Compare Kate with the guy hovering in this clip…

As for The Corrs, they were on the verge of their imperial phase with their next two singles going to No 6 and No 2 before they scored their first and only No 1 in the summer of 2000.

Back when Madonna was still relevant and hadn’t been totally eclipsed as the most famous woman on the planet by Taylor Swift, her releasing a new single was still a major deal. Faced with such an event, Chris Cowey’s ridiculous no video policy wilted before the power of her Madgesty. However, Cowey would still get his bit in by allowing just 1:45 worth of screen time to be shown of the promo for “Drowned World (Substitute For Love)”. There may have been good reason for Cowey to cut short the video for the third single from and opening track of Madge’s “Ray Of Light” album but he didn’t exercise that here. There was some controversy surrounding the scenes where Madonna is chased in her car by paparazzi on motorbikes which critics likened to the events that led to the death of Princess Diana the year before amid accusations of insensitivity and crassness. However, we get to see those scenes in this short clip so it’s shortened length clearly wasn’t due to the editing out of the offending images. In Madonna’s defence, her publicist Liz Rosenberg said that they were nothing to do with Princess Diana and were a reflection of Madge’s own personal experiences with the paparazzi. As for the song itself, it’s a bit of a lost classic that deserved a higher chart placing than its No 10 peak. That William Orbit production that permeates the whole album is very much in evidence with Madonna, whose voice I’ve never really considered as her biggest asset, giving a great vocal performance. Is it fair to say that “Ray Of Light” is Madonna’s best ever album? Quite possibly.

As we saw earlier, Boyzone no longer had the No 1 single but who had knocked them off? I can’t decide if the next occupants of the top spot were a surprise or not? What do we think about “If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next” by Manic Street Preachers being No 1? I don’t mean the quality of the song but that they could sell enough copies to outstrip everyone else. On the one hand, they’d nearly achieved that chart feat two years earlier when perhaps their best known song “A Design For Life” made No 2. This was backed up by a three times platinum selling album and the fact that all four singles released from it went Top 10. That album – “Everything Must Go” – had seen the band breakthrough into the mainstream so it shouldn’t have been a surprise that anticipation for new material would have increased off the back of it, thus contributing to the sales of “If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next” when it was finally released. Maybe I’ve already answered my question with an earlier comment though when referring to “A Design For Life” as ‘perhaps their best known song’. Is that why, in retrospect, I’m surprised? The fact that ‘their best known song’ wasn’t their first chart topper? Or is it even that the song that did do it for the band has such an unwieldy* title? Is it a purely a case of me being offended by the linguistic aesthetics?

*Apparently, it’s in the Guinness World Records as the No 1 single with the longest title without brackets

So what about the song itself? Inspired by a Spanish Republican propaganda poster warning of the horrors of not resisting Franco’s nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War, it’s suitably epic sounding with those trademark broad sonic brush strokes whilst James Dean Bradfield manages to make that elongated title fit into a chorus somehow. It’s a good song but not a great one in my opinion and certainly not my favourite Manics tune. In the end though, it was their first No 1 single and so has its own individual elevated place in the band’s history but somehow I can’t help thinking whether it would have topped the charts without that other factor which I haven’t considered before – the dastardly record company tactic of first week discounting.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Boyzone	No Matter What	Never
2	Steps	One For Sorrow	I’d rather listen to the Magpie theme tune
3	Mansun	Being A Girl (Part 1)	Negative
4	Honeyz	Finally Found	Nope
5	Faithless	God Is A DJ	No
6	The Corrs	What Can I Do	Nah
7	Madonna	Drowned World (Substitute For Love)	No but my wife had the album
8	Manic Street Preachers	If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next	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/m002lj3p/top-of-the-pops-04091998

TOTP 28 AUG 1998

Posted on November 5 by 80stastic

We’re at the fag end of Summer 1998 and with Autumn bringing with it new TV schedules, there’s a shake up happening in pop music programming. No, TOTP isn’t being axed (that doesn’t happen until 2006) but over on ITV, a new challenger to the grand old show is emerging. The day after this TOTP aired, cd:uk made its debut. Replacing The Chart Show which had run for nine years on ITV (it was on Channel 4 for three years prior to its move), it was the companion programme to SM:tv LIVE, the new Saturday morning kids show commissioned to rival BBC’s Live & Kicking and was presented by Ant & Dec with Cat Deeley. SM:tv LIVE proved to be a huge success and was the show that cemented Ant & Dec in the nation’s affections and also saw them successfully transform from pop stars to entertainment presenters. The branding of both shows was strong with their distinctively formatted titles (I always thought the ‘cd’ part of cd:uk stood for compact disc but it was actually count down – in my defence, I was working in a record shop at the time!), and the continuity of the presenters with all three just carrying on from one show to the other.

The BBC must have been concerned especially as cd:uk, rather controversially, introduced a ‘Saturday Chart’ which, although unofficial, gave a pretty fair assessment of the Millward Brown compiled chart that would be announced on Radio 1 the following day. The main consequence of this was that it made the chart countdown shown on TOTP on the Friday look out of date as it was, of course, last week’s chart in effect. Again, I wonder what the Beeb made of that? In fact at, lets take a closer look at the two charts for this week:

Chart Position	TOTP	cd:uk
1	Boyzone	Manic Street Preachers
2	Stardust	Steps
3	The Corrs	Boyzone
4	Savage Garden	Stardust
5	Sweetbox	Honeyz
6	Sash!	Faithless
7	Alda	Madonna
8	Spice Girls	The Corrs
9	Embrace	Savage Garden
10	Pras Michel	Sweetbox
11	Cleopatra	Sash!
12	Simply Red	Mansun
13	Kavana	Alda
14	Puff Daddy / Jimmy Page	Spice Girls
15	Brandy + Monica	Pras Michel
16	Apollo Four Forty	Truce
17	Another Level	Cleopatra
18	Eagle-Eye Cherry	Electrasy
19	Ace Of Base	Brandy + Monica
20	Foo Fighters	Another Level

Wow! That’s quite the difference! Five new entries in the cd:uk Top 10 and eight overall. I think the Beeb might well have taken note!

OK, so with that all said and done, let’s get to the music. Our host is Jamie Theakston for the second week running and we start with an act that was only just on last week – Sweetbox with “Everything’s Gonna Be Alright”. This is just a reshowing of that performance but when I commented on it in the last post, I don’t think I mentioned the four backing violinists who have been dressed up in 18th century period costumes and wigs that look like they came from the wardrobe department of the film Dangerous Liaisons. I get that the idea behind it was to emphasise that the track was based around Johann Sebastian Bach’s Air on a G String but it looks so clunky, cack-handed and rather ridiculous, especially when positioned next to a DJ spinning turntables. And is it my imagination or have they made them up with white face powder to create that look that the French aristocracy favoured using, what AI tells me, was called ‘ceruse’? I would like to say that I blanche at the very idea for a nice quip but, in my early teens age years, I used to put talcum powder on my face and pat it off with a towel if my complexion was suffering from a spot outbreak. What was I thinking?!

Someone who definitely knew what he was thinking back in 1998 was Kavana and what was on his mind was his desire to transition from a pop pin-up to a mature, respected artist. Could he do it? Well, he gave it a try with the track “Special Kind Of Something”, the lead single from his second album “Instinct”. Having broken through in 1997 with two Top 10 singles and a Smash Hits Award for Best Solo Male Artist no less, Kavana succumbed to the notion that so many pop idols have considered, that of wanting to be taken seriously and not seen as just a pop puppet peddling catchy tunes and cover versions. Sadly for Kavana, as is so often the case, the record buying public weren’t overly keen on the pop star becoming an artist and “Instinct” bombed leading to the end of his pop music career.

Relocating to America, he had a brief acting career before resorting to the ultimate path of all ex-stars who can’t quite give up on fame, the world of reality TV. Stints in Grease Is The Word, The Voice UK, The Big Reunion and, of course, Celebrity Big Brother followed. After spending time in rehab for his alcoholism, Kavana has been sober for three years and has written a well received memoir called Pop Scars.

I know I say this a lot but how is it possible that at the time of these songs being in the charts when I was working in a mainstream record shop (presumably selling copies of them to customers) that there are some that I have zero recall of. Like nothing. At all. “Real Good Time” by Alda is yet another example. So who was/is Alda? Well, she was born in Iceland but was based in Sweden at the time of her pop career so she was kind of like a cross between Björk and Robyn and get this – her middle is, indeed, Björk!

Geography and nomenclatures she may have had in common with Björk but sonically they were continents apart. Her song was very chorus heavy, catchy yet ultimately insubstantial and say what you like about Björk (and I have in this blog many times) but insubstantial she is not. The other thing that they singularly did not share was hairstyles. Jamie Theakston can’t stop going on about Alda’s towering hair but I think I’ll leave the last word on that subject to @TOTPFacts and one Anna Cale:

I give up! Despite being on the show three times already (twice as the No 1 record and once as an exclusive performance before it was even released) and despite being at No 8 in the charts this week, here, for a fourth time, are the Spice Girls with “Viva Forever”. Why?! Why Chris Cowey?! Why?! And if you insist on including it in the running order unnecessarily, at least show the animated video that took months to create and not this exclusive performance yet again which wasn’t really ‘exclusive’ any more. Cowey could have given one of my faves Embrace a slot who had entered the charts one place lower than the Spice Girls with their single “My Weakness Is None Of Your Business” but, just as with their last hit “Come Back To What You Know”, it was cruelly ignored. Bah!

P.S. I’m assuming that Theakston’s lame intro about the band being all about Baby these days was a reference to the announcement that Victoria Beckham was pregnant with her and David’s first child Brooklyn.

From a song the chart position of which didn’t really justify an appearance on the show (in my humble opinion) to one which wasn’t even in the charts due to the fact that that it hadn’t yet been released. ‘New!’ said the caption for “My Favourite Mistake” by Sheryl Crow where its chart position should have been. When at last released, it would debut and peak at No 9 thus becoming Crow’s last ever UK Top 10 hit. The lead single from her third studio album “The Globe Sessions”, it ostensibly was more of the sound we’d become used to over the previous four years but was it? Apparently, Sheryl had agonised over the writing of the album to such an extent she thought about cancelling the release of it but in the end its release was deferred instead by six weeks. A change of narrative voice in her lyrics had been the issue with Crow struggling to come to terms to writing in the first person. “My Favourite Mistake” was a point in case with it being about an unfaithful ex-boyfriend (rumoured to be Eric Clapton) which created a whole “You’re So Vain” vibe to it. Crow dismissed the speculation saying she was very private about her relationships though, in 2003, she began dating cycling superstar Lance Armstrong in a very high profile and public romance.

As for “My Favourite Mistake”, it’s not my favourite single of Sheryl’s though it has an understated intensity to it but it is, apparently, Crow’s pick as her favourite song of hers and in 2023, The Guardian voted it their favourite Sheryl Crow track out of a list of 20 so maybe I should reconsider my opinion.

Next we find the Foo Fighters in a reflective mood with their hit “Walking After You”. Very much a melancholy tune, it was originally a track on the band’s “The Colour And The Shape” album but was subsequently re-recorded for inclusion on the soundtrack to the first X–Files film. I can’t say it does much for me; it’s very one paced and dare I say it, a bit dull. Maybe in the right setting or environment it might make more sense but performed in the TOTP studio it failed to make much of an impact on me but then I was rather distracted by Dave Grohl’s eyes. They must be coloured contact lenses that he’s deliberately wearing presumably to tie in with the X–Files connection as they do rather make him look alien-like. The TOTP cameramen seem to be in on the ruse given how much they focus on Grohl’s eyes in the lingering end shots.

The discography of The Corrs is a complicated thing, full of rereleases, remixes and special editions. Take this hit “What Can I Do” for example. Originally released in the January it struggled to a peak of No 53. However, after the subsequent success of the Todd Terry remixed Fleetwood Mac cover “Dreams”, it was given a second chance though not before it too was remixed, this time by Tin Tin Out. Replacing its original doo wop sound with dance beats and a guitar riff that was very reminiscent of Eddie Brickell’s “What I Am”* and lyrics half inched from Elton John’s “Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word”, it debuted at No 3 on the charts.

*Tin Tin Out clearly had a thing for that song as they released their own version of it with Emma Bunton the following year.

As Jamie Theakston said in his intro, all of this success has helped propel the group’s album “Talk On Corners” to No 1, one of 10 weeks at the top of the charts. It would spend two whole years (!) inside the Top 40, its presence presumably helped by the release of a special edition of it in the November which included those remixed singles including subsequent ones by K-Klass (“So Young”) and another by Tim Tin Out (“Runaway”) both of which were big hits. We’ll be seeing a lot more of The Corrs in forthcoming TOTP repeats.

Right, what’s going on here? Why are Jamie Theakston and Robbie Williams (dressed like James Bond) having a stilted, on screen conversation whilst seemingly being unaware that the cameras are rolling? Well, presumably this was a pre-planned skit (something about who’s got the best girlfriend?) as a way of introducing another new single that wasn’t even out yet – “Millennium”. I’ve made cases before in this blog that pinpoint sliding door moments in the career of Mr. Williams. “Angels” obviously but also “South Of The Border” and “Let Me Entertain You” but this, I think, is another one – Robbie’s first solo No 1. Interpolating the Nancy Sinatra Bond song “You Only Live Twice”, it sounded impressive right from the very first listen and if there had been any doubt that we were all in it for the long haul with Williams, this was surely the clincher. Yes, it was a bit cynical by being released in between two Bond films (Tomorrow Never Dies in 1997 and The World Is Not Enough in 1999) and also by naming it “Millennium” with one eye on the rapidly approaching end of the century but it just worked. Even the potentially annoying ‘come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough’ yobbish football chant seemed to fit. At this point Robbie Williams could do no wrong. Even the video for “Millennium” won the BRIT Award for British Video Of The Year.

But wait…now what? He’s doing another song? Theakston plays along by protesting that he’s not allowed to despite the running order clearly having been pre-agreed. For the second song, Williams performs “Man Machine” which was never released as a single but was an album track off “I’ve Been Expecting You” which seems an odd choice in retrospect. Surely he would have been better off doing a long tail preview of a future single like “Strong”? Had they not already chosen which songs were earmarked for release as a single by this point? “Man Machine” is OK I guess but it’s not particularly memorable with some lyrics that don’t make much sense but which seem to be a list of rhyming non-sequiturs. Are they vaguely about how the press perceived Williams at the time based around a space theme (“I’ve heard they’re not very well in the sun”)? Robbie throws in a quick arms-behind-the-back Liam Gallagher stance at one point but it all seems a bit too cocky. Maybe he should have left it as just a one song-performance? After all who did he think he was? The Jam? Oasis? Well, there was that Liam Gallagher moment…

It’s a third and final week at the top for Boyzone and “No Matter What” and it’s a third separate studio performance. Unlike week one, Andrew Lloyd Webber hasn’t flown in to be on the piano – presumably he was too busy unlike in 2015 when he flew into the UK on a private plane to vote in the House of Lords in favour of Tory proposed tax credit cuts, the bellend. A lifelong Conservative, in 2021 he said he would never vote for that party again no matter what due to their handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and their treatment of the arts sector during that time.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Sweetbox	Everything’s Gonna Be Alright	Negative
2	Kavana	Special Kind Of Something	Nah
3	Alda	Real Good Time	Never happened
4	Spice Girls	Viva Forever	Not for me
5	Sheryl Crow	My Favourite Mistake	Nope
6	Foo Fighters	Walking After You	No thanks
7	The Corrs	What Can I Do	I did not
8	Robbie Williams	Millennium / Man Machine	No
9	Boyzone	No Matter What	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/m002l6rx/top-of-the-pops-28081998

TOTP 21 AUG 1998

Posted on November 3 by 80stastic

Right, a small explanation as to why I’m so behind with my posts on this blog which has seen me fall of the pace of the BBC4 TOTP repeats schedule. I was on holiday last week and out of the country for a few days during which time I only intermittently managed to write anything and as such I have ended up with four shows to review this week if I’m to catch up. I hate being behind but a family holiday is more important than banging on about the Top 40 from 28 years ago so it is what it is. Right, a bit of housekeeping before we get into it fully. Jamie Theakston is our host and his intro about it being 6.55 and TOTP being on BBC2 was due to BBC1’s coverage of the European Athletics Championships as opposed to some deliberate move to sideline the show. It had, of course, been channel moved before during Euro 96 for example but it wouldn’t take up permanent residence on BBC2 until 2005, a year or so before its ultimate axing.

So to the music and we start with a great song. I used my words carefully there – ‘song’, not ‘single’ and definitely not ‘artist’. “The Air That I Breathe” was one of the first songs I ever knew as a small child as my Dad bought the hit version by The Hollies that made No 2 in 1974 and what a song with which to begin my musical life! A huge, epic track with that massive, soaring guitar and strings in the middle eight – it made a huge impression on the young me and ignited in me a love of The Hollies. This, however, is not that version of the Albert Hammond and Mike Hazlewood penned song. No, this was the Simply Red version (gulp).

Here’s the kicker though, it’s not as bad as I remembered it. I mean, it’s nowhere near the quality of what is surely the definitive version by The Hollies but Hucknall doesn’t completely butcher it either to my ears. So what gives? Well, apparently there were two versions recorded by Simply Red which is the root of my confusion. There’s this one and another one with the suffix “Reprise” added to it which is a different take on it, sung to a different tune and which, very unwisely and completely inexplicably, incorporates the riff from “Jack And Diane” by John Cougar. That must have been the one I was thinking of.

Both versions were unusually included on parent album “Blue” with the ‘non-reprise’ take also being used in an advert for Sky TV at the time (not sure why Roy Hattersley and his dog were in it!).

They say the mark of a good song is how many times it has been covered and in how many different styles. If that is true, then “Air That I Breathe” is up there in the greatness stakes with it having been recorded by the likes of Olivia Newton John, Julio Iglesias, Semisonic, k.d. lang, Phil Everly and The Mavericks. And that’s not even counting “Creep” by Radiohead the chord sequence of which was so similar that Hammond and Hazlewood had to be given writers credits. Proving its longevity, there’s even a version from as recently as this year by Belinda Carlisle from her “Once Upon A Time In California” album. “The Air That I Breathe”, a song with huge lungs.

From one ‘air’ song to another, sort of. Pop hits based around classical pieces of music were nothing new. Way back in 1967, Procul Harem had a worldwide smash with “A Whiter Shade Of Pale” which used Johann Sebastian Bach’s Air On A G String movement from his Orchestral Suite No 3 In D Major as its basis. In 1985, Sting gave us “Russians” based on Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kijé and in 1990, The Farm’s “All Together Now” made unashamed use of Pachelbel’s Canon In D Major.

None of those though seemed quite as obvious as the Sweetbox hit “Everything’s Gonna Be Alright”. This German outfit who had plied their trade in the shallow waters of Eurodance previously, decided to switch to hitching their wagon to classical music with a topping of rap. It really was as simple a format as that. The aforementioned Air On A G String was the blueprint for the hit which the non classical music buffs among us would know from the long running series of Hamlet cigar adverts, my favourite of which would be this Columbus themed one featuring Blake 7 actor Paul Darrow…

According to their Wikipedia page, Sweetbox has burned through seven lead singers since forming which must be a record surely? The person on stage here is Tina Harris who was the third of the group’s vocalists (this is starting to get a bit Henry VIII!) and started her music career via her her cousin who is Snap!’s rapper Turbo B (there’s a stroke of luck). He chose Tina’s sister Jackie to mime on promotional activities for their hit “The Power” and that connection earned Tina a place as a dancer in Snap!’s tour and videos. After leaving the Snap! family and spending some time in a couple of Eurodance outfits, Harris was contacted by Sweetbox prime mover Roberto ‘Geo’ Rosan to become their singer and she lent her vocals to their debut eponymous album which became a huge success in Japan. However, in a contractual dispute that made George Michael v Sony look like a playground tiff, Tina tried to renegotiate her contract for the band’s second album with their record label. However, they decided to ditch Harris and replace her with another singer. Not only that but the contract she had signed prevented her from releasing music for eight years! In the end though, everything was alright as she did release her debut album “Sunshine” in 2007. As for Sweetbox, they are still an ongoing entity apparently though they haven’t released anything since 2020.

Two of the first three songs on this show are cover versions as we get Cleopatra comin’ at us with their take on “I Want You Back” by The Jackson 5. It turns out though that their take is almost identical to the original 1970 hit save for Cleo Higgins telling us that it’s 1998 just before the end. Like we didn’t know Cleo. This seemed like a pretty cynical choice of song to record to me and the fact that the girls hardly deviated from the original only convinces me more. Perhaps they were relying on an assumption that their fanbase (whom I’m guessing were very young) wouldn’t know the Jackson 5 original and believe it was the girls’ own work? Even allowing for the fact that it had also been a hit in 1988* as well as 1970, that was still 10 years before the Cleopatra version so maybe?

*A remix titled “I Want You Back ‘88” credited to Michael Jackson with The Jackson 5 peaked at No 8

If it was designed to keep the group’s success rolling, it worked with the single going to No 4. However, aside from their contribution to the ABBA tribute single “Thank ABBA For The Music” the following year, they would never return to the Top 10. Inevitably given the age of the group and their fanbase, the clock was ticking on Cleopatra’s salad days…

P.S. I’ve never seen moves like that on a Twister mat before

Next up are Savage Garden with a textbook display of an established music industry practice. No, not doing a cover version (we’ve had enough of those in this show already) but that of the rerelease. It’s a familiar tale – artist’s early single doesn’t chart but subsequent releases do so said early single is revisited, remixed (sometimes), repackaged and rereleased and becomes much bigger hit second time around. “To The Moon And Back” was originally released in 1997 but stalled at No 55 in the UK. Following the global success of “Truly Madly Deeply” though, it was ripe for another go and debuted at No 3 to become the band’s highest charting single in this country.

Still mining that 80s retro synth pop sound, it didn’t quite have the smooth flow of its predecessor and sounded a bit more laboured to my ears. No, not laboured but like it had spent too long fermenting in the pop song laboratory if that makes sense. Slightly overcooked. What I did like in this performance of the song though was the guy who played electric and Spanish guitar. I’ve seen double fretted guitars before but can’t recall someone playing one guitar whilst having a second one draped around his neck. It’s quite the look.

Now here’s a classic case of an artist being so known for just one hit that it overshadows everything else they ever did, regardless of the quality of those releases. “We’re a band not a song” said 4 Non Blondes singer Linda Perry when it happened to her band but you wouldn’t have blamed Stephen Jones for saying the same thing about Babybird. Back in 1996, “You’re Gorgeous” was everywhere, riding high in the charts and at saturation point on daytime radio. Two years on and despite three follow up, Top 40 charting singles, it felt like it was still the primary association with the band. Those other hits had only achieved relatively minor chart positions which was a shame as they deserved better. It was a similar story with “If You’ll Be Mine”. Spending just two weeks inside the Top 40 and peaking at No 28, no wonder it was quickly forgotten. This acoustic performance displaying its spare and brittle nature should have propelled it up the charts, but no, the record buying public were more interested in homogeneous dance music and so it promptly disappeared. Talking of this performance, I’m not sure why there needed to be the four of them up there on stage. Apart from Stephen Jones on vocals and the guy finger picking on the guitar (who some viewers remarked online that he looked like Eric Bristow) what are the other two blokes doing? The second guitarist hardly seems to play anything whilst the maracas man is surely surplus to requirements?

Sash! didn’t half like what the youth would now call a ‘collab’* didn’t they? Just about everything listed in their singles discography featured another artist ranging from Dr. Alban to Boy George to Boney M and even Sarah Brightman. This hit though – “Mysterious Times” – featured Tina Cousins whom the German DJ/production team would work with again in 2000 on Top 10 hit “Just Around The Hill”.

*Apparently collab is now listed in the Oxford English Dictionary. Is nothing sacred anymore?!

Like Cleopatra earlier, Cousins would feature on that ABBA tribute single and would also have a few hits of her own including “Pray” (No 20) and “Killin’ Time” (No 15). One that didn’t make the Top 40 was “Forever” which peaked at No 46 but, according to Wikipedia, in a chart recount it was shown that it should have been No 38. What?! Back in the day that could have been the difference between a successful career or not. A Top 40 position may have meant a TOTP appearance and in any case would certainly have raised the artist’s profile. Scandalous stuff!

Now when I referred to homogeneous dance music before, I surely wasn’t meaning this next track which would become one of the biggest hits of the year. Stardust was nothing to do with one of my favourite ever films starring David Essex but would turn out to be a one off project involving a member of Daft Punk, a directionless DJ and his mate from boarding school. Having dropped out of university and completed a year of military conscription, Alan Braxe decided to pursue a career in music and a chance meeting with Thomas Bangalter of Daft Punk in a nightclub led to Braxe giving his new acquaintance a demo of a track he had been working on called “Vertigo” which Bangalter released on his own record label. Whilst rehearsing for a performance in a Paris club with a line up completed by Braxe’s friend Benjamin Diamond on vocals, the trio worked up another track called “Music Sounds Better With You” using a looped sample of an old Chaka Khan track called “Fate”. Having recorded the track in Bangalter’s home studio in just six days, it was released (again on his own record label) with demand for it on the continent and especially Ibiza crossing over to the UK resulting in enough sales of the import to qualify for a chart placing of No 55. When eventually licensed to Virgin for an official release, it spent two weeks at No 2 and nearly four months inside the Top 40. After the single’s success, Virgin offered the trio $3 million to record an album but after producing some demos, they gave up on the idea and the Stardust project was at an end leaving a legacy of one track that has consistently polled as one of the greatest dance tunes of all time.

Well, that’s the history of the song but was it really that great? I thought so at the time but listening to it 27 years later, it does seem very repetitive. Very repetitive. Maybe that didn’t matter on the dance floor though. Indeed, was it those recurrent beats that made it such a club classic? The ‘performance’ here is very unusual. Theakston informs us that there was no artist nor video to show so they dressed somebody up in 70s disco garb and superimposed her over the top of what looks like some old footage of TOTP studio audiences from that decade. It’s an odd concoction but at least it was better than ignoring a huge hit. Subsequently, a video was produced by Michel Gondry who would go on to direct the rather excellent if confusing film Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind.

Boyzone remain at No 1 with “No Matter What” despite stiff competition from Stardust who had led the boyband in the midweeks. Significantly, this was the first of their chart toppers to spend more than one week at the pinnacle which many took as a sign of the quality of the song and that it was appealing to more than just their usual fanbase. Crossing over in other words. Yeah, you could perceive it like that or you could, like me, hold firm with the opinion that it was schmaltzy shite. I stand by that, no matter what.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Simply Red	The Air That I Breathe	It’s a no
2	Sweetbox	Everything’s Gonna Be Alright”	No thanks
3	Cleopatra	I Want You Back	Didn’t happen
4	Savage Garden	To The Moon And Back	Negative
5	Babybird	If You’ll Be Mine	No
6	Sash! featuring Tina Cousins	Mysterious Times	Nah
7	Stardust	Music Sounds Better With You	Nope
8	Boyzone	No Matter What	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/m002l6rv/top-of-the-pops-21081998

TOTP 14 AUG 1998

Posted on October 31 by 80stastic

There’s a whole swathe of hits in this TOTP show that we hadn’t seen before back in 1998…and I don’t think I could have told you how any of them went without watching this BBC4 repeat back. Let’s see if that is actually the case. Our host is Jayne Middlemiss but we actually start with a song that bar the No 1 record was the last hit we saw in the previous show – “Lost In Space” by Apollo Four Forty. Yes, despite having dropped two places from its debut position of No 4, it was still considered a big enough seller by executive producer Chris Cowey to be featured again just seven days later. In fairness to Cowey, all but one of the other hits (including the No 1 record) on this show are new entries so maybe I’ll let him have this one. This is just a repeat of that initial performance so clock up another one for Cowey’s recycling policy. So successful was this venture into contributing songs for film soundtracks (“Lost In Space” was their biggest ever hit) that Apollo Four Forty would go there again two years later when they reworked the Charlie’s Angels theme for the 2000 reboot starring Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu which also featured Matt Le Blanc in a smaller role than he commanded in Lost In Space. How you doin’ Matt the film star? Not so good apparently.

Just like Karen Ramirez from a few shows ago, we are faced with a solo female artist who prompts the question “whatever happened to…?”. In this case it’s Hinda Hicks who was briefly talked about as the next big name in UK R&B but who would ultimately drift away to the ultimate status of ‘current whereabouts unknown’. After her debut album “Hinda” went Top 20, she received three MOBO and two BRIT award nominations (the later of which The Guardian unkindly dismissed as just ‘making up the numbers’). This single – “I Wanna Be Your Lady” – was actually a rerelease of her debut single that initially peaked at No 89 but made No 14 second time around to become Hinda’s highest charting hit possibly helped by her support slots on tours with Boyzone and 911. However, that old chestnut of record label mergers meant that promotion of her new material for the second album was undercooked and she would not return to the Top 40 again with that sophomore album never receiving a full commercial release. She would make a third album available via R&B label Shout Our Records in 2004 but it failed to chart and a fourth album announced in 2007 remains unreleased. As of 2015, Hinda has been missing in action from her social media channels and the story of Hinda Hicks has gone cold with the only notable mention of her coming from Lilly Allen tweeting that she was experiencing ‘Toni Braxton Hinda Hicks’ about the pregnancy of her daughter in 2011 referring to the condition of ‘Braxton Hicks’ or practice contractions. As of 2025, we are still awaiting the rebirth of the career of Hinda Hicks.

As Jayne Middlemiss says in her intro, this next bloke seems to have a “different lass” with him every time he appears on the show. Sash! though, was actually three blokes, what with them being a German DJ/production team who racked up a string of massive hits in the late 90s/early 00s. Famously, they achieved the most No 2 hits without ever getting to the top of the charts.

“Mysterious Times” was their fourth hit of five to miss being No 1 by one place (the other made No 3) and no, I don’t remember it on the account of it being totally forgettable. This is despite it featuring another new vocalist, this time the UK’s Tina Cousins who would go on to carve out a small solo career of her own but it didn’t last too long with her biggest hit actually being part of the conglomerate that included Steps, Cleopatra, B*Witched and Billie Piper who recorded the medley “Thank ABBA For The Music”. Rather inevitably, she ended up on the ‘Identity Parade’ section of Never Mind The Buzzcocks though I did enjoy her giving host Simon Amstell the finger…

By this point in the 90s, had the whole concept of girl groups not been done to death in the same way that boy bands had in the earlier part of the decade? I know subsequently the format would spawn super successful names like Girls Aloud and The Saturdays but at this particular time of the summer of 1998, hadn’t we had our fill of them? The Spice Girls, All Saints, Eternal, B*Witched, Cleopatra, N-Tyce had all had success ranging from global domination to a few medium sized chart hits with styles of music encompassing either all out pop or an R&B/pop hybrid. Did we need anymore? Well, apparently we did. The very end of the 90s saw no let up in the girl group phenomenon with the likes of Honeyz, Hepburn and Precious all chart regulars. In between came Solid HarmoniE (no capital ‘E’, no points). Conceived as the male counterpart to the Backstreet Boys and NSYNC by Lou Pearlman, the man behind those two boy bands and a very shady character indeed*, they would have three Top 20 hits that all started with the word ‘I’. This one – “I Wanna Love You” – was the last of those three and it’s a nice enough pop song but it was never going to set the world alight or ignite a global sensation like “Wannabe” did for example.

*I’d never heard of him before now but reading up on him, he had his fingers in all sorts of business pies and would end up being sentenced to 25 years in prison for conspiracy and money laundering. He died incarcerated after serving just two. There’s probably a film to be made about him though

One of their number – Mariama Goodman – would leave the band, rejoin, leave again and throw her hat in with the aforementioned Honeyz before giving it all up and retraining as a midwife…and then joining up with her ex-band mates for the ITV2 series The Big Reunion in 2013. After that series finished, I presume she went back to being a midwife. As with Hinda Hicks, there are no further signs of her pop career being reborn.

There seems to be a theme of rebirth/renewal emerging within this post which certainly wasn’t planned but I guess the title of this next hit kind of plays into that? “Pure Morning” was the lead single from Placebo’s second album “Without You I’m Nothing” but was actually a last minute addition to the album, having emerged during a B-side session after the rest of the album ahead been recorded. I have to say that the idea of a ‘B-sides session’ doesn’t sit well with me like they’d sat down to write some songs they didn’t want to be as worthy as their A-sides. Is that how the creative process works for some artists? That they can deliberately write songs that they know will never reach the widest audience? It all sounds very cynical. I’m put in mind of the story about Creation Records founder Alan McGee telling Noel Gallagher that “Acquiesce” was too good a song to be just an extra track on the “Some Might Say” single to which Noel replied “I don’t write shit songs”. McGee, of course, was right about “Acquiesce” in the same way that Brian Molko was right to make “Pure Morning” an A-side and not a B-side. Created around a repeated guitar loop, it sounds kind of like a demo version of “Nancy Boy” which is possibly due to it being produced by Phil Vinall, the guy behind their first hit. I thought that I didn’t remember it but the opening lyrics of “A friend in need’s a friend indeed” was instantly recognisable. Molko gives a performance here in an observed, dispassionate state which lends itself well to the song which would become the band’s joint biggest hit single ever.

It’s another showing next of that ‘exclusive’ performance we’ve already seen from two weeks ago by Will Smith with his hit “Just The Two Of Us”. Maintaining the (re)birth theme, the video (which presumably we didn’t see because of Chris Cowey’s reluctance to include promos on the show) features Smith’s wife Jada who was pregnant with their first child Jaden. A reworking of the Grover Washington Jnr/Bill Withers classic with Smith taking on the mantle of a father trying to be a good role model for his young son, the admirable intentions of the lyrics were rather undermined by the events of March 27, 2022 when Smith left his seat at the 94th Academy Awards, walked across the stage and slapped comedian Chris Rock across the face during his presentation for Best Documentary Feature. Smith’s image as an upstanding family man of firm moral fibre and virtue were certainly put into doubt by the incident despite his aforementioned son Jaden tweeting support of his Dad “And that’s how we do it!”.

It’s the return of the Fun Lovin’ Criminals next with a brand new track – “Love Unlimited”. Having broken the UK (if not America) with their first album “Come Find Yourself”, Huey, ‘Fast’ and Steve Borgovini looked to consolidate on their success with sophomore collection “100% Colombian”. I recall there being quite a buzz around its release what with them being one of the hippest bands around with their Quentin Tarantino sampling hits and effortlessly charismatic front man Huey Morgan. But then…they came back with a song about Barry White! Now, I don’t have any objections to ‘The Walrus Of Love’ but neither am I much of a fan. I can appreciate his unique voice and the fact that he was also a songwriter, record producer and keyboard player. However, I didn’t really appreciate “Love Unlimited” that wanted to pay tribute to him on account of it being as dull as yet another old character being resurfaced on EastEnders. It really is so very pedestrian and one paced with the call and response chorus just being banal. I wonder how many of the youth in the TOTP audience shouting White’s name even knew who he was. Maybe they thought he was an EastEnders character; after all, his name sounded like one (“Awright Baz, fancy a pint in the Queen Vic?”). As poor as “Love Unlimited” was (and yes, I get the reference in its title), follow up single “Big Night Out” was brilliant and I duly bought it. Hope we get to see that one on these TOTP repeats.

Boyzone are No 1 for the second time in 1998 but this time it’s with a track written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Jim Steinman no less. Yes, it’s time for that song from the Whistle Down The Wind musical. Is it fair to say that “No Matter What” is the band’s best known hit? I think it might be given that it shifted 1.4 million copies and was the fourth best selling single in the UK in 1998. This was one of those songs that was always destined to be No 1 if for no other reason than the promotion and fuss around it demanded it. Look at the way it’s presented here with both Steinman and Lloyd Webber in the TOTP studio to give it that extra push and imbue it with a sense that this was no ordinary chart topper. Except that it was…ordinary that is, to my ears at least. I could never hear why it was supposed to be so great. If I thought “Love Unlimited” before it was pedestrian then “No Matter What” was like walking my dog when he really can’t be arsed – painfully slow and with a good chance of featuring shit along the way. Apart from vocalists Stephen Gately and Roman Keating, the other three really might as well not be there. They are given almost zero to do on stage except shuffle from foot to foot with their arms behind their back, make some “ooh” and “aah” backing noises and occasionally click their fingers. Ah yer bollix ye.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Apollo Four Forty	Lost In Space	No
2	Hinda Hicks	I Wanna BeYour Lady	Nah
3	Sash! featuring Tina Cousins	Mysterious Times	Negative
4	Solid HarmoniE	I Wanna Love You	Nope
5	Placebo	Pure Morning	OK song but no
6	Will Smith	Just The Two Of Us	I did not
7	Fun Lovin’ Criminals	Love Unlimited	No but I bought the follow up
8	Boyzone	Non Matter What	Never

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/m002kx4x/top-of-the-pops-14081998

TOTP 05 JUN 1998

Posted on September 20 by 80stastic

I’m nearly 30! Back in 1998 that is. I’m pushing 60 now. Where did all the time go? I’ll tell you where all the time goes these days – on writing this blog! Two TOTP repeats a week is hard work. I’m sure BBC4 only used to air one show every seven days when I first started doing this back in 2017. Much more manageable. Anyway, it’s my choice so I’ll just have to quit my bellyaching and get on with it. So, back in 1998, this particular TOTP was broadcast the day before my 30th birthday and to mark the milestone my wife and I went to Edinburgh for the weekend. Having looked at the running order for this one, I can see English, Irish and Welsh artists but nobody Scottish. As ever then, I was out of step with the musical tastes of the British record buying public!

Our host is Jo Whiley (who seems to be trying out Björk’s hairstyle for size) and we start with an Australian in the diminutive form of Natalie Imbruglia who is experiencing a form of diminishing returns as her third single “Wishing I Was There” peaks at its debut position of No 19. “Torn” and “Big Mistake” had both been No 2 hits with the former especially being a huge commercial and airplay success. This one, however, couldn’t replicate said success and watching this performance, I can see and hear why. There’s a lot of posturing, growling and attitude from Natalie but there’s not much of an actual song to hang it all onto. The overall effect is that of an overly eager Alanis Morissette wannabe. The rock guitar ending seems especially over the top. Bizarrely, a fourth single released from her “Left Of The Middle” album called “Smoke” would return her to the Top 5. You tell me.

The Irish contingent is represented next by Boyzone. Now this track. – “All That I Need” – was No 1 ages ago (the show dated 1st May to be exact) and was not even in the Top 20 at this point so what was it doing back on the show? Well, this seems to be a case of more performance recycling from executive producer Chris Cowey. He’s shoehorned this one in under the guise of the lads’ latest album “Where We Belong” being No 1 on the album chart but that’s seems like a flimsy bit of reasoning. An album chart section wasn’t a regular feature (I think it was back in the ‘year zero’ revamp era) so why bring it back now? Will we see it in every show from now on? Nah, I’m not buying it (the album chart grift not this Boyzone single though obviously I didn’t buy that either).

Here come the Welsh! Yes, it’s those alt rockers, those power poppers, those neo-psychedelics (I’ve no idea what I’m talking about!) the Super Furry Animals with the title track of an EP no less called “Ice Hockey Hair”. To quote Chris Tarrant, this is what the kids wanted! Something to make them think, to question the established norms and to fuck with their heads! Not that bland nonsense Boyzone were pedalling! And for once, maybe the kids were listening as this became The Furries highest charting single to date when it debuted at No 12 after their last five hits had all peaked between Nos 27 and 22. This was also a favourite of the inkies music press with Melody Maker naming it the tenth best single of the year and the NME proclaiming it the second. And why not? It’s a glorious mix of styles with some reviews detecting Queen, ELO, Pavement and Wings combined with what the NME termed “mad, techno squalling”. But what was “Ice Hockey Hair”? Well, it was another term for the mullet hairstyle that the band picked up from a conversation with a Swedish football player (as you do).

The EP’s opening track was a little ditty called “Smokin’” which was used to soundtrack a Channel 4 series about the Seven Deadly Sins and, in particular, the episode about ‘Sloth’ presented by Howard Marks. Yes, that Howard Marks so you can guess what the track was about. It should be of no surprise though as the Super Furry Animals weren’t afraid to push the boundaries. In fact, the band didn’t give a fuck. Ahem.

This next song represents the countries of Turkey, Germany and England – this is “Horny ‘98” by Mousse T versus Hot ‘n’ Juicy. Now depending on your point of view, this was either a cheeky, cheesy dance floor banger or utter filth which was corrupting the pure minds of the young generation. Actually, there’s a third option which was to find it, like me, just plain annoying. Mousse T is Mustafo Gündoğdu, a German-Turkish DJ and producer whose CV includes the accolade of being one of Germany’s first producers of house music and, by way of contrast, a stint as a judge on the German version of Pop Idol. Hot ‘n’ Juicy were Emma Lanford and Nadine Richardson who lived in a tower block in the former Lee Bank estate of Birmingham. There doesn’t seem an obvious connection between the two camps but at some point their paths crossed and “Horny ‘98” was the result. Listening to the track today, it seems quite repetitive (if catchy) but maybe that was requisite to be a club anthem? I don’t know. I was nearly 30 so I don’t think I was frequenting that many nightclubs at the time. I can imagine though that women up and down the country were receiving unsolicited attention from many a drunken male reveller whose opening line was “I’m horny, horny, horny, horny”. The whole thing was just awful.

What’s happening here? A performance of a song that wouldn’t be released as a single for six weeks and which host Jo Whiley says we weren’t meant to see until July? Ah but…there’s some headline-making, mitigating circumstances at play here which my last post was based around – Geri Halliwell leaving the Spice Girls. Right, so there’s a lot to unpack here starting with the insight from Whiley that some TOTP performances were filmed way ahead of release schedules. “Viva Forever” would not be in the record shops until 20th July yet here it was on TOTP on the 5th June! Was this standard practice? Certainly you can tell from some of the presenter links in these shows that the artists are not in the studio with the host at the same time. In the case of the Spice Girls though, there were some very specific circumstances peculiar to this single. The release schedule for “Viva Forever” was a mess. Originally reported as being out as a double A-side with the track “Never Give Up On The Good Times” on May 25th, it never appeared presumably because the group were on their Spiceworld tour and not available to do promotional duties. I’m guessing that this TOTP appearance was squeezed in to be kept until “Viva Forever” was in the charts before its broadcast. Then came the ‘Geri’s leaving’ bombshell but the tour had to continue and so the single’s release date was shifted three times in July before its ultimate appearance.

Given the seismic waves felt by the Halliwell departure, did Chris Cowey realise the footage that he had on his hands with the five piece performing together for possibly the last time was golden and so put it out there as almost an historical document? Then there’s the performance itself. Geri is hardly in it! She has no close ups and is it me or does she seem to be standing slightly away from the rest of the group, isolating herself? Was this how it was originally shot or had some heavy editing taken place post the news of her leaving breaking? If so, why? And if that was how it was originally recorded, also…why? Jo Whiley seems to take great delight in the splintering of the Spice Girls making wisecracks about them performing through gritted teeth. What about the song itself (and that video) though? Well look, it will be No 1 and for two weeks within a few repeats so I’ll keep my powder dry until then but for the record, I thought it was actually OK.

Widening this international array of artists on tonight’s show even further is Cuban-American superstar Gloria Estefan who has been away for a couple of years but was back with new single “Heaven’s What I Feel”. And when I say ‘widening this international array’, I mean stretching it like an elastic band as Gloria’s song was also recorded in Spanish as “Corazón Prohibdo” and French as “Amour Infini”. It received generally positive reviews with plaudits for it being a pop/dance crossover hit and for the fact that Estefan hadn’t resorted to a big ballad as she had done for so many of her hits previously. It sounds to me though like a song from a musical, moving a Romeo and Juliet style plot along but with enough beats to keep the audience tapping their feet. Actually, has there been a Gloria Estefan jukebox musical?

*checks internet*

Yes, there has. I thought there was and it’s called On Your Feet! and guess what? “Heaven’s What I Feel” is not one of the numbers featured in it. Missed a trick there Gloria.

We’re back in dear old Blighty next with “four young ladies who are widely tipped to be the next big thing” according to Jo Whiley. Wow! Who can she be talking about? No, she can’t mean N–Tyce can she?! The All Saints wannabes (check out their carbon copy cargo pants) who’d been around for a year, released three singles of which none got higher than No 12 and whose album peaked at No 44?! That N-Tyce? Couldn’t Whiley have come up with a more suitable intro? It’s almost sarcastic in its tone. “Boom Boom” was the fourth and final of those singles and it really is lowest common denominator stuff. The lyrics to the chorus are:

“Ooh it’s boom boom, hey it’s boom boom, yeah it’s boom boom, ooh it’s boom boom”

It’s not Radiohead is it? Apologies to Ario, Chantal, Donna and Michelle (yes I obviously had to look their names up) and they could, of course say “who are you to judge us and our four medium sized hits? Where’s your hits?” and that would be absolutely valid but ‘the next big thing’? No chance.

Our international tour finishes back in Ireland where we find, according to Jo Whiley in her intro, the youngest ever all girl group to have a No 1 record. Not only that but they’ve gone straight in week one at the top which not even the Spice Girls nor All Saints could lay claim to. Now surely these girls were the act that you should have been referring to as ‘the next big thing’ Jo? Two of the four piece act are the sisters of Boyzone’s Shane Lynch, a connection which actually works against my global theme rather. Three people not just from the same country but from the same family across two different acts. It’s all a bit parochial.

B*Witched appeared fully formed seemingly from nowhere and went straight to the top with their debut release “C’est La Vie”. Every year during the late 90s there seemed to be a single that would cause a selling sensation – “Don’t Speak” by No Doubt, “MMMBop” by Hanson, “Killing Me Softly” by The Fugees and now this one. The very definition of joyful, this bubbly (if cheesy) pop confection bounced around your head almost as energetically as the girls bounced around the TOTP studio stage whilst performing it. Seriously, the whole thing was just exhausting. In some ways, it was preposterous. The Irish dancing breakdown section is sonically and visually ludicrous and the “Fight like me Da as well” line cranks up the cringe factor but somehow it all hangs together and just works. Indeed, the bridge into the chorus is almost pop perfection.

“C’est La Vie” would kickstart a period of undiluted and outright commercial success for the group with their first four singles all going to No 1 whilst their debut eponymous album went double platinum. That level of popularity proved hard to maintain and, almost inevitably, there was a downturn in sales come the release of second album “Awake And Breathe” and its attendant singles. By the time it came to recording a third album, the jig was up and they were dropped by their label Sony leading to the group splitting in 2002. Their management’s decision to base the vocals and focal point around Edele Lynch probably didn’t help build career longevity with the resentment it caused amongst the other group members. Those tensions were brought out into the open again when a spot on ITV reality show The Big Reunion in 2012 reactivated the B*Witched name but they were resolved enough that they could tour again and release new material in the form of two EPs.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Natalie Imbruglia	Wishing I Was There	I did not
2	Boyzone	All That I Need	Never
3	Super Furry Animals	Ice Hockey Hair	Liked it, didn’t buy it
4	Mousse T versus Hot ‘n’ Juicy	Horny ’98	Definitely not
5	Spice Girls	Viva Forever	Nope
6	Gloria Estefan	Heaven’s What I Feel	Nah
7	N-Tyce	Boom Boom	No
8	B*Witched	C’est La Vie	No but it was a favourite of my wife’s

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/m002j9qq/top-of-the-pops-05061998?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 08 MAY 1998

Posted on September 9 by 80stastic

It’s that time of the year again in 1998 when, as a nation, we outwardly cringed in embarrassment at the very idea of it but, on the night itself, found ourselves at home watching it on our TVs anyway. Yes, it can only be the Eurovision Song Contest and in 1998, the UK was the host nation having won the thing the year before courtesy of Katrina And The Waves. The National Indoor Centre in Birmingham was the chosen venue and our hosts for the evening were Sir Terry Wogan (of course) and Ulrika Jonsson who was very familiar with the location for the contest as it was where she filmed the ITV show Gladiators. She was also one of the resident captains on surreal panel show Shooting Stars with Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer so her profile was suitably in the ascendancy to be the go to co-host for such an event. Sadly, just one month later, she was in the headlines again having been assaulted by her then boyfriend, footballer Stan Collymore in a Paris bar during the 1998 World Cup. Let’s concentrate on much lighter events though and some would argue none is more lightweight than Eurovision. However, one person taking it seriously was my record shop colleague Stephen who was so confident in the UK entry that he bet me a fiver that it would win. I didn’t share his faith and took the bet. Who won Eurovision and therefore the bet as well? That’s all to come but for now let’s get back to the charts and TOTP where we find Jamie Theakston on presenting duties for a second consecutive week. Presumably executive producer Chris Cowey must have liked what he saw from Theakston though he didn’t seem to bring anything extra to the show for me.

Talking of not bringing anything extra to the show, despite the new theme tune and titles, Cowey has only brought us three new tunes for this week with five of the eight hits having already been on before including opener “Feel It” by The Tamperer featuring Maya. This one was featured on the show before last and will be on a further two times subsequently. As such, I don’t know what to write about it as I pretty much said it all previously. However, as it’s very heavily based on the 1981 hit “Can You Feel It” by The Jacksons, I did look up whether there were any cover versions of it out there and there are including one by a group I’ve never heard of before. V anyone? I guess I wasn’t really their target audience seeing as they were a boy band and I was 36 years old when this hit was in 2004. Plus, it was four years after I’d left my time in record shops behind me. Anyway, it’s a fairly routine cover that adds literally nothing to the original but got to No 5 as a double A-side with a track called “Hip To Hip”.

Easily beating V in the entertainment stakes though is this version of The Tamperer track by the aforementioned Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer as their Mulligan and O’Hare characters:

Eurovision credentials: None but the Bosnia and Herzegovina entry in 2012 was by an artist called Maya Sar. She finished 18th.

Now for that performance by Boyzone that the band were unable to do last week due to the death of Ronan Keating’s mother. In the intervening seven days, the lads have dropped from No 1 to No 4 but an exclusive performance is an exclusive performance so here they are with “All That I Need”. This must be one of the most forgettable chart toppers of the decade but then, let’s be fair, most of their well known songs are cover versions anyway. I’m thinking “Love Me For A Reason” (The Osmonds), “Father And Son” (Cat Stevens), “Words” (Bee Gees) and “When The Going Gets Tough” (Billy Ocean). Oh, and perhaps their best known song was written by Andrew Lloyd Webber. I think that says a lot if not everything. Nothing else to see here.

Eurovision credentials: Just 12 months prior to this, Ronan Keating had been the co-host for the contest which took place in Dublin. Boyzone were the interval act performing a song called “Let The Message Run Free”.

Now this next one is interesting on a number of fronts. Firstly, hands up who remembered/knew that Freak Power had more than one hit? Not me for sure but here it is – a No 29 hit called “No Way”. Thankfully nothing to do with that awful novelty hit “No Way, No Way” by Vanilla from earlier in the year, on initial hearing I thought it sounded very similar to their huge hit “Turn On, Tune In, Cop Out” but by the end of the track I’d decided it sounded like something else – this from the multi-talented and much missed Kirsty MacColl…

Of further interest is the staging for this one which shows a sudden burst of creativity that had been missing for a while from the show. The setting of a house party with vocalist Ashley Slater positioned next door and banging against the partition wall as Norman Cook and a host of party goers live it up was…well… interesting as I say. Given that Freak Power seemed to have run their course after the aforementioned “Turn On, Tune In, Cop Out” had been a hit three years prior to “No Way” and that the material they released in between hadn’t generated any hits and that he’d had more commercial success with another vehicle Pizzaman, I wonder why he returned to the Freak Power moniker for this one? Whatever the reason, this would be the last we would hear from Freak Power which is a shame.

Eurovision credentials: Ashley Slater provided the original vocals for the 2015 UK entry “Still In Love With You”. He didn’t want to be involved in promoting it though so he withdrew from the project and duo Electro Velvet fronted the song. It placed 24th out of 27 with just five points.

Next come an act that many would consider perfect for Eurovision. In May 1998, Steps were only at the beginning of a career whose longevity very few of us would have predicted with “Last Thing On My Mind” being just their second single release. After the almost novelty debut single ”5,6,7,8” which had jumped on the bandwagon of the line dancing craze that was sweeping the country, the follow up couldn’t have sounded more like Eurovision giants ABBA if it tried. Actually, it was written to try to sound like the Swedish megastars as part of Pete Waterman’s plan to revive Bananarama’s career by pursuing project ‘ABBA-Banana’. Anyway, listening back to it now, if it had been our Eurovision entry in 1998, it would have been a shoo-in to triumph at the contest and I would not have taken that bet with my work colleague Stephen. They even had a Bucks Fizz style gimmmick with that arm roll move. In fact, given the tacky nature of the contest, it wouldn’t have been beyond the realms of possibility for “5,6,7,8” to have gone close to winning the thing. Apparently, there have been discussions within the group about participating but, although Ian ‘H’ Watkins would do it in a heartbeat, some of the other members aren’t as keen or convinced. I’m sure though that if they could be persuaded, the UK would have its best chance of winning in years.

Eurovision credentials: Apart from everything already mentioned, they won the OGAE Song Contest – Organisation Générale des Amateurs de l’Eurovision or General Organisation of Eurovision Fans – in 2018 with their single “Scared Of The Dark”.

Some hip-hop now courtesy of the Jungle Brothers. You know me, I’m a pop kid at heart so my knowledge of this lot is the equivalent of what Nigel Farage knows about being a decent human being – nothing. Thankfully Wikipedia is there to tell me all about them. They’re from New York and are acknowledged as pioneers of the fusion of the hip-hop, house and jazz genres (oh, so they’re not just hip-hop then – told you I knew nothing about them). They paved the way for A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul and founded the Native Tongues collective of hip-hop artists that included Monie Love, Queen Latifah and Busta Rhymes in its membership. Their biggest UK hit up to this point had been 1988’s “I’ll House You” but that was superseded by “Jungle Brother (Urban Takeover Mix)” which made No 18. I have to say it sounds like a lot of shouting to me but the breakdancers supporting them were impressive. They didn’t fall over or go Boom Bang a Bang once.

Eurovision credentials: Absolutely none whatsoever.

“How Do I Live” by LeAnn Rimes was yet another of those songs that lingered on the charts for literally months around this time. I wrote in a recent post how the aforementioned “5,6,7,8” by Steps was, at the time, the biggest selling single in the UK never to make the Top 10. Well, “How Do I Live” has a similar accolade – despite never getting any higher than No 7, its solid 30 (THIRTY!) weeks inside the Top 40 meant that it was the 6th best selling single of 1998 in the UK. It’s quite hard to get your head around – it ranked higher in the end of year chart than at any point during its Top 40 life. I think we must have got caught out by its longevity in the Our Price where I worked a few times thinking its chart run would have to be over soon and therefore running down stock only for it to reverse its sales and go back up the charts which it did on NINE occasions! It seems that the record buying public weren’t any good at making their collective mind up about whether they could live without that particular track.

Eurovision connection: None but LeAnn has appeared on a singing contest – both the Australian and UK versions of The Voice.

So we arrive at the act with genuine Eurovision credentials given that she was the UK’s actual entry this year but who was Imaani? Well, she hailed from Nottingham, her birth name was Melonie Crosdale and she got into the music industry via a chance encounter with a record producer on a train journey. After contributing some vocals to an album by acid jazzers Incognito, she became the UK’s Eurovision entry after a protracted selection process that started in early February and involved a semi final broadcast on Radio 2, appearances by the finalists on The National Lottery Draw and a tele-vote on The Great British Song Contest* broadcast on BBC1 in March.

*Ooh, now here’s a nice little tie-in. The song that came third in that final was by a group called Sapphire (who’d changed their name from Kitt halfway through the process). The singer in Sapphire was one Kate Cameron who worked with Norman Cook under his Pizzaman name and is a backing singer with Freak Power. This really should have gone in the Eurovision credentials section for Freak Power as well.

Imaani’s winning song was “Where Are You?” and she duly embarked on the usual circus of promotional duties including appearances on Blue Peter, Live & Kicking and Fully Booked. In fact, the release of her song as a single came as early as the 21st of March but it spent six weeks bouncing around the very bottom end of the charts between Nos 99 and 76 before the exposure it gained as the contest itself loomed ever closer pushed it into the Top 40 where it would peak at No 15. So, about the song itself. Well, I couldn’t remember how it went but listening to it back, Imaani does a decent impression of Toni Braxton. However, and this is why I didn’t share my colleague Stephen’s faith in it and took his bet, it didn’t sound very Eurovision. Now, I have no idea what the Eurovision sound is anymore with the contest having transcended its legacy definitions and morphed out into all sorts of musical directions but back in 1998, it just didn’t seem to fit the bill to me.

So how did Imaani do on the big night and did I win the bet? Yes I did but only just with “Where Are You?” coming in second to the winner by just six points. By today’s standards, that was a stellar performance but after winning it the year before, was it possibly seen as a disappointment? Surely not. And the winner? Well, this caused many headlines and not all positive as Israel’s Dana International took the crown with the track “Diva” and, in the process, became the first transgender participant in the contest and its first LGBTQ+ winning artist. Twenty-seven years later and the world is still tying itself up in knots over everything transgender. As for Imaani, she returned to working with Incognito and supplied lead vocals on a garage cover of Adina Howard’s “Freak Like Me” by Tru Faith and Dub Conspiracy which made No 12 in 2000. She released her first and so far only solo album in 2014 (some 16 years after her Eurovision moment) and as recently as 2023, was part of the Revival Collective that recorded a version of “Best Of My Love” by The Emotions.

Eurovision credentials: I think we’ve covered these in sufficient detail above.

As predicted by Jamie Theakston last week, All Saints are No 1 with “Under The Bridge” / “Lady Marmalade”. We get the former track again this week but it’s a different performance as the group aren’t high up in a gantry like last time but back on Terra Firma. I must say, although I’m not the biggest fan of their treatment of the Red Hot Chili Peppers classic, I am quite taken with how they managed to get maximum impact out of minimal movement in the dance routine they put together for it. Minor hip shakes and small scale footsteps show that sometimes less really is more.

Eurovision credentials: None but the phrase ‘never ever’ is a key lyric in the track “No No Never” by German entry Texas Lightning which came 14th in the 2006 Eurovision Song Contest.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	The Tamperer featuring Maya	Feel It	I did not
2	Boyzone	All That I Need	No Way
3	Freak Power	No Way	Good song but no
4	Steps	Last Thing On My Mind	Nope
5	Jungle Brothers	Jungle Brother (Urban Takeover Mix)	No
6	LeAnn Rimes	How Do I Live?	Nah
7	Imaani	Where Are You?	No but thanks for the fiver
8	All Saints	Under The Bridge / Lady Marmalade	No but my wife had the album I think

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/m002hqxx/top-of-the-pops-08051998?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 01 MAY 1998

Posted on September 5 by 80stastic

We’ve reached a TOTP milestone – no, nothing to do with my blog (though my 400th post for the 90s shows happened recently). This was all about executive producer Chris Cowey who has taken the decision to change the show’s theme tune and titles. Graphics wise, gone are the flaming torsos and gold medal style logo to be replaced by a more back to basics flurry of primary colours, stripes, circles and lines that morphed into a 60s themed, almost pop art styled motif with bold font. The theme tune was even more retro bring a drum ‘n’ bass-ified take on “Whole Lotta Love” by Led Zeppelin, an instrumental version of which by CCS was used on the show from 1970 to 1977. The new opening music was the work of Bad Man Bad (aka Ben Chapman) and I’m guessing was meant to be an obvious homage to the show’s past but with a current vibe to ensure it remained contemporary and relevant. Cowey had taken nearly a year to bring in these changes, taking his time and experimenting with not having a theme tune at all (Vince Clarke’s “Red Hot Pop” had been phased out during 1997/98 having been in place since 1995). I think I prefer the changes as opposed to nothing at all which had led to a lack of show identity.

The first presenter in this new era was Jamie Theakston and the first artist was All Saints who, having spent months (literally) in the charts with their second single and first No 1 “Never Ever”, are back with…a cover version?! Yes, just three singles into their career and they’ve already hit the cover version button by recording “Under The Bridge” by Red Hot Chili Peppers. Now, as we have seen many, many times over the course of these TOTP repeats, the recording of a cover version can be a break-in-case-of-emergency strategy to save a dwindling pop career but this can’t have been the case with All Saints as they were riding the crest of a commercial wave. So what gives? Were some of the other tracks on their eponymous debut album not considered strong enough to maintain their momentum? That particular theory might have held more sway if the single after this one – “Bootie Call” – had bombed but it didn’t. In fact, it was a third, consecutive No 1 for the group. As such, I am at a loss as to why they went with a cover version so early on in their career but they were so sold on the idea that they doubled down on it by releasing two covers when they made the single a double A-side with the other track being their take on Labelle’s “Lady Marmalade”. Gitchie, gitchie ya-ya, da-da!

Whilst I quite like the staging of this performance with the group positioned on a gantry above the studio audience, I wasn’t that keen on their rendition of “Under The Bridge”. They changed the intonation of both the verse and chorus thereby affecting the melody which made it quite jarring to my ears. Yes, they at least attempted to do something different with it and yes, a change of phrasing can prove a winning tweak (see Paul Young’s take on “Every Time You Go Away” by Hall & Oates) but it just didn’t work for me. Maybe I was too familiar with the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ original. All Saints do a good job of selling it though (even if I wasn’t buying) with a nice little shimmy movement worked out for the distinctive guitar opening which was actually sampled from the original. They’ve also gone heavy again on the cargo pants with all four members sporting them. Their fashion influence has even spread to our host Theakston who’s wearing a camouflage design example of them.

The next song would spend two whole months inside the Top 10 peaking at No 4 and thereby providing another example that disproves my memory that all hits around this time were in and out of the charts within a fortnight. Admitting to liking “Dance The Night Away” by The Mavericks was never going to win you any credibility points but some people must have had a real thing for this rock/pop/country/Latin influenced tune though I can honestly say I was not one of them (my Dad has a fondness for it however). I could never really hear the appeal of what, for me, was a very sleight composition – even the guy who wrote it, lead singer Raul Malo, admits that it came together as a “happy accident” and that it just about wrote itself. So why was it such a big success? Well, my guess is that it was a crossover hit at just the right time. Whilst the UK had been a receptacle for country hits before from the old guard of the like of Dolly Parton, Kenny Rogers and Don Williams, when it came to the 90s and the emergence of ‘new country’, we hadn’t exactly welcomed the movement with open arms. Its biggest exponent Garth Brooks was a superstar in the States but he’d had solid but not widespread success over here. Fast forward five years and we were ready to embrace country music again so long as it had a pop flavour to it. 1998 saw both LeAnne Rimes and especially Shania Twain hit huge numbers sales wise and so the door was open for a track like “Dance The Night Away” to walk through and into our charts. I’m guessing it got a lot of play in Radio 2 back then when it wasn’t the catch-all station for the middle-aged as it is now. It was one of those record that people who wouldn’t be seen anyway near a record shop except with a present list at Christmas would venture into their local emporium to buy. Parent album “Trampoline” also sold well making the UK Top 10 but they would not sustain their commercial appeal. They are still together and touring with Raul Malo on vocals. I wonder if they ever get fed up of having to play their biggest hit though?

Now, as follow ups to a No 1 single go, Usher only making No 24 with “Nice & Slow” after previous hit “You Make Me Wanna…” topped the chart isn’t the worse example of how to consolidate on that success*. However, it can’t have been what the R&B superstar would have been expecting or hoping for. After all, the song gave him another Billboard chart topper across the pond.

*Bee Gees followed up No 1 “You Win Again” with “E.S.P.” which peaked at No 51 whilst Nena’s next single after “99 Red Balloons” was “Just A Dream” which struggled to a high of No 70.

However, its inability to achieve the same level of success as its predecessor certainly wasn’t anything to do with a lack of confidence on Usher’s part to sell the song. Look at him in this performance – he has the studio audience of young girls literally trying to paw him. The man in the hat is actively encouraging the near fever pitch crowd though – what is that finger movement near his crotch area when he sings “I got plans to put my hands in places…”? Well, I think we all know what it is but before the watershed BBC? He follows this up by making thrusting motions with his groin after he’s thrown the hat off Michael Jackson style. In case the audience can’t contain themselves, in what must be a first in TOTP history, Usher has a bodyguard stood at the side of the stage. Surely this must have been for effect? Another Chris Cowey innovation maybe? Or was he an actual bodyguard primed for action? What was going on?!

Was there a more intriguing artist in the 90s than Tori Amos? Now don’t all come at me at once with your own, much more deserving (in your opinion) nominations for such a question – I had to start the paragraph with something to introduce her and, in any case, she is intriguing I think, both musically and culturally. Sure, there were the inevitable Kate Bush comparisons early in her career but to dismiss her as some sort of tribute act was pure folly. Sonically, her compositions could make your senses tingle or alternatively make you think “what on earth is this?” so genre-fluid is her work. At once eerie and haunting but also aggressive and deeply emotional with lyrics that address subjects such as sexual assault, religion and gender politics. This track – “Spark” – dealt with her own experience of suffering a miscarriage. It’s hardly ‘I love you, you love me’ stuff.

In her personal life, Tori is a spokesperson for Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN) and has a deep connection with Native American culture due to her ancestors on her Mother’s side being of Cherokee descent. Some of the artists she is reported to have influenced include Alanis Morissette, Olivia Rodrigo and Olly Alexander of Years & Years. Her songs have appeared in multiple TV series including Dawson’s Creek, Yellowjackets, Charmed and Beavis and Butt–Head. She’s undoubtedly a complex and multi-layered character which, as I say, makes her an intriguing artist. As a performer, she’s visually arresting too. Look at this TOTP appearance in which she employs both keyboards and a piano. I also admire the way she looks like she’s come to the studio straight from having a shower with wet hair. It’s an unconventional approach. Having said all of this, “Spark” would prove to be her final Top 40 hit of her career so did her idiosyncratic ways prove ultimately to be to impenetrable for mainstream success? I think probably it was just a case of shifting tastes and anyway, Tori retains a loyal and sizeable fan base to this day.

Is this a case of the sublime to the ridiculous? I think it might be. Having created an unusual piece of pop history for themselves with their first single “5,6,7,8” which, at the time, became the biggest selling single never to make the Top 10, Steps were back to prove that they were never destined to be a one-hit wonder and a novelty one at that. Now, if I said some of the Kate Bush comparisons with Tori Amos were inevitable (and unjustified) then the parallels being drawn between “Last Thing On My Mind” and ABBA were inescapable and totally justified. The back story of this track is that it was originally recorded and released by Bananarama in 1992 as Keren and Sara began the second phase of their career as a duo with Mike Stock and Pete Waterman as producers. It was the latter whose idea for working with the Nanas on the album “Please Yourself” was encapsulated by the phrase ‘ABBA-Banana’. In the end, only the singles released from it stuck to the plan of which “Last Thing On My Mind” was the second. It turned out that the world wasn’t ready to accept this hybrid in the early 90s and the single bombed.

Waterman must have ruefully filed the idea in a drawer marked ‘Do not open until 1998’ as it was recycled for his latest project Steps. Spending a fortnight at No 6 not only justified Waterman’s faith but also ensured that Steps would carry on (and on and on) beyond one hit. It’s as sugary as golden syrup and as substantial as a politician’s promise but at least they didn’t just do a remake of their line dancing debut. Watching this performance, it strikes me that Ian ‘H’ Watkins and Lee Latchford-Evans, though I’m sure that they’re lovely people, are also two of the luckiest pop stars going based on their contribution to this which consists of some tightly rehearsed but limited dance moves. Maybe they’ll come into their own the bigger the hits become.

Out of the way! Here come Catatonia and they’re mad with “Road Rage”! Yes, confirming their status as one of the hottest bands of 1998, Cerys and co follow up “Mulder And Scully” with an absolute banger. Some songs are defined by a singular detail – that ringing guitar chord in “She Sells Sanctuary” by The Cult comes immediately to mind – and so it is with this one but said detail in this case is Cerys’ ability to roll her Rs in the chorus which became the USP of the track. Despite its rather gruesome inspiration being the real life event of the murder of Lee Harvey by his girlfriend Tracie Andrews in 1996 (Andrews falsely claimed to the police Harvey was killed by a man during a road rage confrontation), the track has a glorious, singalong chorus that helped it peak at No 5 in the charts. That position, following the No 3 hit that was its predecessor, meant Catatonia were finally big news after a few early releases that failed to land.

However, was it the band that were building their profile or Cerys Matthews who was generating the headlines? It seemed to me to be the latter and that they were following in the footsteps of Blondie, No Doubt and Sleeper. Press coverage of Cerys reportedly storming out of the Ivor Novello Awards after “Road Rage” was beaten to the Best Contemporary Song gong by Tin Tin Out only fuelled the perception. In her defence, at least her band wrote their song whilst Tin Tin Out’s was a cover of a track by The Sundays. Maybe her rage was justified?

Nearly two years on from their breakthrough hit “Tattva”, Kula Shaker were still experiencing huge commercial success but this single – “Sound Of Drums” – would mark the beginning of the end of their time as chart stars. Whilst it’s true that it went straight in at No 3, it would be their last ever visit to the Top 10. So what went wrong? Well, a lot of factors contributed to their decline I think not least the bad press lead singer Crispian Mills had generated with some decidedly dodgy comments he made to the NME about the symbolism behind the swastika for which he later apologised. In today’s world, he’d have probably been cancelled immediately but back in the late 90s, the slump was more gradual. The press also applied that well worn convention of building up our heroes only to knock them down which played a part in their downfall with Mills’ acting dynasty background that once marked him out as unusual now saw him as part of some elite to be criticised. Then there’s the band’s own inertia when it came to releasing new material. Between “Govinda” in November 1996 and “Mystical Machine Gun” in the March of 1999, the only Kula Shaker tracks made available in the shops were the singles “Hush” and “Sound Of Drums” and one of those was a cover version! The latter was officially the lead single from their second album “Peasants, Pigs & Astronauts” but said album didn’t arrive until ten months later. All these gaps between releases meant that the band’s momentum inevitably waned and their place amongst the rock/pop A-list was destabilised.

What about the music though? Well, despite having a title that sounded like an Audie Murphy Western, it was talked up in the music press as being an attempt to sonically resemble The Doors though I’m not sure I can hear it. They were still definitely playing that mystical, psychedelic rock card in their image though. Check out the trippy backdrop in this performance and The Beatles referencing helter skelter prop. I have to say that having liked their debut album “K” enormously, they were starting to lose me at this point but then maybe I was just paying too much attention to the dissenting voices.

We finally have a new No 1 but be careful what you wish for as replacing Run-D.M.C. versus Jason Nevins are Boyzone. Now despite this being a chart topper, I have zero recall of it. An actual No 1 that I can’t remember at all despite working in record shop at the time! It doesn’t say much for the song in question which is “All That I Need”. A ‘mature’ ballad is no doubt how the band would have described it whereas I would have gone with a dreary non-entity of nothingness. For the record, the thing that Ronan Keating was struggling with that meant the band didn’t perform in the studio was that his mother had recently passed away. The interview with three of the other four band members means we get less than a minute of the promo but it maybe demonstrates as well that executive producer Chris Cowey really couldn’t stand featuring videos on the show but don’t panic as they are in the studio the following week despite having dropped down the charts from No 1 to No 4. Also, why was Stephen Gately the only one to speak during the interview? What was the point of the other two being there?

It’s taken me the whole post but I’ve finally realised what the new opening title graphics remind me of and it features one of the greatest drum fills of all time…

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it ?
1	All Saints	Under The Bridge / Lady Marmalade	Nope
2	The Mavericks	Dance The Night Away	Nah
3	Usher	Nice & Slow	Negative
4	Tori Amos	Spark	Intriguing as she was, it’s a no
5	Steps	Last Thing On My Mind	Never
6	Catatonia	Road Rage	Great track but no
7	Kula Shaker	Sound Of Drums	No
8	Boyzone	All That I Need	Whatever I needed, it wasn’t this

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/m002hqxv/top-of-the-pops-01051998?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 05 DEC 1997

Posted on May 28 by 80stastic

We’ve entered December of 1997 with these TOTP repeats which can only mean one thing – Christmas is coming! By this point, with me working in the Our Price store in Stockport, I would have been in full-on hectic work mode with Christmas temps, queues of customers and long days of trading the norm. And what were the great British public buying their loved ones for Christmas? Well, the record companies had long since shuffled their pack of cards and got their dominoes in order (not sure where I’m going with this metaphor) to finalise their release schedules for optimum festive sales. A quick scan of the December album charts shows that, unsurprisingly, the Spice Girls were at No 1 with their sophomore album “Spiceworld” with Celine Dion showing strong sales of her “Let’s Talk About Love” album just behind. So far, so mainstream. The rest of the Top 10 is made up of four Best Ofs from Eternal, Enya, Lightning Seeds and, in a blast from the past, Wham! All Saints were on the climb with their recently released eponymous debut album whilst one of the year’s consistent big sellers – “White On Blonde” by Texas – was still shifting major numbers despite 44 weeks on the chart already. Grimly, the Backstreet Boys were in there but perhaps the biggest surprise and certainly the least mainstream artist inside the Top 10 were The Verve whose “Urban Hymns” album would ultimately go eleven times platinum in the UK but more of them later.

Jayne ‘pouty mouth’ Middlemiss is our host for tonight and we start with M People and their single “Fantasy Island”. Nothing to do with the TV series starring Ricardo Montalban and Hervé Villechaize (“De plane! De plane!”) nor (thankfully) the 1982 Top 5 hit for Tight Fit, this was the second track take from the band’s “Fresco” album. I don’t recall this one at all but that’s probably because it only spent one week on the Top 40 peaking at a lowly No 33 making it quite the outlier in the band’s discography. Not since “Someday” five years earlier had they experienced such a low charting single.

So what happened here? The other two singles from the album both peaked at No 8 either side of “Fantasy Island” so what was it about that track that should have caused such a fluctuation. I don’t believe it was a sudden drop in the band’s popularity. Although they weren’t quite hitting the heights of their commercial heyday when “Elegant Slumming” and “Bizarre Fruit” sold 2.5 million copies between them in the UK alone, “Fresco” was still a platinum selling album. So was there a dip in quality for this particular song? Well, musical taste is subjective of course so I can’t really make any definitive judgement on that score but “Fantasy Island” seemed to hark back to the template of those earlier hits so was the formula becoming a bit tired. It couldn’t have been the Samson-effect surely that saw Heather Small’s vocal power reduced by the removal of her usual towering hairdo? No, of course not. Possibly it was just that it got caught up in the Christmas rush (15 of the Top 40 songs that week were new releases) – that seems the most plausible explanation. What was sure was that the time of M People was coming to an end. The only albums released since “Fresco” have been Best Of compilations and box set retrospectives as Heather Small launched her solo career and Mike Pickering pursued a career in A&R.

Also experiencing some commercial difficulties around this time was Kylie Minogue. Her first single in nearly two years – “Some Kind Of Bliss” – had been her first ever release not to make the UK Top 20 (all of her previous 23 singles up to that point had achieved this). Presumably spooked by this, her record label Deconstruction delayed the release of its parent album. Originally scheduled to be called “Impossible Princess”, it had already been postponed once and when Princess Diana died at the end of August, the reason given for its second shelving was issues of sensitivity surrounding its title. On reflection, that seems quite a convenient smoke screen. A second single was lined up to test the waters further in an attempt to divine public opinion about Kylie’s new direction. “Did It Again” was heavily promoted (including a CD-Rom of the promo video on some versions of the single) and it duly improved upon its predecessors chart position by peaking at No 14.

However, it was a temporary and not altogether substantial reprieve. When the album did finally come out, it underperformed. A third single from it could only replicate the chart high of “Did It Again” creating a hat-trick of singles that didn’t make the Top 10. Additionally, the British press seemed to have fallen out of love with Kylie around this time. Accusations of anorexia and a belittling of her ‘IndieKylie’ persona (that itself was a creation by the media and not something encouraged by Kylie herself) dogged her whilst the three year gap between albums and a perceived lack of promotion from Deconstruction were seen as contributing factors to a downturn in her popularity. By the time the 90s had ended, Kylie seemed like she was a chart dinosaur but somehow survived pop music extinction to capture the hearts of the public and a No 1 record with “Spinning Around” in 2000. She’s not really looked back since.

As for “Did It Again”, her vocals here are a bit ropey and I’m not sure that the drag queens on stage with her really add anything to the performance ( yes, I get that they are recreations of the various Kylie personas from the video) but it’s OK. Also, is it in my imagination or does it sound a bit like Garbage (the band!) at the start? After that though, there is no complication as it displays a definite eastern vibe before there is no hesitation as it propels headlong into a catchy chorus. Maybe Kylie should consider herself so unlucky that it wasn’t a bigger hit. Ahem.

Next up, a song that may not be the most well known or highest charting of this particular band’s career but has been singled out by the man behind it as the favourite of his that he’s ever written (so far). That man is Richard Ashcroft, the band is The Verve and the song is “Lucky Man”. The third single released from their aforementioned classic “Urban Hymns” album, it’s a widescreen, epic sonic soundscape of a track though it’s actually got a very basic chord structure that even a lazy strummer like me could handle. Maybe that’s the secret to its power and allure – its simplicity. Of course, the recorded version that we all know is multi layered so that it sounds almost sprawling but as with its chords, it has a simple and pure message in its lyrics – that of the “raw nature of yourselves”, as Ashcroft himself puts it, that is allowed to be displayed between a couple in a committed relationship and the beauty within that ease of being. Yes, it’s anthemic but there’s no bombast to it. I think it’s probably my favourite song by The Verve as well Mr. Ashcroft.

As Jayne Middlemiss says in her intro, this performance was taken from the band’s appearance on Later…with Jools Holland which was broadcast on 10th November 1997 and the orchestral string backing really elevates it to a higher plane sonically. The other artists on that particular show were Rickie Lee Jones, UB40, Roni Size and Jewel. With respect to those names, I consider myself to be a lucky man not to be reviewing that show as well.

Sometimes I really cannot dredge up anything from the recesses of my poor, overworked brain to comment on about a past hit relived on these TOTP repeats. It may be because I can’t recall it at all or that it’s from a genre of music that didn’t speak to me and therefore I have nothing to say about it. In the case of “It’s Over Love” by Todd Terry it’s both. Obviously I do know the name Todd Terry and that he’s a house music legend but apart from that I couldn’t tell you much about his canon of work other than his involvement in the remix of Everything But The Girl’s “Missing”. His discography lists two other UK Top 10 hits that he had with Martha Wash and Jocelyn Brown in 1996 and 1997 and I can’t even remember them! Did I review them for this blog?!

My blushes are spared though by the featured vocalist in this track who is Shannon whom I definitely do recall. Back in 1984 she had three bona fide chart hits in “Sweet Somebody”, “Give Me Tonight” and the biggest of the lot “Let The Music Play”. Thirteen years later and she was back in the TOTP studio and she doesn’t look that much older to me. Am I misremembering? Make your own minds up…

By 1997, I’d started to lose sight of Paul Weller’s solo career. After he’d re-emerged from the wilderness with his 1992 eponymous album, he cemented his position as a respected elder statesman of British guitar rock (even though he was only 35 at the time) with the following year’s “Wild Wood”. By the time that 1995’s “Stanley Road” had gone four times platinum, Weller was the ‘The Modfather’, or even ‘The Godfather of Britpop’ (along with a few other candidates for the title). However, just as Britpop couldn’t and didn’t sustain, neither did Weller’s solo career sales. His fourth solo album ”Heavy Soul” arrived two years on from “Stanley Road” and though a healthy seller, it didn’t come anywhere near the numbers of its predecessor. It felt like he was appealing to his (admittedly large) fanbase still but that crossover into a larger audience that we saw with “Stanley Road” was no longer there.

I think I must have been one of those that fell by the wayside. Both “Wild Wood” and “Stanley Road” CDs were to be found in our flat in Manchester but “Heavy Soul” was noticeably absent. Its lead single “Peacock Suit” was OK but beyond that, I hadn’t felt the need to investigate further. As such, I don’t really remember the fourth and final single lifted from the album called “Mermaids”. Having watched this performance back, it’s a decent tune though a bit Weller-by-numbers. The “sha-la-la-la” hook has me wondering if Mr Weller had been listening to “Sha-La-La-La-Lee” by the Small Faces or even “Brown Eyed Girl” by Van Morrison. Whatever the truth, there seemed to be a trend for records using that lyrical refrain in 1997. Remember “What Do You Want From Me?” by Monaco?

P.S. That tank top Paul! Dearie me!

Somebody who was never going to be found in the Top 10 of the album chart I talked about at the start of the post is Gala. Not in the UK at least. In the rest of Europe she shifted a fair few copies of her album “Cone Into My Life” (nothing to do with the Joyce Sims hit of the same name) but over here she was a singles artist. In fact, she was known for one single in particular and it wasn’t this one. Whilst “Freed From Desire” continues to have a life of its own thanks to its adoption as a football chant, does anybody remember “Let A Boy Cry”? Well, you might if you’re Italian, Belgian, Spanish or French as it went to No 1 in all those countries but one week at No 11 was all it could muster in the UK. To my ears, it sounds very similar to its predecessor but…well…just not as good. Its subject matter about encouraging male sensitivity and emotional intelligence is laudable but it’s just not that memorable. Gala’s shaky vocals in this performance didn’t help its chances. A third UK Top 40 hit would arrive in the form of the album’s title track the following August but a high of No 38 was hardly likely to add longevity of her pop career. The longevity of “Freed From Desire” on the other hand…

With Take That now out of the way and despite the increasing claims of the Backstreet Boys, Boyzone continued to be the premier boy band of this era of the 90s. Their cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Baby Can I Hold You” was the group’s tenth consecutive UK hit of which only one didn’t at least make the Top 3. Of those though, a whopping 40% were cover versions. Hmm. Is that cynical or clever song selection at work? As with their other covers, this was another ballad but unlike its predecessors, it was brutally ignored despite the high profile it enjoys to this day when originally released in 1988 when it made No 94 on the UK chart. No 94! It’s not the only example of this phenomenon. Off the top of my head there’s “Summer Of ‘69” by Bryan Adams (No 42 in the UK) and “Rhiannon” by Fleetwood Mac (a UK No 46). They’ll be many more I’m sure. There would also be many more actual hits for Boyzone (another 10 to be precise including four No 1s) but beware lads as you won’t have it all your own way in the boy band stakes for too much longer – Westlife will be racking up the chart toppers as well before the decade is out.

It’s another cover version still riding high at the top of the charts as “Perfect Day” by Various Artists resists the challenge of *Boyzone to remain at No 1.

*Ronan and co do, of course, feature on “Perfect Day” as does M People’s Heather Small who opened the show thus top and tailing it nicely.

Watching the video back, I’m struck by how many of the contributing artists are no longer with us. Look at this list…

David Bowie
Stephen Gately (Boyzone)
Tammy Wynette
Shane MacGowan
Dr. John
Andrew Davis (conductor)
And, of course, Lou Reed himself

I suppose it’s to be expected that not every artist would still be alive 28 years later but still.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it ?
1	M People	Fantasy Island	No
2	Kylie Minogue	Did It Again	Negative
3	The Verve	Lucky Man	No but I had the Urban Hymns album
4	Todd Terry featuring Shannon	It’s Over Love	Not my bag at all
5	Paul Weller	Mermaids	Nope
6	Gala	Let A Boy Cry	Nah
7	Boyzone	Baby Can I Hold You	I did not
8	Various Artists	Perfect Day	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/m002c5fq/top-of-the-pops-05121997?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 21 MAR 1997

Posted on February 12 by 80stastic

How was your life going in March 1997 (assuming you’re old enough to have any memories of 28 years ago)? If you were Tony Blair, you’d just received an endorsement as the next leader of the country by none other than traditional Tory supporters The Sun. Surely sitting Prime Minister John Major must have known the game was up then. If you were me (and I was), then you were stressed out at work and planning a trip to China. Those two things weren’t related – I was stressed at work as the manager of the Our Price where I worked had left a few weeks before and I was effectively acting manager by default whilst the recruitment process for a replacement was taking an age. I’d reluctantly agreed to put my hat in the ring at the behest of my colleagues (better the devil you know and all that) and we were about to introduce a new electronic stock control system which required a lot of preparation work. On top of that we had a new member of staff who was ruffling a few feathers in the team and apparently, according to my diary, one day a member of the public got stabbed in the shopping precinct where the store was located and I had to ring an ambulance, the police and try and patch him up. I have no recall of this at all so I’m either a complete fantasist or I’ve blocked out the memory of it.

That wasn’t the end of my stress though. One Saturday after work, a few of us went for a drink at a local pub and I took the pack of weekly memos with me as I planned to read them on the Sunday at home as I hadn’t had time at work. The memos were delivered to every store in a blue plastic pouch (‘the blue bag’) containing all the relevant information we needed for the next week including stock prices, charts and promotion details. As I sat down in the pub, I put them on the ledge above a radiator behind me so that they were in view of everyone and wouldn’t be forgotten at the end of the evening. What I hadn’t accounted for was the fact that there was a gap behind the radiator and between the seating and the blue bag slipped down the gap seamlessly once I let go of it. Disaster! Try as we might, we couldn’t retrieve it (and we spent the whole evening trying!) despite fashioning various apparatus using string and hooks (maybe even a coat hanger at one point) to pick it up. Either we gave up or the pub closed and I left memo less. I had to send someone to the Manchester store on Monday morning to photocopy theirs (this was the pre-digital age). As far as I knew, the memos would stay there until the pub had a refit, a time capsule from 1997. Almost 20 years later and long after I’d left Our Price, I went back to the pub and it had indeed had a refit so the memos would have been found (and binned) presumably. I resisted the temptation to ask the bar staff if they could check their lost and found for them!

As for China, my old school friend and best man at my wedding Rob was living and studying in Beijing so I’d arranged with his brother to fly out to visit him in the May. I had to get visas and inoculations and all that sort of thing sorted so there was a lot going on around this time. I’m sure I’ll get onto what went down in China in the next few posts.

Anyway, back to the month of March and if you were Kylie Minogue at that time, then you were hosting this edition of TOTP and had invested in a rather unflattering new, messy, plum coloured hairstyle. I think this was her ‘indie Kylie’ phase when she would collaborate with the likes of James Dean Bradfield of the Manics (he co-wrote her “Some Kind Of Bliss” single of this year) so I’m guessing that a new phase meant a new image. Definitely not having a style remodel was opening act Lisa Stansfield who was still very much attached to her brand of smooth R&B soul/dance that she’d made her name on. By 1997, she was onto her fourth solo album but after releasing the previous three in a four year period, it had been four years since album number three “So Natural”. Lisa had carved out a nice little sideline for herself though in recording songs for soundtrack albums – her contributions to The Bodyguard and Indecent Proposal had given her two Top 10 hits. In addition to that, she’d been back there earlier this year when remix team the Dirty Rotten Scoundrels looked to Lisa’s back catalogue to come up with “People Hold On (The Bootleg Mixes)”. However, taking a holistic approach to Lisa’s career up to this point, it’s surprisingly yet undeniably a case of diminishing returns as sales of her albums from “Affection” onwards decreased. Of course, that’s a very statistical approach – Lisa’s albums were still selling well but the UK figures were as follows:

Affection – 900,000 (triple platinum)
Real Love – 600,000 (double platinum)
So Natural – 300,000 (platinum)
Lisa Stansfield – 100,000 (gold)

It’s a definite downwards trend but I guess it’s all relative. Anyway, “The Real Thing” was the lead single from that last eponymous album and, for me, was typical Lisa fare which was fair enough but didn’t show much musical progression. On the other hand, if it ain’t broke and all that. It would return Stansfield to the Top 10 with a song that wasn’t from a film for the first time since 1991’s “Change” though she did feature on the “Five Live EP” alongside Queen and George Michael that would make No 1 off the back of the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert. However, “The Real Thing” would also be the last time a single of hers would be so high in the charts. I sometimes wonder if Lisa gets the credit she deserves though. You rarely hear her referred to when it comes to naming the UK’s most renowned female singers do you?

Ooh now, might this be a bit awkward? Kylie has to introduce one of her exes as INXS are the second artist on tonight. Ah, it was probably alright – Kylie and Michael Hutchence stopped seeing each other in 1991 so I’m guessing both parties might have moved on. Hutchence certainly had – by 1997 he was two years into a relationship with Paula Yates and they had had a daughter together. However, the relationship was intense and played out under a media spotlight and against a bitter custody battle with Yates’s ex-husband Bob Geldof over the three daughters they had together. Within eight months of this TOTP appearance, Hutchence would be dead, having committed suicide in a Sydney hotel room aged just 37. I remember thinking on hearing the news that “Suicide Blonde” would surely never be played on the radio ever again though it subsequently was resurrected after an appropriate amount of time had passed. One song that was cut in the wake of the news was “So Long Suicide” from the Duran Duran set of the gig they played on the night of Hutchence’s death. The band had already recorded a track about their friend called “Michael, You’ve Got A Lot To Answer For” that featured on their “Medazzaland” album that was released a month before his death.

As for INXS, they would carry on intermittently for the next 15 years with various guest singers including Terence Trent D’Arby at one point and then a permanent vocalist in J.D. Fortune who was recruited via reality television show Rock Star: INXS. Returning to this TOTP performance, I think this would have been their last time on the show in person not only because of Hutchence’s subsequent death but also because “Elegantly Wasted” was their final UK Top 40 hit. The title track of their tenth studio album, it sounded much like everything else they’d ever recorded since the “Kick” album. The winning formula of that record had helped the band become global success and saw Hutchence depicted as a rock god. Fast forward a decade and it was a sound that was starting to feel, if not worn out, then definitely not fresh. As with Lisa Stansfield earlier, it had been a case of diminishing returns for sales of INXS albums since the high point of “Kick” and “Elegantly Wasted” wasn’t about to reverse that trend. It was a sad end to the band’s glory days which had coincided with my time as a student at Sunderland Poly and my early years of marriage and living in Manchester. Thanks for the memories. RIP Michael.

Sometimes I look down the running order for these TOTP repeats and think to myself “what on earth do I have to say about this one?” – “Love Guaranteed” by Damage undoubtedly falls into that category. Needless to say I don’t remember it at all and listening to it in the present day, it made as much impression on me as a feather on a set of scales. It was just more of that one-paced, pedestrian R&B /pop hybrid that was popular back then. What’s that? What about Christopher Lee in the video? What about him? Plot wise, I think he’s meant to be in control of some sort of time portal but he looks as bored with the whole thing as I feel about it. Other than that, he does bugger all except stand around and stare down the lens of the camera. What? It’s the way that he stares though? Ah well, you’ve got me there.

As Kylie says in her intro to the next artist, the Aussies had taken over this particular episode of TOTP what with INXS, Kylie herself of course and now Gina G. Yes, lest we forget, the UK’s 1996 Eurovision entrant was actually Australian*. Despite trailing in eight place on the big night, “Ooh Aah…Just A Little Bit” had gone on to become a No 1 single. More surprising than that though was that Gina managed to sustain a pop career for another year or so and rack up four more hits. “Fresh” was the third of those and also the title track from her debut album. I don’t remember the song at all (for the record it was another ridiculously catchy, disco inflected Eurodance number) but I do recall the album – not for its music but for its dreadful cover art. It looked so amateurish and like it had been designed on the back of a beer mat down the pub. Gina is covered in chocolate icing (hmm…) holding a microphone attached to a stand with the microphone plugged into a socket on a wall. The room it’s set in is all in purple for some reason and Gina’s name and the album title look like they’ve been chucked on randomly at an angle rather than positioned with any resemblance of judgement. Then there’s Gina’s hair which looks like Crystal Tipps from 70s cartoon Crystal Tipps And Alistair. Is that some sort of air blower in the foreground (that might explain Gina’s hair) or is it an amp? You can’t tell because the whole thing has some sort of grainy tint to it that makes it look out of focus. The whole thing is an ugly mess. It was shot by renowned and award winning photographer David LaChapelle whose style has been described as “hyper-real and slyly subversive” – yeah, whatever. Regardless of what it looked like, the album continued her run of success by peaking at No 12 and achieving silver status in the UK in recognition of 60,000 sales.

*This theme was continued in 1997 as the UK entrant was Katrina And The Waves whose lead singer was Katrina Leskanich, an American but well be seeing them in these TOTP repeats soon enough.

Now, this is the song of the night so far for me. The Divine Comedy are probably not everybody’s cup of tea – was ‘wimp rock’ the term that some hack came up with to label them with? – but I’ve always quite liked them. After becoming genuine pop stars with chart hits the previous year, the band didn’t rest on their laurels and released their fifth album “A Short Album About Love” just nine months after their last “Casanova”. Despite containing three hit singles, it hadn’t sold that well so a change of tack was required. Rather than a complete change of sound, a different approach was deemed necessary and that was to record their next album at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire with an orchestra (but no audience). The plan worked in that the album made No 13 in the charts though I think I’m right in saying it was sold at a reduced price on account of only consisting of seven tracks so that may have helped its sales. It also produced another hit single in “Everybody Knows (Except You)” which was another ballad (of sorts) following on from previous hit “Frog Princess” though it was a much more…what’s the word?…agile?…unconventional?…love song but tuneful as hell. As for the performance, there was a lot of talk online about main man Neil Hannon’s cheek bones and beard. They are quite impressive though never really having had cheekbones or been able to grow a beard properly myself, I’m no expert.

By 1997, Wet Wet Wet had been having hits for a whole decade and to commemorate that anniversary, they released an album called “10”. Ironically, they wouldn’t release an album at all in the next ten years after their band splintered due to disputes over royalty payments and Marti Pellow’s hiatus to address his drugs and alcohol addictions. For the moment though, it seemed like business as usual as the band continued to churn out the hits. The phrase ‘business as usual’ could not only be applied to the band’s chart consistency but also to their sound. Lead single “If I Never See You Again” was yet more of their sophisti-pop, blue eyed soul style that they had honed over the years. I’d enjoyed their early hits but ten years in and – a bit like INXS earlier – it had all become a bit stale and predictable. Proving my point, the band’s final hit of the 90s would be with the most predictable cover version they could have chosen, the most covered song in history – “Yesterday” by The Beatles. With that and the whole “Love Is All Around” extended episode, “If I Never See You Again” might well have been the words on the lips of many a disgruntled music fan in 1997.

What’s that? Do I fancy a quick win? What do you mean? “Isn’t It A Wonder” by Boyzone has been on TOTP before on the 8 November 1996 show when it was premiered as an album track from their “A Different Beat” album? So I could just add a link to my review of that episode and I wouldn’t have to listen to/think about/ comment on it a second time? Right then…

TOTP 08 NOV 1996

The Spice Girls are holding at No 1 with the double A-side single “Mama / Who Do You Think You Are” off the back of Comic Relief day that happened the previous week. This time we get a performance of “Mama” and the girls have got some kids on stage with them to make the song even more sickly than it already was. I wonder who the kids were? Competition winners? They’ll be in their mid-30s now – you feel old now don’t you? I’m not sure that Mel B’s outfit was appropriate with her sitting next to that young lad. Still, it’ll have given him a good story to tell for the rest of his life.

The play out video is…wait…what? “Don’t Speak” by No Doubt?! But…but…they weren’t No 1 anymore and were at No 4 in the charts this week. They’d already been on three weeks in the trot whilst they’d topped the charts and yet they were back on again? Why? Well, this was all to do with the new appearance rules that had been brought in following the departure of Ric Blaxill as executive producer when songs no longer had to be new entries nor climbing the charts to be given a slot on the show. If you were going down the Top 40 you might yet get the call to appear one more time. Kylie says that “Don’t Speak” was the biggest selling single of the year to this point in an attempt to legitimise its video being given another showing but it seems a bit of a hollow reason to me. If this was the show’s new direction, I wasn’t sure about where we were heading.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Lisa Stansfield	The Real Thing	Negative
2	INXS	Elegantly Wasted	Nah
3	Damage	Love Guaranteed	As if
4	Gina G	Fresh	Nope
5	The Divine Comedy	Everybody Knows (Except You)	No but I had their Best Of with it on
6	Wet Wet Wet	If I Never See You Again	No
7	Boyzone	Isn’t It A Wonder	Never
8	Spice Girls	Mama / Who Do You Think You Are	I did not
9	No Doubt	Don’t Speak	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/m0027pnn/top-of-the-pops-21031997?seriesId=unsliced

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