Cappella

TOTP 14 SEP 1995

Posted on February 29, 2024 by 80stastic

After last week’s nadir of content, things aren’t much better this week I have to say with a couple of honourable exceptions. It’s another ‘golden mic’ presenter slot again though unlike last week, I’m not expecting much. The double act of Jo Brand and Mark Lamarr were two of my favourite holders of the chalice but the bar is seriously lowered as this time it’s Robbie Williams. Not long departed from Take That, the cheeky Stoke-on-Trent lad probably seemed like a decent shout for the role given that he was headline news even before his solo career had begun* due to the fall out from the Take That split.

*He wouldn’t release his first solo single until July 1996

However, he must also have been a considerable risk given his appearance at that year’s Glastonbury Festival when he was clearly under the influence of…something. He was a loose cannon. He jokes early on that he’d even stayed sober for the show. Well, let’s see if he can live up to one of his song titles and entertain us…

We start tonight with D:Ream who were starting to run out of steam (and sales) some eighteen months after their No 1 song “Things Can Only Get Better”. Having taken the opportunity afforded by such a big hit and run with it by releasing a flurry of further singles to almost constant diminishing returns, the party was entering the past-midnight-talking-shite phase. Take “Party Up The World” for example. The second single from sophomore album “World”, it sounds like it was written to order to supply a middling sized hit with an equivalent sized amount of quality. The song is not aided by Peter Cunnah’s live vocal here – he definitely hits a bum note early on. “Party Up The World” would give D:Ream a No 20 hit but after that it was a case of reliving the glories of “Things Can Only Get Better” which was most famously utilised by the Labour Party for their 1997 General Election campaign. I wonder if Howard Jones ever sits at home and in a quiet moment of reflection thinks “What was wrong with my song?”

Oh, one last thing. The chorus from “Party Up The World” is surely ever so slightly influenced by this Erasure tune which is ironic as D:Ream also released a single called “Star” which didn’t sound anything like the synth pop duo’s track…

Some Eurodance next courtesy of Cappella who have changed their singer since the last time we saw them. After Kelly Overett departed, a replacement was found in the form of Alison Jordan who was initially discovered via the Search For A Star competition on BBC’s That’s Life show in 1992.

After their last few hits all had titles that were variations of the usage of the word ‘move’ and the letter ‘U’ (meaning ‘you’), the group returned to an earlier hit for the inspiration for this latest one. In 1992, they made it to No 25 in our Top 40 with “Take Me Away” and in 1995, they achieved their final UK hit with “Tell Me The Way” – it’s clever stuff no? No, not really and neither was this tune. It sounds like they’d cut and pasted the most obvious and shittiest riffs and beats from every Eurodance hit ever and just glued them altogether – the musical equivalent of a patchwork quilt but one covered in excrement.

Capella never had another UK Top 40 hit but the project is still a going concern albeit with a totally different line up and they performed on the 90s nostalgia circuit. They even released a single as recently as 2023 called “Happy Phonk” but nobody really noticed.

Unable to resist the lure of tomfoolery any longer, the previously staid and sensible persona Robbie Williams had adopted tonight until now goes out of the window as he goes into skit mode. The premise of said skit is that he’s going to reveal the truth behind what Take That are really like but the only rehearsed line he gets out before an extra dressed as a security guard drags him off camera is that they drink camomile tea. Are you entertained yet? As comedy routines go, it’s hardly up there with the “Don’t tell him, Pike!” scene from Dad’s Army is it?

The first video of the night comes from Foo Fighters for their second ever single “I’ll Stick Around”. It’s another pretty nifty, driving rock tune though not as strong a track as their debut single “This Is A Call” to my ears. Dave Grohl looks so young here but then I guess we all did 29 years ago. I used to work with a guy called Dave at Our Price who looked a bit like Grohl though on reflection I’m wondering if the lookie-likie claims were purely based on the fact that Dave had long rock hair and his name was…well…Dave.

And suddenly, from out of nowhere, a man who hadn’t had a UK Top 40 hit since 1988 and hadn’t been on TOTP for a decade. That appearance had been as part of Lloyd Cole and The Commotions performing their single “Lost Weekend”. If you’d told the 17 year old me back then that Lloyd wouldn’t be on the show for another 10 years, I would have dismissed you as a crackpot completely divorced from musical reality and yet that is exactly what happened. But how did it pan out like this? Well, after “Lost Weekend”, things quietened down for Lloyd and the Commotions. Follow up single “Cut Me Down” barely scraped into the Top 40 and then the band disappeared for nigh on two years recording their difficult third album “Mainstream”. When it did finally come out, it seemed that the world had moved on from their crafted, intelligent jangle pop and despite achieving gold status, the three singles from it could only muster these chart peaks:

46 – 31 – 59

The writing was on the wall and the band read it. They split in 1989 leaving Lloyd to pursue a solo career that somehow never seemed to chime with commercial trends. Three albums were released in quick succession in the early 90s but to limited sales. Not one of them produced a Top 40 single. And then, something finally stuck with public opinion. “Like Lovers Do”, the lead single from fourth album “Love Story” made No 24 in the charts and a TOTP appearance was warranted. I don’t know why the stars aligned between Lloyd and the record buying public on this particular single and no other – maybe it was just good marketing and promotion but it’s a nice enough song I guess.

I always liked Lloyd right from “Perfect Skin” though I can’t say I followed his solo career in too much detail. However, I saw him and the Commotions on the “Mainstream” tour when he failed to say more than two words to the audience and years later on his own in New Mills when he wouldn’t stop talking. His opening line in the latter gig to the crowd was “I know you’re all sat there thinking Lloyd Cole has let himself go a bit. Well, you should have a look in the mirror”. Excellent!

Next a song that I do remember but which I don’t recall so much fuss being made about it at the time as seems to have been written about it online since. “Fantasy” was the lead single from Mariah Carey’s fifth studio album “Daydream”. Her previous one “Music Box”* had been a monster selling 28 million copies worldwide.

*Technically her third album but I’m disregarding her 1994 Christmas collection

So how do you follow that? You just churn out a copycat album don’t you? Based purely on lead single “Fantasy”, it sounded to me like she’d done just that – it didn’t seem a whole lot different to something like “Dreamlover”. But then, I hadn’t heard the Bad Boy remix by Puff Daddy. This was the evidence of Mariah’s new direction. Featuring rapping from Wu-Tang Clan’s Ol’ Dirty Bastard, it was seen as a milestone recording by many for the fusion of urban/hip hop with mainstream pop with an emphasis on rap as a featuring act. Alongside “I’ll Be There For You / All I Need To Get By” Method Man and Mary J. Blige, it was designated as an early recording of the “Thug-Love” sub genre.

Apparently, the rest of the album was of a more R&B flavour which caused much concern and consternation at her label Columbia who really didn’t want to mess with the formula that had brought her and them so much success. The head of Sony Music (and Mariah’s husband at the time) Tommy Mottola was especially vexed. Mariah knew best however and the album was another huge seller shifting 20 million copies worldwide with “Fantasy” going to No 1 in the US and No 4 over here.

I’m not sure that this live by satellite performance from New York was worth the effort though. Is that the official video playing on the huge tv screens behind Mariah? Wouldn’t they have been better off just showing that?

Inevitably, Robbie Williams has gone there and resorted to chatting up a female audience member for his next link. Obviously, it’s all staged (he puts on a silly fake American accent) but it’s still not a good look especially 29 years on.

OK, so back with the music and it’s another showing of the studio appearance by The Rembrandts from the other week. Watching it back, I’ve noticed that in the version of “I’ll Be There For You” the band perform here, the iconic handclaps at the end of the first line seem very low in the mix and nowhere near as prominent as in the opening credits for Friends. That seem a little odd as although the addition of them wasn’t the band’s idea and they didn’t actually record them (they were done by the show’s creators who wanted to be on the record in some way), supposedly The Rembrandts thought the clapping was the best part of the song. There’s only four claps after that first line (though it sounds like more) but apparently it took loads of takes to record as the aforementioned show’s creators just couldn’t get the hang of it. I wonder if their mothers warned them that there’d be days like these?

There’s two ways to consider the next hit on the show – either it’s a clever updating (by 1995 standards) of a classic disco track or…it’s an heinous abomination of an idea that should have been dismissed as soon as it crystallised in the originator’s brain. I think, rather predictably, I’m of the latter opinion. N–Trance had started the year with one of the biggest dance anthems of the decade in “Set You Free”. Featuring vocals from Kelly Llorenna, it was a genuine, credible Hi-NRG, rave track. I, for one, didn’t see them following it up by going the tacky cover version route.

“Stayin’ Alive”, of course, was originally by the Bee Gees and was part of the soundtrack to the movie and indeed cultural phenomenon that was Saturday Night Fever. A huge global hit, it was an American No 1 song and UK No 4 in 1978. Fast forward 17 years and it was given the rap treatment by Ricardo da Force whose previous credits included some of The KLF’s biggest hits. Now, given those credentials, I would have hoped for a better outcome than what N-Trance served up which seemed to me to be calculated and cynical to appeal to the cattle market disco crowd.

The performance here goes big on all the 70s disco motifs including the obligatory geezer in the white John Travolta suit. It all seems a bit naff. However, the part where he removes his jacket and twirls it around and throws it into the audience before it is slung back landing on his arm is choreographed quite well. And that’s as positive as I can be about this one. Nasty stuff.

Despite being trailed as the play out track on last week’s show and still not to be released for another four days, Simply Red are back on the show to perform their new single “Fairground”. Not wishing to be outdone by Capella’s costumes earlier, Hucknall has turned up in his own full PVC outfit. For the love of God man! Why?! This was clearly his full on, decadent pop star phase. Check out his overflowing ginger locks as well!

I’m reminded of my own Mick story which I’ve told before but which seems appropriate here. When I first worked in Manchester at the Our Price store in Market Street as a Christmas temp, there was a young woman on the staff called Natalie who was very attractive (I think she’d done done some modelling). One morning she came into work and told us that Mick Hucknall had chatted her up in a bar and wanted to see her again but she wasn’t sure what to do about it. A bit later that day, I answered the work phone and the person on the other end asked to speak to Natalie. When I asked who was calling he simply replied “Mick”. It was Hucknall! In the end, Natalie told him she wasn’t interested I think. That’s not quite the end of the story though. One morning, Natalie turned up to work in a skin tight, black catsuit. I’m not sure she’d been home from another night out. She turned to me and said, “Do you think my outfit is a bit much?”. I didn’t know where to look! Fast forward five years though and I certainly didn’t want to look at Mick Hucknall in his own version of a catsuit!

What’s that?! What about the song? Oh look, “Fairground” will be No 1 soon enough and for 4 weeks so there’ll be plenty of time to discuss it in a future post!

Michael Jackson is No 1 with “You Are Not Alone” for the second and final week. Jackson, like Mariah Carey, recorded for Sony and just as the Songbird Supreme’s (© The Guinness Book of World Records) relationship with the company’s CEO Tommy Mottola deteriorated to the point of divorce, so The King of Pop (© erm…Michael Jackson?) also had issues with him. Big issues. In a 2002 press conference, he called him a racist and held up a picture of Mottola depicted as the devil. Sony refuted the claims and refused to renew Jackson’s contract. In 2020, Kanye West even suggested that Mottola had something to do with Jackson’s death in 2009 in a since deleted tweet though I’m not sure Kanye is the most reliable source of information.

The play out track is “Let’s Spend The Night Together” by the Rolling Stones which was played to advertise the return of TOTP2 as highlighted by Robbie Williams in his final piece to camera but I’m not spending the night or any other time reviewing that one.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	D:Ream	Party Up The World	Nope
2	Cappella	Tell Me The Way	Never
3	Foo Fighters	I’ll Stick Around	I did not
4	Lloyd Cole	Like Lovers Do	I didn’t as it goes
5	Mariah Carey	Fantasy	Nah
6	The Rembrandts	I’ll Be There For You	Yes for my wife but she gave it away to our Friends obsessed goddaughter
7	N-Trance	Stayin’ Alive	As if
8	Simply Red	Fairground	Its a definite no
9	Michael Jackson	You Are Not Alone	And No

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001wc3t/top-of-the-pops-14091995?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 13 OCT 1994

Posted on June 6, 2023 by 80stastic

Dearie me. The running order for this TOTP looks especially uninspiring. What am I going to say about this lot? Even Simon ‘Smug’ Mayo isn’t the presenter for me to throw the word equivalent of rotten apples at as it’s Mr Nice himself instead, the completely inoffensive Mark Goodier.

*Starts watching the show*

Woah! Stop right there! What am I looking at?! It’s as if Mark Goodier himself had just read my comments about him being incapable of being abused because he’s just too nice and said “Hold my beer!” because he’s had an image change and turned up as a dead ringer for Jazz Club host Louis ‘Nice’ Balfour from The Fast Show. What was he thinking?! This can’t have been deliberate on Goodier’s part to look like John Thomson’s character surely? Or is it just coincidence? Is it possible that Goodier may not have even seen the BBC’s new comedy series? It first aired on 27 September so maybe three episodes had gone out by the time this TOTP aired? Is it feasible that he missed them all and so had never laid eyes on the fictional Mr Balfour? Whatever the truth, there’s no denying the similarities.

Anyway, we start with Ant & Dec when they were still known as PJ & Duncan who I’m sure we’re on the show just the other week with “Let’s Get Ready To Rhumble” but are already back with a follow up called “If I Give You My Number”. This was their third consecutive UK Top 40 hit peaking at No 15. Their run of charting singles would extend to 13 in total if you only count those whilst they were an ongoing, active concern as a pop act (i.e. between 1993 and 1997). It’s 15 though if you count their 2002 World Cup song and a 2013 rerelease of the aforementioned “Let’s Get Ready To Rhumble”. That’s a lot of hits but how many could you name off the top of your head? Just “Rhumble” right? Don’t sweat it. I worked in record shops selling the damn things for the entirety of their pop career and I could only come up with two more than that – “Shout” and a cover of “Stepping Stone” made famous by The Monkees.

So what was “If I Give You My Number” like? Well it was somewhere on the spectrum of poor to shite clearly. It didn’t have the playground chant appeal of “Rhumble” but instead, in places, seemed like a poor attempt to rewrite “Jump” by Kris Kross. Given the what I always thought of as a manufactured confusion about which one was Ant and which one was Dec early in their TV career, were there signs of this being a genuine problem during their PJ & Duncan incarnation? Ant/PJ seemed to be cast as the one in a hat whilst Dec/Duncan was the one with the oh so mid 90s pair of curtains haircut. As Louis Balfour would say, “NICE”.

What better way to follow up two ex-Byker Grove stars rapping than with some bland Eurodance? As well as having a penchant for song titles which included the letter ‘U’ substituting for the word ‘you’ and the number ‘2’ for the word ‘to’ (“U Got 2 Know”, “U Got 2 Let The Music” and “U & Me”), Cappella now seemed to be branching out to corner the market in dance tracks with the word ‘Move’ in their title. “Move It Up” was their second hit of 1994 to follow this trend after “Move On Baby” earlier in the year. Look, I’m sorry but I really have had enough of Eurodance and I’m not sure I’ve got anything to say about Cappella…except…what’s the deal with the rapper guy sitting on a throne in this performance? The optics on it are rather jarring. A man sits in an elevated position on a symbol of power overlooking five women who seem to be cavorting about for his pleasure and entertainment whilst he appears displeased by their efforts. Who thought that was a good idea?

I’m wondering whether, by the mid 90s, Gloria Estefan was running out of ideas artistically speaking. I mean you could argue (if you were being extremely harsh) that she only ever had two anyway – the Latin flavoured, uptempo dance numbers (“Get On Your Feet”, “1-2-3”, “Rhythm Is Gonna Get You”) and the huge, schmaltzy ballads (“Anything For You”, “Don’t Wanna Lose You”, “Coming Out Of The Dark”). As I say, if you were being really harsh. However, by 1994 her last three albums had been a Greatest Hits, a Spanish language collection and a Christmas album. To complete the set, Gloria chose to record an album of cover versions, the ultimate sign that the creative well has run dry.

However, “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me” would prove to be a wise move by Gloria peaking at No 5 in the UK and selling 300,000 copies over here and 2 million in the US. Featuring covers of songs by the likes of Neil Sedaka, Elton John and Carole King. And Vicki Sue Robinson. Who? Well, she was an American actress and singer who’s biggest hit was the disco staple “Turn The Beat Around”. A Top 10 hit Stateside and on the track listing for many a disco compilation, it was never actually a hit in the UK. Gloria’s version would correct that when it peaked at No 21.

Before the next act, and in anticipation off the new No 1, we get a message from Take That from Belfast where they are on tour. It’s fairly inane stuff only made even noticeable by the fact that Robbie Williams sits with his back to camera for most of it presumably to make him look interesting…oh and to show off the fact that he’s had the figure ‘1’ shaved into the back of his head. How little did we know of the trauma to come for many a young teenage girl in just nine months time when Robbie would leave the band.

Right, this is all very odd. A record by Snap! that I don’t actually mind. “Welcome To Tomorrow (Are You Ready?)” wasn’t an in your face, bass pumping, klaxon blaring dance anthem like “The Power” but a lilting, whimsical tune that was actually melodic and almost charming. How had this happened? Well, yeah, obviously they’d gotten rid of rapper Turbo B. That seemed to be the crucial factor in the transformation. Like Cappella before them, Snap! seemed to be in the midst of a song title fetish that dictated that every single they released had to include some brackets somewhere. The single before this was called “Do You See The Light (Looking For)” and the one after it “The First The Last Eternity (Till The End)”. What was the point of them? Was it the Robbie Williams effect, trying to make them seem more exotic? There have been many an example of this practice down the years but perhaps two of the most irritating are “I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)” by George Michael and Aretha Franklin and “(Don’t You) Forget About Me” by Simple Minds. Just WHY?

Oh come on now! I believe this is the fourth appearance on the show by Lisa Loeb And Nine Stories with “Stay (I Missed You)” – BRACKETS! – which seems a bit over the top for a song that peaked at No 6. I mean it was in the Top 20 for six weeks, the Top 20 for nine and the Top 40 as a whole for thirteen so it had some legs I guess but four times on the show?! One was a live by satellite performance, one was the video and the other two were in the studio of which this one is just a repeat of the first time. Curiously, Goodier introduces it as “still a Top 10 record” which suggests it’s falling down the chart maybe? There’s no caption for it detailing its chart position so just what number was it at?

* Checks chart rundown*

So it was at No 8. Now given that the record stayed at No 8 for three weeks, it could be a non mover. I’ll check. Wait there…

*Checks chart for this week*

Yep. This was its second week of those three so definitely a non-mover. Historically, TOTP had a policy of only featuring records going up the chart plus the No 1. I can’t recall what the rule was about non-movers but clearly they were deemed still valid in 1994 by head producer Ric Blaxill. Surely this must be the last time on the show for this one though. Lisa, Go (I won’t miss you). BRACKETS!

A future No 1 incoming now as we get the video for Pato Banton and his cover of “Baby Come Back”. I should say Pato Banton featuring Ali and Robin Campbell of UB40 of course. As this will be No 1 soon enough, I think I’ll just leave these chart stats here for this post:

Topped UK singles chart for 4 weeks
Finished the year as the fourth best selling single of 1994 in the UK
Spent 10 weeks inside the Top 10
Spent 4 months on the Top 40
Actually started going back up the charts in week 15 of its chart life

Despite working in record shops for virtually the whole of the 90s, I quite often get tripped up in these reviews by songs or acts I’ve either erased from my memory banks or who had completely passed me by at the time. The next artist is an example of the latter circumstance but watching them back now, how on earth did I miss this uneven paving stone?

Apparently, 2wo Third3 (terrible, terrible name) were the brainchild of pop impresario/manager Tom Watkins whose artist roster also includes Pet Shop Boys and Bros in the 80s and East 17 in the 90s. His new creation were an openly gay four piece pop group – sort of like Bronski Beat but without the credibility and with a much cheesier sound. You’ll notice only three members on stage here though as the fourth member was the non-performing songwriter Richard Stannard who was nicknamed Biff and is represented by the cartoon character displayed behind the band. Well, East 17 had that dog logo – it must have been a thing with Watkins. Also a thing with him was style over content. 2wo Third3 was all about image and promotion – London design firm Form were employed to produce the group’s record sleeves and promotional material which included yellow rubber gloves (check the single glove the lead singer is wearing) and Biff plasters being sent out to fans and promoters. To help get their name (terrible as it was) out there, they supported East 17 on their 1994 world tour (of course they did).

All this promotion finally worked when, after their first two singles failed to crack the Top 40, they finally crowbarred their way in with “I Want The World”. I mean, it’s catchy and all and I’m guessing it went down a storm in gay clubs but it was never going to be anything more than a disposable, here today gone tomorrow pop tune. There is something captivating about their TOTP performance though. I’m not sure if it’s the Biff logo or the way the two keyboard players double up as dancers by deserting their instruments and coming to the front of the stage to bust some moves. Or is it the lead singer’s customised stool that allows him to tower above the studio audience? How very Julian Cope of him!

“I Want The World” peaked at No 20 whilst a follow up “I Want To Be Alone” (make your mind up!) made it to No 29 and that was it. An album was recorded but never released. Biff went on to write mega-hits for Spice Girls and 5ive (another terrible name) whilst the lead singer reappeared in 2007 as 4th Child (what was it with numbers in their names!). As for the other two, one went into music publishing and the other went back to being a plumber. Well, pop songs are all very well but who are you going to call when your toilet won’t flush eh?

https://youtu.be/SsoHUaxyAe4

The biggest name of the night makes an appearance now. Despite his huge success as part of The Police and a solo career that had delivered four massive selling albums (including two No 1s), when it came to singles, Sting was an underperformer – less sting, more minor skin irritation. Up to this point he’d never had a single even make the Top 10 let alone top the charts but “When We Dance” would finally provide him with one by peaking at No 9.

This was one of two new songs written to help promote a Greatest Hits album. “Fields Of Gold: The Best Of Sting 1984-1994” collected the singles from those four solo albums into a handy one stop shop and it was a big seller too. Triple platinum over here, double platinum in the US; it was official – Sting could shift albums. Those pesky singles though. Until “When We Dance”, his highest charting song was “Russians” which made No 12 in 1985 (I’m not counting his part in that trio with Bryan Adams and Rod Stewart on “All For Love” which made No 2). Even singles that still get played on the radio today and which you immediately associate with him like “If You Love Somebody Set Them Free” only made No 26.

Anyway, he finally got his Top 10 solo hit with “When We Dance” but I can think of loads of other Sting songs that are more deserving than this soporific, generic ballad. “Fortress Around Your Heart”, “Love Is The Seventh Wave”, “We’ll Be Together”…all more better tracks in my opinion. Mr Sumner had already done a very slow paced song with the word ‘dance’ in the title back in 1988 on his “…Nothing Like The Sun” album called “They Dance Alone”. Seems Sting liked a slow dance number.

Coincidentally, he collaborated the following year with the aforementioned Pato Banton on a cover of “Spirits In The Material World” for the Ace Ventura soundtrack. Inevitably with such a bad idea, it was awful. Sting obviously liked that sort of reggae hook up though as he would infamously make an album with Shaggy in 2018. He got away with it too – it went to No 9 in the charts.

https://youtu.be/MkTtKV04uKE

And so to the new No 1 courtesy of Take That and we get an exclusive live performance of “Sure” from what I presume is their concert in Belfast from where they did their live message earlier in the show. Curiously though, it sounds and feels like a dress rehearsal – although we can see an audience there, we can’t hear them much. Maybe they were turned down in the mix by the sound people.

P.S. To say I was worried I wouldn’t have much to write about a fairly uninspiring line up, I seem to have written quite a bit. Go me!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	PJ & Duncan	If I Give You My Number	Of course not
2	Cappella	Move It up	Never happening
3	Gloria Estefan	Turn The Beat Around	Nope
4	Snap!	Welcome To Tomorrow (Are You Ready?)	Pleasant tune but no
5	Lisa Loeb And Nine Stories	Stay (I Missed You)	I did not
6	Pato Banton	Baby Come Back	Nah
7	2wo Third3	I Want The World	No
8	Sting	When We Dance	Another no
9	Take That	Sure	And no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001m6qq/top-of-the-pops-13101994

TOTP 23 JUN 1994

Posted on April 15, 2023 by 80stastic

It’s the final week of June 1994 and the World Cup is well under way. Republic of Ireland have already pulled off an unlikely 1-0 win against Italy and Diego Maradona had shocked the world with that bulging eyes goal celebration. Two days after this TOTP aired, he failed a drug test after the Argentina v Nigeria group game and was expelled from the tournament. He never played for his country again. The England team were watching at home like the rest of us after failing to qualify for the first time since 1978. Did we not like that! The World Cup provides the perfect opportunity for tonight’s host Simon ‘Smug’ Mayo to play to the camera by wearing a different country’s football shirt every time he does a link. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – what a nob!

We start with a band who had history when it came to rustling up a big hit out of nowhere. In 1988, Aswad bagged themselves a No 1 with “Don’t Turn Around”. There previous highest chart peak had been No 70. They would spend the next six years as infrequent visitors to the Top 40 clocking up a handful of medium sized hits. By the Summer of 1994, their last chart entry had been a rather desperate career reviving attempt – a cover of Ace’s “How Long” with Yazz. I, for one, did not see them plundering a Top 5 single any time soon but that’s what they did with the release of “Shine”. Why did this particular track spark with the record buying audience? If I knew the answer to that, I’d be a super wealthy songwriter rather than an impoverished blog writer. For what it’s worth, “Shine” (to me) seemed much more aligned with their reggae roots than the likes of the out and out pop of “Don’t Turn Around” and given the then recent trend for ragga/dancehall songs and reggae-fied pop classics in the charts, maybe this was the apposite time for an Aswad comeback. Whatever the reason, “Shine” certainly had some legs – it spent three months in the Top 40 of which half of that time was in the Top 10. I’m sure we’ll be seeing Aswad again on these repeats.

Just to prove my point about the proliferation of reggae and its various sub genres in the charts at this time, here’s Dawn Penn with “You Don’t Love Me (No, No, No)”. And if that wasn’t enough evidence to prove how parochial the charts were becoming and this TOTP in particular, here’s @TOTPFacts with a further tidbit:

Aswad later sampled "You Don’t Love Me (No, No, No)" for their track "You're No Good" a no 35 hit in 1995: https://t.co/XYmjep0ptK #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) April 7, 2023

If Aswad’s comeback was surprising then what can be said about the success of this single? Originally recorded in 1967 and based around a Willie Cobb 1960 song (which itself relied heavily on a 1955 Bo Diddley track), somehow in 1994, it was deemed essential Summer listening. NME put it at No 24 in their list of the 50 best songs of the year. However, it was a case of ‘yes, yes, yes’ for the single and ‘no, no, no’ for the accompanying album which was received much less favourably and it got no further than No 51 in our charts.

Oh this is just getting silly now. How much more Aswad can one blog post take?! The next act is Ace Of Base whose latest single is a version of the aforementioned “Don’t Turn Around”! Why?! Why did they think this was a good idea? Well, apparently it wasn’t the band’s brainwave but their record label Arista’s who wanted some extra tracks laid down for the release of the US version of their debut album. One of those tracks had been previous single “The Sign” and now it was the turn of a song written by songwriter extraordinaire Dianne Warren and Albert Hammond. It was originally recorded by Tina Turner as the B-side to her 1986 single “Typical Male” before Aswad got their hands on it. Six years later it resurfaced in the hands of Swedish hitmakers Ace Of Base who wanted to give it a makeover and reworked it in a minor key to lend it an air of melancholy. I guess they should be given some credit for trying to do something different with what was clearly a straight up and down, uptempo pop song but it’s still a big, steaming pool of piss. I think it’s the nasally vocals on it (and indeed all their records) that grate. That plus the god awful rap in the middle. Oh, and the nasty, tinny production. Yeah, I think that covers it.

Arista clearly knew their markets though and “Don’t Turn Around” went to No 4 in the US and No 5 in the UK as well as being a hit all around the world. Ace Of Base would return with yet another cover version in 1998 with their take of Bananarama’s “Cruel Summer”.

Pretty sure there’s no Aswad association with this next artist. Whilst the UK was experiencing the second coming of Bryan Adams in the form of Wet Wet Wet being No 1 for weeks on end, America also had its own version of chart purgatory in the shape of All 4 One whose single “I Swear” topped the Billboard Hot 100 for eleven consecutive weeks. Inevitably, it became a massive success over here as well and surely would have risen to the summit were it not for Marti Pellow and chums. It got wedged in at the No2 position for seven weeks unable to dislodge “Love Is All Around”. I think this was my sister and her then boyfriend’s song as I recall. No doubt it held that status for many a couple in 1994.

Not quite a one hit wonder in the UK (they had a No 33 single in 1995), they had more success in the US though no chart entries there either past 1996. Despite that, the group are still together with the original line up with their most recent album coming in 2015.

Well before Yorkshire rockers Terrorvision were singing about ‘whales and dolphins’ on their 1996 hit single “Perseverance” there was Shed Seven and their first foray into the Top 40 “Dolphin”. I seem to remember there being a lot of fuss about the emergence of this lot (who were also Yorkshire lads hailing from York itself) and the release of their debut album “Change Giver”. I hadn’t been an early adopter of the Shed buzz though. I hadn’t noticed their debut single “Mark” (to be fair, it only made No 80) and this one also seemed to have passed me by. Not sure why as it’s a decent tune and I was open to the idea of a guitar band playing a form of jangly pop. The music press seemed open to it as well, at least initially. Comparisons with The Smiths and an article in the NME describing them as ‘the UK’s brightest hopes’ alongside positive gig reviews fuelled expectations. Within months though the press had turned and the band were even criticised for their names. Not the band’s name but their actual names. Look at this:

“Do they really expect to make it big with a singer called Rick Witter?”
Sullivan, Caroline. “Feature: Blurred Vision”. The Guardian G2 (Thursday 10 November 1994): 5.

Ridiculous. Anyway, the album made a short lived but significant splash reaching No 16 but only spending two weeks on the chart. It was a start though and within two years they were cranking out some quality tunes like “Getting Better” and “Going For Gold” both of which were used to soundtrack some BBC montages of the England football team during Euro 96 at the height of lad culture. Perhaps their pièce de résistance though was “Chasing Rainbows”, the lead single from third album “Let It Ride”. They were up there with the big boys of Britpop briefly. Ah yes, Britpop. Blur Vs Oasis and all that. Except for a while it was Shed Seven Vs Oasis, a rivalry which I must admit to not being aware of at the time but which seems to be heightened by both bands releasing debut albums within a week of each other. The rivalry became a feud that was played out in the music press with comments like this from Noel Gallagher:

“If we’re The Beatles, where are The Rolling Stones… it’s not f***ing Shed Seven’.”
Simpson, Dave. “Feature: More Songs About Puberty And Power”. Melody Maker (10 September 1994): 32–34.

Ultimately, “Change Giver” couldn’t compete with the record breaking “Definitely Maybe” but it wasn’t for a lack of confidence. Rick Witter is wearing a Shed Seven T-shirt in this TOTP performance with a picture of himself on the front! “Dolphin” peaked at No 28.

https://youtu.be/LW1S-Bf_Ers

Live action films that use cartoons as their source material are rarely a good idea in my book. As far back as 1980 when Robin Williams took on Popeye, they never seemed to work. Leslie Nielsen’s turn as Mr Magoo in 1997 didn’t live long in the memory and neither did Matthew Broderick’s as Inspector Gadget in 1999. And then there’s The Flintstones. A staple of many a child of the 60s and 70s televisual schedule, the live action film starring John Goodman as Fred Flintstone actually did pretty well at the box office but it was still awful. With songs from films being big business in the 90s (think Bryan Adams / Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Whitney Houston / The Bodyguard and Wet Wet Wet / Four Weddings and a Funeral), it was no surprise that Universal Pictures wanted a huge hit to promote the film. Enter The B–52’s to record a version of the cartoon’s well known theme tune.

In many ways they were the perfect vehicle for a reworking of “(Meet) The Flintstones” having an almost cartoonish image themselves and being at the kitsch end of New Wave but on listening back to this today, it sounds horrific. Renamed as The B.C. 52’s (how amusing), they put their trademark stylings to the song like the over emphasised vocals of Kate Pierson and some wah wah guitar but it just doesn’t work for me. Shoehorning in some of the sound effects from the original into the mix like the canned drum roll that accompanies ‘Fred’s two feet’ in the cartoon sounds completely incongruous. What did I know though as the single went all the way to No 3. It would be the band’s final UK and US chart hit.

Some more pissing Eurodance next. I’m so fed up of this now. At the risk of sounding like my Dad when he used to pass judgment on the music of my youth, it all sounds the same and the bigger the crap the longer it goes on. Cappella seemed to be a poor man’s 2 Unlimited but with an obsession with inserting ‘U’ instead of ‘you’ in their song titles. “U & Me” was the third of their singles to follow this trend after “U Got 2 Know” and “U Got 2 Let The Music”. I can’t remember how they went but I’m guessing they sounded pretty similar to this one. Do you think Eurodance is just a dead form of music now? Like Latin is a dead language that nobody speaks anymore, is Eurodance a genre of music that nobody makes nor listens to any longer? We can only hope. “U & Me” peaked at No 10.

The 90s had been pretty good to Elton John so far. The decade had furnished him with his first ever solo UK No 1 in “Sacrifice / Healing Hands”, his album “Sleeping With The Past” (1990) was also a chart topper whilst “The One” (1992) went to No 2. Meanwhile, his collaborations album “Duets” had given him two Top 10 singles on the bounce. I hadn’t liked any of it though. In fact, I’d thought it was all terrible pretty much. However, that period’s success had lifted Elton out of his late 80s malaise when everything had gone a bit awry post “Too Low For Zero” and its radio friendly singles like “I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues” and “I’m Still Standing”.

What came next in 1994 some would say was his best work in years and it was all due to a Disney film. The Lion King would become an international phenomenon becoming the second highest grossing film of all time at one point behind the original Jurassic Park but also spawning a musical, sequels, a prequel and TV series. The man behind its soundtrack though was Elton and he fashioned a record that would go diamond in the US alone, achieving 10 million sales. The two big singles from it were “Circle Of Life” and this one, “Can You Feel The Love Tonight”. Both were heart strings tugging ballads the like of which Elton was more than capable of composing once he’d weaned himself off the overly saccharine which he was want to indulge in. I could appreciate the musicality of both hits from the soundtrack though I preferred “Circle Of Life” if I’m honest as did Elton who is on record as stating it’s the better song. It was “Can You Feel The Love Tonight” though that won an Oscar for Best Original Song in 1995.

The single was also a big hit in the US where it made No 4 though the reception to it in this country was somehow only worthy of a chart peak of No 14. Elton would return in 1995 with the platinum selling “Made In England” album.

It’s week four for Wet Wet Wet at the chart summit. What can I say about it this week? How about our perception of what exactly was going on here at the time? Did we have any idea that we were witnessing the genesis of a 15 weeks run at No 1 for “Love Is All Around”? Four Weddings And A Funeral was pulling in huge numbers at the box office to help promote the song in much the same way that Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves did for “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You” so maybe we should have seen it coming? Or had we consigned the whole Bryan Adams debacle to history as a one off and therefore in our minds there was no way such a run could happen again or at least certainly not within three years?

And what of chart rivals? Were there any records that looked likely to depose the Wets in those early weeks? Was it inconceivable that someone like Big Mountain (with their own song from a film) could get to No 1? How about Dawn Penn or US chart toppers All 4 One? Or even Ace Of Base who’d already scored a chart topper of their own the previous year and whose current single was a song that had been No 1 for Aswad just six years before? Marti Pellow and co would see them all off to achieve fifteen weeks atop the charts before getting bored themselves and deleting the record so that sales would eventually and inevitably decline. At least that put them marginally above Bryan Adams in the credibility stakes.

The play out song is “Night In My Veins” by The Pretenders. I’d completely forgotten that there was a follow up to “I’ll Stand By You” but here it is and it’s not bad if nowhere near as memorable as its predecessor. A catchy, melodic rock work out, it would make No 25 and was the band’s penultimate UK Top 40 entry.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Aswad	Shine	Nope
2	Dawn Penn	You Don’t Love Me (No, No, No)	No and indeed no, no
3	Ace Of Base	Don’t Turn Around	As if
4	All 4 One	I Swear	No but I bet my sister did
5	Shed Seven	Dolphin	No but I have a live album of theirs with it on
6	The B-52’s	(Meet) The Flinstones	Never happening
7	Cappella	U & Me	Negative
8	Elton John	Can You Feel The Love Tonight	Nah
9	Wet Wet Wet	Love Is All Around	I did not
10	The Pretenders	Night In My Veins	And no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001krc9/top-of-the-pops-23061994

TOTP 17 FEB 1994

Posted on February 7, 2023 by 80stastic

It’s the middle of February 1994 and something odd is happening. Unlike in 2023, my beloved Chelsea are still in the FA Cup. Somehow they managed to get past last season’s runners up Sheffield Wednesday after a replay in the last round and, two days after this TOTP aired, would travel to Oxford United and dump them out as well. To put this in context, this was only the third time in my living memory that they had made the Quarter Finals and I’d been supporting them since 1975. Nowadays of course they are serial finalists and winners of the cup but back in 1994, this felt like a very big deal. They would end up making it all the way to the final that season but let’s not talk about the 4-0 thrashing they were handed by Manchester United eh? I was working in the Our Price in Market Street, Manchester at the time and the Sony rep assigned to our shop was a guy called John who was also a Chelsea fan. He called in during the week and offered me the chance to go with him to the Oxford game on the Saturday but I had to work. What has all this got to do with TOTP? Nothing at all really but I like to recall what was going on in my life at the point these repeats originally aired. Right, now that’s done, let the music play…

This is the third show of Ric Blaxill’s stewardship and so far he’s only used Mark Goodier and Simon Mayo of his roster of returning Radio 1 DJs to host the show. Mayo gets the gig this week unfortunately but he gives a mercifully short intro at least before we’re into the tunes. Saint Etienne ended last week’s show and they begin this one but this time in the studio with a performance of “Pale Movie”. I said in the last post that it put me in mind of the theme tune to dubbed, black and white 60s TV series White Horses. However, on reflection it’s got the merest whiff of Madonna’s “La Isla Bonita” about it – must be the Spanish guitars. Apparently the band themselves view the track as a missed opportunity in that it could have been absolutely blinding but they didn’t get it quite right. It sounds pretty good to me though.

Mayo can’t resist going through his various gears of smugness at the end where he makes references to the staging of the performance and the usage of Lambrettas. “That’ll be the first time you’ve seen Lambrettas on Top of the Pops since…ooh…1980 and Poison Ivy” he can’t wait to tell us to show off his pop knowledge. Oh piss off Mayo!

Right, what’s this screeching nonsense?! Well, it’s Cappella, the people who bought you “U Got To Know” and “U Got 2 Let The Music” in 1993. They’ve dispensed with the use of a ‘U’ instead of ‘you’ in their choice of song title this time as they deliver “Move On Baby” though they would return to it for their next hit “U & Me”.

Reading their Wikipedia entry, they were kind of like the Eurodance Tight Fit. How so? Well, Tight Fit were a hastily put together trio of models/ singers who were assembled to be the public image of a recording of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” organised by producer Tim Friese-Greene. However, the year before a different producer called Ken Gold had made a record called “Back To The Sixties”, a medley jumping on the Starsound/Stars On 45 craze. Although it was recorded by session musicians and singers, it was promoted by a group of actor/singer types also under the name of Tight Fit for a TOTP appearance. Sound familiar?

OK but how does this relate to Cappella? Well, Cappella weren’t really a group but more a promotional name for the ideas of Hi-NRG producer Gianfranco Bortolotti. They first had a UK chart hit in 1989 with “Helyom Halib” which was fronted by model Ettore Foresti who didn’t appear on the record at all. Fast forward four years and Bortolotti was having those aforementioned ‘U’ hits but this time the public faces of the act were rapper Rodney Bishop and dancer Kelly Overett. Neither were anywhere near the recording studio at the time the tracks were laid down. Judging by the vocals that Kelly gives on this TOTP appearance, that was probably a wise choice. Anyway, it does seem like the Tight Fit strategy of promoting a single was copied by Cappella. Or was it Tight Fit who copied Boney M and Black Box who copied Tight Fit and Capella who copied Black Box? Considering that question is more likely to give me a headache than listening to “Move On Baby” if that was possible!

For all their success, Crowded House have a patchy record when it comes to hit singles. The did accrue thirteen UK Top 40 entries between 1987 and 1996 (twelve of them consecutively) which in itself is not too shabby but of those only one reached the Top 10 and of the rest only five made the Top 20. I guess they were more of an albums band. This one, “Locked Out”, was their joint second biggest hit when it peaked at No 12. The third single from their fourth album “Together Alone”, it’s a great pop song; urgent yet melodic, well crafted yet felt spontaneous.

It was also featured in a film that I’ve mentioned before (though I can’t recall why now). Reality Bites starred Ethan Hawke, Winona Ryder and Ben Stiller who also directed and whilst it wasn’t a runaway success at the time, has since become a bit of a cult classic. Its soundtrack isn’t talked about in such revered tones but it did furnish a fair few hits. Aside from “Locked Out” it also featured “Stay (I Missed You)” by Lisa Loeb (a US No 1 and UK No 6) and Big Mountain’s cover of Peter Frampton’s “Baby I Love Your Way” (UK No 2 and US No 6). Those hits are for much later in the year though.

I confidently predicted the other week that we wouldn’t be seeing Dina Carroll on the show again until 1996 when her next album came out. So what’s she doing here this week performing an album track? It was all to do with the BRITS which last week’s TOTP had bigged up with a whole section dedicated to the nominations. Dina won Best British Female but as she will have got the gong for that at the actual BRITS show, they’ve allowed Simon Mayo to present her with an award to commemorate her album “So Close” selling one million copies. To celebrate that occurrence, she’s singing “Hold On” exclusively for the show despite it never being released as a single. It’s got a bit of a Marvin Gaye vibe about it but it certainly wasn’t as strong as “Don’t Be A Stranger” for example. Was this type of performance going to be a regular thing under new producer Ric Blaxill? The ‘million seller’ slot? Surely not…?

…or definitely maybe because here’s another new section of the show that is based around songs not actually in the Top 40. To be fair to Blaxill, this slot was at least linked to the charts being billed as it was Bubbling under the 40 and highlighting a song just outside them. Was he thinking that if a single was just outside the 40, given prime exposure on TOTP it would definitely be inside it the following week anyway so why not just get it on early doors? That did rather cast him in the role of hitmaker which is maybe not the job of the show’s producer? Wasn’t TOTP always meant to reflect the tastes of the record buying public and not to be forcing songs upon it? Anyway, whatever the reasoning behind the slot, in the case of Sinéad O’Connor, the exposure it gave her song “You Made Me The Thief Of Your Heart” didn’t turn it into a hit in the UK. In fact, it never got any higher than where it was at the time of this performance – No 42. Taken from the soundtrack to the film In The Name Of The Father about the 1974 Guildford pub bombings and the four people falsely convicted of perpetrating them, it’s certainly an affecting track. I’ve never seen the film but I can imagine it fitting in well to a movie of such gravity. However, whether you’d want to listen to it over and over outside of the film I’m not sure.

Sinéad gives a typically atypical performance here. With just some spotlights, a smattering of dry ice, the word ‘forgiveness’ marker penned on her chest and a long bob wig (I’m assuming) for company, she goes from standing still defiantly to full on animated dancing via a bit of gentle swaying all in the space of three minutes. Sinéad would get herself a bona fide chart hit later in the year when “Thank You For Hearing Me” made No 13 and a gold selling parent album in “Universal Mother”.

The well established Breakers slot is still with us and we start with a third consecutive hit for Urban Cookie Collective. Yes, you read that right – a third consecutive hit. Remembered by many as a one hit wonder, the Cookies (as nobody ever called them) actually had five UK Top 40 hits though the final one was a a rerelease of their first. “Sail Away” was the third of those and would make No 18. It’s got a frenetic beat but none of the charm of “The Key The Secret”, as if they were trying to do their best 2 Unlimited impression.

Mayo’s at it again with his smug mode enabled going on about how there hasn’t been an act called Sasha on TOTP for decades. I presume he was referring to the French singer/songwriter Sacha Distel? Ooh Simon, you’re so knowledgeable! Nob. Anyway, this Sasha is the Welsh, multi-award winning DJ and producer. He isn’t the guy in the video who I believe is Sam Mollison. You didn’t make that clear in your intro did you Mayo? Maybe you didn’t know? He also isn’t Sash! the German DJ of “Encore Une Fois” fame. Anyway, this track “Higher Ground” made No19 and was a track from Sasha’s “The Qat Collection” which also furnished a No 32 hit called “Magic” also with Mollison on vocals though the album itself only made No 56.

Next it’s the official follow up single from Meatloaf to his gigantic, global No 1 hit “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)”. I say official as Sony rereleased “Bat Out Of Hell” in December 1993 to cash in on the renewed interest in their one time artist. However, the second song from the “Bat Out Of Hell II: Back Into Hell” album was this track- “Rock And Roll Dreams Come Through”. Yet another Jim Steinman composition, the track was actually recorded by Steinman 13 years prior for his “Bad For Good” album and was his only US chart hit in his own right.

Written about the uplifting power of rock music and its ability to see people through even the most extreme of circumstances, it’s classic Meatloaf fodder (it was originally written for him) and has the usual play on words title with the use of ‘through’ rather than ‘true’. Any song from the album chosen as the follow up to its chart busting predecessor would struggle in comparison sales wise and that was the case with “Rock And Roll Dreams Come Through” which didn’t even make the Top 10 over here. The video was as over the top as you would expect though with Meatloaf cast as some sort of vigilante fortune teller going around blowing up jukeboxes to rescue runaway teenagers including a young Angelina Jolie. Director Michael Bay would go onto direct movies including Armageddon, Pearl Harbour and Transformers so he obviously had a thing about explosions.

God Mayo really is insufferable. In his next link, he says this:

“Now there comes a point in every good Top of the Pops where your Dad in the corner goes ‘What the Hell is this?!’. Well, just tell him it’s The Wildhearts and they’re great!”.

What’s wrong with that you may ask? Well, at the time of this show, Mayo was a 35 year old father of two so I’m not really buying his ‘I’m down with the kids’ positioning of himself. As for the band he was introducing, I really can’t remember them at all despite their thirteen UK Top 40 hits and four albums they released between 1993 and 1997. So were they great as Simon Mayo told us? Well, if “Caffeine Bomb” was anything to go by, not in my book. All this glam metal stuff had been done to death before and by better bands than this. New York Dolls, Kiss with their full face make up, even Manic Street Preachers had dabbled with make up and guitars in their early days. Then there was the early 90s UK glam blues/rock movement from the likes of The Quireboys and The Dogs D’Amour…oh and guess what The Wildhearts had links to both those bands. Here’s @TOTPFacts with the details:

The Wildhearts singer/guitarist Ginger (real name David Walls) was previously in The Quireboys, while drummer Bam was (and currently once again is) a member of The Dogs D'Amour. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) February 3, 2023

Oh it all makes sense now. They tried to make themselves controversial with headline baiting song titles like “Greetings From Shitsville”, “Sick Of Drugs” and “Just In Lust” but it all seems a bit desperate to me. Nothing to see here. Next!

Did someone mention 2 Unlimited before? Um, yeah…it was me obviously but here they are still having hits even in 1994, three whole years after their first. “Let The Beat Control Your Body” was the ninth of fourteen in total in the UK and the fifth and final one from their “No Limits” album. To highlight how many hits they’ve had, the TOTP production team have set up a 2 Unlimited ‘art gallery’ full of gold and silver discs to enable a really weak link for Simon Mayo who obviously had a thing about other people’s disc awards following Dina Carroll’s earlier. They could have at least used the Vision On gallery music to soundtrack it:

Once the performance starts it the usual 2 Unlimited shtick with lots of pounding beats and some ropey rapping from Ray and Anita enthusiastically singing some dreadful, trite lyrics like “My beat accepts you just as you are, it drives you away just like a fast car”. Seriously, how did they get away with this for so long?!

Mariah Carey has crashed straight I at No 1 with her cover version of Harry Nilsson’s “Without You” finally bringing D:Ream’s four week reign to an end. Supposedly the release of the single was delayed by three weeks probably to align perfectly with the Valentine’s Day market but possibly so as not to clash with the death of Nilsson himself who passed away on 15th January. A respectful amount of time maybe needed to be seen to have passed or was it to see if his record company might rerelease his most famous song in the aftermath of his demise? The single’s success gave her “Music Box” album a huge sales push despite it having been out for six months by this point. I’d ordered in a load for the Our Price I was working in but we still sold out by Saturday afternoon – a rookie error. “Without You” will be No 1 for another three weeks.

The play out tune is “Rush” by Freak Power which is the second song on the show tonight after Sinéad O’Connor’s “You Made Me The Thief Of Your Heart” not to become a Top 40 hit. Freak Power were, of course, one of Norman Cook’s many musical vehicles and followed the dissolution of Beats International in his timeline. They would score a massive hit in 1995 with “Turn On, Tune In Cop Out” following its use in a Levi’s advert. I don’t remember this one at all though hardly surprising seeing as it peaked at No 62.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Saint Etienne	Pale Movie	Liked it, didn’t buy it
2	Cappella	Move On Baby	Never
3	Crowded House	Locked Out	No but I think I have it on a Best Of album
4	Dina Carroll	Hold On	I never bought her album, no
5	Sinéad O’Connor	You Made Me The Thief Of Your Heart	No
6	Urban Cookie Collective	Sail Away	Uh-uh
7	Sasha	Higher Ground	Nah
8	Meatloaf	Rock And Roll Dreams Come Through	Nope
9	The Wildhearts	Caffeine Bomb	God no!
10	2 Unlimited	Let The Beat Control Your Body	As if
11	Mariah Carey	Without You	I did not
12	Freak Power	Rush	And no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001hqvf/top-of-the-pops-17021994

TOTP 21 OCT 1993

Posted on November 5, 2022 by 80stastic

What’s up with the TOTP running order? The other week we just had eight acts on and now this show only has a paltry seven! It’s all to do with whether there’s any Breakers section of course where the producers could slam up to five artists into a two minute time period. However, they’ve really cleared the decks this week because of the running time of the new No 1 but we’re getting ahead of ourselves. We open with Cappella who seemed to be a cut price 2 Unlimited with a penchant for song titles that replace the word ‘you’ with ‘U’ and ‘to’ with the number 2. So much did they like to do it that they rivalled the master of the art Prince. However, if that match up was a game of football, the result would be as follows:

PRINCE 4 – 3 CAPPELLA

I Would Die 4 U

Take Me With U

U Got The Look

I Wish U Heaven

U Got 2 Know

U Got To Know (Revisited)

U Got 2 Let The Music

This latest single would be Cappella’s biggest hit, trumping the chart achievement of its predecessors by going all the way to No 2. Listening back to it though, it was just more nasty Eurodance excrement stinking out the charts. They would linger for another four Top 20 hits over the next couple of years. They are still an active entity but seem to have a list of previous band members to rival The Fall. Sadly one of them was Marcus Birks who died of Covid 19 after previously being an anti-vaxxer and Covid denier.

https://youtu.be/D55ECn_Uzj4

1993 saw the return of INXS though in truth they hadn’t been away long. There was never much of a gap between their albums up to this point. Their latest – “Full Moon, Dirty Hearts” – was already the ninth studio album of their career in thirteen years and the third of the 90s. Previous album “Welcome To Wherever You Are” (which I’d liked and bought) had only been released fifteen months prior but the band had decided not to tour it and go straight into recording the next one instead hence the small time period between them. That recording process though was a fraught one. Michael Hutchence had suffered a fractured skull after being attacked in an alley in Copenhagen and hitting his head on the kerb. He spent two weeks in hospital and the after effects of the attack caused him to behave erratically and aggressively. There were multiple studio bust ups whilst laying down tracks for “Full Moon, Dirty Hearts”. In amongst the upheaval though, the band managed two collaborations with other artists with Chrissie Hynde and Ray Charles contributing to a track each. Despite the album making it to No 3 in the UK, its sales were well down on the likes of “Kick” and “X”. I recall there being lots of unsold copies of it in the Our Price store I was working in.

The album’s lead single “The Gift” though seemed determined to create a bit of sales history of its own. Its debut in the Top 40 of No 11 was the biggest chart entry of the band’s career and when it also peaked at that position instantly became their joint second biggest hit ever after “Need You Tonight”. Listening back to it now it does seem rather one dimensional based around a looped and relentless riff but it was also a great ear worm. Talking of ears, check out host Tony Dortie’s memory of this show:

#totp I remember being informed by BBC complaints after this Episode the word #Eargasm' was not deemed popular suitable family language
— Tony Dortie (@TonyDortie) November 4, 2022

Lisa Stansfield was very busy in 1993 having scored two Top 10 singles from movie soundtracks in “Someday (I’m Coming Back)” from The Bodyguard and “In All The Right Places” from Indecent Proposal. She’d also featured on the “Five Live EP” from The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert which had gone to No 1. However, it had been two years since her last solo studio album and so she duly delivered her third one called “So Natural” in the November. Trailed by the title track as the lead single (though technically that was “In All The Right Places” I guess as it was added onto the album’s track listing) it was yet another soulful ballad which generated the usual clichés beginning with ‘s’ from the music press like ‘sensual’, ‘sophisticated’ and ‘seductive’. I think I would use a different ‘s’ word though. Sorry Lisa.

The album would go platinum but that figure only added to a sales decline that saw debut “Affection” go triple platinum and follow up “Real Love” double platinum. By the time of her fourth album in 1997, she was down to gold status. She’s still recording and releasing music though with her last album being as recent as 2018.

https://youtu.be/j6yedYRqCac

Now if Prince and Cappella had a thing for song titles featuring ‘U’ instead of ‘you’ and ‘2’ instead of ‘to’ then Chris Rea seemed to be developing a habit for songs featuring girls names beginning with ‘J’. After “Josephine” in 1985 came “Julia” in 1993. In answer to Tony Dortie’s question “Who’s Julia”, she was, of course, Rea’s then four years old daughter.

Whatever you say about Chris, you can’t deny his productivity. He’s prolific. In a career spanning 44 years, he’s released 25 studio albums (more than one every two years), 14 Best Ofs, a live album, a soundtrack and 72 singles! Of those 72 singles though, only 13 have made the UK Top 40 and only two the Top 10 (including that Christmas song). “Julia” was one of the lucky13 peaking at No 18. The lead single from his “Espresso Logic” album (his third in three years – told you he was prolific!), it sounds a bit like his 1987 hit “Let’s Dance” to me but a little less jaunty maybe.

https://youtu.be/uAqjqAmJim8

Chris always looked such an unlikely and possibly reluctant pop star when he appeared on TOTP with a look on his face as if to say “yeah, I’m not sure about all this but I’m going with the flow”. Nice bit of slide guitar from him in this one by the way though not as good as his work on this track…

OK here’s another reason perhaps why there’s only seven acts on the show tonight. Nowhere near the time given to the No 1 record but still clocking in at just under 4:30 comes Jean-Michel Jarre. Somehow I never really got the boat to Jarre island. Obviously I knew he had these songs and albums like “Équinoxe” and “Oxygène” (did they have various numbers after them?) and that he was renowned for huge light shows when performing his instrumental pieces live. I also knew guys at school who swore by him but but it mostly left me cold. There was a Best Of album in 1991 called “Images” which I possibly sold copies of in the Our Price in Market Street, Manchester but he really didn’t register much on my musical radar.

Come 1993 and showing Chris Rea style prolificacy, Jarre had just released his eleventh studio album called “Chronologie”. According to his discography, the single released from it was called “Chronologie 4” (there’s those numbers again) though whether this is that track shown here I don’t know – the TOTP graphic just calls it “Chronologie”. Here we get an intro from Jarre himself before he bounds on stage to give us a live performance. Again like Chris Rea, Jean-Michel cuts an unorthodox pop star figure, grinning away with his keytar. Here’s a question, can you rock a gig whilst wielding a keytar? Whether you can or not, there wasn’t any appetite for this track as a single in the UK where it missed the Top 40 altogether. The album was moderately successful peaking at No 11.

https://youtu.be/5VziKpeRwp0

WHOOO?! Well, according to Tony Dortie she was someone “destined for a big future” though he was proven to be wrong in that claim. For a while though, there was a big buzz about Lena Fiagbe. Her debut single “You Come From Earth” had even been included on the track listing for “Now That’s What I Call Music 25” and received massive radio airplay but somehow fell short of the Top 40. Undeterred, the follow up single “Gotta Get It Right” was released and its upbeat, soul-pop rhythms made it a No 20 hit. It kind of sounds like Macy Gray doing a Des’ree impersonation – not an unpleasant sound but maybe not one to build a career of longevity on. And so it proved as a clutch of subsequent singles all failed to breach the Top 40 and Lena’s album bombed. She recorded a cover of Barry Manilow’s “Can’t Smile Without You” for the Four Weddings And A Funeral soundtrack and provided vocals for Wasis Diop’s “African Dream” single in 1996 but then the trail went cold.

To the main event now. Weighing in at a colossal 7 minutes and 15 seconds it’s the full fat video for Meatloaf’s “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)”. OK so firstly, just to clarify the timings, the album version of the song clocks in at a whopping 12:01 but the radio edit was more than halved to 5:13. The absolute full video version is actually 7:52 but I’m guessing they shaved a few seconds off here to allow Tony Dortie to do an outro. The video was directed by Michael Bay who would later direct Transformers and Pearl Harbour (not a great CV I would suggest) and cost $750,000. It’s based on the Beauty and the Beast story which is clearly obvious but there’s also a definite hint of Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula which had been out less than a year. The scene where ‘beauty’ is being ravished by two lesbian vampire types is an almost shot for shot steal of a scene from it.

The single itself was the biggest selling of 1993 in the UK selling 761,000 copies and spent a total of sixteen weeks in the Top 40 of which fourteen were in the Top 10 and seven were at No 1. As we’ve got another six weeks of this, I’ll leave it there for the moment.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Cappella	U Got 2 Let The Music	Never
2	INXS	The Gift	Nah
3	Lisa Stansfield	So Natural	No
4	Chris Rea	Julia	Nope
5	Jean-Michel Jarre	Chronologie 4	Hell no!
6	Lena Fiagbe	Gotta Get It Right	I did not
7	Meatloaf	I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)	And no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001drbj/top-of-the-pops-21101993

TOTP 15 APR 1993

Posted on July 31, 2022 by 80stastic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

https://youtu.be/uu7Nu4XsSfw

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

“Sing Hallelujah!” peaked at No 16.

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

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

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

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

“U Got To Know” peaked at No 6.

https://youtu.be/WKWRCHTI1g0

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

https://youtu.be/y7cPYUytcEE

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

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

https://youtu.be/42i4O5q2wNQ

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

TOTP 01 APR 1993

Posted on July 24, 2022 by 80stastic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Pressure US” peaked at No 19.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0019dvm/top-of-the-pops-01041993

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 14 SEP 1995

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TOTP 13 OCT 1994

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TOTP 23 JUN 1994

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TOTP 21 OCT 1993

PRINCE 4 – 3 CAPPELLA

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TOTP 15 APR 1993

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TOTP 01 APR 1993

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