Bryan Adams | TOTP Rewind – the 90s

TOTP 22 AUG 1991

Posted on September 29, 2021 by 80stastic

Welcome back to TOTP Rewind where I’m pretty sure we are about to witness the very last time that Bruno Brookes hosted the show. Yes, that annoying little git that seems have been hanging around forever is about to be deprived of one of his regular gigs and it’s come not a moment too soon as far as I’m concerned. I wonder if he knew this would be his last appearance at the time? Obviously it wasn’t just Bruno who was being ousted though. The great TOTP ‘Year Zero” cull that happened in October 1991 would take out all of those Radio 1 DJs that had been inviting themselves into our sitting rooms every Thursday for years in one fell swoop. We will see valedictory appearances by Mark Goodier, Jakki Brambles, Simon Mayo, Nicky Campbell and Gary Davies in the weeks to come. I wasn’t particularly a fan of any of them but Brookes was such an irritating little runt (yes that’s ‘runt’ although it could easily have been another word ending in ‘-unt’) that I think it’s his removal that pleases me the most. Despite his TOTP dismissal, he still had his Radio 1 post that he had been in since 1984 and somehow he would survive for another four years there before new Head of Radio 1 Production Trevor Dann axed him with the infamous words “…Why is Bruno on? You know, he seems to have a charmed life, because if the view was ‘we must get rid of the dinosaurs’, you know we’ve got this behemoth striding the airwaves of dawn”. Anyway, lets see if Brookes makes a decent fist of his last show or if he makes a few howlers like always…

He starts off with zero controversy (even his usually elaborate wardrobe has been toned down) as he introduces someone else making their final TOTP appearance on the show in Midge Ure. I was listening to some Ultravox on Spotify earlier and some of their Ure-period stuff was pretty good. I’m thinking about the likes of “All Stood Still”, “Hymn” and “Dancing With Tears In My Eyes” rather than the pompous “Vienna” (which I never liked that much) and the frankly ridiculous “We Came To Dance”. A lot of Midge’s solo stuff paled in comparison to his Ultravox high points. Some of it was OK but even his most successful stuff like surprise 1985 No 1 “If I Was” I found laborious and uninspiring. “Cold Cold Heart” was hardly electrifying and could be filed under the category of ‘meh’.

Although he’s got rid of his horrid ponytail, Midge still has a cracking pair of sideburns on display here. Pretty bold stuff as I don’t remember them being an essential male fashion accessory back then. Of course, these days Midge is actually bald rather than bold. The rather ham fisted attempt to show off the song’s Celtic credentials at the end via the use of three tympanum drums looks a bit daft to me. “Cold Cold Heart” peaked at No 17.

Oh, here we go…what’s Bruno on about now? There are two records at No 21 in the chart run down? What?! For once, Brookes hasn’t made a right ricket as there were two No 21 records that week. Apparently Oceanic and Sophie Lawrence had pulled in the same amount of sales and so, after the furore the previous year surrounding the Dee-Lite / Steve Miller Band debate about who should have been No 1 after sharing the exact number of sales, Gallup had made the policy not to try and separate artists in these circumstances but would instead grant them equal chart billing.

The soundtrack to this unusual countdown was supplied by The Prodigy who were having a huge hit with their debut single “Charly”. Infamously sampling the 1970s BBC Public Information Film Charley Says, I for one did not see them becoming such huge players in the dance scene of the 90s and beyond off the back of it. That mining of vintage Childrens TV programs as source material for dance tracks would become a thing of sorts . Following in the steps of “Charly” came amongst others Smart E’s “Sesame’s Treet”, Urban Hype’s “A Trip to Trumpton” and “Roobarb & Custard” by ShaFt. This short-lived genre even had a name which I was unaware of until now which was ‘Toytown Techno’.

I would come to appreciate The Prodigy much more as the decade wore on and their Glastonbury performance of 1997 remains spectacular. For now though, I think I almost dismissed “Charly” as a novelty. Maybe I just didn’t like to be reminded of those 70s public informations films, of which none were more scary than this one:

“Rave on!” exclaims Bruno at the end of the Prodigy video sounding like he was auditioning for a part in Peter Kay’s Phoenix Nights. The turd. Right, here’s somebody new even if the song had been out before. Nothing to do with Elkie Brooks (that was “Sunshine After The Rain”), this little pop nugget was called “Sunshine On A Rainy Day” and was written by legendary producer Youth for his then girlfriend Zoë but it failed to find an audience when originally released in 1990 when it peaked at No 53. However a remix by Mark “Spike” Stent earned it a second shot at the charts and this time it powered all the way to a high of No 4. Youth seemed to be preoccupied with writing songs about rain back then as he also co-wrote Blue Pearl’s 1990 hit “Naked In The Rain”.

Zoë’s hit song though captured something of the essence of 1991 it seemed to me. Was it the mix of hypnotic dance beats with a folky song structure or just that uplifting, sing-a-long chorus pre-fixed with a shout of ‘Yay!’ from Zoë that so beguiled? Or was it just that Zoë herself cut quite the pop star figure in this performance? I seem to remember a few male work colleagues being quite taken with her.

Sadly for Zoë, it never got any bigger or better than this for her as a singer. One minor Top 40 hit followed called “Lightning” but her album “Scarlet Red And Blue” disappointed commercially. She returned with a new rock sound in 1996 with a song called “Hammer” which seemed to be trying to ride on the Alanis Morissette bandwagon but nobody noticed nor cared. After its failure, she left the music business to become a sculptor and potter although she has since recorded material under the alias Hephzibah Broom.

So The Prodigy creating Toytown Techno proved to be a case of “What Can You Do For Me” and passed me by completely but an act sampling proper pop records and making them into dance anthems proved to be “Something Good” I could get behind. OK, enough for the puns but I have always had a soft spot for Utah Saints. Their ambition according to themselves was to get rock ‘n’ roll into rave and they achieved this by sampling Eurythmics’ “There Must Be An Angel (Playing With My Heart)” and Gwen Guthrie’s “Ain’t Nothin’ Goin’ On But The Rent” to outstanding effect.

Originating from the Leeds club scene where they hosted their own nights, their name was nothing to do with toothy 70s boy band The Osmonds who hailed from Ogden, Utah. No, here’s @TOTPFacts with the real story behind that name:

Utah Saints' name was inspired by the Coen Brothers film Raising Arizona. Jez Willis: "Near the end of it he mentions Utah and we just thought it was quite a nice word. We put the Saints bit on to make it sound like a football team or something like that." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) September 24, 2021

So now you know. Anyway, they hit big immediately with their debut single “What Can You Do For Me” making the Top 10. Now I’ve read both Dave Stewart’s autobiography and a biography of Annie Lennox and I don’t remember anything in either about there being a dispute between Annie and Dave about allowing Utah Saints to use a sample of “There Must Be An Angel (Playing With My Heart)” as Bruno Brookes suggests there is. “Annie Lennox wanted it banned but Dave Stewart thinks it’s a smash. What do you think?” he rambles in his intro. I can’t find any mention of it online either. In fact the only Utah Saints / Annie Lennox reference I found was that they did a remix of one of her solo singles (“Little Bird”) in 1993 so she can’t have been that pissed off with them.

Another song that made it to No 10 in the charts was this one from Jason Donovan although Brookes can’t resist one final incorrect chart prediction when he says that it’s “no doubt a future No 1”. Maybe he was basing his forecast on the fact that Jase’s last single “Any Dream Will Do” had gone to No 1. That song’s success though was backed up by Donovan performing it live twice a day all week at the London Palladium in the lead role of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. A little naive I think from Bruno to think that chucking out an unimaginative cover of “Happy Together” by The Turtles would repeat the trick. Not that there’s anything wrong with the song – I love the original version – but Donovan’s take on it brought nothing new to the table at all. It just seemed a lazy choice of song and indeed it had been cynically shoe horned onto his recent Greatest Hits album presumably with the intention of releasing it as a single all along.

Even Donovan can’t really be arsed to sell the record too much in this performance. At one point he does a Paul McCartney ‘whacky tombs aloft’ gesture for some reason and then his panicked facial expression immediately afterwards gives away that he suddenly thought what did I did that for?! “Happy Together” was Jason’s final UK Top 10 hit.

It’s that song by Karyn White that was a Breaker last week next. It turns out that Karyn is quite the businesswoman. She started her own music label and entertainment company in 2011 called Karyn White Enterprise Inc and also runs a successful interior design and real estate business. Not content with that, she’s also tried her hand at acting and is still recording with her last release being in 2018. If only she had given video directing a shot as well – it may have livened up the video for “Romantic”. The ‘storyline’ for it as listed on the IMDB database is this:

The music video begins with Karyn White pulling up in a sports car. She sings as she wears pearl necklaces against a gray background. A group of dancers strike poses throughout.

Seruously?! Did somebody pitch that as an idea and got the gig?! “Romantic” peaked at No 23.

“Onto more rave” announces Bruno as we head into the No 21 hit (of which there are two of course this week) sound of Oceanic with “Insanity”. Now you know me, I could never be described as a dance head but after Utah Saints earlier, this is the second dance anthem of the show that I didn’t mind at all. I think it was that huge, euphoric chorus or maybe even the key change at the finale. There seemed to be much more of a traditional song structure to it than some of the other dance tracks of the time. Here’s David Harry of the band on that very subject courtesy of @TOTPFacts:

Oceanic were morally opposed to sampling other acts, and big on hooks. David Harry: "I think there are a lot of similarities between Nirvana and Oceanic. We're into the same dynamics as a way of keeping the listener's attention." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) September 24, 2021

"The best rock music, like Nirvana, is really simple. You can't miss their choruses. It's a chorus, no two ways about it, and it's usually set in a different key from the verse, which is played down to emphasise the chorus even more." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) September 24, 2021

OK, well the comparison between Oceanic and Nirvana slightly undermines the point but I think you get the gist.

What? You want to hear about my Oceanic story? Oh OK. Well, I was once at a freebie record company do (possibly the Ricky Ross album playback) whilst I was working for Our Price and I’d arrived at the venue before any of my colleagues. I’m not great at parties anyway so I found myself mooching around feeling lost. I spotted someone else who appeared to be experiencing the same thing so I decided maybe we could help each other out by striking up a conversation. The person who I started chatting to was *that lady from Oceanic! It turned out she was feeling exactly the same as me and was glad of someone to talk to. Eventually my colleagues and her friends turned up and our time together was over – cue lots of questions from my contingent about who I had been talking to and what did we say to each other. All I remember is that she was very nice and that I learned that her friends she was at the event with were in the middle of some legal action about the songwriting credits to Gina G’s hit “Ooh Aah… Just a Little Bit”.

“Insanity” peaked at No 3 and was the best selling dance single of the year and the ninth best selling overall outselling nine No 1 records in the process. Let’s hope whoever wrote it got their just royalties.

*I should give the lady her proper name which is Jorinde Williams although to be fair to me they did call their album “That Album By Oceanic”.

Martika is back! Yes, she of “Toy Soldiers” fame back in 1989 had returned and with a credible song. How so? Well “Love… Thy Will Be Done” was written by Prince of course and much was made of that at the time I seem to remember. It didn’t strike me as an obvious collaboration I have to say but then if you think about it, he has worked with / written songs for loads of different people. There’s even a Prince family tree online which lists them all. Under the section People who recorded songs written or co-written by Prince you’ll find Martika along with Madonna, (Chaka, Chaka, Chaka) Chaka Khan, Sheena Easton, Sheila E, Paula Abdul, The Bangles, Celine Dion, Kenny Rogers and of course Sinead O’Connor. If he could write songs for Celine Dion then Martika wasn’t that big of a stretch! As for the song, I quite liked it – a much more mature sound (that’s the word all the music press used anyway). Bizarrely its drums and bass backing do not vary at all throughout the song in terms of bpm yet somehow it just works.

“Love… Thy Will Be Done” was from Martika’s second album “Martika’s Kitchen” which performed well in Europe but poorly in her native US. The title track would be issued as a single and was a return to the more poppier fare that I would have expected from her.

“Love… Thy Will Be Done” peaked at No 9 on the UK Top 40.

Yet another dance tune as we start the Breakers section with “Lift” / “Open Your Mind” by 808 State. Like previous singles “Cubik” / “Olympic” and “In Yer Face”, this was taken from the band’s third album “ex:el” but unlike those tracks which both went Top 10, the spreadsheet formulas for chart success didn’t work for “Lift” / “Open Your Mind” and it stalled at No 38. I didn’t mind this but to my untrained ear were they all starting to sound a bit the same? Maybe it didn’t matter if you were on the dance floor with chemical substances coursing through you which I wasn’t at this time.

What?! Tin Machine?! F*****g Tin Machine are on TOTP?! In my mind, Bowie’s much maligned super group project had disappeared after their first album in 1989 but having checked out their discography on Wikipedia, I do remember the cover of the second album (“Tin Machine II”) from working in Our Price. I don’t recall this track (“You Belong In Rock n’ Roll”) though. Apparently it was released in a blaze of publicity (it clearly had no effect on me) but it struggled to a chart high of just No 33. Even that paltry chart placing for the musical legend that Bowie is/was turned out to be Tin Machine’s biggest hit. The band had to change labels from EMI to Victory Music to even get that second album released as the lack of hit singles on their debut album had freaked EMI out and they got cold feet about the whole project.

Apparently there’s a studio performance in the next TOTP repeat that involves a chocolate eclair but I’ll keep my powder dry on that one until next time….

Following “The Joker” by the Steve Miller Band and “Should I Stay or Should I Go” by The Clash into our charts comes the next vintage track to be reactivated for a Levi’s TV advert. “20th Century Boy” was originally a No 3 hit for T. Rex in 1973 but it was chosen to front the latest Lev’s ad campaign in 1991 and re-issued curiously as being by Marc Bolan and T.Rex.

The advert itself features a very young Brand Pitt and the single’s success in 1991 (it peaked at No 13) , just like The Clash, sparked the release of a T.Rex Best Of album called “The Ultimate Collection ” which, backed by a TV Ad campaign, went to No 4 in the album charts.

It’s a great song and as much as I had a weakness for them, is sooo much better than – “21st Century Boy” by Sigue Sigue Sputnik.

So it’s been a “healthy” chart Brookes advises us before we get to the No 1. Not sure what standards he’s applying to the nations’s pop choices there but it is still suffering from an extreme case of ‘Adamsitis’ as “(EverythingI Do) I Do It For You” by Bryan Adams is still at the summit of the Top 40 for the seventh week running. OK, what can I dredge up about this song that hasn’t already been said so far. My own personal opinion of it? Sure…

Question: Is it a terrible song?

Me: No, but it has a deservedly terrible reputation. No song should be No 1 for 16 weeks.

Question: Ah, so you like it then?

Me: It’s not up there with his best material but I didn’t mind it on first hearing. After the 10th, 20th, 100th time, it lost its appeal certainly.

Question: Did you buy it?

Me: No. I never even considered it. It was so inescapable that even if I’d really liked it, there would have been no point – you heard it all the time anyway.

The play out video is “Mind” by The Farm. It seemed as though this lot’s time in the sun was coming to an end by this point. After the glory of two consecutive Top 10 singles in 1990, impetus had been lost and subsequent singles “Sinful! (Scary Jiggin’ with Doctor Love)” with Pete Wylie and “Don’t Let Me Down” failed to crack the Top 20.

Still, not to worry, they had lots of new tunes up their sleeve and “Mind” was the first of those being the lead single from second album “Love See No Colour”. Unfortunately that also failed the Top 20 test and also the Top 30 one as well when it stalled at No 31. In truth, it’s not a great song, lacking the groove of ..erm…”Groovy Train” and the hook of “All Together Now”‘s rousing chorus. It also had some seriously terrible lyrics:

Remember all the good times that we had
Remember those days they were never sad
All our hopes and all our dreams
All our crazy mixed up schemes

I’d have been embarrassed by those in 5th form.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Midge Ure	Cold Cold Heart	Mouldy old fart more like – no
2	The Prodigy	Charly	No
3	Zoë	Sunshine On A Rainy Day	Liked it, didn’t buy it
4	Utah Saints	What Can You Do For Me	See 3 above
5	Jason Donovan	Happy Together	Hell no
6	Karyn White	Romantic	Nah
7	Oceanic	Insanity	No but I didn’t tell Jorinde that
8	Martika	Love… Thy Will Be Done	Nope
9	808 State	Lift / “Open Your Mind	Guess what? No
10	Tin Machine	You Belong In Rock n’ Roll	This belonged in the bin – no
11	Marc Bolan and T.Rex	20th Century Boy	Not the re-release but I have it on a Best Of CD
12	Bryan Adams	(EverythingI Do) I Do It For You	I think we’ve already established the answer to that question
13	The Farm	Mind	Negative

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/m000zwqz/top-of-the-pops-22081991

TOTP 15 AUG 1991

Posted on September 26, 2021 by 80stastic

It’s mid August 1991 and the nation is still in the grip of Robin Hood fever with the Kevin Costner film having been out at the cinemas for around a month and doing great business whilst the theme song from the soundtrack by Bryan Adams is not even half way through its historic run at the top of the charts. Now obviously Costner’s performance in Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves was rightly put in the shade by the over the top portrayal of The Sheriff Of Nottingham by Alan Rickman but for my money, Rickman produced an infinitely better turn in another film that came out the day after this TOTP aired. It received critical acclaim but made peanuts at the box office compared to Robin Hood. Long before Savage Garden had a hit with a song called Truly Madly Deeply, it was also the title of a film starring Rickman and Juliet Stevenson written and directed by Anthony Minghella and it was kind of like a British Ghost but understated and without the Hollywood sheen and was so much better for it. It remains my favourite Alan Rickman movie. Despite Rickman’s character being a cellist and there being a motif of music running throughout the film, there was no chart-chomping hit single from its soundtrack thank God as that would have really spoilt the whole thing.

Back to TOTP though and we start this particular show with a band who would definitely have benefited from a huge hit single. Level 42 hadn’t been seen once yet in the new decade and had last released an album back in 1988 but they were back with a new single and album both entitled “Guaranteed”. Come 1991 though, they looked and sounded like a complete anachronism. The single had all the composite Level 42 elements with Mark King’s driving slap bass to the fore and Mike Lindup’s falsetto vocals still there in the background and centre stage in the bridge section but where was the tune? The whole thing just sort of meandered along for a while before giving up and disappearing up its own arsehole.

Although it was the second highest entry in the Top 40 that week as host Gary Davies advises, it never got beyond that number despite this TOTP appearance. The album did achieve a high of No 3 but its sales were nowhere nears those of previous albums like “World Machine”: and “Running In The Family”. I certainly can’t remember selling any in the Our Price store I was working in. Their imperial phase of the mid 80s was long gone and the band would split in 1994 before reforming in the new millennium.

Oh come on now! Color Me Badd again! I’m plain out of anything to say about this bunch of chancers. I mean just look at them. How did anybody fall for this crud?! Watching this video for “All 4 Love” back, they kind of remind me of Pinky and Perky the singing puppet pigs with their high pitched squealing voices and jerky dance moves.

I think Color Me Badd’s legacy (if it can be described as such) is summed up by the following: if you google their name, in the questions that appear in the People Also Ask section after the Wikipedia entry, the second one down is ‘Was Kenny G in Color Me Badd?’.

Now there was some unexpected Twitter love for this next act when the TOTP repeat was broadcast. Sophie Lawrence was never going to be the British Kylie but her version of Donna Summer’s “Love’s Unkind” seems to be much more fondly remembered than I had bargained for. It was produced by one Pete Hammond who had left the Stock, Aitken and Waterman team earlier that year and although it is an out and out sugary pop production, I think I prefer it to what SAW did to the actual Donna Summer when she teamed up with them in 1989 for hit singles like “This Time I Know It’s for Real” and “I Don’t Wanna Get Hurt”.

Of course, Sophie wasn’t the first EastEnders star to infiltrate the pop charts. Back in the mid 80s there seemed to be an Albert Square resident featured in the Top 40 countdown every week. So how does Sophie compare to those who went before and indeed after her…

Actor	Character	Single	Year	Chart peak	Was it any cop?
Anita Dobson	Angie Watts	Anyone Can Fall In Love	1986	No 4	Indescribably bad track set to Eastenders theme tune
Nick Berry	Wicksy	Every Loser Wins	1986	No 1	Painful piano weepy
Letitia Dean and Paul Medford	Sharon Watts and Kelvin Carpenter	Something Outa Nothing	1986	No 12	Clunky, mechanical pop. Dreadful
Tom Watt	Lofty	Subterranean Homesick Blues	1986	Did not chart	Astonishingly bad Dylan cover
Peter Dean	Pete Beale	Can’t Get a Ticket (For the World Cup)	1986	Did not chart	World Cup tie in “song” that couldn’t get any sales for obvious reasons
Sophie Lawrence	Diane Butcher	Love’s Unkind	1991	No 21	Passable Donna Summer cover
Michelle Gayle*	Hattie Tavernier	Sweetness	1994	No 4	Credible and catchy pop
Sean Maguire*	Aidan Brosnan	Good Day	1996	No 12	Breezy but nasty cliche of a song
Martine McCutcheon*	Tiffany Mitchell	Perfect Moment	1999	No 1	Surprisingly classy sounding big ballad
Sid Owen	Ricky Butcher	Good Thing Going	2000	No 14	Sugar Minott cover designed to make him the next Peter Andre. The mind boggles

* Biggest of a number of hits

I’d say that puts Sophie about mid table. Could have been worse although the competition wasn’t up too much.

Although lacking that star quality of the aforementioned Kylie, Sophie seems likeable enough in this performance although the suggestive eye wink that she has deemed necessary does jar a bit by the end. There was some also a Twitter reaction to Sophie’s backing singers and you have to say that the TOTP cameraman does seem to give them at least as much screen time as Sophie herself. Can’t imagine why.

It’s the video for “Winter In July” by Bomb The Bass up next. There seems to be a lot of love still out there for this period of the band’s career with comparisons between their album “Unknown Territory” (from which “Winter In July” came) and Massive Attack’s classic “Blue Lines” made by fans. Somehow though, whilst “Blue Lines” routinely appears in various best album polls of varying categories, the same can’t be said of “Unknown Territory” – odd really as both albums achieved similar chart peaks (No 13 for the former and No 19 the latter) whilst “Winter In July” was by far the biggest hit single of those released from both albums peaking inside the Top 10 at No 7. Apparently there’s a sample of “Ghosts” by Japan in the there somewhere but I’m not sure I can spot it.

Ah, this next track is peak summer of 1991. “Set Adrift On Memory Bliss” by PM Dawn was basically musical Radox washing over you and gently smoothing out the wrinkles in your aural senses. Now admittedly I couldn’t hear the Japan “Ghosts” sample in “Winter In July” but nobody could miss the sampling of Spandau Ballet’s “True” in this track. Much was made of its use at the time and I’m sure that many a customer asked for “that song that has Spandau Ballet in it” rather than “the PM Dawn single”. What a great choice of sample though – it totally makes the track.

As for PM Dawn, they’d had an earlier minor hit “A Watcher’s Point of View (Don’t ‘Cha Think)” but I don’t think that had registered with me so, as for many people, they were a pretty new name to me. There seemed to be something transcendental about “Set Adrift On Memory Bliss” though that made me take notice from its trippy sounding title to its lyrics that were at turns both indecipherable (“Rubber bands expand in a frustrating sigh”) and existential (“Reality used to be a friend of mine”).

The duo behind this wonderful sound were New Jersey brothers Attrell and Jarrett Cordes who went by the stage names of Prince Be and DJ Minutemix respectively. Looking like the missing members of De La Soul in their D.A.I.S.Y. Age phase, they scored a huge global hit with this single which went to No 1 in the US. It would peak at No 3 over here kept off the No 1 spot by Bryan Adams and even denied a No 2 berth by Right Said Fred. Where’s the justice eh?

A second screening for the video to ‘Monsters And Angels” by Voice Of The Beehive next (and the third outing in total for the song on TOTP). I watched Gary Davies very carefully during this link. Why? Well, at the end of the song he advises us that the band’s latest album had been released on the Monday of that week. Yeah and…? The title of it of course! The pun-licious “Honey Lingers”! I can’t be sure if Davies has grasped the cunnilingus connection by his expression but he does seem to take extra care to make sure he pronounces the album title correctly.

The Beehive sisters certainly weren’t shrinking violets when it came to naming things. Apart from “Honey Lingers” there was also an album called “Sex & Misery” and some live appearances in London in the Summer of ’91 that were entitled Orgy Under The Underworld. Blimey!

A staple of Summer compilation albums next as we get DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince with “Summertime”. Whilst it is an indisputable seasonal anthem, for me the song of that year’s Summer was “Set Adrift On Memory Bliss” that we saw earlier in the show. I mean, I thought “Summertime” was good and all that but PM Dawn’s track was shimmering perfection in comparison.

One of the landmarks that features in the video is the Philadelphia Museum of Art – yes, the building where Rocky runs up the steps at the end of his legendary training routine montage. That act of adrenaline pumping and lung bursting physical exertion being pretty much the opposite of what DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince were doing as they saunter past.

“Summertime” peaked at No 8.

This lot were inescapable in the Summer of ’91 and I’ve already mentioned them in this blog but here they are in the flesh (as it were) – it can only be Right Said Fred with “I’m Too Sexy”. Did any body else get a ZZ Top vibe off this lot back then. Not a musical vibe obviously but looks wise. Ok Ok, they clearly did not look like the Texas blues rockers but the make up of the band with two bald geezers (brothers Richard and Fred Fairbrass) who looked very similar and the guitarist (Rob Mazoli) who looked nothing like them. Compare that to ZZ Top and the very hirsute Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill out front with the clean shaven and most ironically named musician ever Frank Beard on the drum stool behind them. No? Nothing? Just me then.

The Freds were defiant about their image though. In a Smash Hits interview Richard Fairbrass stated:

“When we were on Top Of The Pops the other week, everyone else look really boring like Deacon Blue and their stupid student look. We’re different.”

Well, he was right about them being different. Nobody elsel looked like that on TOTP. I thought they might have shaved off their hair due to encroaching male pattern bald ness but it seems not. Fred Fairbrass went on to say in that Smash Hits interview that:

“When I had it in a ponytail it always looked a bit naff so I just thought ‘Shave it all off’.”

And his brother? Why did he shave off his hair? Here’s Richard Fairbrasss again:

“I did it because he did it.”

Oh.

Three Breakers this week starting with the lesser spotted Midge Ure who had not been seen on the show since…

*checks notes*

Wow! Since 26th June 1986! That’s a lifetime in pop music! Yes, very nearly five years on from his last appearance on the show when the video for his “Call Of The Wild” single played over the closing credits, Midge was back with a new hit called “Cold Cold Heart”.

What had he been up to in those missing five years? Well, he’d reconvened Ultravox in the latter part of 1986 to record the “U-Vox” album which I’d always assumed was a commercial failure but apparently went gold and achieved a chart high of No 9. However, all was not right in the band. Drummer Warren Cann had been sacked and the album recorded with Big Country’s drummer Mark Brzezicki. The singles taken from it were only minor hits – “Same Old Story” peaked at No 31. ‘All Fall Down” No 30 and “All In One Day” an unimaginable No 88 – and the band’s chemistry was no longer intact. Maybe Midge’s successful solo career in 1985 with the No 1 single ‘If I Was” had pissed them right off?!

Anyway, the band split in 1987 after the U-Vox tour and Midge returned to his solo career releasing “Answers To Nothing” the following year. Despite including a duet with Kate Bush and a couple of decent singles in the title track and “Dear God”, the album was only a minor commercial success. And then….not much. I’m guessing he was still touring but no new material was released over the next three years. Maybe he spent much of it in dispute with Chrysalis who had been Ultravox’s record label since the “Vienna” album in 1980 and also for all of Ure’s solo output up to this point? Come 1991, he was with new label Arista for his “Pure” album from which “Cold Cold Heart” was taken.

So what was his new material like? I wasn’t a fan of the single to be honest. It sounded like a twee folk infused nursery rhyme bulked up with some synths and a plodding bass. I really couldn’t see why this had propelled Midge back into the charts. He’d already experimented with a Celtic sound much more successfully to my ears on the aforementioned “All Fall Down” Ultravox single which had been recorded with The Chieftains. “Cold Cold Heart” sounded amateurish next to it. Still, it did provide Midge with one final trip to the UK Top 40 to where he has yet to return if you’re not counting the 1993 re-release of “Vienna” (which I’m not).

A US No 1 next from Karyn White in the form of “Romantic”. Although I remember her album “Ritual Of Love” from its cover, the actual music doesn’t ring any bells. It sounds very much like a Janet Jackson song to me and there’s good reason why as it was produced by regular Miss Jackson collaborators Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis.

Didn’t Karyn White have an earlier hit that sounded nothing like “Romantic”?

*checks YouTube*

Yes she had this slushy slowie called “Superwoman” in 1988…

Think I preferred that version of her rather than the Janet tribute act. “Romantic” couldn’t repeat its US success in the UK as it peaked at No 23.

REM‘s run of hit singles in 1991 continued with “Near Wild Heaven”. The third track to be lifted from their “Out Of Time” album, it consolidated on the success of previous singles “Losing My Religion” and “Shiny Happy People” when it peaked at No 27. It was the first single to be released by the band that had its lyrics both co-written and sung by bassist Mike Mills. He had written the lyrics to early single “(Don’t Go Back To) Rockville” and sung lead vocals on a cover version called – and get this for a nice little link with the previous Breaker – “Superman” but never both writing and vocals on the same track before. He does a pretty good job as well I think. I certainly don’t recall thinking it would have been better if sung by Michael Stipe. REM would garner a fourth and final UK Top 40 hit for the year when “Radio Song” was released in November.

We’re at week number six of sixteen of Bryan Adams being at the top of the charts so not even half way through his reign yet. It’s worth remembering that prior to this single, Adams hadn’t had a UK Top 40 hit since “It’s Only Love”, his 1985 duet with Tina Turner. Indeed, up to 1991, he’d only ever had four hits in this country at all and none had made the Top 10. So he hadn’t always been this interminable music figure that the Summer of 1991 made him into. I guess he certainly made up for lost time with “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”.

The play out video is “Time, Love And Tenderness” by Michael Bolton. There’s bit at the very start of the video which we don’t see on TOTP where Bollers is sat at his piano surrounded by members of a gospel choir rehearsing the song and he says “Ok , so we come right in with …”and then sings the words ‘Time, Love and Tenderness’. I say sing but he rasps them out. It sounds horrible.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Level 42	Guaranteed	I did not and that’s a guarantee
2	Color Me Badd	All 4 Love	Of course not
3	Sophie Lawrence	Love’s Unkind	Nope
4	Bomb The Bass	Winter In July	Negative
5	PM Dawn	Set Adrift On Memory Bliss	Yes I bought the cassette single but I don’t know where it is now
6	Voice Of The Beehive	Monsters And Angels	Liked it, didn’t buy it
7	DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince	Summertime	Nah
8	Right Said Fred	I’m Too Sexy	A definite no
9	Midge Ure	Cold Cold Heart	Negative
10	Karyn White	Romantic	Never happening
11	REM	Near Wild Heaven	It’s a no
12	Bryan Adams	“(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”	I didn’t
13	Michael Bolton	Time, Love And Tenderness	Hell 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/m000znwp/top-of-the-pops-15081991

TOTP 08 AUG 1991

Posted on September 19, 2021 by 80stastic

Whilst we are into Autumn in the real world in 2021, back in TOTP Rewind and 1991 it’s still the Summer and this particular show reinforces just how bizarre the charts were back then. We have a couple of metal bands (albeit one is singing an acoustic ballad), a pair of electronic dance acts, some acid jazz, some hip hop, some singer songwriter types, an indie rock band who would become Britpop legends, yet another soap star chancing their arm as a singer, a joke rapper, Michael bloody Bolton and with it being 1991, we also have Bryan Adams of course. Pick the bones out of that lot.

As for me, the worry of the Our Price store I was working in being sold and what that meant for my job security had been resolved by this point I think as the decision to sell the unit was reversed. Phew! My wife had set herself up working as a freelance dressmaker so the work she was doing meant that we had two incomes for the first time in a while. I’m guessing we still didn’t have too much spare cash for record buying though. I wonder if any of the songs on tonight’s show would have been on my shopping list?

Nicky Campbell is tonight’s host and he’s employing his usual ‘I’m cleverer than you with my flourishes of vocabulary’ schtick. The first act he introduces are De La Soul and their “A Roller Skating Jam Named “Saturday”” single.

This pretty much marked the end of the trio as chart entities in the UK with only one more minor Top 40 hit during the 90s and none in the last 20 years. The reach of their music has not been helped of course by being hamstrung in terms of digital platforms like Spotify due to the sample heavy nature of their early back catalogue. Said samples were only cleared for physical music distribution and the wording of the contracts negotiated didn’t take into account the impact of unforeseen technologies. Disputes with the owners of their catalogue Tommy Boy Records further complicated matters and negotiations to bring those early hip hop classics to online listeners are ongoing with new owners Reservoir Media. For now though, type De La Soul into Spotify and you won’t find anything earlier than 2004 on there.

I mentioned in a post that me and my wife still often quote the ‘Saturday, it’s a Saturday’ lyric to this day when the weekend rolls around but there’s another reason this song still reverberates which is the Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah reference which of course is in Disney’s Song Of The South film. For years I was convinced that the lyrics were ‘plenty of sunshine, plenty of rain’ when they are actually ‘plenty of sunshine coming my way’. Why I was under this impression I have no idea but I argued my corner for years with my wife in the pre-internet days. Not for the first time, she was right and I was completely and utterly wrong.

“A Roller Skating Jam Named “Saturday” peaked at No 22.

Campbell starts blathering about ‘funked up fairytales’ when introducing Extreme. I’m not quite sure what the point is that he’s trying to make. I think he just lost his way trying to say that their single “More Than Words” is a rather delicate ballad as opposed to their usual funk metal style but gets bogged down in his own nonsense. Bloody pseud.

As for Extreme themselves, they’re up to No 2 but are the latest in what will become a long line of acts to hit the Bryan Adams bottleneck and never get to No 1. Incidentally, that list includes 2 Unlimited, Right Said Fred, Heavy D And The Boyz and The Scorpions. Given that extremely low bar, I’d say Extreme perhaps had the most plausible case to take before the court of pop injustice although I’d have also been OK with “Let’s Talk About Sex” by Salt ‘N’ Pepa making it to the top which was the final No 2 single to be Adams’d.

Apparently Extreme’s management didn’t see “More Than Words” as a hit record and only released it as a single after guitarist Nuno Bettencourt badgered the label leading them to testing it in several markets and territories to check out audience reaction. They’d wanted a more traditional sounding power ballad with crashing drums and kitchen sink production values. Bettencourt won out though AMA the rest is history with it making up for just missing out in the UK by going to No 1 in the US.

Campbell tells us how he’s all about ‘real’ music next referring to the next act as a songsmith in a techno-led age crafting songs like an ornament rather than a computer print out. He really was a pretentious, verbose wanker back then. So who could he have been waxing lyrical over? Why Beverley Craven of course who’s back in the charts with “Holding On”, her follow up to No 3 hit Promise Me”. Unfortunately for Beverley, she couldn’t turn her lyrics into reality as she failed to hold onto her previous success when the single peaked at No 32 despite the TOTP exposure.

Beverley wrote a song for her then baby daughter Mollie on her second album “Love Scenes” called…erm…”Mollie’s Song” and her daughter repaid her years later by appearing on ITV dating show Take Me Out causing her Mum to have to endure the embarrassment of performing on Take Me Out: The Gossip. Ungrateful kids eh?

If Extreme weren’t going to do this hard rock thing properly then stand aside as the real deal is here. “Enter Sandman” by Metallica is just huge whether you’re a devotee of that genre or just a music fan. Absolutely massive. I would certainly put myself in the latter category and my knowledge of Metallica at this point was limited at best. I knew they had released a few albums as we stocked them in the Our Price store I was working in but they were never played on the shop stereo. Not really seen as suitable playlist material for a mainstream record shop chain. I still held this view two years later when I was Assistant Manager at the Altrincham store as Xmas approached.

Whilst I was upstairs with the manager having a no doubt very important meeting planning something or other, the staff downstairs on the counter thought this was a perfect time to test my stress levels by playing some inappropriate music in the shop. After a couple of tracks had led me to ringing down to the counter and telling them to play something more shop friendly, they decided to really push my buttons by playing “Enter Sandman”. I was verging on apoplectic by this point but I could see the funny dude once I had calmed down.

“Enter Sandman” was the lead single from their self titled fifth album otherwise known as ‘The Black Album’ on account if it’s all black cover. Surely they must have taken inspiration from Spinal Tap’s “Smell The Glove”?

“Enter Sandman” peaked at No 5 on the UK chart.

The Shamen are back in the studio next to perform their hit “Move Any Mountain: Progen 91”. A retitled re-release of their 1990 “Pro>Gen” single, it was taken from their “En-Tact” album which had made a high of No 31 on the charts at the back end of the previous year but somehow, the success of “Move Any Mountain” didn’t trigger a renaissance period for the album and it struggled to a second peak of No 45 despite re-entering the charts for a seven week run.

I’m guessing it was the curse of the record label practice of temporarily withdrawing an album that had been out for a while before releasing it off the back of an unexpected hit single. That was happening all the time in 1991. The band needn’t have worried as the following year’s “Boss Drum” would go to No 3 and be certified platinum.

The second of those two singer songwriters on the show now as Amy Grant proves she was not a one hit wonder after all. “Every Heartbeat” was her follow up to No 2 hit “Baby Baby” and was also taken from her “Heart In Motion” album. It’s pretty twee stuff though I have to say, one of those airhead, superficial songs that would be on an album called ‘The Best Songs To Convince Yourself That Life Isn’t Shit After All Whilst You Do The Ironing…Ever!’. Or something.

Any would have one further UK hit single in 1995 when she covered Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” and took it to No20, five places higher than the peak of “Every Heartbeat”.

I’d completely forgotten that Blur had a second Top 40 hit in 1991. I’d been labouring under the misapprehension that there was a sizeable gap between “There’s No Other Way” and their “Modern Life Is Rubbish” sophomore album but here’s “Bang” to show that there was a second hit single from debut long player “Leisure” after all.

I must have not watched this TOTP as surely I would have remembered “Bang” as the one with the chicken placard. What the hell was that about?! Cue lots of comments about Damon Albarn waving his big cock about on Twitter. There were also lots of tweets about Graham Coxon’s Oxford That University t- shirt (he didn’t actually go there) but I was more impressed by drummer Fave Rowntree’s Teenage Fanclub t-shirt.

As for the song itself, it’s just a poor man’s “There’s No Other Way” isn’t it? Even the band themselves weren’t keen:. Here’s TOTPFacts with the story:

"Bang" was apparently bashed out in 15 minutes in response to Blur's label's demands for another hit. The band are not fans (it's not on their Best Of LP). "'Bang' was just shit", Damon Albarn later said. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) September 17, 2021

“Bang” peaked at No 24.

Some more wise ass word play next from Nicky Campbell as he introduces Young Disciples and their one and only hit “Apparently Nothin’”. This lot were essentially a springboard for the solo career of well connected soul singer Carleen Anderson (Bobby Byrd was her stepfather and James ‘The Godfather Of Soul’ Brown was her actual godfather).

Talking of being well connected, isn’t that Mick Talbot of The Style Council up there on keyboards? Yes it is but why? How? Well, their album was recorded at Solid Bond Studios (Paul ‘The Modfather’ Weller’s personal studio) and both he and Talbot featured on it. Simples.

The album was shortlisted for the inaugural Mercury Music Prize but lost out to Primal Scream’s “Screamadelica”. Being in such exalted company makes you wonder why the band weren’t bigger than they were or at least why they didn’t last longer. Maybe it really was all about Carleen Anderson as the band split after she left in 1992.

“Apparently Nothin’” peaked at No 13.

I hate the way they’ve started putting the Breakers just before the No 1 song. It keeps killing me into a false sense of security that I’m nearly done. Also nearly done (thank f**k) are Technotronic whose appearance here in the Breakers will be their last on the show possibly ever. I think the only other UK chart entries they had were remixes of “Pump Up The Jam” years down the line so with a fair wind at our backs we might just be about to steer a Technotronic free course through the rest of the decade.

For the record, this one was called simply “Work” and featured someone just called Reggie. Who was Reggie? She’s the singer on this one I believe and also collaborated with “Last Night A DJ Saved My Life” hitmakers Indeep though to be honest she might as well have been Reggie Perrins for all I care. Just as the founder of Grot walked off into the sea never to be seen again (sort of), Technotronic are finally doing the decent thing and disappearing.

Ah shit. It’s Michael Bolton again, this time with the title track from his “Time Love And Tenderness” album which would produce five hit singles for him in this country! My Michael Bolton story has been well documented in previous posts so I don’t propose to wheel it out again here. Despite his sanitised image as a shaggy dog haired singer of bland soft rock ballads, Bolton did mix it up a bit with some of his song titles. “Said I Loved You…But I Lied” is not your archetypal love song message but my favourite is “Can I Touch You…There?”. WTF?!

Now if we thought that the whole soap star to pop star thing that dominated the end fo the 80s would disappear come the new decade, we were wrong. In 1990 we had Neighbours and Home And Away Aussie actor Craig McLachlan chancing his arm with an attempt at being a serious musician and now here was the UK’s very own Sophie Lawrence giving it a whirl with a version of Donna Summer’s disco classic “Love’s Unkind”. Sophie, of course, played Diane Butcher in EastEnders from 1988 until 1991 (her last few appearances in the soap coincided with her attempt at pop stardom in fact).

I remember wondering at the time whether Sophie’s character was popular enough to be able to attract an audience of pop fans. I mean no offence but she was hardly Kylie Minogue / Charlene Robinson was she? I mean she wasn’t even the most well known of the Butcher family I would wager being outshone by her Dad Frank (played by Mike Read) and her dopey brother Ricky (Sid Owen). Maybe I wasn’t a big enough EastEnders fan to truly understand her draw. To be fair to her, she looks like a pop star in the video; like a cross between Olivia Newton John and Debbie Gibson. Sadly for Sophie, her pop career didn’t\’t extend beyond this one single and she returned to acting after her moment in the charts.

Bryan Adams is still No 1 with “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You” obviously. He hasn’t even got into his stride yet. I think by this point he was selling twice the number of copies of any other record in the Top 10. I recall a colleague called Pete in the Our Price I worked in struggling to keep up with demand. When asked by the manager if he had any more copies on order as we had sold out again, Pete turned to me and whispered “No, I thought I’d leave it” in his best sarcastic tone. I would encounter my own singles buying crisis a few years later when I found myself being in charge of orders in the week of the Blur v Oasis battle but that’s for a future post.

And so we come to the joke rapper. No not Honey G of the X factor. It can only be Vanilla Ice who is back in the charts with “Satisfaction“. This take on the Rolling Stones classic “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” was Ice’s fourth UK Top 40 hit. Fourth? Who’d have thought he’d had so many hits? Well, not the BBC who included him in their One Hit Wonders programme which aired on BBC4 just before this TOTP repeat. As if all the pro-government news reporting wasn’t enough, now the Beeb do this!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	De La Soul	A Roller Skating Jam Named “Saturday”	Nope
2	Extreme	More Than Words	I did not
3	Beverley Craven	Holding On	Nah
4	Metallica	Enter Sandman	No
5	The Shamen	Move Any Mountain: Progen 91	Liked it, didn’t buy it
6	Amy Grant	Every Heartbeat	Negative
7	Blur	Bang	Another no
8	Young Disciples	Apparently Nothin’	Yes it’s in the singles box but I think my wife actually made the purchase
9	Technotronic	Work	F**k off!
10	Michael Bolton	Time, Love And Tenderness	Never happening
11	Sophie Lawrence	Love’s Unkind	Ditto
12	Bryan Adams	(Everything I Do) I Do It For You	It’s a no
13	Vanilla Ice	Satisfaction	As if

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000znwm/top-of-the-pops-08081991

TOTP 01 AUG 1991

Posted on September 15, 2021 by 80stastic

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – I f******g love The Proms! I’m not a classical music buff or anything (though I have been once and actually rather enjoyed it) but the real reason for my appreciation of this peculiarly British and currently devisive institution is that they completely hijack the BBC4 TV schedule and ride roughshod over all the usual programming. The consequence of this is that last week the TOTP repeats didn’t happen at all meaning I get a week off from this blog! Except that I’m always behind so I still have this one to do before it all starts again in earnest meaning if I want to kick back for a few days before this Friday’s resumption, I need to get a shift on with it.

Just before I get into the music though, a little context. Wikipedia tells me that the day after this TOTP aired, a little trumpeted and even less remembered comedy show premiered on Channel 4 that me and my wife used to love. Anybody else remember Packet Of Three? It was a very early vehicle for Frank Skinner and Jenny Eclair and also featured Henry Normal who would go on to write for the Mrs Merton Show and set up Baby Cow Productions which would give us such celebrated comedies as Alan Partridge, The Mighty Boosh and Gavin And Stacey.

Packet Of Three was a mixture of sit com and stand up set in the fictional Crumpsall Palladium showcasing real life stand up comedians whilst behind the scenes the three main protagonists played characters who ran the theatre. Normal was the theatre owner, Skinner the stage manager and Eclair the kiosk attendant. The opening titles festered the three of them as Gerry Anderson style puppets and had a pretty funky sounding theme tune. The whole thing had the feel of The Muppet Show I guess and it certainly helped to fill out many a Friday night when we were skint and had no money for going out. Here’s an episode featuring a very young Steve Coogan…

Anyway, back to the music and we start with one of the most infamous songs of the whole decade. “I’m Too Sexy” would go on to become ingrained in the nation’s collective mind over the course of the Summer – one of the most insanely catchy yet annoying ear worms of all time I would suggest. Remarkably however, the people behind the song would somehow manage to forge a career off the back of it and are still managing to achieve media coverage to this day though not perhaps for the best of reasons. Right Said Fred were of course named after the novelty single by Bernard Cribbins in 1962 and I have to admit that I could only see “I’m Too Sexy” in the same vein – a novelty hit like all those other intensely annoying examples of the genre from charts gone by. Yet what the Freds did to make their hit more durable was that they made it danceable. Now I’m certainly not admitting to ever having strutted my stuff on the catwalk or otherwise to its beats but I can imagine it was a hit at office parties and family dos the length and breadth of the country.

Consolidating its musical credibility (two words I never thought I would have typed about Right Said Fred) is the group’s musicianship that I was not aware of until now. It transpires that Richard and Fred Fairbrass had proficient enough chops to have played with some of the biggest names in the business. They don’t get much bigger than David Bowie who Richard played with as a session bassist in the mid 80s on tracks like “Blue Jean” and “Loving The Alien” whilst Fred appeared as a guitarist in the Bob Dylan drama Hearts Of Fire. No really. Look, here’s @TOTPFacts with the pictorial evidence:

Fred Fairbrass, meanwhile, played guitar for Bob Dylan in the 1987 film Hearts Of Fire. Dylan gave him the leather jacket he wore in the movie. #TOTP pic.twitter.com/Ur2jAf1Jla
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) September 3, 2021

I know. Bloody Hell!

“I’m Too Sexy” was written as a piss take of the narcissistic behaviour of preening body builders at the gym that the Fairbrass brothers ran in the early 90s and was originally recorded as an indie rock song before being turned into a dance track at the behest of radio plugger Guy Holmes. The lyrics supplied as many if not more hooks as the tune itself with suggestive lines like ‘No way I’m disco dancing’, ‘I shake my little tush on the catwalk’ and of course ‘I’m too sexy for my cat, too sexy for my cat, poor pussy, poor pussy cat’ pressing the big red double entendre button. It would spend a record six weeks at No 2 behind Bryan Adams (the jury is out on whether that was a good or bad thing) but made it to No 1 in the US.

A substantial career was to follow for the band but nowadays Richard Fairbrass is most well known for being a prominent anti-vaxxer. Presumably he is too sexy for Pfizer.

Now I don’t think the word ‘substantial’ probably does justice to Will Smith’s career. A massive TV and film star (he’s been in over 40 movies) he also, of course, has a long and successful music history with multiple hit records on both sides of the Atlantic. It all started though with his collaboration with DJ Jazzy Jeff with Smith assuming the moniker of The Fresh Prince that would make his name in the TV series The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. I think that show was probably on UK TV screens at the time so I’m guessing Smith would already have been known on these shores in 1991. He had of course had a small hit in our charts back in 1986 with “Girls Ain’t Nothing But Trouble” but that seemed a million miles away from the cool vibes of “Summertime”. Even allowing for the obvious connection of its title, this track was just perfect for the Summer with its lilting beats drifting out from transistor radios.

The parent album “Homebase” didn’t make the necessary improvements and no further singles released from it were hits in the UK. However, the duo would return in 1993 with the No 1 single “Boom! Shake the Room” before Smith would release a plethora of hits under his own name throughout the rest of the decade racking up three No3s, three No2 s and another chart topper in “Men In Black”.

Voice Of The Beehive now with their “Monsters And Angels” single and wha a pleasant ditty it is too. There was much debate on Twitter after this repeat aired about Tracey Bryn’s guitar which appears to be the wrong way round. The answer to this strange behaviour though lies in the writing on it which the Twitterati’s consensus was that it was an autograph from Morrissey who is on the show later. I can understand Tracey wanting to show it off but why did he sign it on the back? Apparently the band were on tour following this TOTP appearance and Tracy mentioned the signed guitar at nearly every gig apparently. I have to admit that I missed this detail when I first watched this back as I was more struck by how Tracey had the look of Britney Spears. Is it just me or could she be Britney’s Aunt?

“Monsters And Angels” peaked at No 17.

Whilst a student during the late 80s, I’d developed quite the liking for Deacon Blue. Their debut album “Raintown” was an instant classic (in my opinion) and they became hugely successful pop stars on the back of follow up album “When The World Knows Your Name”. However, I’d begun to lose interest a bit by 1991 and, being employed by a Manchester record store (albeit a chain), I kept my liking of them down to a minimum when at work. However, I couldn’t deny that “Twist And Shout” was a great pop song, familiar yet nuanced, unconventional yet radio friendly, it just worked for me and also for the people who bought it in enough amounts to send it to No 10 in the charts.

As ever with any Deacon Blue performance, my eyes are drawn to Lorraine McKintosh and her energy and presence. And those eyes of course. Erm…anyway…err…the band would achieve a further seven Top 40 singles but never again returned to the Top 10.

If ever a band should have been a one hit wonder surely it was this next lot? Yes, unbelievable as it may seem, Color Me Badd had more than one hit and here they are with the other one “All 4 Love”. Given that there is an abrupt cut away from host Simon Mayo to this studio performance and we don’t actually see the band behind him at any stage, I’m willing to bet that this was recorded when they were in the TOTP studio in person for their No 1 “I Wanna Sex You Up”. Having checked out that clip on YouTube, although some of the band have changed their outfits for “All 4 Love”, I’m still of that opinion.

If “I Wanna Sex You Up” was all about New Jack Swing, then “All 4 Love” harked back to 60s soul and the performance the band gives here puts me in mind of some of the great groups of that era. There’s a reason for that. The song was pretty much a direct rip off of another song. Here’s @TOTPFacts once again:

"All For Love" has, er, similarities to "Patch My Heart", a 1966 track by '60s vocal group The Mad Lads – enough for its composers (one of whom was Isaac Hayes) to receive credit. https://t.co/glNmhvjuSy #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) September 3, 2021

The first time I saw that tweet I read it as The Macc Lads rather than The Mad Lads but that would have been a different type of song altogether!

“All 4 Love” would give the band a second US No 1 but it didn’t quite achieve that in the UK peaking at a still healthy (and totally undeserved) No 5.

Earlier in this year, my friend Robin had found himself marooned at a TOTP recording after mistakenly believing that Morrissey was going to be on the show. He wasn’t and instead found himself being forced by the studio floor team to clap along to the likes of Kenny Thomas instead. The show he should have been at was this one as Mozza is here and up next. After the video for “Pregnant For The Last Time” the other week, here he is in the flesh and if you look closely you can see his nipples through his sheer shirt!

The song has a rockabilly sound to it and that is backed up by the presence of a double bass player on stage with Morrissey. As with the guy on accordion witnessed earlier in the Deacon Blue performance, you didn’t get many of those on TOTP in the 90s.

Morrissey’s solo chart statistics were pretty predictable out turns out. Look at this tweet from Gareth Windibank:

This was one of only three of those 33 top 40 hits (after “Suedehead” and “Everyday Is Like Sunday”) to reach its chart peak in the second week rather than the first. #TOTP
— Gareth Windibank (@eightiespopkid) September 3, 2021

Very much a case of a loyal fanbase dutifully buying everything their hero released immediately but then the single falling down the charts as it failed to find a wider market methinks.

Of course, Morrissey’s stock is not that high these days thanks to some unpalatable views that he now holds. Very similar to Richard Fairbrass. I wonder who would win this particular fat-headed arse -off?

Despite being “a day out of date already” as Simon Mayo quips, Bomb The Bass is next with “Winter In July”. On vocals here is Loretta Heywood who also wrote the lyrics. Loretta is still recording material and she even laid down an acoustic version of this track on an album called “The Boy Across The Road” and I have to say I much prefer the sparser version…

After giving up making music, Tim Simenon relocated to Prague where he opened a bistro called Brixton Balls with a menu based around meatballs. I wonder if he was so into meatballs back in 1991? If so, I hope he didn’t let it slip to Morrissey in the BBC bar after this show.

“Winter In July” peaked at No 7.

Just when I was powering through this, they go and chuck in four Breakers in a two minute slot right at the death! Bastards! We start with Beverley Craven who, after the surprise success of “Promise Me” earlier in the year, looked like she could become a global superstar in the shape of perhaps Carly Simon or even Carole King. Her record label Epic went for a re-release of her first single “Holding On” as the follow up. Peaking at a very lowly No 95 at the start of 1991, it very much followed the “Promise Me” blueprint and I guess the strategy was to keep hold of the fan base that she had built so spectacularly. No point in putting out something from left field that would have confused and potentially lost her audience. It was a sensible move.

Somehow though, the single didn’t seem to take off in the same way that its predecessor had and it stalled at No 32. Maybe people had splashed out on the album instead which had been out for around two months by this point and spent every one of those weeks in the Top 10. A similar fate would await another single in October when “Woman To Woman” peaked at No 40 whilst the album was in the middle of a 50 week run on the charts. Even so, it seemed like a surprise when neither single could gain any traction in the Top 40.

Simon Mayo never missed an opportunity to plug himself and his Radio 1 Breakfast Show did he? He makes a point of telling us that Marillion‘s “No One Can” is the show’s Chart Beater that week. Not sure that choosing Marillion from this week’s Breakers was the smartest move in terms of credibility Simes. After the departure of Fish they seemed to be a completely different and less interesting entity. Replacement vocalist Steve Hogarth was a decent singer but the material the band were recording had lost the spark that differentiated them from other acts. Maybe it was just Fish’s ungainly and unlikely rock star persona that was missing or the element of the band being deeply unfashionable? Whatever it was, Marillion sounded more accomplished and radio friendly to my ears but ultimately more predictable and boring for all that.

“No One Can” peaked at No 33.

Whenever I think of Saturdays in 1991, my mind immediately fills with images of long days working the counter at the Our Price store in Market Street in Manchester whilst trying to find a reason to go up stairs to the stock area to try and find out the football scores from the radio up there. I also think of this song, “A Roller Skating Jam Named “Saturdays”” by De La Soul. This was another track from their “De La Soul Is Dead” album and was one of the lighter tracks on it, proclaiming, rather obviously, the joys of roller skating and the weekends. It includes a prominent sample from Chicago’s “Saturday in the Park” and you have to acknowledge De La Soul’s vision to be able to base a hip-hop song around such an unlikely source. Something about the track has stuck with me all these years and it’s this – me and my wife will still sometimes quote the song’s ‘Saturday, it’s a Saturday’ lyric to each other come the weekend.

“A Roller Skating Jam Named “Saturdays”” peaked at No 22.

The final Breaker delivers us some Acid Jazz courtesy of Young Disciples. Is Acid Jazz still a thing? It certainly was in 1991 with acts such as Omar and Incognito having broken through into the mainstream with Top 40 hits already this year. Both of those artists as well as Young Disciples (like Eurythmics there is no ‘The”) were on the legendary Talkin’ Loud label and its latest chart busting act hit it big with “Apparently Nothin” which peaked at No 13.

Although it would prove to be the band’s only chart hit, it was important in launching the career of Carleen Anderson who would secure a solo deal off the back of it and would indeed release her own version of the song in 1999. alongside The Brand New Heavies (who did have a preceding definite article).

My wife really liked this one and I think she must have bought it as it’s in the singles box.

It’s still Bryan Adams at the top obviously with “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You” – this is only week 4 of 16 – and according to Simon Mayo, the last five UK No 1 singles in this year were taken from movies. Is that right?

*checks Wikipedia*

Well, not quite true. The list is as follows:

Artist	Title	Film taken from
Chesney Hawkes	The One and Only	Buddy’s Song
Cher	The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss)	Mermaids
Color Me Badd	I Wanna Sex You Up	New Jack City
Jason Donovan	Any Dream Will Do	Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
Bryan Adams	(Everything I Do) I Do It for You	Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves

The problem is that Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat wasn’t a film was it Simon? It was a stage musical. Yes, they made some sort of film of the stage show years later in 1999 with Donny Osmond as Joseph but even that was a direct to video release. And yes, there was a soundtrack album to the stage show featuring Jason Donovan but again it wasn’t a movie soundtrack. OK, I’m being a pedant but when you’ve reviewed hundreds of these TOTP repeats covering a nine year period, presenters getting things wrong (or at least not quite right in this case) tend to get on your wick.

Seeing as I’ve got another 12 weeks worth of having to say something about this record, I’m leaving it at that for this one.

The play out video is “The Beginning” by Seal. Ever the wag, Simon Mayo doesn’t let the opportunity for a wry comment pass when he remarks that “The Beginning” coming at the end of the show is “kind of logical”. Yeah, whatever Mayo. The video has Seal messing around with a chain and a bird of prey while dressed in a pair of leather trousers. Did he ever wear a pair of kecks that weren’t leather?

“The Beginning” peaked at No 24.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Right Said Fred	I’m Too Sexy	Of course not
2	DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince	Summertime	I did not
3	Voice Of The Beehive	Monsters And Angels	Nope
4	Deacon Blue	Twist And Shout	No but I have it on a Best Of CD I think
5	Color Me Badd	All 4 Love	Hell no
6	Morrissey	Pregnant For The Last Time	Nope
7	Bomb The Bass	Winter In July	Nah
8	Beverley Craven	Holding On	No
9	Marillion	Not One Can	Never going to happen
10	De La Soul	A Roller Skating Jam Named “Saturdays”	Liked it, didn’t buy it
11	Young Disciples	Apparently Nothin	Yes but I think it was my wife actually
12	Bryan Adams	(Everything I Do) I Do It for You	Negative
13	Seal	The Beginning	Not the single but I had their album

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/m000z8dd/top-of-the-pops-01081991

TOTP 25 JUL 1991

Posted on September 9, 2021 by 80stastic

It’s 1991 here at TOTP Rewind and it’s a pivotal period for the grand old show which was in its 28th year. The ‘year zero’ revamp is just around the corner and we have already seen a flurry of cosmetic changes to the programme in the weeks prior to it. Various bits of tinkering with the chart rundown had led to inconsistencies in the show’s core concept and in the last few episodes we have seen a nasty green screen backdrop employed behind the presenters. However, that now seems to have been ditched as tonight’s host Mark Goodier is seen against a background of the real set. However, they do seem to have positioned him away from the studio audience who are all facing towards the stage area and not looking at Goodier at all. This gives the whole thing a rather sparse look, as if this is the dress rehearsal rather than the actual show.

The first act on tonight are making their debut in person performance on the show (I believe) but this landmark event is shot through with tragedy. The Shamen had been building a reputation on the club scene following the release of their “En-Tact” album the previous year but mainstream success had so far eluded them (bar one Top 30 entry for the single “Hyperreal”). However, the decision to remix and releases their “Pro-Gen” track from that album and retitle it as “Move Any Mountain (Progen ’91)” would prove to be a masterstroke as it crashed into the charts at No 9 this week. All of this chart activity however had come heart breakingly late for bass and keyboards player Will Sinnott who had tragically drowned whilst on a trip to Tenerife to film a promo video for “Move Any Mountain”. Founder member Colin Angus decided to carry on under The Shamen name with rapper Mr C promoted to the position of full time band member. I have to say that I prefer the original track “Pro-Gen” where Mr C’s rapping is dialled down a bit. However, if you didn’t like either of those mixes then there were plenty of others to choose from as apparently there were as many as 35 versions of the track circulating in Europe and the band themselves released a whole album (“Progeny”) dedicated to mixes of the track – 19 remixes of “Move Any Mountain (Progen 91)” plus 16 samples and loops according to Wikipedia. Phew!

I worked with someone at Our Price in later years who had a massive crush on Mr C which took me by surprise a bit. He never struck me as the hereat throb type. “Move Any Mountain (Progen ’91)” would peak at No 4 unable to dethrone Bryan Adams but they would return a year later to claim that No 1 spot with the infamous “Ebeneezer Goode” single. Naughty, naughty!

C+C Music Factory again?! How many times is this that the video for “Things That Make You Go Hmmm…” has been on? Three? Four? How am I supposed to keep coming up with stuff to say about this one?! Oh, hang on…there’s a cover version of it you say by a band called Stooshe? Never heard of them. Well, that could be an oasis for my word count desert. Let’s have a listen then…

…well that was ghastly! Harrowing even. Who the hell are these people?

*checks Wikipedia*

So, they’re a British girl group from London formed to be an urban and soulful Spice Girls! The name is pronounced as in ‘pushy’ and originates from the word ‘stoosh’ which is urban slang for either something expensive, a girl who thinks she’s nicer than she is or being stoned! WTF?! The suffix -she was added on the end to represent female empowerment (oh you mean ‘girl power’ then?). The resulting name is pronounced like the Scottish word ‘stooshie’ which means ‘the disruption caused by a disagreement or misunderstanding’. What a load of old ‘tosh’… that’s ‘tosh’ as in ‘what a lot of old bollocks’.

C+C Music Factory’s version of “Things That Make You Go Hmmm…” peaked at No 4.

Still enjoying 1991 was Dannii Minogue who is back on TOTP with her third hit in the last four months. “Jump To The Beat” was of course a cover of the Stacy Lattisaw No 3 hit from 1980 and it completed a peculiar little pop palindrome for Dannii when it peaked at No 8 meaning her three Top 40 entries so far had achieved the following chart peaks:

8-11-8

Stacy Lattisaw was only 13 when she had her hit but Dannii was a whole six years older at 19 when she took it back into the charts. Someone who was younger than both of them was the daughter of a guest at a wedding that I attended around this time. It was the evening do of a friend from school of my wife’s and there was a little girl there who clearly loved this record and was throwing herself around the dance floor as the DJ played it. As the night drew to a close and the DJ announced there was only one song left we all begged him to play “Jump To The Beat” again for this young girl but the jobsworth refused and played “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You” instead as he had clearly decided well in advance that would be his final record of the night. Instead of at least one guaranteed person on the dance floor, he got nobody as everyone walked off as soon as the first strains of Bryan Adams came over his disco speakers. Nobhead.

Having introduced themselves to UK audiences with the funk metal of “Get The Funk Out”, Extreme threw us all a curve ball when they followed it up with the spare and brittle sounding acoustic ballad “More Than Words”. Despite Mark Goodier’s warning not to be fooled by the gentle song and that they were a serious rock band, many a pop fan was duped into buying the band’s “Pornograffitti” album on the strength of “More Than Words”. Such a deception had not been put into practice since 1986 when the Doctor and the Medics album “Laughing At The Pieces” was bought by many a chart follower expecting an LP full of “Spirits In The Sky”s.

The joke was on Extreme in the end though as the song became an albatross around their necks and they became known as ‘the More Than Words guys’ (see also 4 Non Blondes and Berlin whose biggest hit was more famous than the band). It’s a pleasant enough rock ballad though I guess and went to No 1 in the US and would surely have done the same over here but for the Bryan Adams effect.

1991 wasn’t all about acts making their first breakthrough into the charts like Dannii Minogue, The Shamen and Extreme that we have seen on the show so far. It was also about this who rose phoenix like from the ashes to rekindle former glories like Feargal Sharkey and Mike and the Mechanics who both returned to the charts in this year after a big gap away from them. And this lot. OMD (who seemed to be basically Andy McCluskey at this point) were enjoying not one but two Top 10 hits in 1991 with the second being this one “Pandora’s Box”.

It was hard not to believe the band were all just about McCluskey to be fair when you watched performances like this and all you can see are his extraordinary ‘Dad Dancing’ moves which have been described as ‘a geography teacher with ants in his pants’ and ‘an epileptic windmill’. My brother-in-law looks a bit like Andy McCluskey I always think (although my wife can’t really see it). I have never witnessed him dancing though.

“Pandora’s Box” peaked at No 7.

After getting Bette Midler into the TOTP studios the other week, the producers have pulled off another coup by twisting the arm of Cher into making a visit. She’s here to promote her latest single “Love And Understanding” and as with Andy McCluskey’s dancing, all you can see in this performance is Cher’s hair. Presumably that was a wig? It’s not as shocking as Madonna’s pink fright-wig back in 1984 for her performance of ‘Like A Virgin” but it was still a bold statement.

Just like Madonna, Cher is up there all on her own with no backing singers / dancers / band which I’m kind of surprised about. You would imagine she would have a whole Mariah Carey style entourage with her. The following single release from Cher was a song called “Save Up All Your Tears” which was the opening track of the “Love Hurts” album and which I recall was also recorded by Robin Beck of “First Time” fame (that cola advert song from 1988) but which tonked when released as the follow up to her surprise No 1. They are almost exactly the same! Here’s Robin’s version…

And here’s Cher’s…

Apart from Cher’s more throaty vocals, almost indentical.

“Love And Understanding” peaked at No 10.

This next bloke is “a bit of a musical genius” according to Mark Goodier. Why? He’s only the ‘The Godfather of House Music’ that’s why! Even a dance tune dodger like me knew the name Frankie Knuckles and of his legendary status within the genre. “The Whistle Song” must be his best known tune in his own right but he has also remixed some massive chart hits like “You Are Not Alone” by Michael Jackson, “Un-Break My Heart” by Toni Braxton and “Ain’t Nobody” by Chaka Khan. Such is his influence that he even has another nickname which is ‘The Man Of The House’ which immediately makes me think of this:

Despite acknowledging his indisputable legacy, “The Whistle Song” did very little for me. A performance that included a key-tar and a flute on the same stage?! Come on! No wonder the TOTP producers got in four backing dancers in hot pants to liven things up a bit. The single peaked at No 17.

Three Breakers this week starting with “Twist And Shout” by Deacon Blue. Obviously not that “Twist And Shout”, this was the second single to be released from the band’s “Fellow Hoodlums” album and was easily the biggest hit from it. In fact, it would turn out to be the last of their only three Top 10 singles. I think there was just something simple and joyful about this song that made UK record buyers sit up and take note. The fact that it was released in the Summer also added to its appeal. There’s plenty of hooks in it as well which always helps and none more so than Lorraine McIntosh’s high pitched squeal on the word ‘upside’ in the lyric ‘turned the big world upside down’.

The single’s success, as with OMD and “Pandora’s Box” earlier in the show, would initiate a welcome spike in sales of the parent album which although a No 2 record, had failed to shift the units that its predecessor “When The World Knows Your Name” had done. The basic but colourful video enhanced the feel good factor of the song with the bond between the band obvious to see.

Despite the phenomenal success of his debut album, Seal‘s single releases were suffering from a dose of the diminishing returns. “Crazy” had been a huge hit just missing the top spot by one place but follow up “Future Love Paradise” hadn’t made the Top 10 and this one, “The Beginning”, didn’t make the Top 20. Maybe it was because so many people had splashed out on the album that had already been out for six weeks and which had gone straight to No 1 that there was little demand to buy more tracks released from it? Maybe Seal was an albums artist? His first two albums both went to No 1 after all whilst he only ever had three Top 10 hits under his own name and one of those was a re-recording of “Killer” (which was officially credited to Adamski). “The Beginning” was a pretty decent tune although were they all starting to sound just a little bit samey by this point?

I really didn’t see this next hit coming. Bomb The Bass? As in “Beat Dis” Bomb The Bass? Tim Simenon’s alias hadn’t been seen ins the charts since 1988 when they had racked up three consecutive Top 10 hits and been one of the breakout sensations of the year. Three years is a long time in the music industry though and I had just about forgotten all about Bomb The Bass. They had also been rather hamstrung to be fair when they had been caught up in the BBC / Radio 1 Gulf War censorship controversy with their band name being deemed far too politically sensitive leading to an airtime black out (see also Massive attack).

Undeterred, they released new single “Winter In July” after the conflict had ended to positive reviews. This new direction seemed much less frenetic than the likes of “Beat Dis” with a more soulful feel (surely the single’s title was a nod in the direction of Stevie Wonders’ “Hotter Than July”) and helped to return Simenon to the Top 10 where it peaked at No 7. Parent album “Unknown Territory” perfumed steadily rather than spectacularly but this would prove to be their commercial peak. Simenon would go on to produce material for the likes of Gavin Friday and Depeche Mode before taking an extended break from the music industry due to physical and mental exhaustion. He returned to the business in 2008 with his “Future Chaos” album.

We’re only into week 3 of Bryan Adams‘ 16 week reign at the top of the charts. How are we all holding up? Given the amount of projected posts that I will have to find content for about “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”, I’m allowing myself to use one @TOTPFacts tweet a week to help me out. Here’s this week’s :

Bryan Adams had competition: Chicago's Peter Cetera also submitted a version. Michael Kamen: "In all honesty, Cetera's was too pretty. I write sweet melodies, and sometimes they need someone to deliver them with enough authority to make sure that you don't fall asleep." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) August 27, 2021

Well, Cetera did have a proven track record for soundtrack compositions. His 1986 hit “Glory Of Love” was featured in The Karate Kid II for which it received nominations for an Academy Award for Best Original Song, a Golden Globe in the category of Best Original Song and a Grammy Award in 1987 for Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Male Artist. It was also a US No 1 and UK No 3 song. Cetera’s effort doesn’t seem to have ever seen the light of day and even in this digital age of leaks and spoilers, I can’t find a trace of it anywhere online.

In addition to “Glory Of Love”, he also had a song on the hugely successful Pretty Woman soundtrack so the guy had chops when it came to film music. It wasn’t to be but I find it hard to believe that we would have had Peter Cetera at No 1 for 16 weeks in the Summer of 1991.

The play out video is “Pregnant For The Last Time” by Morrissey. This was a non album single that I have no memory of whatsoever. It sounds quite rockabilly and actually listenable which you can’t always say about Morrissey (especially these days). Not sure if Mozza himself still likes it though as he hasn’t played it live since the 1991 Kill Uncle tour apparently.

“Pregnant For The Last Time” peaked at No 25.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	The Shamen	Move Any Mountain (Progen’91)	No but I easily could have done
2	C+C Music Factory	Things That Make You Go Hmmm	Nope
3	Dannii Minogue	Jump To The Beat	Never going to happen
4	Extreme	More Than Words	Bit too formulaic for me
5	OMD	Pandora’s Box	No but it’s on their Best Of CD that I have
6	Cher	Love And Understanding	Nah
7	Frankie Knuckles	The Whistle Song	Not for me
8	Deacon Blue	Twist And Shout	See 5 above
9	Seal	The Beginning	No but I was one of those who had the album
10	Bomb The Bass	Winter In July	No
11	Bryan Adams	(Everything I Do) I Do It For You	Negative
12	Morrissey	Pregnant For The Last Time	A final 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/m000z2j4/top-of-the-pops-25071991

TOTP 18 JUL 1991

Posted on September 2, 2021 by 80stastic

It’s mid Summer in 1991 as July stretches out before us but it’s not the consistently warm weather that is setting UK temperatures rising. No, it’s our pre-occupation with all things Robin Hood. Not only is Bryan Adams at No 1 with that song from the latest celluloid take on the legend but said film is set to open in the UK the day after this TOTP aired. In all honesty, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves was just the latest in a long line of adaptations of the Robin Hood story in film and television which have engrossed us as a nation down the years. From the classic 1938 film starring Errol Flynn in the title role, through the 50s TV series starring Richard Greene with its ‘Robin Hood, Robin Hood, Riding through the glen‘ theme tune and onto the 1973 Walt Disney re-imagining of the tale with the lead characters as animals. It didn’t stop there though as we progressed into the 80s with the supernatural themed TV series starring not one but two different Robins and finally arriving in the 90s with the BBC sit com Maid Marian and her Merry Men with its role reversal re-writing of the story. Hell, even in 1991, the year of Robin, there was another film of the legend in addition to the Kevin Costner one starring Patrick Bergin which was a much more gritty retelling of the tale than its more commercial competitor. So, with a seemingly inexhaustible demand for tight-clad merry men and archery, I wonder if TOTP followed the trend?

Our host for tonight is Jakki Brambles who’s had her hair done like Debbie Gibson and the opening act is Cathy Dennis with her single “Just Another Dream”. This track was on its third attempt at being a hit by this point after getting no further than No 93 in 1989 and No 95 in 1990. However, as Jakki intimated in her intro, Cathy was doing the business over in the US where the song had gone Top 10 so that, allied with her recent Top 5 hit “Touch Me (All Night Long)”, meant that it was shoved out into the market place one more time where it would sell enough copies to reach No 13 in the UK. It’s pretty bland stuff though to my ears with one of those choruses that seems to have too many words in it.

There’s little evidence of a Robin Hood theme to Cathy’s outfit tonight which is more space cadet than Maid Marian, not unlike something Betty Boo would have been wearing at the time but her song is nowhere near as catchy as something that the Boo-ster would have come up with. A month after this, Cathy’s debut album “Move To This” was released and it was a huge success selling 100,000 copies in the UK and she would consolidate that success by following that well worn path of releasing a slowie after two fast tracks when sugary ballad “Too Many Walls” went Top 20.

It would be stretching it to try and make a connection between Robin Hood and the next act but I’ll give it a go. Well, for starters they both feature a gang with a leader at the head of it. Erm…that’s it. Yes for Robin Hood and his Merry Men read Heavy D And The Boyz. Their cover of “Now That We Found Love” was by far their biggest ever hit peaking at No 2 although Heavy himself did feature on hit singles by Janet Jackson (“Alright” a No 20 hit in 1990) and Michael Jackson (“Jam” a No 13 hit in 1992).

The album it was taken from (“Peaceful Journey”) has some song titles on it loaded with sexual innuendo such as “Do Me, Do Me”, “The Lover’s Got What U Need” and the C+C Music Factory soundalike “I Can Make You Go Oooh”. I’m pretty sure that Robin Hood woulds never have been so course in his wooing of Maid Marian.

Jakki Brambles goes a bit fattest in her commentary on Heavy D though when she says “Turning cellulite into success, that’s Heavy D” and then compounds the insult by saying “I like that” clearly giving away the fact that she was reading from a script. Let’s just hope she was cringing her face off if she was watching these BBC4 TOTP repeats back.

Next is an English rock band ploughing their own furrow in amongst all this dance music and doing quite nicely thank you very much. Little Angels had already racked up five Top 40 singles by this point (though none of them had progressed past No 21) and “I Ain’t Gonna Cry” kept the run going by peaking at No 26. This was the last single to be released from their third album entitled “Young Gods” and the band were just 18 months away from the pinnacle of their success when fourth album “Jam” would go to No 1. I had a freebie CD of that album (one of those advanced copies that the record companies sent out to record shops to promote ahead of its official release) and it was pretty good. Don’t know where it is now mind.

For me what set them apart from all those similar bands like Thunder, The Quireboys, The Dogs D’Amour that were around at the time was their brass section called The Big Bad Horns who would play live with the band as well as record with them. I saw Little Angels do an instore appearance at HMV in Manchester at the time of the “Jam” album and they also played a mini set and they could make a decent noise live. The band seemed to split right at the height of their success in 1994 and have only reformed briefly for a nine date UK tour in 2012 and an appearance at the download festival in 2013.

What’s this? Jakki Brambles advising that we can have a party for a group of friends at TOTP and she’ll tell us how later. What?! Really? How would that work? My friend Robin, who was in the TOTP audience by mistake earlier in this year (he thought Morrissey was appearing, he didn’t), said it was a awful experience and he was just part of a small group of people being herded around the studio and being asked to whoop and holler inanely by the floor staff now and again. Doesn’t sound like a top night out to me? Did your party get access to the legendary BBC bar as well? I think I would have wanted a full breakdown of what was included in the deal before booking!

I can’t actually work out what this next single is? “(Hammer Hammer) They Put Me in the Mix” by MC Hammer (obvs) sounds like one of those medley remix singles that the likes of Black Box, Technotronic and Snap! had released around this time but I can’t hear any of his previous hits in the mix (as it were). His discography says it was a non-album single (remix) not listed on either “Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt ‘Em” or the follow up “Too Legit to Quit” so what exactly was it? Well, I have the answer for you….it was absolute shit that’s what it was.

“(Hammer Hammer) They Put Me in the Mix” peaked at No 20.

Ah… I wasn’t expecting to see Kim Appleby on the show again as I’d pretty much written off her chart career the last time she appeared. Consequently, I’ve very little left to say about this one. Kim seems so nice and her song “Mama” is so inoffensive. OK, how about this. Whilst recording tracks with Stock, Aitken and Waterman at the Hit Factory studios, Mel & Kim were prone to staying the phrase “F*****g lovely mate”. So often did they say it in their strong London accents that it inspired Pete Waterman to come up with the song “FLM” which in the press for the single stated it was an acronym for ‘Fun, Love and Money’ although the truth was a lot more base. And the link to Robin Hood? Here’s Christian Slater as Will Scarlet swearing in a very non-English sounding accent in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves…

Tenuous? Me?

“Mama” peaked at No 19 and was Kim’s last ever Top 40 entry.

It’s that duet from Nat ‘King’ Cole and his daughter Natalie Cole now and their virtual version of “Unforgettable”. The track won four Grammys in 1992 – Record of the Year, Traditional Pop Vocal Performance, Song of the Year and Arrangement Accompanying Vocals whilst the parent album won Album of the Year and Best Engineered – Non-Classical. OK, some of those categories sound a bit confusing and possibly made up – what’s the difference between Record of the Year and Song of the Year (no, I can’t be bothered to look it up) for example? Anyway, I guess it was a very big deal in the US and indeed went seven times platinum over there.

Oh, and a Robin Hood tie in? “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You” won Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or Television grammy that same year.

Just the two Breakers this week starting with Altern 8 and “Infiltrate 202”. If I hear the name Altern 8 I don’t hear any of their tunes (which all sounded a bit the same to my non raver ears) but I do get a mental image of face masks and hazmat suits. Yes, clearly ahead of the game by 30 years, I don’t think I saw a TV appearance by this Staffordshire duo when they weren’t wearing their distinctive outfits with the ‘A’ logo on the masks.

Although I didn’t get their appeal, they were a pretty big deal for a while in the early 90s and scored two Top 10 hits in “Activ 8 (Come with Me)” and “Evapor 8”. Apparently, as well as their face masks gimmick, they also employed the trick of ensuring that just about all their tracks had the figure 8 in their title. Other singles included “Hypnotic St-8” and “Brutal-8-E”. So why didn’t they call “Infiltrate 202” “Infiltr-8 202” then?

Another dance tune now from Shades Of Rhythm who, as Jakki Brambles said, hailed from Peterborough. I remember the name but that’s about it and have no recall of “Sounds Of Eden” at all. Apparently they were signed to legendary label ZTT Records (Frankie Goes To Hollywood and all that) and they were stalwarts of dance compilation albums of the day such as “Deep Heat” and “Hard Fax” but this was never going to be my bag at all.

“Sounds Of Eden” peaked at No 35.

“The world’s most pleasant pop stars” are up now, well at least according to Jakki Brambles they are. To be fair, the general consensus seemed to be that Londonbeat were indeed an extremely amiable bunch. Their single “A Better Love” had been originally released as the direct follow up to the band’s surprising No 2 smash “I’ve Been Thinking About You” at the end of 1990 but it had failed to get above No 52 then. A cover of Bob Marley’s “No Woman No Cry” was then sent out to restore chart fortunes in March of ’91 but failed abysmally spending just two weeks in the charts peaking at No 64. For some reason (maybe because it was a Top 20 hit in the US?), “A Better Love” was given another shot at redemption just a few months later and bingo! Another Top 40 hit and a slot on TOTP.

I’m not really sure why it didn’t take off first time around. It’s a very melodic tune with some lush vocals that wash over you making it perfect for daytime radio playlists. I have to say though that the lyrics were on the wrong side of jarring. “I’ll never find a better love not in a minute” they sang in the chorus. Well, yeah. Obviously. How would it even be possible? For a start you’d have to wake up to the fact that you weren’t happy in your relationship to begin with and that there was someone better for you out there. Then you’d have to break up with your current squeeze and got through all that. That’s before you’ve even thought about how you go about finding a new (better) love. At work? Down the pub? Online dating? All this stuff takes time and is certainly not achievable in 60 seconds!

As with many a single in 1991, its belated success caused a sudden surge of demand for the parent album (“In The Blood”) which had been released some 10 months prior meaning not many record shops had copies of it in. When more were ordered in our store, we found that the delivery note had those dreaded words ‘Temporarily Withdrawn’ against the album meaning it was going to be re-promoted but the record label wanted all the old copies still knocking around sold first before they would make it available again. I hated that practice.

As for Londonbeat, they were never as popular again and even resorted to that last chance saloon tactic of entering in the Song For Europe competition in 1995. Want to hear it? Tough, here it is…

Hmm. Not sure I have to say. Do you remember who they were beaten by to being the UK’s official entry in that year’s Eurovision Song Contest? How could you forget the year we went rap with Love City Groove? The song finished 10th leading Terry Wogan to famously comment that “the experiment has failed”.

What was it with 1991 and re-released singles?! After Cathy Dennis and Londonbeat before them came Jesus Jones with “Right Here, Right Now” a single that had not only been released once already but had actually also been a hit before! Back in October ’90, it went to No 31 in the UK charts paving the way for bigger successes in “International Bright Young Thing” and the album “Doubt” that made the band a huge deal briefly.

Their success was not restricted to just over here though. As Jakki says, they were also a doing the business in the US where “Right Here, Right Now” topped the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart and reached No 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. Presumably that was why it was re-released in the UK. The US success didn’t translate over here though as it peaked at, yes you guessed it, No 31 again. Reminds me of when I retook my Maths ‘O’ level in ’84 and got the same ‘C’ grade again. Still, there’s not many song’s that can boast that it was used in not one but two US presidential election campaigns which was what happened to “Right Here, Right Now” when it was appropriated by Bill Clinton in 1992 and then again by his wife Hillary Clinton in 2008.

And so we arrive at the main protagonist of all this Robin Hood mania. Bryan Adams is No 1 for just the second of 16 weeks with “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”. As I said earlier, the film the song was taken from, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, was released in the UK the day after this TOTP went out but was it any good? I don’t think time has been kind to it. Let’s start with its star Kevin Costner. His box office pull was not in doubt after his run of hits like The Untouchables, No Way Out, Bull Durham and Field of Dreams and that’s before we mention the Oscar winning Dances With Wolves. However, the anomaly of his accent (why didn’t he even try to do one?!) and his dreadfully wooden performance as a whole should be enough on their own to condemn the film to eternal bad reviews.

Then there was Alan Rickman as the Sheriff of Nottingham. Don’t get me wrong. I love Alan Rickman’s body of work and even his monstrously over the top performance here is enjoyable but it detracted from the film. It almost made us want to root for him instead of stuffy old Robin despite the badly misjudged scene where he forces Marian’s legs apart after a coerced wedding ceremony. In fact, the whole tone of the film was incredibly dark and nothing like the Errol Flynn version of yore. It didn’t stop audiences rushing to see it though. It was the second highest grossing film of 1991 beaten only by Terminator 2: Judgment Day whilst Smash Hits magazine predictably called it “probably the best version of Robin Hood ever made”. The critics weren’t keen though and Costner won the Worst Actor Golden Raspberry Award whilst Christian Slater received a nomination for Worst Supporting Actor (that clip earlier in the post was surely enough ammunition for the nomination).

So, in answer to the question was it any good, I think my answer is a resounding no but I must have seen it multiple times as it always seems to be on the TV year in year out.

The play out video is “Monsters And Angels” by Voice Of The Beehive. Having taken a whole three years between the release of the debut album “Let It Bee” and the follow up “Honey Lingers” (yes, there was a deliberate double entendre style play on words in the title), there must have been some trepidation about whether the pop world remembered who they were and indeed if they were welcome back into it. Sisters Tracey Bryn and Melissa Brooke Belland needn’t have worried as lead single “Monsters And Angels” brought immediate chart dividends when it rose to No 17, their second highest ever Top 40 placing. The album also achieved the same chart position and their comeback was complete. However, a further five years until the next album “Sex & Misery” was a gap too far and it failed to chart at all and the band broke up soon after. Despite Tracey and Melissa now living lives outside of music, there have been a couple of reunions to play a handful of gigs in 2003 and 2017.

I took part in a recent music Twitter challenge called #PopInjustice where Twitter users posted songs that had failed to make the UK Top 40. By far the biggest reaction to any of my suggestions was for this Voice Of The Beehive track…

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Cathy Dennis	Just Another Dream	Nope
2	Heavy D And The Boyz	Now That We Found Love	No
3	Little Angels	I Ain’t Gonna Cry	Negative
4	MC Hammer	(Hammer Hammer) They Put Me in the Mix	Hell No!
5	Kim Appleby	Mama	Nah
6	Nat ‘King’ Cole / Natalie Cole	Unforgettable	Another no
7	Altern 8	Infiltrate 202	Nothing here for me
8	Shades Of Rhythm	Sounds Of Eden	See 6 above
9	Londonbeat	A Better Love	Pleasant but no
10	Jesus Jones	Right Here Right Now	No, on neither release
11	Bryan Adams	(Everything I Do) I Do It For You	I did not
12	Voice Of The Beehive	Monsters And Angels	See 9 above

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000z2j2/top-of-the-pops-18071991

TOTP 11 JUL 1991

Posted on August 24, 2021 by 80stastic

Do you ever find yourself trying to remember a time before huge events had happened and had entered the world’s consciousness and what that felt like? Is it possible to access that part of your memory or does it no longer exist as any recollections you may have had up to that point can now only be viewed through the filter of those happenings?

Is that too heavy an intro for a post in a blog about 90s chart music? Too weighed down in the existential? Probably as I’m not referring to personal life changing occurrences like the birth of a child or the death of a loved one. I’m not even referring to world events like 9/11 or COVID. No, I’m talking about times before we had ever heard of a particular song or artist (well, in my defence, it is a music blog as I said earlier).

I touched on this subject the other week when we got our very first airing on TOTP of “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You” by Bryan Adams before it had even got to No 1 let alone staying there for 16 weeks. I’m reminded of that theme again this week as the date of this TOTP was around the exact same time that the debut single by a group came out who the vast majority of us had never heard of but from whom it would be impossible to escape in the years to come. I refer, of course, to Take That! Yes, 30 years ago in mid July their first ever single “Do What U Like” was released to a massive shrug of indifference from the public. It made zero impression on the charts despite the efforts of the put together boy band to build a fan base by playing endless shows in schools and clubs. They even made a saucy video involving naked buttocks and jelly smearing to gain them some profile although that did seem to rather shoot them in the foot as it couldn’t be played on daytime TV.

They did manage a small Top 40 hit when their next single “Promises” scrambled it’s way to No 38 but they were back pushing their faces up at the chart window again when third single “Once You’ve Tasted Love” failed to do the business. At this point they seemed destined to fall by the way side like so many other pop wannabes down the years and they couldn’t really blame their marketing and promotion teams – they had loads of press in the teen mags and were constantly being talked up as the next big thing.

At some point around this time, Gary Barlow came into the Our Price store where I worked in Manchester. We all knew who he was due to their aforementioned press coverage. As he wandered around the store, my co-worker Craig decided to follow him around mouthing behind his back “nobody buys your records, nobody buys your records”. Cruel but undeniably funny. Of course, Barlow had the last laugh as they finally hit pay dirt with their very next release “It Only Takes A Minute” and the rest was history. Hit after hit followed including 8 No 1s before they called it a day in 1996. The hits and affection for the band were still there when they reformed in 2006 as they took on near national treasure status. All of this and I haven’t even mentioned the ubiquitous Robbie Williams!

So, in conclusion and in answer to the question “is it possible to recall a time before household names entered our lives and how that felt?” then yes it is as a small part of me will always have a mental image of Craig following Gary Barlow around Our Price openly mocking him when I hear the words ‘Take’ and ‘That’!

Blimey! That intro was so long that I feel I should be tying up this post by now but I haven’t even got to the first act on tonight’s show which is…DJ H featuring Stefy. Oh. I think this lot had a hit earlier in the year but I’ve forgotten what it was called already. This track went by the title of “I Like It”, three words that proved beyond host Bruno Brookes who introduces it as “you need it and you love it”. WTF?!

Anyway, this was just more nasty Italian House but the real dregs of the genre I would suggest. Clearly the woman up there isn’t the actual singer. At points she sounds like Martha Wash who supplied the vocals for Black Box’s ‘Ride On Time” and at others like Aretha Franklin so I’m guessing there are samples of both those singers in the mix somewhere. So boring is the performance visually (Steffi herself hardly moves at all and can’t even get her miming to the few lines she has right) that the TOTP producers include loads more shots of the studio audience than they usually would. Not only that but they are dancing! Or attempting something that approximates to dancing at least – it seems to just be jumping up and down in most cases. Right at the end of the song, it sounds like the backing track is being played on warped vinyl as it carriers crazily off beat. Surely it wasn’t meant to sound like that was it?

“I Like It” peaked at No 16.

It’s the Paula Abdul video for “Rush Rush” again next (the third time it’s been played I believe). This was pretty much the end fo the road for Paula as a successful pop star. She managed one more UK hit of the “Spellbound” album from which “Rush Rush” was taken and then one final solitary Top 40 entry in 1995. She only actually made three studio albums of which the final one “Head Over Heels” was a big commercial disappointment compared to her first two. That’s not to diminish her chart stats though. She did have six US No 1 singles and two No 1 albums after all and set a record for the most No 1 singles from a debut album on the Billboard Hot 100.

The four years between her second and third albums though was a lifetime in the music industry and nobody was that arsed when she finally returned. In that time she married and divorced the actor Emilio Estevez and also sought treatment for bulimia so it’s hardly surprising that she took her eye off the ball of her music career. She did however, re-invent herself as a reality TV judge working on shows like American Idol, Live to Dance and The X Factor and also was seen as a big enough draw still to undertake a Las Vegas residency from August 2019 to January 2020.

When Andy McCluskey decided to carry on the OMD name after the departure of his writing partner Paul Humphreys (plus band members Martin Cooper and Malcolm Holmes) at the end of the 80s, he surely couldn’t have imagined the success he would have had straight off the bat with the single “Sailing on the Seven Seas” and the album “Sugar Tax” with both hitting No 3 in their respective charts. So when second single “Pandora’s Box” was lifted from the album and followed its predecessor into the Top 10, he must have been tempted to do the lottery that week (had it been invented by then which it hadn’t) as his Midas touch seemed to know no bounds.

My sister’s then boyfriend was obsessed with this song apparently and bought every available version of it that was released including a limited edition collector’s CD single which came housed in a rather neat little wooden box. I’m pretty sure we had this version in the Our Price I was working in at the time.

“Pandora’s Box” seemed to be a much more straight forward type of pop song compared to its more quirky, shuffling predecessor. The verses were fairly pedestrian but the pay off of the uplifting chorus was more than worth the wait.

Inspired by silent film actress Louise Brooks and named after the 1929 film Pandora’s Box in which she starred, the single was retitled “Pandora’s Box (It’s a Long, Long Way)” for the American market but God knows why? A similar practice had been inflicted upon a single by The Icicle Works who’s song “Birds Fly (Whisper to a Scream)” was reversed for its US release as “Whisper to a Scream (Birds Fly)”. Weirdos.

“Pandora’s Box” would peak at No 7 and was directly responsible for a spike in sales of the album around this time.

C+C Music Factory are up next (or CeCe Music Factory as Bruno Brookes mispronounces it) with their “Things That Make You Go Hmmm…”single, talking of which, does that bass line sound a bit like the one used so majestically in “Groove Is In The Heart” by Dee-Lite? Hmmm. Anyway, the track had plenty more hooks to it including that saxophone riff which is recycled at the end of every line. Sometimes it’s the little things like that which can make a song (see also that ringing almost tinny sounding double strummed guitar chord in “She Sells Sanctuary” by The Cult).

Oh and that lyric about ‘playing tic tac toe’? Nothing to do with noughts and crosses apparently. It refers to when you have sex with three different partners in one night according to the urban dictionary. You learn a new thing or three every day.

1991 saw the release of not only some of the biggest selling albums of the whole decade but also some of the most iconic. Look at some of these albums for a start

Artist	Title
Massive Attack	Blue Lines
Metallica	Metallica
Pearl Jam	Ten
Primal Scream	Screamadelica
Red Hot Chili Peppers	Blood Sugar Sex Magik
REM	Out Of Time
U2	Achtung Baby

All released within the calendar year of 1991. However, no such list could be compiled without including not one but two albums released in the same year by one band. That band was, of course, Guns N’ Roses and the albums were “Use Your Illusion I” and “Use Your Illusion II” both released on the same day (17th September) to much fanfare and excitement. Two albums by a huge artist on the same day! Long before the Blur vs Oasis chart battle, this was a majorly significant event in the record industry. Within six months though the practice would appear old hat as Bruce Springsteen followed suit with the “Human Touch” and “Lucky Town” albums both released on 31 March 1992.

Before that Guns N’ Roses day in September though, we had the first new material from the band of the decade (although the track “Civil War” had appeared on the charity album “Nobody’s Child: Romanian Angel Appeal” in 1990) with the single “You Could Be Mine”. Not only would it in effect be the lead single from the “Use Your Illusion II” album but it was also being used prominently in the soundtrack to one of the biggest films of the year, the much anticipated Terminator 2: Judgment Day the sequel to 1984’s Terminator. The flick was a huge success becoming the highest-grossing film of 1991, beating Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (more of which later) into the process.

“You Could Be Mine” seems a perfect fit with the film and was used during the ending credits and in the film itself in early scenes with John Connor and that’s despite it having what would normally be seen as the impediment of having a one-minute drum and guitar intro. The video is basically just a straight in concert performance intertwined with some action sequences from the film but it’s all held together by the fairly weak premise of Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator himself being dispatched to assassinate the band after the gig. Somehow though despite the hokey ending as Arnie finally catches up with the band as they leave the venue and deciding that killing them would be a ‘Waste of Ammo’, it all kind of hangs together and just works; for me at least.

“You Could Be Mine” would peak at No 3 and would herald a run of seven singles taken from across both “Use Your Illusion” albums stretching into 1993 when the final “Civil War EP” was released.

A rare in the studio appearance from Billy Bragg next as he performs his “Sexuality” hit single. To be honest, it’s nowhere near as much fun as the video we saw in the Breakers last week, shorn as it is of Kirsty MacColl in the background making small dick gestures behind Billy’s back plus some admirable attempts at slapstick humour from the Braggster himself.

So what was “Sexuality” all about anyway? There is a lot of online discussion about some of the lyrics references. What was the significance of an uncle who once played for Red Star Belgrade or of a nuclear submarine sinking off the coast of Sweden? I think a lot of it was just Billy playing around with word puns like rhyming ‘Sweden’ with ‘read them’ and Robert De Niro with Mitsubishi Zero (which wasn’t a car at all but a Japanese WWII fighter aircraft). My general reading of the song is that it’s a celebration of sexual freedom in whatever form that takes.

I saw Billy in concert in Dublin in 2006 and in the middle of his set an extremely pissed fan got out from his seat and wondered up the aisle to the stage waiving an autograph pad. Billy handled it pretty well but you could see that it really annoyed him as he issued the withering put down “I’m working mate”.

“Sexuality” peaked at No 27.

Another video from another big rock band next as after Guns N’ Roses we now get INXS with “Bitter Tears”. This was another track from their “X” album and managed to immediately see off the possibility of a run of flopped singles from the band. Despite the album having been out for 9 months by this time and “Bitter Tears” being the fourth and final single from it, another Top 40 miss (previous single “By My Side” only made No 42) was avoided when it made it to a peak of No 30.

As Bruno Brookes hints at in his intro, the band were about to play a huge gig at Wembley stadium on 13 July 1991 as part of their Summer XS tour to a sold-out audience of 74,000 fans. The band would never play live to a bigger crowd. It was recorded and and filmed and would become the live album “Live Baby Live” which would be released in the November. “Bitter Tears” was included in the set list for the concert but didn’t make it onto the track listing for the album (it did however feature in the video of the gig).

The style of the promo video for “Bitter Tears” follows the well worn template that all the band’s videos seemed based on. A straight performance of the song filmed in black and white with a few cut away graphics thrown in to maintain interest. I’m not sure if they were all shot by the same director but if they were, he or she did seem to be a one trick pony.

After Guns N’ Roses sang “You Could Be Mine” earlier in the show, here were Bros being even less decisive with “Are You Mine?”. The 90’s pop career of Bros after their late 80s success could not be better summed up than by the phrase the ‘after the Lord Mayor’s show’. The biggest group in Britain at the height of Brosmania, by the time the new decade was getting into its stride, they were an afterthought at best. Seriously, who thought a third album by the Goss twins was a good idea? A third one though they did make and it was called “Changing Faces”. It struggled to a high of No 18

I knew that they were still trying to recapture their glory days back then as I was working in a record shop but I could not have told you how any of their later singles went with “Are You Mine?” a prime example. I think I have a strong defence for my lack of recall about this one though on the basis that it is absolutely dire and instantly forgettable. A complete snooze fest from start to finish.

There would be one more single released before the duo went their separate ways, Matt Goss into a successful residency at Las Vegas and Luke into an acting career. 27 years later that documentary about them would appear and the rest is history…

“Are You Mine?” peaked No 12.

Who’s this then? Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam? That can’t be right surely? The people that had a hit in 1985 with “I Wonder If I Take You Home”? They had another hit 6 years later? I have literally zero recall of this but for the record their second hit was called “Let the Beat Hit ‘Em” and was produced by Clivillés and Cole who we saw earlier under their other guise of C+C Music Factory. It sounds completely bland to my non dance ears but it is lauded by the likes of Pete Tong and Trevor Nelson no less the latter of whom says of it in Music Week magazine “It’s not the coolest record I’ve ever bought but it’s the most fun.”

“Let the Beat Hit ‘Em” peaked t No 17 in the UK but it topped the dance and R&B charts in the US.

And here we are, the first of 16 weeks at No 1 for Bryan Adams and “Everything I Do (I Do it For You)“. How am I supposed to write about one song for so long?! On top of that, I need to be wary of just repeating the same trivia and tidbits that @TOTPFacts might serve up as he has the same problem. OK, I think I’ll allow myself to reproduce one @TOTPFacts tweet per post so here’s this week’s:

The starting point for "(Everything I Do) I Do It For You" was Michael Kamen's "Maid Marian" cue for Prince Of Thieves… https://t.co/Hp58YEmMWs #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) August 20, 2021

Apparently Bryan and producer Robert ‘Mutt’ Lange wrote the song in just 45 minutes. I’m guessing Michael Kamen’s piece took a while longer.

I’d forgotten that Bryan actually made it into the TOTP studio for at least one week of the song’s chart reign but here he is in his trademark white T-shirt and jeans emoting all over the stage although the show’s producers do intercut his performance with the promo video.

In case you’re bored of the song already, here’s a 1992 cover of the song by Fatima Mansions which was released as part of a double A-side with “Suicide Is Painless” by Manic Street Preachers which was a charity single for the Spastics Society. It made No 7 but hardly received any airplay as the Manics track was predominantly the one played on radio.

The play out video is “Love And Understanding” by Cher. Coming hard on the heels of her recent No 1 with “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss)”, I’m guessing much was expected by her record company of the follow up. It did pretty well making it to the Top 10 (just) in the UK and the Top 20 in the US. Its sales (plus a last minute inclusion of “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss)”) helped propel parent album “Love Hurts” to No 1 in the UK where it would stay for 6 weeks and end up becoming the best selling female album of the year.

I was working at the Market Street Our Price store in Manchester at the time and around then, the company was committed to its slogan of ‘mad about music, see a specialist’ (or something like that) which meant every week day morning, we had to play music from a particular genre like Easy Listening, Folk or Classical. Once 12 o’clock came around there was a rush to put a chart album on and I recall shoving “Love Hurts” on as the first thing that came to hand after a particularly gruelling morning of folk music. The store manger happened to walk by and said to me “Time for some proper music eh?”. We should probably both have been ashamed.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	DJ H featuring Stefy	I Like It	I’d rather have bought “I Like It’ by Gerry and the Pacemakers frankly.
2	Paula Abdul	Rush Rush	No
3	OMD	Pandora’s Box	No but I have it on a Best Of CD of theirs
4	C+C Music Factory	Things That Make You Go Hmmm…	Liked it, didn’t buy it
5	Guns N’ Roses	You Could Be Mine	See 3 above
6	Billy Bragg	Sexuality	No but I bought Accident Waiting To Happen, another single from the album
7	INXS	Bitter Tears	See 3 above
8	Bros	Are You Mine?	Are you mad more like! No
9	Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam	Let the Beat Hit ‘Em	Nope
10	Bryan Adams	Everything I Do (I Do it For You)	I did not
11	Cher	Love And Understanding	Despite somehow managing to buy two recent Cher singles (one by mistake), I managed to avoid this one. Honest!

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000yw8k/top-of-the-pops-11071991

TOTP 27 JUN 1991

Posted on August 20, 2021 by 80stastic

It’s 1991 and that grand old institution that was TOTP is having an identity crisis. Ratings had fallen and the show was struggling to retain its relevance to a Top 40 chart which had become increasingly dominated by dance music the stars of which were the tunes themselves rather than those making them. The programme’s traditional format and the way it delivered flamboyant pop stars into the nation’s living rooms every Thursday night functioned rather less well when its content was anonymous looking DJ types stood behind some keyboards or a mixing desk. Adding to its dilemmas was the competition it faced from other music shows. Having gone head to head with TOTP in the late 80s with its own version of the show in The Roxy, ITV had usurped that traditional format and came up with The Chart Show whose video only / no presenter format on a Saturday morning was increasingly popular. Then of course there was MTV which had been serving the UK via its MTV Europe network since 1987 although its penetration into UK homes was hardly universal. Still, its style and programming was starting to make TOTP look like a TV relic. Rallying against this, the show employed what was then cutting edge technology (presumably) in green screen backdrops for the presenters, changes to the Top 40 countdown (the show’s whole modus operandi since its inception), an ill judged Top 5 albums feature and cramming more and more videos into its 30 minutes of screen time. The 30 minutes time limit was beginning to look very restricting. I’m sure The Chart Show lasted at least an hour and of course MTV broadcast all day long.

As we approach the mid-point of the year, the show has reduced its regular hosts to a shallow pool of names, those being Gary Davies, Bruno Brookes, Jakki Brambles, Mark Goodier, Nicky Campbell and tonight’s presenter Simon Mayo. Anthea Turner had already been relieved of her duties a few weeks prior. Come the end of September, all of these names would be jettisoned in favour of new, younger and mainly unknown faces as part of the ‘Year Zero’ revamp brought in by new executive producer Stanley Appel. For now though, the show is limping along trying to convince us all that everything is fine and that there’s nothing to see here (literally true in the case of some of those pesky dance acts).

So, as stated, it’s Simon Mayo’s turn at the wheel for this particular instalment and he brings his usual smug sense of his own importance to proceedings. I’m finding Mayo especially grating in these repeats although to be fair, all of the aforementioned names had their own intrinsic foibles. If Mayo was smug then we also had Goodier (plain boring), Davies (overly chummy), Brambles (disinterested) and Brookes (just creepy). Mayo begins the show by asking the audience to name any Belgian “singing superstars” – I say ask, it’s more like he’s goading us in a ‘see I can name more than you’ way as he references The Singing Nun and Plastic Bertrand before advising us that we can “add this lot to the pile” as he introduces Cubic 22 with their hit “Night In Motion”. They’re hardly singing though are they Simon? No, because Cubic 22 were one of those dance acts meaning some faceless bods behind keyboards and a couple of dancers. The only voices you hear are some sample vocals shouting ‘Party time’ and ‘Let me hear ya!’. That really doesn’t qualify Cubic 22 as singing stars in my book Mayo. The performance here though is a prime example of the challenges TOTP faced in reflecting the nation’s dance music choices. Watch it without the track playing and the visual element is woeful. Lots of shots of hands playing keyboards and the two dancers doing some very ordinary synchronised moves. At least with a video you might get some clever graphics or distracting images. Why on earth did they have such an act in the studio open the show?!

Next, Mayo comes across like wannabe football fan David Cameron (‘call me Dave, I’m a football fan but is it Aston Villa or West Ham?) with his remarks about “Rush Rush” by Paula Abdul being an ode to Welsh striker Ian Rush. I know he’s a Spurs fan (he goes on about Terry Venables later on in the show) but did he have to try so hard to get his football credentials over?

This was the lead single from Paula’s “Spellbound” album and I’m sure we had an import CD of it in the Market Street, Manchester Our Price I was working in ahead of its UK release. I can’t believe anyone would have coughed up the £18 or whatever it was just to be able to say they had it a couple of weeks before anybody else!

Playing across the bottom of the video is the Top 40 countdown which Mayo didn’t think worthy of a mention in his intro (though of course his pathetic Ian Rush quip was) and they’ve even tweaked that as they have gone back to referencing everything in the Top 40 whereas they had previously omitted anything going down the charts. As I said earlier, identity crisis.

It may be a new decade but that didn’t put any sort of brakes on Erasure‘s imperial phase. Here they are with their first new material since 1989’s “Wild” album and “Chorus” would confirm that their popularity was a strong as ever when it went straight in at No 3 in the charts. Admittedly, it was hardly a major change of musical direction for Andy and Vince but hey, if it ain’t broke and all that. The lead single from their fifth studio album of the same name, would it have sounded out of place on any of three previous albums? I liked it though. It fair whipped along with a hooks a plenty and the most unlikely use of a word in the chorus (‘fishes’) since George Michael managed to get ‘feet’ into “Careless Whisper”. It was also perfect for any Radio 1 daytime playlist.

The album would give the duo their third consecutive No 1 when it was released later in the year. I’m pretty sure that on that day, our deliveries of new releases didn’t turn up until well into the afternoon which meant we missed out on loads of sales as everyone who wanted it on the day of release popped over the road to HMV who had racks of it. By the end of the 90s, retailers had agreed with the record companies that new releases could be delivered on the Friday before the release date to allow shops to get them ready for sale first thing Monday morning on the strict proviso that they could not be sold before then. The rule was pretty much totally observed in my experience although there must have been the odd title that slipped through the net company wide.

Back to Erasure though and what was the deal with the Vince and Andy mannequins in this performance? They weren’t a feature of the official promo video so presumably they were made just for this TOTP appearance. Seems a bit extravagant but then I guess Erasure were (well Andy anyway).

More inane attempts at wit from Mayo next when he introduces “Hey Stoopid” by Alice Cooper and tries a line about getting a thick ear if you go into a record shop and saying ‘Hey Stupid’. Well, I worked in a record shop at the time Simes and never did I have the licence to assault a customer who happened to annoy me.

As for Alice, after his unlikely monster hit “Poison” in 1989, he managed to eke out a few more in the 90s though none were as successful as “Poison”. As with Erasure before him, this lead single was also the same title of his album which featured guest contributions from some of rock’s biggest names including Slash, Ozzy Osbourne, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai and Nikki Sixx. Given the deliberate mis-spelling of ‘stupid’, I’m surprised Noddy Holder wasn’t on that list.

As for the song itself, it was fairly dumb as mud stuff and not likely to oust the likes of “School’s Out”, “Elected” or indeed “Poison” as one of Alice’s most famous songs (and yes I know the first two are actually Alice Cooper the band tracks).

“Hey Stoopid” peaked at No 21 in the UK.

Now most of us may know Omar just for “There’s Nothing Like This” but there was far more to him than just that one song. He has worked with some legendary names like Stevie Wonder and Lamont Dozier and is still making music to this day. His career is actually remarkably similar to that of another British soul singer Roachford. See how their stories resemble each other:

Omar	Roachford
Grew up in musical family. His father drummed for Bob Marley, his brother is Grammy winning producer, remixer and DJ Scratch Professer and is sister is a BRIT School alumna	Grew up in a musical family and was playing in his uncle’s touring band as a teenager
Is a multi instrumentalist	Is a multi instrumentalist
Unjustly and incorrectly categorised as a one hit wonder – “There’s Nothing Like This”	Unjustly and incorrectly categorised as a one hit wonder – “Cuddly Toy”
Appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for services to music in 2012	Appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for services to music in 2019

Now I’m no soul aficionado but even I could appreciate that “There’s Nothing Like This” was slick, smooth and perfectly sung. Oh and get this from @TOTPFacts:

Not long before this #TOTP appearance, Omar had to turn down an offer of playing on Jason Donovan's tour. "They wanted me to play percussion, but I was too busy. Even though they were offering £1000 a week."
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) August 13, 2021

The insertion of that bit of trivia will make sense later on.

After weeks of cramming in up to four acts in the Breakers section, this week we only have two. First off is Chesney Hawkes with a song called “I’m A Man Not A Boy”. You could almost hear the music press laughing in Chesney’s face at the title. Its No 27 chart peak sounded the death knell for the poor lad’s pop star career which was over before it had even started. No 27? That was an awful attempt at following up a record that had topped the charts for five weeks. It did however do one thing which was to disprove the theory that Chesney, like the aforementioned Omar and Roachford, was not a one hit wonder.

In truth, “I’m A Man Not A Boy” was nowhere near as good a pop record as its predecessor. It was a weak tune with a risible title. Maybe there was a different track on the Buddy’s Story album that his label Chrysalis Records (them again!) could have released instead that might have done the trick? It was all too late now though. A third and final track off the album was released as a single called “Secrets Of The Heart” which was a fairly terrible ballad. It did nothing to reverse Chezza’s fortunes and it peaked at No 57.

Fast forward to 1993 and a comeback single called “What’s Wrong With This Picture?” was released but its soon became apparent that Chesney was now persona non grata in the world of pop and it couldn’t get any higher than No 63. The parent album disappeared without trace. Hawkes seems to have come to terms with his time as a pop star though and now lives happily in Los Angeles with his American wife Kristina and their three children.

Now if it hadn’t been for the next single, I could have said that Chesney’s song was ‘The One And Only’ Breaker this week but here’s Incognito with “Always There” to stop that happening (damn it!). Now I had never heard of this lot before 1991 but I turns out that they were actually part of the UK Jazz Funk movement of the early 80s with their first album released in 1981. However, it would be another 10 years before their next long player by which time, like Omar earlier in the show, they had been signed to Gilles Peterson’s newly formed acid jazz label Talkin’ Loud. Impressed by their arrangement of “Always There”, it was picked out as a single but there was a problem. The band’s vocalist was sick so the replacement was the legendary R&B singer Jocelyn Brown (of “Somebody Else’s Guy” fame). The impetus that Jocelyn gave the record turned it into a Top 10 smash.

I also hadn’t been aware that “Always There” was actually a cover version with the original having been a minor hit for an act called Side Effect in the mid 70s. Incognito would repeat the cover version trick for their next hit the following year, a version of Stevie Wonder’s “Don’t You Worry ’bout A Thing”.

The increasingly tiresome Mayo indulges himself in some more dreadful attempts at humour as he introduces “It Ain’t Over ’til It’s Over” by Lenny Kravitz by stating that it was inspired by some football commentary by John Motson. OK, Simon well not only was that lame but it didn’t make any sense. I presume you were trying to make a link to the legendary line from the 1966 World Cup final commentary “some people are on the pitch, they think it’s all over…it is now!” but that was, of course, by Kenneth Wolstenholme and not John Motson. This is schoolboy error stuff.

“It Ain’t Over ’til It’s Over” was written by Kravitz as he attempted to save his marriage to actress Lisa Bonet (who found fame playing Denise Huxtable in The Cosby Show). Despite his attempts, the two divorced in 1993 and she would later play the role of singer Marie De Salle in the wonderful High Fidelity with John Cusack and Jack Black. If you merge those two characters together you just about get Denise La Salle who had a hit with the execrable “My Toot Toot” in 1985. You can tell I’m flagging a bit here can’t you?

“It Ain’t Over ’til It’s Over” peaked at No 11.

And the moment has arrived. The moment you all dreaded. It’s the first week of Bryan Adams and “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You” and he hasn’t even got to No 1 yet! It’s strange to think that as this TOTP went out with the song entering the chart at No 8 that we had no idea at that point how ingrained it would become in our psyche not just in 1991 but forever more. Taken from the soundtrack to the Kevin Costner film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, it proved to be irresistible to UK audiences famously staying at the top of the charts for a record breaking 16 weeks.

Look, this song is going to be on show after show after show which means I’ll have to write about it a lot so I don’t propose to dump everything I have to say about it on week one. So to start with, here’s some statistics about its chart performance:

No 1 in the UK for 16 weeks from July 7 to October 27
Topped the Europe-wide sales chart for 18 continuous weeks, still an all-time record
Topped the European-wide radio airplay chart for 10 weeks
No 1 for 7 weeks in the US, Billboard Hot 100, which combines radio airplay and sales,
No 1 for 8 weeks on the US Adult Contemporary Chart ,the longest run atop that chart since 1979
No 1 for 9 weeks in Adams’s native Canada
No 1 for 11 weeks in Australia
No 1 for 12 weeks in Sweden
No 1 in 18 countries being try best sell of the year in 7 of them
Sold 15 million copies worldwide

Phew!

More gibberish from Simon Mayo next as he introduces “I Touch Myself” by Divinyls. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed but there’s an awful lot of touching going on; touching this, touching that, touching cameramen. I don’t know whether I approve actually. Mind you, it hasn’t done the Divinyls any good at all has it? There at No 12 this week…”. What?! No Simes, there isn’t a lot of touching going on, it’s just that there is a song in the charts with the word ‘touch’ in its title and surely you meant to say “it hasn’t done the Divinyls any harm at all has it?” to make any sort of sense of your nonsense.

This week it’s the infamous studio performance where singer Chrissy Amphlett spends a lot of time seemingly fondling her breasts. The sexual tension is added to by her guitarist playing his instrument in an erect, phallus like position. Blimey! Wilkipedia informs me that the B-side to the single was a track called “Follow Through”. Oh God! Don’t bring any toilet humour into the already overcrowded proceedings.

Despite taking “I Touch Myself” to No 10, they were unable to repeat the trick and it became their only UK chart hit. Chrissy Amphlett sadly passed away in 2013 from breast cancer but her legacy was the I Touch Myself project promoting breast cancer awareness and encouraging women to check themselves regularly.

Hallelujah! Color Me Badd have been toppled and we have a new No 1! The bad news is it’s Jason Donovan. Yes, in some sort of twisted version of a Faustian pact, we had traded the obvious material benefit of getting rid of those berks who wanted to sex us up for our pop music souls by placing “Any Dream Will Do” at the top of the pile. Look, it’s not that I hate musicals (I don’t at all) but I can’t really be doing with Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and certainly not the insipid and twee “Any Dream Will Do”. I wasn’t the only one. Look at this tweet from an actual Jase fan:

As someone who was a fan of @JDonOfficial as a kid, this song was what killed every bit of fandom I had back then. He was singing songs from school play territory & it just seemed so naff. Now I'm older I look back with fondness at the stuff before this, though..but this…cringe
— CodaQueen (@CodaQueen) August 13, 2021

Quite. No wonder Omar turned his offer of touring with him down!

The play out video is “Sheriff Fatman” by Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine and it’s finally time for my claim to fame story. This single appeared on the duo’s album “101 Damnations”. The album closes with the track “G. I. Blues” which is an anti-war song inspired by John Savage’s character in The Deer Hunter. Now, look at the personnel listed as having contributed to the making of the album in the screenshot below. See that arrow pointing to someone called Rob Sheridan? Rob was Best Man at my wedding!

This has been my go to claim to fame indie story for years. How Rob knew Jim Bob and Fruitbat I really can’t recall but knew them he did and there is his name, recorded in history for all to see. And then…during the first wave of the pandemic last year, when joining in on Tim Burgess’s Twitter Listening Party “101 Damnations”, Jim Bob tweeted this:

This piano bit is a lot harder to play than it sounds. We had to get a friend Rob to play it but he did it too well so we had to change it after he’d left the studio #TimsTwitterListeningParty
— Jim Bob (@mrjimBob) July 14, 2020

What! You mean that isn’t Rob playing on the album after all?! Noooo!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Cubic 22	Night In Motion	No chance
2	Paula Abdul	Rush Rush	I was in no rush to buy this
3	Erasure	Chorus	Don’t think I did
4	Alice Cooper	Hey Stoopid	No
5	Omar	There’s Nothing Like This	Nope
6	Chesney Hawkes	I’m A Man Not A Boy	Dearie me no
7	Incognito	Always There	Nah
8	Lenny Kravitz	It Ain’t Over ’til It’s Over	No but I had the album
9	Bryan Adams	(Everything I Do) I Do It for You	Negative
10	Divinyls	I Touch Myself	Liked it, didn’t buy it
11	Jason Donovan	Any Dream Will Do	See 6 above
12	Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine	Sheriff Fatman	No but I must have it on something

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/m000ypc8/top-of-the-pops-27061991