Cast

TOTP 12 SEP 1997

I’ve decided that this post will be a Diana’s death free zone on account of it having dominated the last two and that we still have weeks of the Elton John single to come. Right then, let’s get to it starting with tonight’s presenter. Now, I thought that, under executive producer Chris Cowey, the ‘golden mic’ feature where a celebrity would host the show had been done away with and replaced with a roster of young BBC presenters sourced from their existing youth TV output. So why is comedian Mark Lamarr on hosting duty this week? Well, maybe he was considered as a member of the extended BBC family or an associate member if you like seeing as he was a regular on two of the corporation’s popular panel games Shooting Stars and Never Mind The Buzzcocks at the time. Anyway, our host he is and he will lead us through tonight’s acts in a similarly dismissive manner to his Buzzcocks demeanour. Well, did we expect anything else?

We start with Hanson who were only on last week but are back again as they have shot into the charts at No 4 with “Where’s The Love”. I recently met up with a friend with whom I discussed my blog and admitted that after nearly nine years of writing it that occasionally the creative juices can run dry. I summed this position up by saying “Sometimes I ask myself ‘what more can I say about Hanson?’”. And so here I am facing that very question. OK, how about this? Somebody on Twitter described Hanson as ‘Kula Shaker meets The Osmonds’ which I thought was pretty clever but he followed it up with ‘Tuneless meets unlistenable’ which I thought wasn’t. What was unlistenable were some of the comments that drummer Zac made on his Pinterest account in 2020 which were described by Ashley Spencer of Vice Media as “a trove of pro-gun memes many of which were racist, transphobic, homophobic and sexist”. Three years later, Zac Hanson was appointed as a deacon in the Georgian Orthodox Church under the name Father Mercurios. Form your own opinions. I had to.

In the last post, I posited the theory that Ocean Colour Scene had become serial chart stars by 1997 based on the peaks of their last half a dozen or so singles. The same logic could also be applied to Cast. Check out the placings of their last six hits below:

8 – 9 – 4 – 7 – 9 – 7

The last of those was “Live The Dream”, the third single released from their sophomore album “Mother Nature Calls”. It’s a fairly laid back, strolling type number that’s quite pleasant though, on reflection, I’m kind of surprised was considered suitable for release as a single. Its chart high would suggest I don’t know what I’m taking about*. However, I’m pretty sure all of those peaks were achieved in their first week of sales when they would have been discounted as new releases so was it more a reflection of their growing fanbase than the hit potential of the song?

*Actually, I did my dissertation at polytechnic on what makes a hit record a hit record – I think I called it something one the lines of ‘The Mechanics of the Music Industry’. Something wanky like that. Does that mean I did know what I was talking about? Of course not as I came to no valid conclusions. Obviously.

For the aforementioned question “What more can I say about Hanson?”, repeat for Tina Moore. Well, The Guardian no less ranked her hit “Never Gonna Let You Go” at No 11 in their list of ‘The best UK garage tracks – ranked!’ in 2019 which I guess shouldn’t be disregarded assuming that sort of thing means something to you (it doesn’t to me). As for this performance, this is just a repeat of her previous appearance from the other week which Mark Lamarr had clearly watched before his stint as host as he takes the piss out of a part of it that I hadn’t picked up on before. “In the middle of this next track, Tina Moore does some of the snappiest footwork I’ve ever seen since Bambi learned to walk but watch very carefully as it might be too fast for the human eye” he warns. What follows, via a camera situated underneath the glass podium Tina is performing on, are some of the slowest, most plodding shoe shuffle moves ever witnessed on prime time TV!

Next up is Finley Quaye with his second hit single “Even After All”. The follow up to “Sunday Shining”, it would be his biggest ever peaking at No 10. It was again more of that soul/reggae fusion sound on which he made his name with a meandering groove that was perfect for whiling away whatever was left of the weekend after a big night out on the Saturday. Finley’s affectation here for singing with one arm behind his back confused me at first glance and left me asking the question “Finley Quaye didn’t have just one arm did he?”. Of course he didn’t so with that issue resolved my next query was “What is he wearing?”. The 60s went that way *points behind him* Finley!

My final question to myself was “How did I not know at the time that his nephew was trip-hop artist Tricky?”. The clue was right there in the title of Tricky’s album “Maxinquaye” which was literally the name of his Mum (minus an ‘e’) – Maxine Quaye who is Finley’s half-sister. Apparently the family ties are quite distant though – Finley and Tricky didn’t actually meet until 1996.

Here comes the next instalment of the curious tale of Kavana the pop star. I find his story* peculiar because on the one hand, he could have been extraordinarily successful with his classic teen heart-throb looks and catchy pop tunes and on the other, on another day, you look at him and think “How did this bloke become a pop star?” so insubstantial was he.

*Apparently he has an ‘explosive’ autobiography coming out later this year. I’m not so intrigued by his story that I would shell out good money for that though!

For the record, come 1997, Kavana was at the peak of his fame with two Top 10 hits under his belt and a Smash Hits award for Best Male Artist on his mantelpiece. Given all of this, the decision was taken to maintain his career momentum by rereleasing his debut single “Crazy Chance” which had been a minor hit in 1996. Given a remix and retitled as “Crazy Chance ‘97”, it would do the job efficiently enough by returning a No 16 chart peak. It was co-written by Take That’s Howard Donald but I don’t think I’d own up to that if I was Howard as it sounds like an Eternal B-side at best.

Now, what was going on with the staging of this performance? All that hazy camera focus and wobbly, garishly coloured ‘green screen’ effect behind Kavana? Many of the TOTP online community came up with the theory that it must have been a nod to or in joke with Mark Lamarr referencing his time on The Word the look of which Chris Cowey seems to be trying to recreate. Had he taken inspiration for the controversial Channel 4 show or was he just trying out something new?

Maybe Cowey was indeed trying to be inventive as we stick with the ‘green screen’ effect for the next act who are N–Tyce. That’s N-Tyce, not ‘N Sync nor N-Joi but N-Tyce…yeah, I’ve got no idea either. Apparently they had four UK Top 20 hits though of which this one, “We Come To Party” was their second and biggest. I’m sure it’s not as clear cut a divide as this but it did superficially seem like the first part of the 90s were all about boybands whilst the second part was the turn of all girl groups. Eternal, All Saints and of course the Spice Girls are names that trip easily off the tongue but N-Tyce? They would surely have been a perfect choice for the ‘identity parade’ round in the aforementioned Never Mind The Buzzcocks. As if that wasn’t enough indignity, there were those tours supporting Boyzone and Peter Andre that Mark Lamarr mentions in his link – “so it is true there’s always someone worse off than you” he closes his segue with. He’s not wrong though is he?

Just as with Tina Moore earlier, the next performance is just a re-showing of an earlier appearance on the show as we get Mariah Carey and “her wobbly legged sailors” again as Lamarr puts it. I like the way he plays along with the all too easily seen through deception that Mariah is actually there in the studio by craning his neck as if to get a better view. His shout of “Go on love!” is the icing on the cake. I have nothing else to say about her song “Honey” except that it was her 13th of 19 US No 1 singles! *Nineteen!

*You’ve got that Paul Hardcastle song in your head now haven’t you?

Even Lamarr has to stop his cynic act to prostrate himself at the altar of this week’s No 1. After crossing over into the mainstream with “Bitter Sweet Symphony”, The Verve really hit the big time with follow up “The Drugs Don’t Work”. A ballad that redefined melancholy, it was either written about Richard Ashcroft’s father-in-law who passed away after having cancer or his own Dad who died of a blood clot when Ashcroft was just 11 years old – depends which story you believe. One which I’m not sure that I believe is that its success was somehow fuelled by the mood of the nation which was in mourning over the death of Diana, Princess of Wales…Damn! I said I wasn’t going to mention it! Oh well, I nearly made it through the whole post. The theory goes that with the single having been released the day after Diana died, the public were more open to “The Drugs Don’t Work” than they perhaps might have been, that they connected with it more if you like, and bought it in enough copies to send it to No 1 for a week. Just a week mind as then “Candle In The Wind ‘97” would have been in the shops and all bets were off. It was, in effect, a makeshift chart topper until the real mania could take place courtesy of Elton John. I’m just not having that. I just don’t think that those people that were literally buying armfuls of the Elton single at a time would have also bought a song by an indie band, no matter how melancholy it was.

Now I can’t find any reference to it online anywhere but wasn’t there someone within the Irish media at the time, a TV presenter or a radio DJ perhaps, who totally misunderstood the song and called for it to be banned? Apparently, he thought that the story behind “The Drugs Don’t Work” was that of a drug user moaning that their recreational drugs weren’t giving them the required high. I haven’t made that up have I?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Hanson	Where’s The Love	Didn’t happen
2	Cast	Live The Dream	I did not
3	Tina Moore	Never Gonna Let You Go	Negative
4	Finley Quaye	Even After All	No but my wife had his album
5	Kavana	Crazy Chance ’97	Nope
6	N-Tyce	We Come To Party	No
7	Mariah Carey	Honey	Nah
8	The Verve	The Drugs Don’t Work	No but I had the Urban Hymns album

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0029cfk/top-of-the-pops-12091997?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 04 APR 1997

Posted on February 16 by 80stastic

As widely predicted and discussed within the TOTP online community, BBC4’s repeats for 1997 are facing more disruption than the London Underground during a tube strike due to the various misdemeanours of some of the artists who had big hits this year. The first of these came at the end of March when the show that aired on the 28th of that month featured the video for R Kelly’s hit “I Believe I Can Fly”. The R&B singer is currently serving a 31 year sentence for racketeering and child pornography. Having checked the running order for that episode, my opinion is that we didn’t miss much with only the Pet Shop Boys and The Beautiful South being of potential interest to this blogger.

We’ll be jumping around for a while though as “I Believe I Can Fly” went to No 1 for three weeks and later in the year we have Puff Daddy/P Diddy/Sean Combs who spent six weeks on top of the UK charts with “I’ll Be Missing You” and who is currently facing charges of racketeering and sex trafficking. I’m assuming all shows that feature either R Kelly or Puff Daddy will be pulled and not re shown. For this episode though we are on safe ground with a load of dance tunes and those nice Spice Girls featuring. Our hosts are the irreverent pair Mark and Lard who had recently taken over the reigns of the Radio 1 Breakfast Show following the departure of Chris Evans.

We’re straight in – literally straight in as there’s no to camera piece from a featured artist nor even a presenter intro in these strange, new times – with the latest hit from Cast called “Free Me”. The lead single from sophomore album “Mother Nature Calls”, it was more of that so called ‘Britpop’ sound that had seen them become chart stars over the previous 18 months though possibly a bit more of an earthy sound and not quite as melodic. It was a decent tune – definitely not ‘filler’ but by no means ‘killer’ either. When reviewing their last hit, the standalone single “Flying”, I criticised the track’s lyrics for being basic and superficial. I have to say that this was also the case with “Free Me”. So simple are they that if they were a boy in a nursery rhyme, they’d definitely be called Simon. I mean, look at these:

Give me some time to be me, give me the space that I need

Give me a reason to be, give me some time to be

Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Russell Glyn Ballard
Free Me lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group

What? I wouldn’t have submitted that as an 11 year old if I’d been asked to write some poetry in an English lesson. Come on John Power – you were better than that! By the way, I’m not sure about your hat either. Must do better.

After Mark and Lard have reinforced their northern roots by insisting that you pronounce Cast as “Cast” and not “Carst” (they’re right of course), they introduce 3T who, unbelievably, were still having hits two years after their first. Happily, “Gotta Be You” would be the fifth and final time they would feature in the UK charts. Their discography informs me that this one featured a Herbie Critchlow who Wikipedia informs me is a producer and songwriter who has penned songs for the likes of Backstreet Boys, Rita Ora and…erm…Andy Abrahams. Is he the guy that comes on in the middle of this performance and raps something truly dodgy about zombie nymphomaniacs or something? Anyway, even he gets bored of the whole thing and exits stage left before the end of the song and he co-wrote the bloody thing! To paraphrase Morrissey when reviewing a Modern Romance single in Smash Hits, “there may well very well be a worse group than 3T but can anybody really think of one?”.

Next we have…what the actual f**k?! No Doubt?! AGAIN?! After venting my spleen in the last post that “Don’t Speak” had been shown in the 21 March show despite no longer being at No 1 and dropping down the charts, here they are once more. To quote from the extraordinary film Blazing Saddles, “What in the wide, wide world of sports is a-goin’ on here?” OK, the single had gone back up from No 4 to No 3 so in theory it was a chart climber, but this was the sixth time it had been on the show already and only three of those had been as the No 1 record. Sixth you say? YES! SIX! I’ve done my research and it was even on the 28 March show that we didn’t get to see meaning it was in three consecutive weeks after falling from the top of the charts. And it doesn’t even stop there as it was also on the 18 April show (which we similarly won’t get to see) meaning it was given a slot on the running order more often than when it was the actual No 1! This was just ludicrous! Who was the director during these shows?

*Checks internet*

It was that John L Spencer character again! Well, all I can say is never mind The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, this was The John L Spencer Bullshit Explosion!

When Mark and Lard looked at which acts would be featured in the show they would be presenting, what do you reckon they thought? I’m betting that when their fingers descended the list and alighted on N–Trance their reaction wasn’t “Brilliant! We’ve got N-Trance on the show and even better than that, they’re doing a cover of that old Ottawan hit!”. The descent of the people who gave us the dance floor classic “Set You Free” into a naff 70s tribute act was indeed a bizarre career move. It all seems to be down to the recruitment of rapper Ricardo da Force to their ranks who had previously featured on those huge hits by The KLF in the early 90s. He was at the forefront of N-Trance’s reworking of the Bee Gees classic “Stayin’ Alive” which had stunk the charts out in the Autumn of 1995 when it did a hit No 2.

Throwing out credibility for commercial success, they repeated the trick with “D.I.S.C.O.”. The original was gruesome enough but the 1997 version was just vulgar and the performance here, complete with 70s disco wigs and outfits (obviously) turned up the tacky-o-meter to 11. In case you’re not convinced by my argument, then here’s all the proof you need – it was covered by the King of Cheese himself Chico. It’s Chico time!….

What? There’s a counter argument? Which is?

*The guy who wrote and produced “D.I.S.C.O.” – Daniel Vangarde – is the father of Thomas Bangalter, one half of achingly hip dance outfit Daft Punk*

Daft Punk? Seriously? No, I don’t care. N-Trance can, to quote Norman Stanley Fletcher from Porridge, “Naff off!”.

Ah this is better – “North Country Boy” by The Charlatans. I recall that a record company rep turned up at the Our Price shop where I worked a couple of weeks before this all excited and carrying a pre-release copy of this single saying how it was really special and the best thing the band had ever done. Was he right? Well, music taste is totally subjective but he might have been in with a shout with that claim though it’s not my own personal favourite (which I think is “Just Lookin’”, today anyway). It’s probably one of their best known songs though, peaking at No 4 and coming from the album “Tellin’ Stories” which ushered in a period of great chart success for the band. The album itself went to No 1 while furnishing the band with four hit singles that achieved the following peaks:

3 – 4 – 6 – 16

I’m pretty sure that Mark and Lard liked this one – they even did their own version of it (sort of) under the guise of their alter ego spoof band project The Shirehorses. This is The Charley Twins…

This show really is dance heavy. After N-Trance earlier, we now get three more tracks from that (admittedly wide-ranging) genre back to back starting with DJ Quicksilver and “Bellissima”. Anybody whose stage name includes the letters ‘DJ’ in it immediately raises red flags for me and my pop sensibilities and in the case of Mr Quicksilver, I wasn’t wrong. His real name is Orhan Terzi which sounds like he’s Hull City’s latest Turkish midfield signing and I wish he had pursued a career in football rather than dance music. I can only assume that my brain can’t be wired the same way as the dance-heads that bought this single (it sold 600,000 copies- 600,000!) as I can hear nothing in the track that would have compelled me to shell out good money to buy it. It’s just the same beats all the way through with some strings sounds laid over the top of it. Repetitive, monotonous and moronic. I guess if you were tripping off your tits in a club it might make more sense but how could you listen to it in the privacy of your own home? The ballerina type dancer was a novel way to visually stage the track I guess but then she’s usurped by the usual women in PVC trousers and one in suspenders no less. Quicksilver himself gets a brief close up when he gurns down the camera lens and gives a thumbs up. Prat! It’s a massive thumbs down from me.

The second dance act on the show is that rare beast that had achieved a No 1 single. Back in 1995, Livin’ Joy rather surprisingly topped the charts with a rerelease of their No 18 hit “Dreamer” from the year before. They’d followed that up with two further Top Tenners but ultimately they would submit to the trend of diminishing returns.

This fourth single “Where Can I Find Love” would peak outside the Top 10 at No 12 and final chart entry “Deep In You” even lower at No 17. This one sounds a little too frantic for me, too much going on in the mix but who cares about that? What was going on with singer Tameko Star’s hat?! It’s enormous – I haven’t seen one that big since this fella was on our TV screens…

Did I say that dance acts having a No 1 hit were a rare beast? I was clearly talking out of my arse as here’s The Chemical Brothers with their second consecutive chart topper “Block Rockin’ Beats”. I think this might just have taken me by surprise at the time as it’s possible that I dismissed previous No 1 “Setting Sun” as having had an Oasis flavoured boost via the vocal contributions of Noel Gallagher. However, I must have underestimated the appeal of the Manchester duo as here they were again as the kings of the Top 40. Or had I? There was a lot of discussion at the time about how quickly the sales of “Block Rockin’ Beats” fell away in its second week of release as it slipped to No 8 just seven days after topping the charts. At the time, it was the ninth biggest fall from the pinnacle since charts were compiled. Was this down to the nature of it being a dance track with a lack of crossover appeal (say compared to something like “Don’t Speak” by No Doubt) or was it just more evidence of how the charts were being manipulated by record companies and their first week price discounting strategies.? Or perhaps a bit of both? I mean, they weren’t alone – both Blur and U2 had experienced similar chart slippage with their last two singles (though not quite as big as The Chemical Brothers). Did I just say ‘lack of crossover appeal’? Yet again, I seem to be spouting nonsense as when parent album “Dig Your Own Hole” came out a few weeks later, it went to No 1 and chalked up platinum sales. What was it Frank Zappa said? Writing about music is like dancing about architecture?

For the record, I quite enjoyed “Block Rockin’ Beats” and in a completely contrary stance to what I’d just said about Livin’ Joy, I liked that it sounded chaotic and all over the place. Musical opinion eh? Whatcha gonna do? The video features Perry Fenwick a year before he made his EastEnders debut as Billy Mitchell. I met his ex-partner and fellow actor Angie Lonsdale once when she was sharing a house with my mate Robin when he lived in London. She was nice. Yeah, it’s not a great story is it?

The play out video is “Mama” by the Spice Girls despite the fact that they have slipped from No 1 to the runners up spot this week. Yes, following in the footsteps of No Doubt and the nonsensical decision of temporary TOTP director John L. Spencer to show songs going down the charts, we get this one again. There were surely other hits in the Top 40 that could have been shown instead?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Cast	Free Me	Nah
2	3T	Gotta Be You	No
3	No Doubt	Don’t Speak	Nope
4	N-Trance	D.I.S.C.O.	F...K. O.F.F.
5	The Charlatans	North Country Boy	No but I had the Melting Pot Best Of with it on
6	DJ Quicksilver	Bellissima	Never
7	Livin’ Joy	Where Can I Find Love	I did not
8	The Chemical Brothers	Block Rockin’ Beats	Liked it, didn’t buy it
9	Mama / Who Do You Think You Are	Spice Girls	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/m0027pnq/top-of-the-pops-04041997?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 25 OCT 1996

Posted on November 22, 2024 by 80stastic

Three days before this TOTP aired, I travelled the short distance from Manchester to Bolton to see my beloved Chelsea play. They’d been drawn away to Bolton in the League Cup and my Wanderers supporting mate Steve invited me to go with him and his mates to watch the game. Predictably, we lost 2-1 after taking the lead and my hopes of seeing my team finally win a trophy were dealt a severe blow. This was supposed to be the new, exciting Chelsea of Ruud ‘sexy football’ Gullitt, Gianluca Vialli and Roberto Di Matteo and yet we got turned over by rather less glamorous opponents. In short, to paraphrase a football saying, we couldn’t do it away on a cold Tuesday night at Bolton. I returned home a very disappointed man. But at least I returned home. Chelsea vice-chairman Matthew Harding had also been at the game and would lose his life in a helicopter crash on the way back to London. Harding had contributed huge amounts of money to the club helping to finance those exotic signings and also the redevelopment of the Chelsea ground. He also had a great relationship with the fans socialising with them at the games and in the pub. He was one of them rather than a faceless director. He also contributed £1 million to the Labour Party and the helicopter that went down had often been used by Tony Blair as leader of the party and prior to him becoming Prime Minister. In a parallel universe, the future of the whole country might have been different rather than just Chelsea Football Club’s. My wish to see my blue boys finally win something came true just six months later as they won the FA Cup at Wembley. Matthew Harding never lived to see that moment.

After a very sombre opening to this post, let’s get back to the music and hope for some uplifting tunes. Our hosts are Steve Lamacq and Jo Whiley and we start with a bang via a cracking song from Suede. The second single from their No 1 album “Coming Up”, “Beautiful Ones”, for me, even surpassed previous hit “Trash” in terms of immediacy and…well…sparkle. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised as supposedly it was written by guitarist Richard Oakes purposely to be a chart success and was originally called “Dead Leg” after bass player Matt Osman threatened to give Oakes a dead leg if he couldn’t come up with a Top 10 hit. Presumably that particular punishment was not dispensed as the single peaked at No 8.

The performance here is a curious one. Keyboard player Neil Codling is out front for some reason, thumbs in his pockets, occasionally leaning into his mike to mouth a few lyrics. Why wasn’t he behind a synth or something as per usual? Weren’t there any keyboard parts in this track? Was he auditioning for Brett Anderson’s position in the band? As it turned out, Codling would actually take on a lot more of the vocals duties along with an increased input into song writing later in his Suede career. He left the band in 2001 due to chronic fatigue syndrome though he would return when they reconvened in 2010.

The lyric in “Beautiful Ones” about ‘your babies going crazy’ always puts me in mind of this scene from Swingers which was released in America a week before this TOTP was broadcast. “How long till you call your babies?”…

Next, we’re straight into one of the biggest dance tunes of the year, nay the decade…how about ever?! Steve Lamacq rather undermines my ardour by just referring to it as a “really cool track” but “Insomnia” by Faithless is surely more than that. A regular in all those ‘top club tunes’ polls by the likes of MTV Dance and Mixmag, it remains a timeless classic. Indeed, I have a friend in her late 70s and she loves Faithless!

Comprising of Maxi Jazz, Jamie Catto, Sister Bliss and Rollo (yes, Dido’s brother), they’d had two minor hit singles in 1995 with “Salva Ames (Save Me)” and the initial release of “Faithless” which had only made No 27 in the December as it got lost in the Christmas rush. March of 1996 saw another attempt on the charts but “Don’t Leave” could only make one week inside the Top 40 at No 34. Come the Autumn though, “Faithless” was rereleased and this time, it crashed into the charts at No 3 and easily topped the Dance Chart. Its subject matter struck a chord with clubbers who had trouble nodding off after a substance filled night of raving (or whatever it is clubbers did back then). The original album version is nine minutes long but it was edited down to three and a half for radio with the memorable keyboard riff being intended to sound like Underworld. Perhaps unusually for an album by a dance act, their album “Reverence” would go on to sell 300,000 copies in the UK and achieve platinum status and yet weirdly would get no higher in the charts than No 26. Where’s the justice in that? And I thought God was a DJ.

“You’re Gorgeous” by Babybird is up to No 6 on its way to a peak of No 3 which means a reshowing of their studio performance from the other week is required. I recall that when this came on the shop stereo in the Our Price in Stockport where I was working one busy Saturday afternoon, it happens to coincide with a group of ‘lads’ entering the shop and deciding to sing along at the top of their voices very badly. Saturdays were stressful enough in a record shop as it was and I could have done without this as well. I approached the group and asked them to pack it in but this only served to make them sing louder whilst eating their Greggs pasties and dripping flakes of pastry all over the floor (which was another bugbear of mine). Tossers.

Given the song’s much misunderstood subject matter, another thing that springs to mind when I hear “You’re Gorgeous” is another even more unpleasant memory, that of a particularly harrowing episode of the crime drama Prime Suspect the plot of which revolved around a pornographer who murdered a young girl after convincing her that he was a fashion photographer. Bloody hell! Death, murder…this post is bloody miserable so far! Please let there be some joyful tunes coming up to lighten the mood…

Hmm. Future Sound Of London wasn’t really what I had in mind. Experimental, ambient soundscapes are all very well but I need something to cheer me up and “My Kingdom” just isn’t doing it for me. I mean, it’s an interesting sound I guess and the accompanying video was probably cutting edge at the time with its morphing graphics but it’s kind of leaving me cold when I need something to give me a nice warm, fuzzy feeling that tells me everything is going to be OK – there must be a huge demand for such music whatever form it might take given the current state of the world.

You have to hand it to those Future Sound Of London boys though – they were ahead of their time. The album this track was taken from (“Dead Cities”) was promoted by a tour called ‘the f**k rock ‘n’ roll tour’ that allowed them to play live events via ISDN without leaving a studio. This was in 1996, well before the dawn of the digital age we all live in now. Hell, the vast majority of us didn’t even have a very basic mobile phone back then. In 2024, the idea of being separated from our mobiles for even an hour can cause a meltdown amongst many of us – ‘a phone, a phone…my kingdom for a phone’. Ahem.

Hands up who knew that Gina G had more hits than just “Ooh Aah…Just A Little Bit”. OK. Keep your hands up if you can name any of them. I thought as much. You’d have to be a superfan to still have your hands in the air at this point. “I Belong To You” was the first of four further hits and it was almost identical to her Eurovision song. And why not? ‘If it’s not broken…’, ‘Strike while the iron’s hot’ and so on and so on…It would have made sense for her to go with an almost identical sound – anything other than that would have been folly. Gina surely wouldn’t have been expected to reinvent herself as a serious artist within months of only being known as a Eurovision entrant? If she’d returned with a big ballad would people have accepted it? I’m not sure. Repeating the formula certainly worked for Gina giving her a none too shabby chart peak of No 6. And there’s more…she would have a further three hits after and none of them were a remix of “Ooh Aah…Just A Little Bit” meaning that she never had to plead “Ooh aah…just a little hit…please”. Yeah, sorry about that.

This week’s ’Flashback’ slot features “Orinoco Flow (Sail Away)” by Enya. I’m far too behind with this post to comment on this so here’s what I had to say about this one in a post from my 80s blog.

TOTP 24 NOV 1988

If it’s good enough for Enya, it’s certainly good enough for E–Motion. Look, I haven’t got the time nor inclination to review something that I commented on as recently as six months ago especially when it’s as big a heap of shit as “The Naughty North And The Sexy South”. Here’s my thoughts on this one from when it was originally a hit in the February of this year and peaked at No 20 (it was rereleased in the October peaking at No 17).

TOTP 01 FEB 1996

By 1996, Madonna’s career had reached the point it was always meant to reach – i.e. that she would play the part of Eva Perón in a film version of Evita. Rumours had been circulating for years that she was destined for this role and it finally came to be. A cinema version of the Tim Rice/Andrew Lloyd Webber 1978 musical, its soundtrack was always likely to sell in bucketloads even before you added in the superstar factor that Madonna brought to the project. However, the song we all know from the musical – “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina” – wasn’t the first one to be released from the project. No, the first track that we heard Madonna singing from Evita wasn’t from the original musical at all – it was a brand new composition written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice to promote the film and to secure an Oscar nomination (it would go on to win the 1997 Academy Award for Best Original Song). “You Must Love Me” was that song but despite its recognition, it wasn’t the massive hit that many may have expected. It made No 10 in the UK, No 18 in America and didn’t top the chart anywhere in the world. It certainly sounded like a huge hit or rather it sounded like a Lloyd Webber/Rice song with trademark haunting melody and a huge string backing – in fact you could be forgiven for thinking that it had been part of the original musical soundtrack so seamlessly did it sit alongside those other songs from the 1978 West End production.

The video shown here is just a plug for the film really with clips from the movie interspersed with a heavily pregnant Madonna singing in a room with her bump hidden behind a piano. The film made $141 million at the box office against a budget of $55 million and received mixed reviews from the press with the main criticism being that it was a case of style over substance though the soundtrack was a redeeming factor. It received a total of 23 film award nominations winning 12 including one Oscar and three Golden Globes. I’ve still yet to watch it though my wife took her Mum to see it at the cinema and her review was that it was one of the loudest films she’d ever sat through.

Cast are back next with their biggest ever hit “Flying”. I was a bit sniffy about this song the last time I reviewed it which on reflection was possibly a tad unfair seeing as it crapped all over most of its chart contemporaries (yes, I’m looking at you E-Motion). Originally a non-album single, it was later included in the band’s 2004 compilation “The Collection” which must be one of the least comprehensive retrospectives ever given that it does not feature the hits “Alright”, “Sandstorm”, “Walkaway”, “Guiding Star” or “Beat Mama”. Presumably a licensing issue, I guess you get what you pay for – it was a budget range album that was ineligible for a UK Album Chart ranking. A definitive collection called “Cast: The Singles 1995-2017” was released on white vinyl in 2018 however.

The Spice Girls are straight in at No 1 with their second single “Say You’ll Be There”. It’s interesting that although it is the desert based, high-tech ninja warriors video that I immediately think of when I hear this song, TOTP did not once show that promo instead having the group in the studio every time (although I think one may have been a just a repeat of a previous appearance). Which raises the question how had I seen the promo at all? On The Chart Show? Maybe but that was on TV on Saturday mornings when I would have been at work most weeks. I can’t think of any other music shows from around that time? They weren’t such a big deal already that they’d made it onto national news programmes surely? However I had seen it, I wasn’t alone. One David Beckham, legend has it, was so taken with Posh Spice in her black PVC catsuit that he vowed there and that they would become a couple. And lo and behold, two became one…or something.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Suede	Beautiful Ones	No but I had the album
2	Faithless	Insomnia	I did not
3	Babybird	You’re Gorgeous	Nope
4	Future Sound Of London	My Kingdom	Never happening
5	Gina G	I Belong To You	You didn’t belong to me though Gina – no
6	Enya	Orinoco Flow (Sail Away)	Nah
7	E-Motion	The Naughty North And The Sexy South	Definitely not
8	Madonna	You Must Love Me	No
9	Cast	Flying	Negative
10	Spice Girls	Say You’ll Be There	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/m0024zk6/top-of-the-pops-25101996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 11 OCT 1996

Posted on November 15, 2024 by 80stastic

Writing two of these blog posts a week can be quite a drain on the well of creativity. Consequently, I have returned to my 1996 diary for inspiration and it’s certainly thrown a memory up though not one that I’m very proud of. Two days after this TOTP aired, I was out in Manchester with my wife and a coupe of friends. The plan was to have a few drinks and then go to Chinatown first and then for a meal. And we did do all of that so what was the problem? Well, unfortunately I imbibed a few too many alcoholic beverages along the way and by the time I sat down to eat in the Yang Sing restaurant I was completely plastered, off my face, hammered. That would have been bad enough but here’s the real kicker and this was unbelievable. The table next to us had noticed my inebriated state and had engaged in conversation with us along the lines of “dearie me, is he alright?”. In an attempt to prove that I was indeed OK and more than that, not drunk at all, I proceeded to tell them that I had to be at work early the next day as I worked in the Our Price in Stockport and we were having our Christmas merchandising, signage and decorations installed. Back in those days, the company employed outside contractors to come in and do all that sort of stuff. By the end of my time at Our Price, I’m pretty sure the staff were expected to do all that sort of thing. Now we get to the really weird bit. One of the women on the next table the informs me that she works for the company putting up the merchandising and is doing the Stockport store tomorrow. Excellent! So literally in a few hours time when no doubt I will feel as rough as a badger’s arse, I’ll be opening the shop doors to the woman next to me who has witnessed me completely destroyed by drink. So, not embarrassing at all then. My diary doesn’t record what happened at work on the Monday other than it was a quiet day presumably meaning I was hung over and hiding in the stockroom away from the counter and other human beings. I wonder if this TOTP has anyone on it to match my level of humiliation?

Nothing embarrassing about opening act Manic Street Preachers who are in the studio to perform their new single “Kevin Carter”. The third track lifted from their “Everything Must Go” album, it was also their third Top 10 hit on the spin. To give this achievement some context, their previous 13 singles had given them just one. This really was phoenix from the flames stuff given that the band had suffered the loss of main lyricist Richey Edwards. Having said that, “Kevin Carter” was one of the songs demoed for Edwards before his disappearance and which he wrote the lyrics for about the titular Pulitzer Prize winning photojournalist who took his own life in 1994 haunted by the images of famine and death that he had taken in Sudan.

It’s a very spiky track with a rhythm that judders and skitters about and not the strongest chorus but then there’s the middle eight trumpet solo by drummer Sean Moore which is actually quite exquisite. I guess it would have been difficult logistically to have him play the solo and be on the drums simultaneously in this performance. Such a striking piece of music was it that it was used as the theme music to the ITV Wales current affairs show Wales This Week. No, really. See…

Ooh now, here’s something that’s truly mortifying! What in the world was this all about?! Well, it’s the obligatory dance tune on tonight’s show and it arrives courtesy of Jeremy Healy & Amos. Jeremy, of course, started his music career as a member of Haysi Fantayzee but went on to carve out a diverse career as a superstar DJ and musical director for fashion house Victoria’s Secret and labels launched by the likes of Jennifer Lopez and Gwen Stefani. Amos was that bloke from Emmerdale who ran the Woolpack pub. No, of course he wasn’t but he might have well have been for all the information I can find out about Healy’s partner in crime and let’s have it right, “Stamp!” was a crime of music. This track is all over the place. There’s some record decks scratching, funk style bass lines, some de rigueur dream trance keyboards flourishes and some repeated spoken word Spanish all in the mix. And then there’s the performance which is absolutely bonkers. I guess it’s trying to reflect the mishmash of styles on display with flamenco dancers, a ludicrously moustachioed man on bongos and in the centre of it all is Jeremy Healy gurning away and generally making a total prat of himself. There’s very little online about this hit – Healy’s Wikipedia page doesn’t mention it at all – and quite right too as we should all try and expunge it from our memories. A total embarrassment.

With their repertoire of sardonic, social commentary yet beautifully crafted songs, I don’t think The Beautiful South could be accused of being a national embarrassment. Indeed, Paul Heaton is more of a national treasure. He even offered to nationalise his songs so that every time they are played on radio the state would receive the royalties revenue and could use it to improve living standards. Predictably, the Conservative government of the time refused his generous offer of a gift to the British public.

One of those songs that would have been included in his proposal was “Rotterdam (Or Anywhere)” the lead single from fifth studio album “Blue Is The Colour”. Perhaps one of their most well known songs and one of their biggest hits (it peaked at No 5), it was inspired by the lack of a welcome Paul Heaton received in a snooty bar in Rotterdam which he perceived didn’t want ‘his type’ as part of their clientele. Paul has refuted the idea that it’s a criticism of Rotterdam itself but more of the type of people who consider themselves the beautiful elite whom you see everywhere. Heaton’s experience of this just happened to be in a bar in Rotterdam. There’s something about its barbed lyrics with its references to Liverpool, Rome and pickled people that appealed to the nation. Interesting to note that Heaton is happy to completely take a back seat in this performance and hand all the vocals to Jacqui Abbott. As of a 2020 interview in The Guardian, neither the band nor the duo of Jacqui and Heaton have ever played “Rotterdam” live in that city nor Rome but it always goes down well in Liverpool and anywhere in Ireland for the line “gargoyles dipped long in Irish stout”. It has also taken on a life of its own as a football chant with the chorus being adopted by home fans to taunt their away counterparts with “insert name of opposition get battered everywhere they go”. I must tell my football obsessed son where that chant comes from.

Next up are a band whose name I remember but as for their hits, I couldn’t name you a one. Apparently Damage were marketed as being the British 3T despite the fact that there were five of them (the clue was in the name guys – bit embarrassing) and despite my inability to name any of them, they would rack up nine UK Top 40 hits including four Top Tenners. This really was a boom time for British R&B/pop artists what with the likes of Eternal, Gabrielle and Michelle Gayle representing the women of the genre and MN8, Mark Morrison and Ultimate Kaos showing up for the men (well, boys in the case of Ultimate Kaos). It makes me wonder how there was room for another such act in Damage but their run of hits proves that there was. “Love II Love” was their breakthrough hit and its title has left me wondering if it was inspired by another UK R&B artist, that of Soul II Soul. Anyway, it doesn’t do much for me although the video is at least diverting with the band as puppets being controlled by a mean alien lady. The only other thing to delay us here is to mention that lead singer Jade Jones has been in a relationship with Emma Bunton since 1998 finally marrying her in 2021. The Spice Girls are on later but this can’t be where they met as it was Damage’s promo video that we saw on the show and not the real thing in the studio.

Now I wouldn’t call this next hit embarrassing, not at all. However, despite it being the artist’s biggest ever hit, it’s also one of their weakest to my ears. “Flying” by Cast was a standalone single presumably recorded and released to plug the gap between their debut and sophomore album that wasn’t released until April of 1997. It’s not that it’s an awful song (and I don’t recall having this opinion of it at the time) but there really isn’t much to it. It’s very repetitive – the chorus is also its intro with its lyric sung four times over – and said lyrics are so basic and uninspiring that they sound like they took about the same amount of time to come up with as the Liz Truss/Kwasi Kwarteng infamous and disastrous mini budget (now that was something that was truly shameful). Look at these:

It’s like flying through the air, you can make it if you dare

You live your life without a care, you know that love is everywhere

Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: John T. Williams
Flying lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Universal Music Publishing Group

I mean, come on. Was that the best John Power could do? I don’t think so. To be fair to him, I saw Cast live this year as part of a three band open air show along with Embrace and Ocean Colour Scene. We arrived late halfway through the set and only caught a bit of “Flying” which they were playing as we entered the venue but I have to admit it sounded better live.

This week’s ’flashback’ section features Madonna and “True Blue” which was No 1 in the corresponding week ten years previously. Here’s the post from my 80s blog in which I discussed it:

TOTP 09 OCT 1986

Next up is the most misunderstood song since Bruce Springsteen’s “Born In The USA”. Babybird was basically a vehicle for songwriter Stephen Jones who had been churning out hundreds of lo-fi demos in his Nottingham flat without being signed to a major label until Echo Records (a division of the Chrysalis Group) offered him a deal. His first single release for them “Goodnight” was a No 28 hit spending just two weeks in the charts but it was second single “You’re Gorgeous” that would become the song that he would forever be remembered for. On first hearing, it may have seemed like a full blown, lush ballad but first impressions can be deceiving. I can’t recall the specific realisation that I (and so many others) must have had that not everything was as it seemed here but clearly the lyrics of the verses were at odds with that joyful chorus. The tale of a sleazy photographer manipulating his model with promises of magazine covers, it was a brilliant example of subverting the established love song narrative. And yet so many people didn’t get it. Even today, if you check out the comments on YouTube against its promo video you’ll find people saying that their Mums used to sing it to them when they were little or that the song makes the commentator’s spirit feel lighter or that the song has such fun, happy vibes. Should those people be embarrassed or is it a case of ignorance is bliss? Who am I to tell people how to consume or enjoy a song?

And for the third time in the TOTP studio we have Donna Lewis performing “I Love You Always Forever”. Seriously? What is there left for me to say about this one? Or should I be the one who’s embarrassed with my lack of creativity? OK, I’m just going to fling some stuff out there and see if any of it sticks or resonates…

The song was inspired by the H.W.Bates 1962 novel Love For Lydia with the lyric of the chorus being lifted directly from the book.
It was originally entitled “Lydia” but Lewis was talked into renaming it by her record label due to there being no reference to a ‘Lydia’ lyrics. Could it also have been to do with the fact that there was already a song out there called “Lydia” by Dean Friedman?
It spent nine weeks at No 2 sat behind Los Del Rio’s “Macarena”. Surely the Ultravox/ Joe Dolce moment of the 90s?
Despite not toppling Los Del Rio’s hit, “I Love You Always Forever” completely trounced it in the airplay chart being heard by 100 million radio listeners in one week compared to 19 million for “Macarena”.

That do ya?

Was this the moment that we all knew that the Spice Girls were here to stay? After the runaway success of almost novelty hit “Wannabe”, the decision on how to follow it up was always going to be crucial. Would they carry on into the extremes of bubblegum pop or go in an altogether different direction? I guess there two ways of reacting to “Say You’ll Be There”:

It was a super smooth and slick pop/dance number with a dash of R&B that was so prevalent and popular around this time. Therefore it showed a maturity to the group that was not apparent in “Wannabe” and was a wise career move aimed at longevity.
It was a safe and boring decision to jump on that pop/dance bandwagon and shows that the surprise of their debut hit had been sacrificed for guaranteed further success.

I’m not embarrassed to say that I was of opinion No 1. It was super radio friendly and the way that they divided up the vocal parts between the five of them promoted that gang mentality and also allowed for fans to pick out a favourite Spice Girl.

It’s another single that’s straight in at No 1 now as The Chemical Brothers top the charts in week one with “Setting Sun”. Working in a record shop, I was aware of Manchester duo Ed Simons and Tom Rowlands via my much hipper than me work colleagues – they had especially liked their debut album “Exit Planet Dust” which was a shop stereo favourite. However, perhaps like many, I didn’t really take that much notice of them until this single the publicity surrounding which was substantially heightened by the presence of the record of one Noel Gallagher. How much the Oasis man’s association affected sales we may never know but regardless, his input helped forge a spectacular dance tune that even I could get on board with. By all measurable criteria, I should have hated this. After all, “Higher State Of Consciousness” by Josh Wink hadn’t so much set my teeth on edge as trigger a full blown nervous breakdown in me every time I heard it and “Setting Sun” wasn’t a million miles away from that with its sprawling, squealing cacophony of sounds that metaphorically slammed you to the wall and kept you pinned there for the duration when it came on. Whether it was the presence of Noel I’m not sure but this track seemed to have more…what?…structure to it? Those sniffy elements of the music press would laud it as the best thing Gallagher ever did which makes for a good line but is a bit embarrassing on their behalf.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Manic Street Preachers	Kevin Carter	No but I had the album
2	Jeremy Healy & Amos	Stamp!	As if
3	The Beautiful South	Rotterdam (Or Anywhere)	No but I must have had it on something
4	Damage	Love II Love	Definitely not
5	Cast	Flying	Nah
6	Madonna	True Blue	Nope
7	Babybird	You’re Gorgeous	Negative
8	Donna Lewis	I Love You Always Forever	I did not
9	Spice Girls	Say You’ll Be There	I can’t because I wasn’t – no
10	The Chemical Brothers	Setting Sun	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/m0024s0b/top-of-the-pops-11101996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 28 MAR 1996

Posted on June 26, 2024 by 80stastic

On the Monday following the broadcast of this TOTP, John Squire released a statement confirming that he had left the Stone Roses. As that date was 1st April, maybe some thought it was an April Fool’s joke but in reality, the writing had been on the wall for some time. The band were in disarray after a number of damaging events – the lukewarm reception to the almost mythical sophomore album “Second Coming”, the departure of Reni and the cancellation of their Glastonbury appearance the year before and the poor reviews for the shows they did play with much of the criticism surrounding the state of Ian Brown’s voice. The Stone Roses would be dissolved by Brown and Mani just a few short months later. Squire would move in to his next project very quickly with The Seahorses claiming a Top 3 hit with their debut release “Love Is The Law” in late April.

Also moving on to something new was the Our Price store in Stockport where I was working. I’m pretty sure it was around this time that we switched over from the old (and antiquated) master bag stock control system to the Virgin ELVIS technology. I think it stood for Electronic Virgin Information System and was quite the advancement from what preceded it. This was a computerised system that would give you daily figures (as opposed to a manual count) for every item that was sold in store meaning that you had much better sales information on which to make reorder decisions about the all important chart titles. Setting it up though was quite an undertaking as everything in the shop needed a barcode attaching to it and scanning into the system. Not only that but the tills had to be changed as well and the staff trained in how to use them. It was quite the transition and required a team of ELVIS trainers to guide us through it and for the store to be shut to the public at some points while the hardware was installed. I wonder which tunes we might have played in the shop stereo to soundtrack our endeavours…

I don’t think “I Need A Lover Tonight” by Ken Doh would have been my first choice. Who the hell was this guy, where had he come from and what did he want? Well, my answers would be that he was a pound shop Haddaway, I don’t know nor care and that he wanted a hit record which he got when this Italian House track from the “Nakasaki” EP went to No 7.

Presumably the whole thing was inspired by the wrestler Kendo Nagasaki who was popular in the 70s. His real name was Peter Thornley who kept up the pretence of his Japanese samurai wrestling character by never being seen without his mask and doing interviews via a representative. A similarly mute approach by Ken Doh would have been appreciated. Ken Doh? I’d rather have Mad Donna…

The curious footnote to pop history that is Bis have themselves an actual, proper chart hit with “Kandy Pop” from “The Secret Vampire Soundtrack” EP after their debut TOTP appearance the other week as the first unsigned *band in the show’s history.

*This wasn’t quite the truth as they were on Glasgow’s Chemikal Underground label

Up to No 25 by this point, it’s a curious song that sounds like an outlier compared to its chart contemporaries back then. Sort of ahead of its time you might say in that it has a new millennium feel to it to my ears. Of course, I might be talking bollocks here; I often do. Here’s evidence of that as my earlier description of them as a musical footnote isn’t really true. Yes, they only had two minor UK Top 40 hits but that doesn’t really tell the whole Bis story. As Alphaville once sang, the band were big in Japan, have released six studio albums, fourteen EPs, seventeen singles, had their music used in The Powerpuff Girls TV series and film and, despite a few years hiatus, are still a going concern today. They haven’t quite made it to the top result if you google Bis though being behind the Bank for International Settlements.

Themes from TV shows as hits in the pop charts, whilst not a weekly occurrence, weren’t unheard of either. There’s “The Theme From M*A*S*H” / “Suicide Is Painless”, Ennis Morricone’s “Chi Mai” from The Life And Times Of David Lloyd George and “I’ll Be There For You” by The Rembrandts from Friends to name but three. However, “The X Files” by Mark Snow felt different to all of the above. Maybe because it was from a sci-fi show and therefore the sound of it was…what?…spooky…eerie…sinister….that its success seemed somehow out of left field. I couldn’t quite imagine people buying it, taking it home and then listening to it. They must have as it went to No 2 in the charts and stayed there for three weeks but it seemed an unlikely activity. Or maybe they weren’t listening to it but bought it as a keepsake or souvenir of the show they loved. In the pre-digital age, access to your favourite show wasn’t as easy to come by. Sure, you could record the episodes off the TV to a VHS tape for repeated viewing or wait until the official videos came out and buy them (and many people did) but all that required effort. Or was it being played in the clubs as a come down tune as the morning dawned and the ravers tried to get themselves together to make the journey home? I guess the truth is out there (ahem) as to the real reason people took to buying this single in such quantities but it probably isn’t anything to do with an alien plot to take over the earth.

The X–Files TV series was first aired in the UK on Sky in January 1994 (Rishi Sunak wouldn’t have known about it then) before being picked up by BBC2 in the September. By March 1996, it was an established phenomenon with the characters of Mulder and Scully imprinted on the national psyche (just ask Catatonia). I watched it occasionally rather than religiously but always enjoyed what I saw. Mark Snow’s theme tune though? I couldn’t imagine feeling the need to listen to (an albeit enhanced) four minute version of it let alone purchase it. Such was the interest in The X–Files and its theme tune though that inevitably other parties saw the opportunity to cash in on it. In a future TOTP repeat, we’ll see DJ Dado with an Italian House version of the song but I’m getting ahead of myself. For now, it was all about Mark Snow and his hit record which by making it to No 2, equalled the chart high of the last instrumental TV theme tune to be a mega smash that being “Crockett’s Theme” by Jan Hammer from Miami Vice in 1987.

When I were a lad, the utterance “ooh-arr” usually meant just one thing – The Wurzels were on TV again. Yes, the Scrumpy and Western band who gave us “The Combine Harvester” and “I Am A Cider Drinker” never seemed to be far from our screens in that long hot summer of 1976. Fast forward twenty years and that phrase (with just a little bit of a spelling tweak) would be adopted for a much higher and nobler use than that of a novelty record – the UK’s Eurovision Song Contest entry! Gina G was the singer chosen to represent us in 1996 despite the fact that she is Australian (the following year we had Katrina And The Waves whose titular Katrina is American also) and although she would finish 8th despite being a pre-tournament favourite with the bookies, her song “Ooh Aah…Just A Little Bit” would become a No 1 record. This would make it the first Eurovision song to top the UK charts since “A Little Peace” by Nicole in 1982 and the first UK entrant not to win Eurovision but become a No 1 since “Congratulations” by Cliff Richard in 1968. Phew! How did this happen then? Well, the Song For Europe people had shown a willingness to depart from the more traditional Eurovision sound with the previous year’s “Love City Groove” track and though that rap experiment failed in terms of winning the contest, it proved that you could go bold without being derided. Hence the following year, another musical direction was chosen that wasn’t a natural fit with Eurovision but which was certainly popular – Eurodance. “Ooh Aah…Just A Little Bit” nailed that sound but added something to make it stand out – an infectious, brain cell kidnapping, almighty hook of a chorus that was simple to the point of nearly being dumb but with a sexual overtone. It was sort of like a more knowing, elder sister of “Saturday Night” by Whigfield really.

Given that the single would stay in the Top 10 for ten consecutive weeks (including seven at either No1, No 2 or No 3) and given that Eurovision wasn’t until the 18th May and this TOTP was still in March, I think I’ll leave it there for now. We’ll be seeing a lot more of Gina G in the forthcoming weeks but to add some symmetry to the post, it should be noted that The Wurzels recorded their own version of “Ooh Aah Just A Little Bit” in 2002 (with the “Ooh Aah” restyled as “Ooh Arr” obviously) from their album “Never Mind The Bullocks, Here’s The Wurzels”. Marvellous!

Just like that other Britpop band Menswear at this time, Cast decided that their fourth single release would be a ballad. Whereas “Being Brave” felt ever so slightly of being contrived and that it had everything thrown at it in the production, “Walkaway” sounded more organic to me. As I said in a recent post, I think Menswear just about pulled it off with their slowie but Cast’s attempt at balladry seemed more natural and effortless. Wistful, contemplative, melancholic yet melodic, it really stood out.

Being chosen to soundtrack a BBC montage to draw a line under England’s semi-final defeat to Germany in Euro 96 didn’t harm the song’s life cycle either. Whoever was putting those vignettes together was clearly a Britpop fan after Shed Seven had been used twice before earlier in the competition. “Walkaway” was an inspired choice though. The devastation the nation felt after Gareth Southgate missed that penalty needed to be acknowledged and assuaged and Cast’s track was just right. The band themselves were away on tour in the US whilst all the fervour and excitement surrounding the tournament was going on and so missed their moment of national recognition. It might just be their most well known tune though not their highest charting hit. That honour would be bestowed on their next release, the non-album single “Flying” which indeed the band were. One thing though; shouldn’t it have been called “Walk Away” not “Walkaway”.

I should have probably mentioned that this is the last show to be hosted by Mark Goodier. He’d made his TOTP debut back in 1988 and although I’ve been quite disparaging about him in the past on this blog, I can appreciate that he was a safe pair of hands. His hair in this episode is very Louis Balfour of The Fast Show’s ‘Jazz Club’. Nice! Also coming to an end were PJ & Duncan. No, sadly they hadn’t decided to stop making music yet but rather that they would now be releasing records under their own names rather than their Byker Grove characters. On reflection, it’s a wonder that the change hadn’t happened much earlier. After all, they had been gone from the CBBC drama for three years by this point. Whatever the reason and circumstances behind the change of moniker, you could see the direction the pair were heading in the direct to camera piece at the top of the show where they inform us that they will be performing on the show tonight from an aircraft hangar at Heathrow Airport on their way to Japan. This presenting lark did seem to come naturally to them. The track they are promoting is the fourth and final single lifted from their “Top Katz” album and it’s a cover of the old Monkees hit “(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone” except the duo have renamed it as purely “Stepping Stone”. Well, at least they were showing some respect for the correct spelling.

I say the old Monkees hit but the song has been covered by many artists including, as Mark Goodier states in his intro, The Sex Pistols but the list also includes Paul Revere & The Raiders and scouse baggy types The Farm. Like most I would guess though, the version I first knew was that Monkees one as it was on a Greatest Hits tape I had when I was only about 10. Back then I was more familiar with them than The Beatles for example due to the repeats of their TV shows that the BBC would air during those aforementioned long summer holidays. As for PJ & Duncan’s version, it’s predictably naff with the first few seconds sounding like a knock off of “Everybody In The Place” by The Prodigy (more of whom later).

How do you define Dubstar? Even the music press at the time struggled. Look at this list of other artists that they were compared to by various publications:

Portishead
Pet Shop Boys
St Etienne
Billie Ray Martin
Deacon Blue (?!)

Well, if those guys in the know couldn’t decide, what chance do I have? For the record, surveying that list, my first inclination was towards Portishead but on reflection maybe St Etienne is a better choice. Or maybe we should dispense with all such comparisons and judge them on their own merits? Yes, that seems like a better way of doing it. I shall proceed on that basis. “Stars” was a rerelease of their debut single which had peaked at No 40 in 1995 but was given a second chance after the success of “Not So Manic Now” and deservedly so. It’s an affecting, almost beautiful song bestowed with a touch of stardust by the celestial vocals of Sarah Blackwood. Deceptively slight and also substantial at the same time, it rightly became the band’s biggest hit when it peaked at No 15 second time around. There you go. No comparisons to anybody else in that assessment. As for the performance here, Sarah’s commitment to hardly moving is almost Chris Lowe-esque…Oh bugger.

There is a point where I really couldn’t be bothered with Wet Wet Wet anymore. When they burst into the charts in 1987 from seemingly nowhere with a clutch of great pop tunes (albeit with some bits of them pinched from the work of others), I genuinely liked them. Even when they tried to make that jump from pop star to mature artist too quickly with second album “Holding Back The River” I thought they were still OK and then their renaissance under third album “High On The Happy Side” was well deserved as it was a solid pop album. So why and when did my interest wane? It seems obvious now but it was “Love Is All Around”. I didn’t hate it like everyone else seems to be in a rush to say they did these days but after that level of success I guess I maybe thought they didn’t deserve my attention any more. Not that they would have known or cared about my onrushing indifference but still. I know “Julia Says” was the follow up single but after that I couldn’t really tell you what they released. As such, I have zero memory of “Morning” but Wikipedia tells me that it was fifth and final single taken from the “Picture This” album and it peaked at No 16.

Having listened to it back, it wouldn’t be out of place on a Radio 2 playlist today but was this really what the kids wanted back then? I wonder how many albums that “huge record deal” they’d just signed according to Mark Goodier was for? They only managed to release one more before the end of the 90s plus a second Greatest Hits in 2004 for their label Mercury. To be fair to them, drummer Tommy Cunningham left the group for a while over royalty payments and then Marti Pellow had to take time out to deal with his addiction problems. The band are just about still together though seem to be a three piece these days with only Graeme Clark and previously publicity shy guitarist Graeme Duffin remaining from the original combo with former Liberty X member Kevin Simm on lead vocals.

To the new No 1 and what a seismic record it was. Everything about “Firestarter” by The Prodigy screamed headlines whether they were about its sound, Keith Flint, that video and, of course, a show of moral outrage by some of the tabloids. Watching the promo back further the first time possibly since 1996 and it strikes me that it would be hard to explain to anyone who wasn’t around then why it was so shocking but somehow it was. Why was it? Well, it was 28 years ago and in those intervening years, we will have witnessed a lot of shit and maybe we have become desensitised to images that we would have once found shocking or disturbing. Perhaps, if our first view of the video was via this TOTP and that first view came after a very mellow song by those nice Wet Wet Wet boys…well, it would have been a bit of a shock and certainly quite a contrast. Then there’s the fact that it’s all shot in black and white (due to the band blowing most of the budget on an aborted first attempt) and set in a disused London Underground tunnel adding to the sense that we were watching something very sinister. We were still three years away from the black and white ‘footage’ style cinema of The Blair Witch Project but revisiting the “Firestarter” promo through the prism of that film somehow makes the viewing even more unsettling. Then there’s Keith Flint whose performance provoked such a reaction from viewers and the press. The tics and twitches that he constantly shows us gave the impression of someone who was, if not deranged, definitely experiencing some sort of mental breakdown. His Soo Catwoman influenced hairstyle only added to the sense of the unhinged. And then there’s the sound of “Firestarter”…oh hang on, you know what? It’s going to be No 1 for the next two TOTP repeats so I think I’ll leave it smouldering there for now…

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Ken Doh	I Need A Lover Tonight	Never
2	Bis	Kandy Pop	Negative
3	Mark Snow	The X Files	No
4	Gina G	Ooh Aah…Just A Little Bit	Nope
5	Cast	Walkaway	How did I walkaway from this one? No it seems
6	PJ & Duncan	Stepping Stone	As if
7	Dubstar	Stars	Didn’t but should have
8	Wet Wet Wet	Morning	Nah
9	The Prodigy	Firestarter	See 8 above

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002053x/top-of-the-pops-28031996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 18 JAN 1996

Posted on May 16, 2024 by 80stastic

It’s all change in the charts in these TOTP repeats as all but the No 1 are songs that haven’t featured previously and even that No 1 is in its first (and only) week at the top. There’s also a new host who similarly would only get one go in the hot seat. Comedian Alan Davies had become a well known name both a a live stand up and radio personality by 1996 but he was still a year away from his big mainstream breakthrough role in mystery crime drama Jonathan Creek. Watching this TOTP back, Davies doesn’t seem a particularly good fit for the show. His sardonic humour and aloof manner were perhaps not the ideal skills set for presenting a fast moving, pop music show. He just doesn’t seem very engaged or indeed engaging.

We start tonight with Bucketheads whose last hit was the Top 5 stand out dance tune “The Bomb! (These Sounds Fall Into My Mind)” which combined disco funk with house beats to great effect in 1995. The follow up sort of stuck to that formula with a reworking of Brass Construction’s 1976 hit “Movin’” retitled as “Got Myself Together”. Whilst a very competent dance floor filler I’m sure, for me it didn’t have that something extra that made its predecessor that little bit more intriguing. They’ve wheeled out all the usual visual 70s funk tropes for this performance but I can’t help feeling that you’d be better off listening to the original if funk was your thang (sorry!).

Sunscreem were not a band that I paid that much attention to back in the day but that’s possibly my bad as I’ve quite enjoyed some of their songs when they’ve featured on these TOTP repeats. “Blue Skies” is another case in point. Enough of a good melody in the chorus to satisfy my pop sensibilities but also with the correct bpm to stay hip with the dance heads. If I’d only given them more of a chance in the 90s, I might have had a bit more musical credibility with my record shop colleagues.

As with the artist at No 1 this week, the band had issues with their record company Sony Music. They’d released tracks independently for inclusion on some dance compilations and therefore broke the terms of their contract with Sony. In return, Sony didn’t put much effort into promoting Sunscreem with their second album “Change Or Die” not released in major territories outside of the UK. The writing was on the wall and the band negotiated their release from their Sony contract. Sunscreem are still going though with their last album being released in 2018.

How do you follow one of the biggest selling singles in the world in 1995? Well, in the case of Coolio, and this didn’t seem like the most likely strategy, you release a cover version of an old Kool & The Gang track. “Too Hot” was a hit for Robert ‘Kool’ Bell and his mates in early 1980 but was reactivated by the “Gangsta’s Paradise” star sixteen years later as the follow up to that single. Obviously, it’s not a straight cover what with Coolio being a rapper and all but it does kind of hang together quite well. I can’t say that I remember this one from back then though. In fact, if pressed on Coolio’s cannon of work, I really could only name “Gangsta’s Paradise” and “C U When You Get There” (that inevitably the wags amongst us referred to as “C U Next Tuesday”). I’m sure most people would come up with the same tracks. Both the lyrics and video for “Too Hot” warn of the dangers of unsafe sex which set him apart from some of the other West Coast rappers. Maybe Coolio actually lived in a socially conscious world rather than a “Gangsta’s Paradise”.

Lush were another of those bands that I was on acquaintance terms with only by virtue of knowing what the covers of their albums looked like and who they were distributed by for ordering purposes in the record shops I worked in. As for their sound…well, I knew they were part of the ‘shoe gaze’ crowd but I’m not sure I’d ever actually heard any of their songs which is a shame in hindsight as “Single Girl” is quite the tune. The more I write about my time in record shops, the more it makes me feel like it was a whole list of missed listening opportunities. Anyway, back to Lush and supposedly this era of the band saw them leaving behind that ‘shoe gaze’ phase and moving towards the Britpop zeitgeist; not that Lush saw themselves in that bracket. That’s the thing about Britpop – no act associated with the movement seemed to want to admit to being associated with the movement.

Alan Davies’s intro here seems rather inappropriate in retrospect. His story about chatting up lead singer Miki Berenyi at a Pulp gig and asking for her number only to realise she’d given him that of a pizza delivery place might have seemed vaguely humorous at the time but then Miki posted this on Twitter when the BBC4 TOTP repeat went out recently…

I think this is the one where Alan Davies intro'd us with an anecdote about me staving off his chat-up lines with a fake telephone number… (I genuinely thought I gave him the right number, but didn't realise he was chatting me up) https://t.co/OM7dqHmXSO
— Miki Berenyi (@berenyi_miki) May 10, 2024

So it was true?! Why did Davies think telling that story to an audience of millions watching at home was a good idea? Did he ask Miki’s permission beforehand to use the anecdote? Thankfully Miki seems like a good sort and went on to say it was 30 years ago and isn’t a big deal.

“Single Girl” was subsequently parodied by the Shirehorses (aka Mark and Lard) as “Single Bloke”. I used to love listening to their Radio 1 afternoon show when I was working in the Our Price store in Altrincham which I’d have on in the background if I happened to be away from the counter. Clearly another reason why I didn’t know how Lush sounded as I could have used that time to acquaint myself with their album. Ah, well.

I think I’ve said this before but what was it with Nightcrawlers (featuring John Reid -for the pedants!) and their song titles? They all seemed to feature the words ‘Push’, ‘Pushing’ or ‘Feeling’. So here we get “Let’s Push It” but they also had hits with “Don’t Let The Feeling Go”, “Keep Pushing Our Love” and “Push The Feeling On” (which was released six times!). Talk about sticking to a formula! Creativity? New ideas? Balls to all that! Just keep selling the masses the same song over and over again and when I say same song, I don’t just mean the titles but also the sound. Seriously, could you really distinguish any of their hits from another?

After starting the decade in spectacular style with the No 1 single “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s In His Kiss)” and No 1 album “Greatest Hits 1965-1992”, there’d been a bit of a downturn for Cher commercially. After “Love And Understanding” made the UK Top 10 in the early Summer of 1991, of her next seven singles released, none got any higher than No 31 with the nadir being reached with the last of those being a version of “I Got You Babe” with Beavis and Butt-head. That was followed by an almighty reversal of fortunes when she featured on the 1995 Comic Relief single “Love Can Build A Bridge” alongside Neneh Cherry, Chrisse Hynde and Eric Clapton which topped the UK chart. I think these days we’d called it an ‘asterisk’ hit what with it being for charity and all. A No 1 is a No 1 though and it acted as a springboard for Cher who recorded her twenty-first studio album and first since 1991’s “Love Hurts” for new label Warners in 1995’s “It’s A Man’s World”. Featuring a number of cover versions of songs by the likes of James Brown, Marc Cohn and The Walker Brothers, it went gold in the UK which was not insignificant but was nowhere near the numbers of her Greatest Hits collection which sold 10 times that amount.

OK, that’s enough stats and chart positions, what about the actual music? “One By One” was the second single released from the album and it was, rather unbelievably, the debut single for Liverpool band The Real People (then known as JoJo And The Real People) in 1987. Who you ask? Well, they may not have had many hits (one minor Top 40 entry in 1992) but they did help none other than Noel Gallagher to record a demo to send out to record companies in the early days of Oasis featuring many songs that would end up on “Definitely Maybe”. So my question is how did “One By One” come to the attention of Cher/her management/Warners? I’m not sure there’s a straight line between the two. Anyway, here’s the original version of the song…

The Cher version released in the UK was quite different to that made available in America. The former was a trademark, chugging rock guitar number but the latter dropped all those traditional stylings (including backing vocals and sax solo) and turned it into an R&B tune. The Wikipedia entry for the song includes clips of both versions and the difference is quite startling. “One By One” made No 7 in the UK and paved the way for Cher to return in 1998 with the all conquering “Believe” album and single.

Talking of Liverpool bands, here’s one that, unlike The Real People, would have loads of hits. Cast were onto their third with “Sandstorm”. I liked this lot. I’d bought their debut single “Finetime” and also enjoyed its follow up “Alright”. Somehow though, I considered this one to be slightly inferior though listening to it now, I’ve no idea why as it’s a banger in very much the same vein as its predecessors. Supposedly a fave of the aforementioned Noel Gallagher, Cast seemed to have timed their arrival to perfection in terms of riding the Britpop zeitgeist. I’m sure they would deny their membership but they were definitely seen as a part of that movement.

On reflection, you could say that these early singles were quite conventional, rock/pop songs but if you’re a good songwriter (as I believe lead singer John Power to be) then your tunes will always stand up when heard through the lens of retrospect. Image wise, Power seems to be copying the Oasis sartorial look with that jacket (or maybe they copied him?) but the standout performer is always Keith O’Neill with his energetic, powerful drumming. At the time, we hadn’t witnessed anything like it on the show since Talk Talk’s Lee Harris a decade earlier.

I’ve given myself a hard time on this blog lately about not remembering certain songs or artists but I think I can give myself a free pass for not recalling this lot. Who on earth were Solo?! Well, apparently, they were an American a cappella R&B group who had one minor hit in the UK with this song “Heaven” which got to No 35. I don’t wish to be unkind but this sounds so dull. Clearly the guys can sing but I’m not sure why TOTP executive producer Ric Blaxill thought their performance here was any sort of ‘exclusive’ (“Heaven” wasn’t even a hit in the US) nor why he gave them the direct to camera message slot at the top of the show. And that band name! Is that solo as in with no instruments? Well, no instruments except a double bass it seems. So obvious was the name Solo that they had to go by the name Solo (US) here to avoid confusion with dance producer Stuart Crichton who had released records under that moniker. That’s before we even mention Han Solo (Star Wars), Napoleon Solo (The Man From U.N.C.L.E) and Skid Solo (Tiger comic).

Just as the UK was falling in love with George Michael all over again in 1996, the US seemed to be going a bit cold on him. George had ended Michael Jackson’s six week reign at the top of the charts with “Jesus To A Child” going straight in at No 1. The lead single from his album “Older”, it was followed by a further chart topper in “Fastlove” and three other singles that peaked at either No 2 or No 3. The album went six times platinum here and effortlessly leapt to No 1. However, across the pond, those two singles only made it to Nos 7 and 8 respectively and the album peaked at No 6 and was only the 99th best selling album of the year. By contrast, it was the UK’s 5th best selling of 1996. That’s not to say it didn’t sell at all in the US; one million sales is not to be disregarded lightly but “Faith” sold ten (!) times that amount in the late 80s. Why should this be? Well, maybe the songs weren’t as obviously commercial and radio friendly as those of “Faith” and George had been away for a while – it had been six years since “Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1” came out. Maybe, his audience had just moved on in his absence? It can’t have been a gay backlash as he didn’t come out until 1998. Sadly for George, his stay at the top will last just one week as he was unable to repel the march of “Spaceman” by Babylon Zoo. He should have maybe stuck with those “Faith” era Levi’s.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Bucketheads	Got Myself Together	Never happening
2	Sunscreem	Blue Skies	No but maybe should have
3	Coolio	Too Hot	Nah
4	Lush	Single Girl	Nope
5	Nightcrawlers	Let’s Push It	I did not
6	Cher	One By One	Negative
7	Cast	Sandstorm	See 2 above
8	Solo	Heaven	Definitely not
9	George Michael	Jesus To A Child	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/m001z1vm/top-of-the-pops-18011996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 28 SEP 1995

Posted on March 8, 2024 by 80stastic

The last couple of shows have been very poor quality-wise for me – too many anonymous or fly-by-night dance acts and, in the case of one particular standards drop (on many levels) a loathsome novelty record. Well, tonight’s episode sees a definite upturn in the calibre of tunes but…there’s also a tendency for very established acts and mainly those of a rock persuasion. Bon Jovi, Def Leppard and Meatloaf are all on the show tonight as are Wet Wet Wet and Simply Red. Was this what the kids wanted from the UK’s most watched music programme? Or did they want to see and hear more from the Britpop scene that was dominating the musical landscape? Well, it would seem that the TOTP producers were aware of the need to strike a balance. The show had always been structured around the Top 40 singles chart so that needed to be reflected and so, in the case of Simply Red for example, they were always going to be featured as this week’s No 1 record. However, there are also what could be considered Britpop artists on tonight so you can’t say that the genre wasn’t represented.

In a further effort to promote TOTP as being on trend, the chosen presenters this week are Steve Lamacq and Jo Whiley. The pair presented The Evening Session on Radio 1 together from 1993 to 1997 with its emphasis on indie and non mainstream music. Indeed, Lamacq seemed to me like the natural successor in waiting to John Peel whilst Whiley…hmm…well, I never really warmed to Jo Whiley. I didn’t think she had much credibility somehow. She seemed to me like she’d just found herself in the right place at the right time and got to where she was rather fortuitously. That’s probably completely unfair of me and I find myself on very dangerous ground by highlighting my misgivings about the female member of the presenting duo but I can assure you I have no such agenda. I just didn’t buy into Jo’s “I love all of this music” persona. In later years, she moved to Radio 2 and seemed as comfortable introducing the likes of Billy Joel as Billy Joe Armstrong (of Green Day fame). I’ve never found her convincing when she’s hosted at the Glastonbury Festival either. However, her work highlighting the struggles of her sister Frances, who has learning difficulties and diabetes, during the COVID pandemic and the need for her and anybody of a similar status to be a priority to be vaccinated led to the shaping of government policy. I had to reassess my opinion on Jo and I find myself being much more disposed to her these days.

Anyway, we start with one of those Britpoppers in Cast. I quite liked this lot, having seen John Power’s original band The La’s live twice, I guess I was always going to. I dutifully bought their debut single “Finetime” and I’m surprised I didn’t buy the follow up “Alright” which was just as good. Jangly, 60s influenced pop with a 90s twist – yep, sign me up. Although it only reached No 13 in the charts, it was enough of a hit to maintain the band’s momentum and ushered in a run of six successive Top 10 singles. As with Supergrass before them, clearly being a Britpop band and having a hit called “Alright” was a more than ‘alright’ strategy for continuing success.

I love the energy and style of drummer Keith O’Neill in this performance which I don’t think we’d seen the like of in the TOTP studio since Talk Talk’s Lee Harriss powered his way through “Life’s What You Make It” a decade earlier. One final thing, I’m pretty sure the lads in Cast didn’t pronounce their band name as ‘Carst’ Jo Whiley!

A marked strand of the whole Britpop movement was the concept of a band that was fronted by a distinctive female singer. I’m thinking Sleeper, Elastica and Echobelly. Add to that list Garbage. The TOTP caption said that the singer was from Edinburgh with the rest of the band from Madison, US. Whilst that is factually correct, to me it illustrated a laziness on the part of the researchers. That singer was Shirley Manson who had started her musical career as backing vocalist and keyboard player in the marvellous but mostly ignored Scottish rockers Goodbye Mr Mackenzie. The band’s label decided that Shirley had star quality and wanted to launch her as a solo artist. A side project under the name of Angelfish fronted by Manson was put into action and one of their videos came to the attention of the three members of Garbage (one of whom was Butch Vig who had produced Nirvana’s iconic “Nevermind” album). An invitation was sent by Garbage to audition for their band and despite initial reactions not being especially positive, Shirley got the gig. Debut single “Vow” received airplay from the aforementioned John Peel and tonight’s co-host Steve Lamacq (which explains why he introduced them as “the excellent Garbage”). The limited release of “Vow” meant that it wasn’t a big commercial hit but by the time of third single “Only Happy When It Rains”, the momentum of and buzz about the band was enough to propel it into the UK Top 40.

Whilst I liked and appreciated those other indie bands that had women lead singers, Garbage’s sound was much more rock and somehow bigger than their contemporaries to me. I guess that was always going to be the case bearing in mind that Nirvana connection. This track was a great example of the band’s style which would bring them huge success and a long career. Their debut eponymous album would sell 4 million copies worldwide and go double platinum here in the UK propelled by subsequent hit singles “Queer”, “Stupid Girl” and “Milk”. The pink, feather boa adorned Mike stand in this performance is presumably a nod to the album’s cover artwork. The band are still going strong with their most recent album released in 2021 whilst they also announced their first tour for five years with dates confirmed for later this year.

The most interesting thing about this next song by Wet Wet Wet is what Jo Whiley points out in her intro – that its video shows us that Marti Pellow has had his hair radically recut. Gone are the luscious long locks that he’s been sporting since about 1992 and that were certainly still in place for previous single “Don’t Want To Forgive Me Now”, replaced by a much shorter (some might say sensible) style. And once you’ve taken that on board, you can effectively switch off watching the rest of the video as the song is soporific. “Somewhere Somehow” sounds to me like a slowed down version of their 1988 hit “Temptation” with a country tinge added to it. Pellow adds a “Love Is All Around” -esque ‘Hey!’ shout into it during the middle eight to try and liven it up but nothing could shake awake this snore fest. Not sure what the woman wandering around with Angel wings attached to her was all about but it probably wasn’t the best idea for her to be walking near a cliff edge – what if a gust of wind had got under those wings!

Was this a new section on the show? The ‘Acoustic Exclusive’ slot or had it just been made up for The Pretenders? After the success of their last studio album “Last Of The Independents” which had given the band their first UK Top 10 single for eight years in “Stand By You”, their record company Warners clearly wanted to keep the band’s profile raised. Rather than waiting for the next studio album to be delivered (which wouldn’t be for another five years), a live, televised performance showcasing the band in acoustic mode formed their next release. Recorded at the Jacob Street Studios in London and accompanied by the Duke Quartet, “The Isle Of View” album was clearly based on the MTV Unplugged concept which was popular in the 90s and featured artists such as Eric Clapton and Nirvana. Its title was a pun on the words ‘I Love You’, a practice no doubt inspired by the film This Is Spinal Tap. You know that bit where the band claim they once played a jazz/blues festival on the Isle Of Lucy? No such place existed and it was a play on words of the title of the US 1950s sitcom I Love Lucy starring Lucille Ball. Apparently, fans of the film didn’t initially pick up on the joke and I didn’t pick up on the reference when my mate Robin bought me a T-shirt with ‘Isle Of Lucy’ emblazoned on it and I love that film! Bah!

Chrissie Hynde performs “Kid” for this TOTP which would end up being released as a single retitled as “Kid ‘95 live” though it would only make No 73 in the charts. The acoustic version is a revelation which lays bare how amazing Chrissie’s voice is (as if it needed pointing out any further). The verse almost sounds like “Unchained Melody” done in this way. Not sure what her red evening gloves were all about though.

It wasn’t the first time that “Kid” had been performed in a stripped back style though. Check out this from Everything But The Girl from 1985…

The pursuit of ever more unusual locations for Bon Jovi to perform on TOTP continues. After Niagara Falls for “Always” and an American Football stadium for “Someday I’ll Be Saturday Night”, we get a runway at an airport in Dallas for “Something For The Pain”. I’m not sure I’m buying Jo Whiley’s explanation as to how this came about – they were just about to get on a plane when the phone call came in from TOTP – as this looks very staged to me – they’ve even got TOTP logos handy for display.

However, watching this back, it wasn’t the location that struck me as odd as much as the very un -Bon Jovi looking bass player they had performing with them. Who the heck was that guy?! Well, I think his name is Hugh McDonald and he was the replacement for Alec John Such who left the band in 1994 after not taking too kindly to his bass playing being criticised by Jon Bon Jovi supposedly. McDonald would tour and record with the band for 21 years before finally being made an official member in 2016. That’s quite the probationary period! Such sadly died in 2022 from a heart attack aged 70. As for the song, it was a pretty standard Jovi composition – a jaunty, little rock number that they probably could have knocked out waiting for that plane to take off.

Is this another new slot? An ‘exclusive performance’? Not just an ‘exclusive’ and certainly not a ‘satellite performance’ but an ‘exclusive performance’. What gives? Well, it appears to be something created bespoke for the next artist who are TLC. According to Jo Whiley, the TOTP family had been waiting for a long time to get the trio on the show (was this their first time in the studio then?) and fortunately they must have been in the country. Unfortunately, they didn’t have a hit single that was rising in the charts to justify an appearance according to TOTP law, so the show producers shoehorned them in anyway, I’m guessing. To give TLC something to perform, a “Hits Medley” was dreamed up comprising “Creep” / “Waterfalls” / “Diggin’ On You” the last of which hadn’t actually been released and wouldn’t be until October. This makes me wonder why they didn’t just perform the final track as an ‘exclusive’ preview of said single? Why the need for a medley? It all seems a bit odd. Nothing wrong with the tracks or performance of course, just that the thinking behind them didn’t seem in alignment with the show’s traditional concept of reflecting what was popular in the UK singles charts. I guess though that the show had changed over the years (and we’d seen plenty in the 90s what with the ‘year zero’ reset and the replacement of Stanley Appel with Ric Blaxill as the show’s executive producer). Maybe this was just another one.

In the whole cannon of Britpop bands, there was perhaps none more Britpop than Menswear. For those who denigrated the movement, they were such an easy target. “They’re not a real band are they?” or “They’re a music press construct” or ultimately “Who do they think they are?”. I get all that and yet I still liked them and this single – “Stardust” – is a banger!

In some ways, they were like the Britpop equivalent of Spandau Ballet. A band who emerged out of a short lived, uniquely British music movement and who were the pin up boys and face of said movement. Gary Kemp is on record as saying that the New Romantics needed a group to rally around that were theirs rather than clinging to Bowie and Roxy Music and Spandau were in the right place at the right time. Menswear kind of performed a similar role – where Spandau were talked about because of their cultish wardrobe in their early days (all kilts, highland sashes and deer stalker hats) so Menswear took inspiration from their name and went for an image influenced by the classic mod look. Melody Maker ran a cover story that labelled them as “the best-dressed new band in Britain”. Indeed, check out Jo Whiley’s sartorial comments in her intro.

Then there’s the bidding war parallels. Spandau became hugely sought after by record labels after a highly publicised early gig aboard the cruiser HMS Belfast. Fifteen years later, Menswear played their debut gig at a club called Smashing on Regent Street which kick started a ruck amongst labels desperate to sign the next big thing. They eventually signed with London Records on an unheard of contract offering the band 18.5% gross revenues. They then signed a publishing deal worth £500,000 despite only having a repertoire of seven songs at the time. However, where the two bands diverge is that Spandau managed to adapt and outgrow the New Romantic scene once it had run out of steam to become bona fide, mainstream pop stars whereas Menswear couldn’t escape the Britpop tag after that movement petered out and they imploded with band infighting and a second album that was only released in Japan. They literally just came to a full stop.

Back in 1995 though, they were where it was at for all the groovy, young Britpoppers. I wasn’t particularly young at the time (I was 27) and had never been groovy but I could still appreciate “Stardust” for the tune it was. It fair gallops along driven by Matt Everett’s on point drumming with Johnny Dean’s affected vocals being punctuated by lots of “ba, ba baaas’ backing vocals. Yes, the piano outro could be accused of plagiarism from “Gimme Shelter” by the Rolling Stones but I didn’t care. The aforementioned Dean trod a thin line between swagger and being a dick in this performance with his dramatic, angular posing but I think he just gets away with it. Even The Who-like set destroying nonsense at the end didn’t put me off nor Dean’s silly styling out of having to omit the word ‘fucker’ from the lyrics – at least it gave Jo Whiley a nice line in her intro describing them as “groovy little muckers”. I’m definitely warming to her you know.

From groovy muckers to legends of rock (Steve Lamacq’s words not mine). Def Leppard seemed to be following in the career footsteps of Bon Jovi who were on earlier. The New Jersey outfit had come to a crossroads and decided a new direction was needed. Drawing a line under what had gone before, (including sacking their bass player) they released a Best Of album in 1994 called “Crossroads” (geddit?) before releasing an album that was supposedly darker in its themes than what had gone before but which was critically acclaimed in “These Days”.

Def Leppard were similarly assessing their options. Without an album of new material since “Adrenalize” in 1992, they found themselves in a dark place. Divorce, ill health, arrests for spousal abuse and assault and the death of guitarist Steve Clark meant the band were intent on writing some songs that were more from personal experience and mature than their standard “Let’s Get Rocked” rubbish. Also like The Jovi, they had a line up change following Clark’s passing with the addition of new guitarist Vivian Campbell. Perhaps more significantly though, sixth studio album “Slang” would be the first since 1980 without the involvement of producer Robert John ‘Mutt’ Lange.

Before that though, they put down their own marker to delineate their career in Greatest Hits collection “Vault”. To promote it was a new song, a rock ballad called “When Love And Hate Collide”. Possibly not renowned for their slow songs, they had a hit with at least one to my knowledge – “Love Bites” in 1988. However, this new track seemed more epic. It sounds like it was written to order for a blockbuster movie. In fact, it sounds like a template for Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing” which was written for the sci-if disaster film Armageddon.

I always quite liked the name of that Best Of – “Vault” sort of implied that there were sacred treasures inside though whether that meaning should apply to Def Leppard’s back catalogue rather depends on your opinion of the band I guess. My mate Steve who’s from Bolton swears that they were huge there in the 80s. Hmm. There’s a show on Sky Arts called Guy Garvey: From The Vaults which is a veritable treasure trove of fabulous musical clips taken from the archives of shows like The Tube, Razzmatazz, So It Goes and Tiswas. Based around a specific year and curated by Garvey, it’s a little gem of a programme and if the word ‘vault’ is good enough for Guy Garvey, it’s good enough for me.

Simply Red are this week’s new No 1 with “Fairground” which knocks Shaggy off the top spot after just one week. It remains the band’s only chart topping single to date. My first impressions on hearing it went along the lines of “Hang on, he’s just nicked that beat from “Give It Up” by The Goodmen. What a swizz!” OK, I maybe didn’t say ‘swizz’ but my point remains. It seemed to me like Hucknall was just jumping on the dance bandwagon in an attempt to remain relevant. After all, it had been four years since the last album, the all conquering “Stars”. However, lots of people didn’t seem to mind the sample and bought it in enough quantities for it to spend four weeks at the chart summit. At least we don’t get that clip with him wearing his PVC outfit like we got last week. Whoever advised him to don that costume really weren’t ’good men’ and should have told him to ‘give it up’.

The play out video is “I’d Lie For You (And That’s The Truth)” by Meatloaf. After the gargantuan success of the “Bat Out Of Hell II: Back Into Hell” album and “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)” single, delivering a follow up was always going to be an almost impossible task. “Welcome To The Neighbourhood” was no flop but it couldn’t hope to match the sales of its predecessor. Like Def Leppard before him, the Meat also had a change of producer and some may argue that was the reason for not being able to replicate the success of “Bat Out Of Hell II”. Meatloaf without Jim Steinman was like Ant without Dec (or the other way round as happened in 2018) – it just wasn’t right.

Having said all that, “I’d Lie For You (And That’s The Truth)” sounded right out of the Steinman playbook. Epic sounding rock ballad, huge production, paradoxical title – all the ingredients associated with the legendary writer and producer were there. And yet, it didn’t perform as well commercially. I mean, a UK No 2 was damn good going for a guy who had been nowhere near the top of the charts for years pre- “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)” but in America it only got to No 13. A sizeable hit sure but nowhere near being a No 1 record. It was a similar story with the album. Big sales but dwarfed by those of its predecessor.

In an unlikely turn of events I’m going to reference Spandau Ballet again in a post about pop music in 1995. Having made a connection between them and Menswear earlier, I’m jumping the shark now and relating them to Meatloaf. Gary Kemp said in a 2000 BBC documentary about the band that nobody else could play their songs and that you could get a new guitarist or singer even but really people just wanted to see the five original members performing on stage. Maybe it was a similar theme with Meatloaf and Steinman? That the former’s audience mostly wanted him and Steinman together?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Cast	Alright	No but easily could have
2	Garbage	Only Happy When It Rains	See 1 above
3	Wet Wet Wet	Somewhere Somehow	No
4	The Pretenders	Kid ‘95 live	Nope
5	Bon Jovi	Something For The Pain	I did not
6	TLC	Hits Medley	N/A
7	Menswear	Stardust	Call the police! Where’s my copy of this?!
8	Def Leppard	When Love And Hate Collide	Nah
9	Simply Red	Fairground	Never
10	Meatloaf	I’d Lie For You (And That’s The Truth)	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/m001wkgl/top-of-the-pops-28091995?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 13 JUL 1995

Posted on December 13, 2023 by 80stastic

We’ve reached the middle of July 1995 in these BBC4 TOTP repeats and there was a lot going on in the world of pop music at this time. Four days on from this broadcast, hearts of teenage girls everywhere in the UK were breaking as the news that Robbie Williams had left Take That! Shock! Horror! More of that later though as there’s another musical separation that rocked the industry just a day after this TOTP beamed into our homes when George Michael finally parted ways with Sony Music after being in dispute with them for over a year. As if all of that wasn’t enough, get this…Dale Winton was the guest host on TOTP! I know! It’s hard to be sure with these ‘golden mic’ hosts how big a name they were at the time that might have informed the decision to invite them on the show. Having checked Dale’s Wikipedia entry, it looks like he’d been presenting Supermarket Sweep for a couple of years by 1995 which, if my memory serves, started out as cult viewing for students but which rapidly grew in popularity. I could be wrong about this but, assuming I’m not, Dale may or may not have been instantly recognisable to TOTP viewers depending on which demographic you fell into. Sadly, Dale died in 2018 aged just 62 but I shall always remember him fondly for completely trashing Lulu whilst he was on an episode of Never Mind The Buzzcocks. Excellent work Mr. Winton!

We start tonight with yet another song and artist that I have obliterated from my memory. It turns out that Jinny wasn’t a person but a band (just like Toyah and Nena) and this track – “Keep Warm” – was the first and biggest of their two UK chart hits. Now, listening to this it sounds very much like Black Box to me which makes it a bit of an anachronism in 1995. Its back story supports my theory. It was originally released in 1991 and failed to chart presumably as the Italo House phenomenon spearheaded by the likes of the aforementioned Black Box and Starlight had run out of steam. However, it was given a second chance when the UK went mad for Eurodance in the mid 90s – meh, Italo House, Eurodance…what’s the difference?* – and it became a No 11 hit.

* I’m sure the dance heads out there will tell me that there is and what it is but I’m really not that interested

Now I believe that the blonde woman fronting this performance is one Carryl Varley who would go on to have a TV career presenting quiz shows and featured on the children’s Saturday morning show Scratchy & Co. Just like the woman from Black Box, it’s rumoured that she didn’t actually sing on any of the Jinny records and that it was the woman behind the Corona hits that supplied the vocals. Not the woman who did the TOTP appearances and whose face was on the artwork of the singles and albums though as she didn’t do the actual singing either! Confused? You will be…a point to anyone who knows which US sitcom that tagline is from**. We should probably ask queen of the quizzes Carryl Varley. She’ll know.

Oh don’t tell me I’ve got to find something to say about MN8 again! OK, well “Happy” was their third consecutive Top 10 hit and it turns out that it wasn’t actually their single at all. It was originally recorded by British funk band Hi-Tension in 1984 and then by American R&B group Surface in 1987. What do those previous two versions sound like? I don’t know and to be honest, I can’t be arsed to find out either it being such a dreary, lifeless thing.

Oh and Dale? Mate, it’s M-N-8 (as in emanate) not M – and – 8! Got that? Great! Or should that be GR8?

Next, the first of two songs on the show tonight that the artist behind them doesn’t like that much. And it’s another bloody rerelease. “Kiss From A Rose” was originally out in 1994 as the second single from Seal’s sophomore album “Seal II” when it made No 20. That chart placing always seemed quite low for such an accomplished, fulsome and lavish ballad and fate determined that its story wouldn’t end there. Batman Forever director Joel Schumacher asked Seal for permission to include it in the film and its soundtrack and once given and the song rereleased – Holy Heidi Klums! – a tsunami of sales engulfed the charts. It went to No 4 in the UK and topped the Billboard Hot 100 in America.

A second promo video was hastily put together for it featuring clips from the film and Seal singing next to the Bat Signal. With “Kiss From A Rose” and U2’s song from the film in the charts at the same time, it made for a nice little display in the Our Price store I was working in at the time when you needed to fill a tower with something. That was if you could get hold of the stock of course. I seem to recall there being some availability issues with the supplier for both singles.

So why doesn’t Seal like possibly his most well known hit? Well, apparently it was written in 1991 but Seal felt embarrassed by it and never even showed it to producer Trevor Horn when it came to recording his debut eponymous album. He still wasn’t very enamoured by it when his sophomore follow up was being laid down but quite liked the fact that Horn turned it into an eight million selling record. You don’t say.

The first of two bands who are associated with the Britpop movement now as Cast make their debut. I seem to have rather a connection with this lot despite hardly being a superfan. Rising from the ashes of The La’s after they imploded, Cast were an outlet for the creativity of their bass player John Power. Switching to rhythm guitar, he went through a number of different line ups before settling on the one in this TOTP appearance. So my connection with Cast was really a connection with Mr. Power. I’d caught The La’s live twice before they self-combusted; once as the support for Fine Young Cannibals when I confidently but ignorantly informed my wife that they were called The LA’s (as in the abbreviation for Los Angeles). The other time was when I saw them as the headline act in Manchester (must have been around 1991) when I’m pretty sure one of the band walked off stage in a huff never to return. Fast forward three years and I’m at the Manchester Opera House awaiting Elvis Costello on stage as my wife is a big fan. Who should be the support band that night? Yep, Cast. I’m not sure I twigged that this was John Power’s new band despite being sat a few rows from them as they watched Costello after their set was done but as I recall they were pretty good.

I’m guessing that they played “Finetime”, their debut single that they perform on this TOTP. Now, I may have refuted the notion of being a superfan earlier but I did buy this single. Some melodic, indie-ish guitar rock? I’m in. Someone I worked with at the time reckoned it sounded like Abba but I couldn’t understand what he was on about. If you were a scouser watching this TOTP then you might not have understood what Dale Winton was on about either when he pronounced their name as ‘Carst’. Oh dear. Incidentally, the drummer looks like he could be a mate of Damon Grant’s from Brookside. Boss!

It’s Dale’s favourite Summer ballad now (according to the man himself) and it’s “Grapevyne” by Brownstone. I really haven’t much to say about the song or group on this one. Sultry R&B was never really my bag and it wasn’t high on the list of priorities to listen to in that aforementioned Our Price store as I don’t remember hearing it played at all. My colleagues were more likely to put on Aphex Twin or Autechre or DJ Shadow – something like that anyway (yes, I was the uncool member of staff). Still, Brownstone’s performance here is very…erm…competent I guess, especially the a cappella bit at the end. Not sure why they spelt ‘grapevine’ with a ‘y’ in it though unless it’s the American spelling? Where’s Carryl Varley when you need her?

Before we move on to the next video, a momentary pause to highlight the fact that, yes, that is a young Iain Lee in the studio audience behind Dale’s left shoulder. Iain would have just turned 22 years old at the time but he was presenting The 11 O’Clock Show by the end of the decade which would give the world Ali G. Iain would enjoy a career as a writer, comedian and broadcaster and is currently working as a counsellor.

Back to the music and it’s time for a video exclusive from Hole. The follow up to their first ever UK hit “Doll Parts”, “Violet” was supposedly written about Courtney Love’s chaotic relationship with Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins. It’s a riot of raucous guitars, power chords and Love’s strangulated vocals. As you might guess, this wasn’t for me. Far too…well…loud. The spooky video just served to alienate me from the song even more. Look, I know that some people swear by her but I think I’m with Dale when it comes to Courtney Love; she’s a bit of a worry.

So to that Take That news that both Dale and I promised earlier. Dale plugs the fact that they will be on the show next week to plug their new single (“Never Forget”) but as I said at the top of the post, Robbie Williams would leave the group three days before that TOTP appearance. Did they show up without him? I can’t remember so I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Meanwhile, it’s a third (by my calculations) outing for Edwyn Collins and “A Girl Like You” on the show and yet again it’s the same clip of Edwyn’s first TOTP performance from about a month previous. I assume Edwyn was too busy touring or promoting his hit in other territories to come back on the show?

Now, whether you love it or hate it, you have to admire a song that features the words ‘acknowledge’, ‘metaphorically’ and ‘allegorically’ in its lyrics. I think it’s only outdone by “This Kiss” by Faith Hill which includes the phrase “centrifugal motion” in its song words. No, really…listen…

And so to one of the songs that will forever scream “Britpop!” at the top of its voice. Just as Pulp had had a couple of polite knocks at the door of the UK charts before smashing them in with a sledgehammer with their seminal “Common People” single, so Supergrass did the same with “Alright”. Both songs enjoyed almost identical chart trajectories, crashing in at No 2 on the first week of release, staying there for a week and then slipping to No 3 and spending a month inside the Top 10. It’s a great, knockabout song that, like “Wake Up Boo!” before it earlier in the year, had radio stations playing it endlessly it seemed. It became the band’s calling card, their signature tune – call it what you will – but it would become their albatross as well. As with Seal earlier, the band would come to dislike “Alright”. They stopped playing it live before the end of the decade; something I can confirm as I saw them in York in the early 2000s and it certainly didn’t make the set list then.

Unlike Pulp for whom “Common People” was the lead single from their seminal album “Different Class”, “Alright” was actually the fifth and final single from Supergrass’ “I Should Co Co”. Strange that the last release from an album should also be the biggest hit off it. I wonder why they kept it back so late? Given the band’s subsequent misgivings about it, maybe they were never that sure of its hit potential? And yet bassist Mick Quinn is on record as saying that he knew the song would be enormous because its backing track was “bulletproof”. Who knows the truth but release it they did and Supergrass made a super fast leap to superstardom.

“We’re baaaack!” they hollered at the message to camera piece at the top of the show and that’s exactly what I would like to see – the back of them. The Outhere Brothers are still No 1 with “Boom Boom Boom”. What more do you expect me to say about these two berks? OK, how about this? Their real names were Keith ‘Malik’ Mayberry and Lamar ‘Hula’ Mahone. The latter see seems rather apposite in the year that we lost Shane MacGowan as The Pogues took their name from the expression ‘Pogue Mahone’, an anglicisation of the Irish phrase ‘póg mo thóin’ meaning ‘kiss my arse’ – The Outhere Brothers certainly can.

The play out track is “Love Enuff” by Soul II Soul. I lost sight of Jazzie B and co after the “Joy” single in 1992 so I have no recollection of this track which was the lead single from the band’s fifth studio album “Volume V Believe”. It featured ex-Snap! vocalist Penny Ford and its peak of No 12 meant it was Soul II Soul’s biggest hit since the aforementioned “Joy”. And that rather dry, fact based analysis is all I have to say about it.

** Yes, it was of course from Soap

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Jinny	Keep Warm	Nah
2	MN8	Happy	No thanks
3	Seal	Kiss From A Rose	I didn’t
4	Cast	Finetime	YES!
5	Brownstone	Grapevyne	Nope
6	Hole	Violet	No
7	Edwyn Collins	A Girl Like You	Liked it, didn’t buy it
8	Supergrass	Alright	No but I had the I Should Co Co album
9	The Outhere Brothers	Boom Boom Boom	As if
10	Soul II Soul	Love Enuff	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/m001t61j/top-of-the-pops-13071995

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 12 SEP 1997

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TOTP 04 APR 1997

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TOTP 25 OCT 1996

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TOTP 11 OCT 1996

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TOTP 28 MAR 1996

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TOTP 18 JAN 1996

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TOTP 28 SEP 1995

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TOTP 13 JUL 1995

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