Cher

TOTP 18 JUN 1999

I’ve just checked and this is the 750th TOTP Rewind post! Yes, over both the 80s and 90s sites, the combined number of posts has reached 750. I couldn’t have believed I’d get anywhere near that number when I started this nine years ago. In fairness, I couldn’t have imagined keeping this up for nine years but here I am. However, all good things (and distinctly average ones) must come to an end and I’m declaring when I get to the end of the 1999 BBC4 repeats. As Jude Law says in that Uber Eats ad – “It’s exhausting!”. As such I don’t think I’ll quite make the 800 milestone post so I’m celebrating this one. Let’s hope there are some suitable performances on this TOTP show to commemorate this historic post…

Our host is Jamie Theakston (again!) and we start with…oh no…this can’t be right! Why were The Wiseguys back in the show with “Ooh La La”? After debuting at No 2 a fortnight previously, it began a constant descent down the charts going to No 5 and then No 9 in this particular week. That decline was never reversed once. To show it again was just nonsensical. Had it been kicking around the Top 5 for weeks on end or gone back up the charts at some point then maybe I could have understood another airing but this just defies logic. Presumably the final decision on this came from executive producer Chris Cowey – the definitive opposite of a wise guy.

Hmm. This 750th post hasn’t started well and now it’s taken an even bigger turn for the worse. A definite nosedive in quality. It’s only bloody Shania Twain with “That Don’t Impress Me Much”. This was the third time on the show for this one and as much as it annoys me, it had spent three weeks at No 2 and two at No 4 since its debut appearance so Chris Cowey could make a decent stab at defending making room for it in the running order again. I really can’t be arsed to vent about this one anymore so I’ll just ask the question of why Shania had the actor, presenter and writer Stephen Mangan playing bass for her in this performance? Seriously, complete doppelgänger. Even if it was him, big deal. Okay, so you’re Stephen Mangan…that don’t impress me much.

Finally a new song which was also the final single release of the 90s for one of the biggest artists on the planet (at the time). I always thought that “Beautiful Stranger” was a curious Madonna hit. Maybe it’s because it was a one-off release being part of a movie soundtrack rather than a Madge studio album that added to that feeling. Or maybe it’s that it sounds like it could so easily have been included on her last album “Ray Of Light” but wasn’t. Or maybe it’s the peculiar song structure it has where it seems to build to a payoff chorus but we never really get one but just a rather flat “Da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da-dum” refrain. Or maybe it’s just that I never got the appeal of the whole Austin Powers thing which “Beautiful Stranger” was a part of being the lead single from the soundtrack of the second film in the franchise – Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. Seriously though, it can’t be just me that doesn’t get the humour of that character surely? Even the title of the film is completely puerile. I get it’s meant to be satirical, sending up the whole James Bond phenomenon and TV spy series like Jason King but I just find the Austin Powers character intensely stupid and annoying. All that sexual innuendo and those inane catchphrases just leave me cold. Maybe it’s Mike Myers himself I just can’t be doing with as I never found Wayne’s World that humorous either.

Anyway, back to Madonna and “Beautiful Stranger” and it’s no wonder that it sounds like it could have been included the “Ray Of Light” album as it was written and produced with William Orbit who was also Madonna’s collaborative partner for said album. I’m guessing that the 60s styles and cultural references within the film also influenced the sound of the track which delivers a pop song with psychedelic leanings and an almost ethereal quality. It’s not bad but it’s just doesn’t have much substance to it. In various ‘Madonna’s Best Singles’ polls, whilst it appears in the rankings, it’s mostly a pretty lowly position (e.g. in March 2023, Billboard ranked the song as Madonna’s 88th greatest ever).

As for the video, it’s obviously based around the portrayal of the Austin Powers character with him fantasising about scenarios of him and Madonna together but there’s not a lot to it compared to some of the singer’s iconic promos from her past (“Like A Virgin”, “Like A Prayer”, “Vogue” etc). We do get a little bit extra with Madge giving us a personal intro nicely woven into the scene where Powers receives a message from his boss Basil Exposition via a screen in his car. It’s a nice touch but Madonna performing the track in the TOTP studio would have been a much bigger coup. Ultimately, “Beautiful Stranger” would lose out on another UK No 1 to a bunch of British kids with an insanely catchy pure pop number and a hit TV show. The times they were-a-changin’.

Oh come on! This is meant to be a celebratory, milestone post and the artists in this TOTP are making a mockery of it and none more so than this lot! Of all the shit that these 1999 repeats have flung at us so far, surely Cartoons stink the most? Did we just accept this crap at the time? We should have been out on the streets protesting shouldn’t we?! How do we explain this to our children?! Watching them perform “DooDah” is like suddenly finding yourself in an alternate universe where all the norms and practices of pop music have been replaced by a honking clown car. Actually, it’s the musical equivalent of the Trump administration. Their grotesque, oversized wigs make that comparison hold even more water.

For the record, “DooDah” was clearly based on the 1850 folk song “Camptown Races” by American composer Stephen Foster. Introduced into the mainstream by blackface troupe Christy’s Minstrels, it was used as the centrepiece of this excellent satirical scene from Blazing Saddles to lampoon its origin.

P.S. Blazing Saddles also gives us the most accurate description of what is going on in the White House currently…

Tatyana Ali’s pop career was a bit blink-and-you’ll-miss-it. Three singles in and this was already her final hit. “Everytime” was the smallest of them peaking at No 20. Is it coincidence that it was the first that didn’t seem to have anything to do with Will Smith? “Boy You Knock Me Out” featured a rap from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air whilst her first – “Daydreamin’” – came with a personal endorsement from Smith who did a specially recorded intro for Ali’s debut performance on TOTP. Maybe it didn’t perform as well as its predecessors because it wasn’t that good? It’s very pedestrian never really getting out of first gear. Her album “Kiss The Sky” also failed to sell in huge quantities making little impression on the US or UK charts which would lead to her being dropped by her label by the end of the year. Maybe Ali’s decision to tour with the Backstreet Boys as referenced in Jamie Theakston’s intro wasn’t the right choice after all?

Right, what’s going on here then? Well yes, obviously it’s Cher performing her single “All Or Nothing” for the second week on the spin but there’s something odd occurring that I’ve noticed. Cher has different hair and a different costume from what she was sporting seven days prior but her backing dancers appear to be exactly the same people wearing exactly the same outfits from the last show. Could it be that Cher recorded two performances back to back but did a whole wardrobe and wig change in between to fool us into thinking they were recorded a week apart? I haven’t gone completely forensic by trying to identify if the studio audience is the same but in both appearances, Jamie Theakston is not there in person to do his intro, rather there is a cutaway to clearly prerecorded footage. If I’m right, why would all concerned in this have done it? Would there have been protests outside the BBC if they’d just reshown the first performance? I think not. If the population couldn’t rouse itself to take to the streets about Cartoons then surely there was no chance of any push back against this? Mark it down as another weird happening during the Chris Cowey era.

There’s more strangeness now as we get some unusual symmetry between the next artist and one that we saw earlier. When I said Tatyana Ali had a brief career, I guess you could say the same about Lauryn Hill, in terms of their discographies anyway. One album and three singles lifted from it was the same for both singers with said singles achieving very similar chart peaks:

Tatyana Ali – No 6 – No 3 – No 20
Lauryn Hill – No 3 – No 4 – No 20

Those No 20 singles even had similar titles. For Tatyana it was “Everytime” and for Lauryn we had “Everything Is Everything”. Despite its moderate UK chart performance, it was well received by the music press and was nominated for a Grammy and a Soul Train Lady Of Soul award. Both Ali and Hill’s music careers would come to a halt as the new millennium dawned; the former as mentioned earlier after being dropped by her label and the latter because she became disillusioned with the trappings of fame and sought solace in religion, attending bible study classes five days a week. Both would also have acting careers alongside their music ones with Tatyana auditioning (unsuccessfully) for Sister Act 2: Back In The Habit which Lauryn starred in. Everything is everything indeed.

We have another new No 1 and it’s from a group who were pure, unadulterated pop. S Club 7 had already been given TOTP exposure six weeks prior to the release of their debut single “Bring It All Back” so they had a very long run up to topping the chart at the first attempt. Not only that but they’d appeared briefly on last week’s show for a ten seconds interview with Jamie Theakston when he basically said “It’s you or Madonna for No 1 next week” to which one of them (Jon?) replied that they were taking nothing for granted because Madge was the Queen of Pop or something like that. I don’t recall Theakston saying he thought S Club 7 would definitely win out as he says he predicted in this intro. Maybe he said it on his Radio 1 show. Anyway, that first appearance was a promo video but this time see get the group hyper-jigging about in the studio. Although Jo O’Meara would be the designated lead vocalist on most of their hits, all four of the girls get a go at singing out front whilst the boys are offered some backing vocals spotlight. Look, we’re going to see this one twice more in these BBC4 repeats so I think I’ll leave it there for now.

It wasn’t quite the line up I’d hoped for to celebrate my 750th post but then again, what did I expect from TOTP in 1999?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	The Wiseguys	Ooh La La	Get to f**k!
2	Shania Twain	That Don’t Impress Me Much	Heavens no!
3	Madonna	Beautiful Stranger	No
4	Cartoons	DooDah	Seriously?! Of course not
5	Tatyana Ali	Everytime	Negative
6	Cher	All Or Nothing	Nope
7	Lauryn Hill	Everything Is Everything	I did not
8	S Club 7	Bring It All Back	Nah

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002sw9g/top-of-the-pops-18061999

TOTP 11 JUN 1999

Posted on March 27 by 80stastic

After a rare, half decent show last week, could we be about to begin a run of better hits and performances? Well, I don’t know about that but what I am certain of is that seven of the eight songs on this one we haven’t seen before. However, we start with an ex-No 1 from a month ago which is back on the show because…? Because “I Want It That Way” by the Backstreet Boys had gone back up from No 9 to No 7. As Peter Crouch might say, “Big Deal!”. What’s that? It was a big deal? What because it sold 3 million copies in the US, because it was No 1 in just about every territory on the planet and because it was the 15th biggest selling boyband single of the 1990s in the UK selling 423,300 copies? Because of those things? Yeah, I don’t care. Big deal. NEXT!

In the late 90s mini-movement that was instrument playing all girl groups, after Hepburn and before Thunderbugs came 21st Century Girls. Though they had a name that suggested forthcoming longevity, this lot really were a case of blink and you’ll miss them. They were the protégés of music mogul Simon Fuller whose influence on the industry, though substantial, would become ever more pervasive in the years that followed. After being infamously sacked as the manager of the Spice Girls, he’d turned his attention to a Monkees-esque project for the 90s in S Club 7 but still had time to launch another all girl group. And this lot really were girls aged between 14 and 16 at the time that their debut single – also called “21st Century Girls” – hit the charts. Hailing from Dudley in the West Midlands, they’d formed a band st school and were spotted by a talent scout for Ian Allen’s Creative Management company. Allen managed Next of Kin who’d had a No 13 hit with “24 Hours From You” in 1999 so he had a track record for spotting young potential and getting them into the charts. He would duly do the same with 21st Century Girls but only after he’d given their demo CD to Fuller who immediately signed the group to his 19 Recordings label.

“I wanted something different – an antidote to all that is sterile and artificial about the music scene. I’m on a mission to take this band, which is pure and unadulterated and make them the biggest thing ever.”

Fulton, Rick; Daily Record (Glasgow, Scotland); April 23, 1999.

Hmm. Methinks he doth protest too much especially as Fuller proceeded to spend thousands to promote his “pure and unadulterated” group, a saturation project that resulted in a No 16 charting debut single and an appearance on TOTP. Was that an acceptable return on Fuller’s investment? Possibly not but these were literally just kids we’re talking about – the weight of responsibility to succeed was completely unreasonable. Indeed, Fuller was on record as saying that 21st Century Girls would be bigger than the Spice Girls – strike unreasonable and replace it with intolerable. Then there’s the music itself. In its favour, it didn’t sound much like Fuller’s former charges what with their influences were Green Day and Garbage. In the debit column, it wasn’t very good nor original. Their song was full of forced raucousness and naive, clunky lyrics* with a sound that was a melting pot of Republica, Transvision Vamp and Shampoo. It was meant to be a heady brew but it ended up being a concoction that was flavourless.

*If they wrote them, their age is a defence. If they were written for them, I guess it was part of their image but still.

They would not release another single in the UK presumably because Fuller lost interest (and the fact that S Club 7 took off) though a follow up and album were made available in Japan where the aforementioned Shampoo had been similarly massive. And so ended the tale of 21st Century Girls who never even made it out of the 20th century.

When I think about the film Notting Hill, or more specifically the music from it, I think of Elvis Costello’s version of “She” or Ronan Keating’s take on “When You Say Nothing At All”. At a push, maybe “Gimme Some Lovin’” by Spencer Davis Group which soundtracks the car scene as Hugh Grant’s character tries to get to a press conference at the Savoy Hotel. Or even “Ain’t No Sunshine” by Bill Withers which plays as the passing of time scene after Julia Roberts’ character has left London. At no point would my mind have turned to “From The Heart” by Another Level. Is it even in the film?

“Checks the internet*

Just as I thought; it doesn’t appear as a prominent background song during a main dialogue scene during the whole movie. Apparently, it features over the credits at some point but that must be well into them as “When You Say Nothing At All” plays at the end of the movie. Having said all of that, I don’t think Wet Wet Wet’s cover of “Love Is All Around” is heard in Four Weddings And A Funeral (which Notting Hill was a sequel to just about) until the credits have long since stated rolling. Anyway, my point is that I don’t recall Another Level’s contribution to the Notting Hill soundtrack at all and it’s one of those films I tend to watch if I happen upon it while channel hopping so I know it pretty well. Plus, we must have played the soundtrack in the Our Price where I was working a few times at least seeing as it went platinum in the UK. Punters in America who did buy the album however, got a slightly different track listing which omitted “In Our Lifetime” by Texas and instead included “No Matter What” by Boyzone. Why? Good question. That track doesn’t feature in the film at all what with it being from the soundtrack to the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Whistle Down The Wind. What gives? AI tells me that the song was used in the promotion of Notting Hill in America with an alternate version of the song’s music video produced specifically featuring clips of Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant interspersed with the band. That still doesn’t explain why? What was the association? I don’t get it. What’s that? Ronan Keating is the link? That’s it?! Nah, I’m not having it. Pure nonsense. Eh? What about Another Level’s song? I repeat, I’m not having it. Pure nonsense.

The return of The Chemical Brothers next who were hoping to replicate the success of their previous No 1 hits “Setting Sun” and “Block Rockin’ Beats” from ‘96 and ‘97 respectively. They came close with “Hey Boy Hey Girl” which was the lead single from third album “Surrender”. This was, I believe, what was known as a ‘bangin’ tune’. With its distinctive, repeated lyric and insistent, almost alarm-like back beat, you just couldn’t ignore this one. Oh yeah, that lyric. I’ve never noticed this before but the order of the single’s title is reversed in the words spoken on the track. Look…

“Hey girls Hey boys

Superstar DJs Here we go”

Writer(s): Richard Lee Fowler, Charles Pettiford, Gregory Carlton Wigfall, Edmund John Simons, Jerry Bloodrock, Thomas Owen Mostyn Rowlands, Celita Evans

I wonder why that was? I don’t think it makes too much difference in the way that it scans. As for the “superstar DJs” line, that always reminds me of the staff rota at the Our Price store I was working in when this single was out. Why? This is really niche and probably of no interest to anyone else reading this but it is my blog so…for my own personal amusement when compiling the weekly staff rota of who was in and when, sometimes I would allocate nicknames to my colleagues. So Suzanne was Skipper (can’t remember why), Lisa was Looby-Loo (from Andy Pandy – again no idea why) and then there was a guy called Richard who only worked on a Saturday but who loved his dance music so he was…of course…Superstar DJ. Look, I did warn you that this anecdote wouldn’t be interesting to anyone else!

What was interesting though was the video that gets shown here. Starting with the story of a girl on a school trip to the Natural History Museum who fractures her arm, it follows her into being an adult and going to a nightclub. Dominant throughout the promo is the imagery of all the human beings she encounters as being reduced to just bones, literally skeletons. Again I ask, what was that all about? A tribute to the climatic scene in 1963 movie Jason And The Argonauts when the titular heroes have to fight seven armed skeletons – ‘the children of the Hydra’s teeth’?

The version shown on TOTP, as hinted at by host Jamie Theakston, is heavily edited with a scene of a couple having sex in a nightclub toilet both in the flesh and as skeletons removed. Having seen the full version, there was no way that was getting past the censors. Quite what the idea behind the cutback shots to the studio audience watching the video on a big screen was I’m not sure. It’s not as if they’re even dancing enthusiastically but rather just milling about. Sort of. Very odd.

There was a third single from Cher’s “Believe” album?! Yes, there was and a fourth actually but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Though she wasn’t averse to a cover version, “All Or Nothing” wasn’t Cher’s take on the Small Faces’ classic hit but yet another track with 90s disco anthem pretensions but to my ears it was just a watered down version of “Strong Enough” which itself was the poor relation of “Believe”. Did every song on the album sound the same? There’s a slight deviation in the middle where it goes a bit “I Feel Love” by Donna Summer but then that’s just copying someone else rather than yourself.

After some of her previous outfits down the years, Cher has come to the studio in a dress-down-Friday, casual style. Her bright red hair still hints at her sense of the glamorous life though. As was almost inevitable, all the singles released from the “Believe” album would peak at a lower chart position than the one before it with “All Or Nothing” making it to No 12. I guess it was unreasonable to expect every hit to be as big as the commercial whopper that “Believe” (the song) was.

If pressed, I would have said that Feeder didn’t turn up until into the new millennium but here they were in 1999 with their fourth Top 40 hit “Insomnia”. Clearly they didn’t register on my radar back then and I now realise that they can only have bleeped for the first time when “Buck Rogers” was a Top 5 hit in 2001. Listening to them in 2026, is it fair to say they were/are like a UK version of Green Day? After all, they did have an album called “Insomniac” (ahem). Ok, Ok – not a UK version but a Welsh one. I’m nothing if not fastidious about facts. To back that claim up, I should really say that they are a Welsh-Japanese hybrid with founding member and bassist Taka Hirose being from Japan.

Looking at Feeder’s discography, I was a little surprised to see that they have released twelve studio albums with the most recent coming in 2024. Having said that, the first one came in 1997 so that’s twelve in just under 30 years. Is that a lot or not that many? More than one every three years is pretty consistent I would say. And yet the extent of my knowledge of them is pretty much the aforementioned “Buck Rogers”. Sometimes I wonder what my credentials for writing a music blog are at all.

I had the briefest of dalliances with the Red Hot Chili Peppers back in 1994 when I could no longer ignore a rerelease of “Under The Bridge”. Having been a No 26 hit in 1992, my purchase of it two years later helped it to spend two weeks at No 13. The CD single I bought included a version of “Give It Away” which I also liked. That was as far as my commitment went though and I pretty much ignored 1995’s “One Hot Minute” album. However, even my lukewarm interest was reignited by 1999’s “Californication” album. Now, let me be upfront and open – I didn’t actually buy it but I could certainly appreciate its wares starting with lead single “Scar Tissue”.

This was the more melodic side of the band that had first drawn me in via “Under The Bridge”. Indeed, comparisons highlighting similarities between the two tracks wouldn’t have been that wide of the mark. Based around the marvellously meandering guitar riffs of the returning John Frusciante, it was a great example of the band at the height of their powers. Indeed, it was so popular in America that it spent a record breaking 16 weeks atop the US Billboard Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart. It should surely have hit higher in the UK than its No 15 peak. As a song to perform on their very first visit to the TOTP studio, it was certainly a high bar. “Californication” would become one of the band’s biggest ever albums going five times platinum in the UK and eight times platinum in the US.

We’ve arrived at one of the strangest No 1 records of not just the 90s but perhaps of all time. A bold claim but what other word would you use to describe the success of “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)” by Baz Luhrmann other than strange. This one took me totally by surprise though many punters were one step ahead of me (despite my working in a record shop) and asking for it well before its official release. I clearly hadn’t been listening to Chris Moyles on Radio 1 who led a campaign to make it a hit. So what was it all about? The story of the record starts with the essay ‘Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young’ which was written by American journalist Mary Schmich and published in the June 1, 1997 issue of the Chicago Tribune. It was written as a hypothetical commencement speech given to graduating students, in which Schmich dispenses various pieces of advice for living a happy life with persistent references to using sunscreen having seen a young woman sunbathing and hoping she was wearing sufficient sun protection. An urban legend developed around the article suggesting that it was, in fact, a genuine commencement speech made by the author Kurt Vonnegut at MIT.

Enter Australian film director Baz Luhrmann who was working on a remix of Rozalla’s “Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good)” for his “Something For Everybody” album, a track he’d used a version of on the soundtrack to his film William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet. Aware of the supposed Vonnegut speech, he decided to use it in the remix but wasn’t sure he could get clearance from the author in time. Looking for Vonnegut’s contact details, he became aware of the true source of the speech and was able to get consent from Schmich. Narrated by Australian voice actor Lee Perry (not the ‘Scratch’ version) it would become a member of that most exclusive of genres – the spoken word hit alongside J J Barrie’s “No Charge” and “If” by Telly Savalas. To be honest, I’d forgotten how it went and listening back to it on this TOTP repeat, I found it completely underwhelming and myself nonplussed about why there had been such a huge fuss about it in the first place. Despite said hype and amid claims that it would be one of the biggest sellers of the year (it wasn’t), it lasted just three weeks inside the Top 10. The whole episode was completely bizarre.

So did this episode continue the quality of last week’s show? Probably not. There was an awful lot of crap though the Chemical Brothers and Red Hot Chili Peppers readdressed the balance handsomely with a mention in dispatches for Feeder.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Backstreet Boys	I Want It That Way	Never
2	21st Century Girls	21st Century Girls	Negative
3	Another Level	From The Heart	Nah
4	The Chemical Brothers	Hey Boy Hey Girl	Nope
5	Cher	All Or Nothing	Nothing then
6	Feeder	Insomnia	No
7	Red Hot Chili Peppers	Scar Tissue	Liked it, didn’t buy it
8	Baz Luhrmann	Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)	I did not

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002sw98/top-of-the-pops-11061999

TOTP 12 MAR 1999

Posted on February 6 by 80stastic

At last a presenter who isn’t Jayne Middlemiss nor Jamie Theakston! Yes, we have a new presenter who is Gail Porter, someone who has had quite the life and career full of the highest highs and the lowest lows. Gail’s early CV entries included stints on various children’s TV shows before getting her big break on TOTP. She was also a model for magazines such as FHM and it was that part of her life which would result in one of the most infamous news stories and visual memories of the decade. Although it would raise her profile into the stratosphere, it would ultimately cause Porter far more harm than good. A couple of months after her TOTP debut, Gail would awake one morning in May 1999 to find her names in headlines though it wasn’t her head that the story concerned. A nude 60ft tall photograph of Porter was projected onto the Houses of Parliament organised by FHM magazine as part of a marketing campaign to promote their ‘100 sexiest women in the world’ poll. Gail had no idea what had been planned but received a backlash anyway as the perception that she was in on the stunt as a career move was propagated. The incident would lead to Gail not feeling able to leave the house and contribute to bouts of depression. She suffered from anorexia nervosa and was hospitalised before, in 2005, developing alopecia totalis which led to her losing all of her hair. Choosing to deal with her condition literally head on, she declined to wear hats or wigs and used her profile to become ambassador for the Little Princess Trust, a charity which provides wigs to children with hair loss. As if that wasn’t enough to deal with, her marriage (to Toploader guitarist Dan Hipgrave) broke down and she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and sectioned against her will for 17 days in 2011. In a painfully honest and insightful 2024 documentary called Being Gail Porter, she discussed her two decades of mental health struggles. Knowing all of the above, it’s hard to recall her as this fresh faced, young presenter. Let’s see how she did…

Well, Gail’s first line is about it being her first time and a request to please be gentle with her, a bit of sexual innuendo which feels unnecessary but possibly didn’t raise an eyebrow in the era of ‘lad culture’. We then move straight to our first performance which is…oh this is just getting silly now…a hit that was only just on last week’s show and was now coming down the charts. I know this was nothing new in the Chris Cowey era and that I’ve banged on loads about the practice of repeat showings of songs that were descending the Top 10 but this one has really pissed me off for some reason. Actually, not this one but FOUR songs that were on just seven days ago which are all back on the show. Wait a minute though, am I being unfair here? Having checked out that week’s chart on official charts.com, there’s not one song going up the charts! The whole Top 40 consists of either new entries or songs going down. What was the hell was this?! I guess it was another consequence of first week record company discounting as sales in the second week fell dramatically as the price of a single went up. OK, so were there any new entries that could have featured on the show instead of songs declining in popularity? Well yes, there were three entries inside the Top 10 which were never featured including hits from two of the biggest names in music – Madonna and George Michael! OK, they might not have been available for an in the studio appearance but were there no videos made to promote their singles? Well yes, there were – at least they are easily found on YouTube so was this Cowey’s stupid ‘no promos’ policy at work again?

For the record the first act in this TOTP is Cher with “Strong Enough” which is down from No 5 to No 8 in the charts. I’ve nothing else to say about this one other than that Cher was in the news this week for fluffing her lines at the Grammys when presenting Kendrick Lamar and SZA with an award though in her defence it didn’t seem to be all her own fault…

Gail Porter warns us that this next act’s last single stayed on the charts for three months hinting that the follow up may do the same. Did we heed Gail’s warning? No we did not as Vengaboys spent five weeks inside the Top 10 and two and a half months on the Top 40 with “We Like To Party! (The Vengabus)”. You know, the 90s have provided some awful years of music but I think 1999 might just prove to be the worst and this lot will have been one of the biggest contributing factors as to why. Using those exact same tinny, buzzing and downright annoying backing beats as featured on their first hit “Up & Down”, this was music in its most basic form. No, it wasn’t music, this was anti-music or some sort of tribal chant led opium for the masses causing the general public to lose its collective mind and taste to rush to their local record emporium to buy this colossal shit. “Pushing the boundaries of pop” says Gail by which I don’t think she meant carving out a new art form but shrinking the definition of what could reasonably be described as such. Just horrendous but worse was to come in the shape of two No 1 hits during the year for these absolute dolts. The Vengabus was indeed coming…for us all.

Now in previous posts I’ve stated how I should really explore Skunk Anansie’s back catalogue more based on some of their hits I wasn’t familiar with. However, this next one – “Charlie Big Potato” – has dulled my commitment to that endeavour as it’s far too heavy for my liking. I mean, it sounds like Metallica or someone. And it’s dark as well as heavy. The opening lyrics are “I awake from blood thick dreams” followed a bit later by “I awake, dry the scream, spit the vile breath, till my tongue bleeds”. Bloody hell! Skin’s almost demonic performance here certainly doesn’t add any levity to the whole experience with her seemingly on the verge of kicking out at the studio audience and her weird stage outfit of what seems to be a PVC jacket with dangling, massively oversized pieces of material (I’m not sure they count as sleeves) hanging from her arms. Are they meant to be wings? Is she meant to resemble a bat? The whole thing comes across as far too much for a mainstream pop music show and the aforementioned audience don’t seem to know how to react to what they are witnessing initially before adopting an ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’ approach and just going mental in the really loud bits. The floor managers seem to have run with the element of danger to the whole performance with police tape barriers skirting the stage. “Charlie Big Potato” was a big hit in Iceland which makes sense as the craziness of it puts me in mind of Björk. It was also used in the soundtrack to the deeply disturbing and unpleasant movie Hollow Man starring Kevin Bacon which again makes sense.

Another song going down the charts from No 3 to No 5 is next – “It’s Not Right But It’s OK” by Whitney Houston. This is the third time in a row this performance has been on the show. Week one was an ‘exclusive’ performance before the single was released, week two reflected its debut at No 3 and week three is it descending the charts albeit still remaining in the Top 5. Are all three appearances justified? I can make a case for the first two but surely the third is overkill? Whatever your own opinion on the matter, the upshot is that I have nothing else to say about this one. As a blogger, it’s not right…but it’s OK.

We arrive at the valedictory performance for a band who had eighteen Top 40 hits including a Christmas No 1 and of which only six failed to make the Top 10. A group who courted controversy and were allocated the role of the perceived rivals to the UK’s premier boy band of the 90s. A group who looked to have lost everything but who shortened their name and made one last (partially) successful grab for chart victory. It is, of course, ~~East 17…~~erm…E-17!

Having achieved a No 2 hit against the odds as a Tony Mortimer-less trio with their past single “Each Time”, Brian, Terry and John (thanks for the name checks Gail!) followed it with “Betcha Can’t Wait” which was more of a deliberate R&B sound which they’d plotted without their former chief songwriter. However, whilst I’d unexpectedly appreciated “Each Time”, this one was pure parody. All the same soul stylings were there but the lyrics were laughable. Witness:

“I’m gonna touch you in the right spot baby….Betcha can’t wait, betcha can’t stop…Can’t stop thinking ’bout my love rock, baby come on”

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Brian Lee Harvey / Terence Mark Coldwell / John Darren Hendy / Mark Reid / Jonathon Lesley Beckford / Ivor Paul Reid
Betcha Can’t Wait lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Ltd., Strongsongs Ltd.

“Touch you in the right spot”?! “My love rock”?! This performance is almost like a Fast Show sketch but instead of ‘Jazz Club’ or ‘Indie Club’ they’d turned their attention to R&B and given us ‘Bump ‘n’ Grind Club’. And check out the other two’s (forgotten their names already – where’s Gail when you need her?) ridiculous dance moves! Like I said pure parody. Compare this nonsense to such gems as “Deep” and “It’s Alright”. There is no comparison. What a said way to bow out for the lads who were straight outta Walthamstow.

Two more hits now which were also on only last week starting with “Just Looking” by Stereophonics. As with Whitney earlier, I haven’t got much else to say about this one except to note that their bass player was recreating a look first popularised on the show by Sandie Shaw and her barefooted performances. However, if you’re wanting a band to band comparison, check out Duran Duran’s guitarist Andy Taylor in this clip of them playing “Hungry Like The Wolf”. What happened to his shoes? I don’t know but if you watch him closely, he does seem to be rather out of it like he was in another world. Planet earth to Andy…Is there something I should know?

Also just like Whitney Houston, this is the third time for Blur on the show with “Tender”. Come on Cowey, what do you think I’ve still got left to say about this one?! OK, how about a shout out to the London Community Gospel Choir who also featured on this track. Founded in 1982, look at this list of artists with whom the have either performed or recorded:

George Michael and Liza Minnelli at The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert
Madonna at Live 8 in Hyde Park
Eric Clapton in Hyde Park
Kylie Minogue in Hyde Park
Blur (again) at the 2012 BRITS
The 1975 at the 2017 and 2019 BRITS
Pink! at the 2019 BRITS
They recorded a version of the OutKast hit “Hey Ya!” with Razorlight (the B-side to their single “Vice”)
They recorded with Will Young on his debut album “From Now On”
They provided backing vocals on Erasure’s self-titled 1995 album
They featured on Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds 2005 double album “Abattoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus”
They also performed on the songs “Don’t Get Lost in Heaven” and “Demon Days” on the Gorillaz’ “Demon Days” album
They have also recorded with
Paul McCartney, Elton John, Westlife, Elkie Brooks and Tori Amos amongst others

Blimey! Or should I say Hallelujah!

So the halting of the run of one week wonder No 1s didn’t last long did it? Britney Spears has been toppled after just fourteen days at the top of the charts by the 1999 Comic Relief single recorded that year by Boyzone. For the third time in a row we got a pretty straight run through of a song that wasn’t written with the intention of being funny nor that had extra comedic lines thrown into the mix by the performers over a well known hit. To break that down further, ever since its inception in 1986, the established choice was either a cover version played for laughs:

Cliff Richard and The Young Ones – “Living Doll”
Mel & Kim (Mel Smith & Kim Wilde) -“Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”
Bananarama & Lananeeneenoonoo – “Help!”
Mr. Bean & Smear Campaign feat. Bruce Dickinson – “(I Want to Be) Elected”

Or an original song written to be intentionally funny (I’m not sure the writers always succeeded):

Hale & Pace – “The Stonk”
Right Said Fred – “Stick It Out”
Pet Shop Boys – “Absolutely Fabulous”

Then came “Love Can Build A Bridge” by Cher, Neneh Cherry, Chrissie Hynde and Eric Clapton in 1995 which was a cover of an original song by country music duo The Judds. Two years later, no song was specifically written nor covered for the campaign but the Spice Girls agreed that all royalties for their double A-side single “Mama / “Who Do You Think You Are” would go to the charity. And then there was Boyzone who did a faithful version of Billy Ocean’s 1986 No 1 “When the Going Gets Tough” which I didn’t particularly like first time round so Ronan and the lads take on it was never going to win me over, charity record or not. Watching this back, I’m struck again by how little the guys who weren’t either Keating nor Stephen Gately actually did. In this one, they’re tasked with a bit of finger clicking and some shadow boxing to match the staging theme for the performance and that’s about it. That staging with the boxing backing dancers gives the whole thing a very 80s feel. I’m thinking of this perhaps..

P.S. A few people on line noted an unlikely link between “When the Going Gets Tough” and “We Like To Party! (The Vengabus)” by Vengaboys. Give up? They both have near identical opening lines – “I got something to tell you” in the former and “I’ve got something to tell ya” in the latter. Then in the third line they both share a similar theme – Ronan Keating sings “I’m gonna put this dream in motion” whilst whoever the Vengaboys ‘vocalist’ is gives us the line “Gonna put some wheels in motion”. Note to arresting officer – add plagiarism to the Vengaboys charge sheet for crimes against music.

As for Gail Porter, she did pretty well I think. All power to you Gail, a quite remarkable person. We’ll see plenty more of her (ahem) in future 1999 TOTP repeats.

Order of appearance	Artist	Tilte	Did I buy it?
1	Cher	Stong Enough	Nah
2	Vengaboys	We Like To Party! (The Vengabus)	Never
3	Skunk Anansie	Charlie Big Potato	No
4	Whitney Houston	It’s Not Right But It’s OK	I did not
5	E-17	Betcha Can’t Wait	Nope
6	Stereophonics	Just Looking	No but I had the album
7	Blur	Tender	See 6 above
8	Boyzone	When the Going Gets Tough	Not even for charity

Disclaimer

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

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

TOTP 05 MAR 1999

Posted on February 4 by 80stastic

Three days before this TOTP aired, the singer Dusty Springfield passed away aged just 59 from breast cancer. My Dad saw her folk-pop trio The Springfields back in the early 60s but I wasn’t really aware of Dusty until I started taking a real interest in pop music around 1983. By that point, her career was totally in reverse with no Top 10 hits since 1968 and just one minor Top 40 chart entry throughout the whole of the 70s. Her 60s glory days seemed a long time ago. An attempted comeback in 1985 with the single “Sometimes Like Butterflies” (which I’d quite enjoyed) failed to restore her fortunes despite an appearance on Wogan when it peaked at No 83. And then, just two years later, enter the Pet Shop Boys and a career resurrection via her part in their No 2 hit “What Have I Done To Deserve This” and a Top 20 album of her own in the silver disc achieving “Reputation”. She would release just one more studio album in her lifetime (the commercially overlooked “A Very Fine Love”) but her profile was maintained via a couple of Best Of collections with 1994’s “Goin’ Back” making the UK Top 5. Talking of going back, let’s revisit this TOTP episode from 1999 and see if there’s any sign of a connection to Dusty…

Jamie Theakston is our host (boo!) and we start with the No 2 record “Tender” by Blur. This appears to be just a repeat showing of the ‘exclusive’ performance from the other week prior to the single’s release and we get the whole 4:30 radio edit version which seems quite generous. Expectations were that it would go straight in at the top of the charts (I fully expected it to). After all there’d been a new No 1 every week for the first nine weeks of the year so far. And it was the band’s first new material for two years and it was something of an anthem. However, the power and pull of Britney Spears and “…Baby One More Time” would not be denied a second week at the summit and Blur had to be content with the runners up spot. Apparently it was a close (ish) run thing. The two singles had been neck and neck for most of the week but Britney would pull away over the weekend and would sell 55,000 more copies than Blur in the final reckoning. Still, “Tender” did outsell just about every other No 1 up to this point in the year and, perhaps more importantly, parent album “13” would spend two consecutive weeks at the top on its way to achieving platinum level sales in the UK.

Can I just say that Damon Albarn looks perhaps the coolest he ever did in this performance with his tousled hair, shades and Fred Perry shirt. Compare that with his look in the video for 1991’s breakthrough hit “There’s No Other Way”. Dearie me.

Dusty Springfield connection: The aforementioned Pet Shop Boys who resurrected Dusty’s career also did remixes of Blur’s 1994 hit “Girls & Boys”.

Next up is a singer who was a peer of Dusty Springfield and, rather incredibly, was still having hit singles in 1999. And not just hit singles but the biggest one in the UK in 1998. So how do you follow up such a success? Well, if you’re Cher, you just repeat the exact same formula. At least, that’s how I remembered it; that “Strong Enough” was just a carbon copy of “Believe” but listening to it now, it’s clear that rather it was more trying to be “I Will Survive Mk II”. I mean, it’s not a million miles away from being “Believe Mk II” either but “Strong Enough” had more of a disco feel to it with some definite 70s sonic stylings thrown into the mix and, of course, it had the same lyrical subject matter. Given the status of “I Will Survive” and Cher’s standing amongst the LGBTQ+ community and that “Believe” had brought her to a new audience within said community, it made perfect sense to release “Strong Enough” as the follow up single.

Watching this performance back, all the backing dancers positioned in straight lines behind Cher make it seem like a fitness video. Has Cher ever done a fitness video?

*checks internet*

Yes, she did two in the early 90s called “A New Attitude” and “Body Confidence”. Well, had she ever made a third then she could have used this routine in it. “Strong Enough” couldn’t hope to match the success of “Believe” but it was a Top Ten hit around the world and was a No 1 on the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart so not quite strong enough but not a 10 stone weakling either.

Dusty Springfield connection: Both emerged as significant female artists in the 1960s, both are celebrated as camp icons and both have recorded versions of “You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me” which was a UK No 1 hit for Dusty in 1966 and appeared on Cher’s album “Chér” also from 1966.

Another performance we’ve seen before next as we get The Corrs and the rereleased “Runaway” just seven days after it was last on the show and despite the fact they it had dropped from No 2 to No 6 this week. Except…hold on…this isn’t the same performance…is it? They’ve all got the same outfits on but Caroline, the drummer, is playing the piano in the first appearance and it’s a more acoustic version of the song and in the second show she’s back on the drums. What gives? I can only assume that they recorded two versions whilst they were in the studio that day. Why did they do that? To diversify the promotion of the single? Both the Tin Tin Out remix and the album version were on the 1999 CD single release so maybe they were trying to cover all bases of appeal? Maybe the BBC wanted to stockpile their archives? Who knows? Either way, it didn’t stop the single from descending the charts albeit at a steady rate.

Dusty Springfield connection: According to Sharon Corr, her parents listened to a lot of Dusty Springfield (along with Burt Bacharach and The Carpenters) which served as the soundtrack to her early childhood. Also, Dusty’s parents were both Irish just as the Corrs family are.

Jamie Theakston can’t help himself making a comment about The Corrs (“Runaway. That’s The Corrs. You wouldn’t really would you?”) before he does that thing all the presenters were doing around this time that was clearly a new innovation by executive producer Chris Cowey – walking into the backstage area and introducing the next act who were to be found on a TV screen not on stage. Well, I mean they were on a stage but not actually sharing the same physical space as the presenter if you see what I mean. I’m guessing that many of these performances were being recorded separately from the host’s time in the studio because of scheduling issues? Having said that, there is a studio audience present so there as a certain amount of joining the dots going on. In the old days, unless a video was being shown, it seemed like one big shot jumping from presenter to artist and then back to the host to introduce the next act. This had the feel of lots of clips needing to be edited together neatly so as not to see the seams hence these rather clunky backstage segues.

Anyway, enough of the technical stuff, back to the music – who were the next artist on? Well, it’s The Cardigans and their hit “Erase/Rewind”. Now I could have sworn that this follow up to “My Favourite Game” was released much closer to its predecessor but the time elapsed between the two was four months. Presumably their record label didn’t want it swallowed up in the mad dash that was the Christmas selling period. The other thing I could have sworn was that it was better than this. I mean, I shouldn’t be complaining about it when compared to the rest of the crud in the charts but it did disappoint slightly on re-listening to it. Just ever so slightly underwhelming. It certainly helped reactivate sales of parent album “Gran Turismo” propelling it into the Top 10 after spending the first four months of its chart life outside of the Top 20. This would pretty much be the peak of commercial success for The Cardigans, in the UK anyway*. One more Top 10 hit with Tom Jones doing a cover version of “Burning Down The House” by Talking Heads would follow later in 1999 and a No 31 hit in 2003 was it for chart singles action whilst their two albums released subsequently to “Gran Turismo” gained hardly any sales traction.

*In their home country of Sweden, the band continued to rack up No 1 albums and Top 10 singles.

Dusty Springfield connection: The band’s bassist Magnus Sveningsson participated in a tribute project to Dusty Springfield around 2007, where he played in a band for a live performance featuring songs like “If You Go Away”.

This post is all about female singers what with the Dusty Springfield theme, Cher and Britney Spears. Even two of the groups featured are fronted by women. Add to that list Whitney Houston who appears on the show two weeks on the run with “It’s Not Right But It’s OK”. With the single having entered the charts at No 3, I get why it’s featured but there were other new entries this week that could have been shown instead from Shawn Mullins, Kula Shaker, Sheryl Crow and…erm…Elton John and LeAnn Rimes…OK maybe not that last one!

Anyway, it’s Whitney who got the nod and perhaps rightly so if you read about the song’s legacy. It won a Grammy for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance and in 2019 it was certified platinum for sales of over a million copies in America. It regularly features highly in the various Best Of polls and just last year it was ranked the 45th Greatest LGBTQ Anthems of All Time with Billboard comparing it to…yes, Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” just as Cher’s “Strong Enough” was. Clearly the two were duking it out for the hearts of that particular community.

Dusty Springfield connection: Cissy Houston (Whitney’s mother) was a founding member of The Sweet Inspirations, a group that provided backing vocals for several of Dusty’s records, most notably on her acclaimed 1969 album “Dusty In Memphis” and her classic hit “Son Of a Preacher Man”.

With their last single “The Bartender And The Thief”, the Stereophonics took a significant step up the ladder of commercial popularity. No longer were they a band of minor to medium sized hits but a Top 5 artist. Follow up “Just Looking” would consolidate that position by being a No 4 chart hit. More than that though, it was a great advert for their sophomore album “Performance And Cocktails” which was released the Monday after this TOTP aired. It would go to No 1 and six times platinum in the UK. These boys really were big news. It remains their second biggest selling album after “Just Enough Education To Perform” I liked it enough for it to end up in my CD collection. “Just Looking” maybe wasn’t as rollickingly riotous as “The Bartender And The Thief” but it’s still a decent track worthy of repeated plays. However, I’d have to say I prefer “Just Lookin’” by The Charlatans as a song – that missing ‘g’ clearly making all the difference.

Dusty Springfield connection: Well this is tenuous in the extreme but…the Stereophonics only No 1 single is a track called “Dakota” and in January 2024, singer-songwriter Shelby Lynne performed a set dedicated to Dusty based on her 2008 tribute album “Just A Little Lovin’” at the Dakota Jazz Club in Minneapolis. Don’t like that? How about that Dusty once recorded the song “The Black Hills Of Dakota” from the film Calamity Jane? Oh suit yourselves!

Britney Spears is No 1 again with “…Baby One More Time” and has therefore achieved something that we were yet to see in 1999 – a record top the charts for more than seven days. Yes, it’s taken ten weeks but finally the constant conveyor belt of a different No 1 has ground to a halt. When you consider though that this was easily the best selling single of the year in the UK, could we have expected a longer ride in pole position? The timings within release schedules probably worked against Britney as in her third week in the chart she was up against that year’s Comic Relief single courtesy of the biggest boy band in the country at the time but even so. That chart conveyor belt would spring back into action though with another 14 No 1s spending a solitary week at the top meaning 22 out of 52 weeks of the year saw a different record at the top!

As for Britney, well I haven’t the time nor space to chronicle her career and personal struggles here but suffice to say she would have two more big UK hits before 1999 was out and followed that by starting the new millennium by topping our chart twice with consecutive singles. That’s two, not one more time.

Dusty Springfield connection: Dusty’s iconic hit “Son Of A Preacher Man” featured in the film Pulp Fiction and was included on its multi platinum selling soundtrack. In 2008, the film’s director Quentin Tarantino considered casting Britney Spears as the lead character Varla in a planned remake of the 1965 cult film Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! The project never materialised though.

We’re still not done with The Great British Song Contest entrants in the BBC’s quest to find a contestant to be the UK’s representative at 1999’s Eurovision but fear not for this is the last of the four finalists. Jay were a band not a singer who was one Jamie Callis seen here fronting the song “You’ve Taken My Dreams” and what an affront to musical taste it is. Dull doesn’t quite cover it – how about ‘insipid’? ‘Soulless’? ‘Banal’? I’ll go for plain old shite I think. Callis was an unemployed karaoke singer at the time of his 15 minutes of fame – I should have just used those three words as my review of this one. Jay came fourth out of four when The Great British Song Contest airedtwo days after this TOTP was broadcast.

Dusty Springfield connection: Surely there’s nothing?! OK, how about Laurie Jay who was the drummer with The Echoes who served as Dusty’s primary backing band for her live performances and several studio recordings during the peak of her early solo career from late 1963 to1966. Jay was a dedicated fan and associate of Dusty, even attempting to organize tribute events in her memory such as a star plaque in Los Angeles and a show at The Albert Hall in 2012.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Blur	Tender	No but I had the album
2	Cher	Strong Enough	No
3	The Corrs	Runaway	Negative
4	The Cardigans	Erase/Rewind	Nope
5	Whitney Houston	It’s Not Right But It’s OK	Nah
6	Stereophonics	Just Looking	See 1 above
7	Britney Spears	…Baby One More Time	I did not
8	Jay	You’ve Taken My Dreams	And pissed all over them – 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.

TOTP 11 DEC 1998

Posted on December 30 by 80stastic

As I write this sat on a train on the 27th December, Christmas has been and gone for another year but there were still two weeks to go at the point this TOTP aired back in 1998. After a period of poor mental health resulting in five weeks off work, I was back in a record shop as Christmas approached just as I had been for the previous eight years. However, this time I was in the Our Price store in Altrincham having been transferred there as part of the plan to phase me back into work. The last three festive periods I’d been in Stockport, a much larger store with its own set of particular challenges. Altrincham was a much smaller unit and I’d already worked a Christmas there five years prior which I’d enjoyed so it was a good decision by area management to install me there. The manager was a guy called Scott who was from down south originally but had relocated ‘oop north’ and though I didn’t know him at all, he would prove to be a very important person in helping me to re-establish myself at work and recover from my mental health issues. Scott presumably wouldn’t have chosen to go into a busy Christmas with an Assistant Manager who had suffered from such problems but he was never anything less than supportive and encouraging. He took the role of being shop manager very seriously and would always wear a collar and tie to work which I’d never witnessed before but it helped to establish the standards he wanted for the shop. My re-integration wasn’t just about Scott though, the whole team at Altrincham were pretty easy to work with. First example, as I sat nervously in the staff room with Scott on that first morning back, a lovely colleague called Suzanne popped her head around the door and offered to make me a cup of tea and it was at that moment when I believed that everything was going to be OK after all.

Well, that’s enough recollections of my private life. Let’s get to the music and we start with a man having the biggest hit of his life up to this point. Jay-Z may be one of the biggest hip-hop artists of all time but back in 1998, certainly in the UK, he just had a collection of middling hits that were all collaborations with other artists to his name. Suddenly, with the release of the lead single from his third studio album, Beyoncé’s fella was debuting at No 2 in our charts. “Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)” was an unlikely hit, or rather, its source material was not an obvious choice. When my son was younger he loved to watch the film Annie (either the original or remake) and I’ve also seen a few theatre productions of it during the course of my job as an usher so I know the songs in it quite well including “It’s The Hard Knock Life”. I’m guessing that Jay-Z was also familiar with it but, unlike me, he had the vision to incorporate it into a massive hip-hop hit. So invested was he that 16 years later, he was a co-producer on that aforementioned movie remake.

Whenever I hear this song, I am reminded of a nice pun that I read about a footballer playing for my beloved Chelsea at the time. His name was Gus Poyet and he’d picked up an injury playing in the Boxing Day fixture which would rule him out for the next ten matches. The headline in the official Chelsea Magazine reporting on this news? ‘It’s a hard knock life for Gus’. Lovely stuff.

There’s no doubt that songwriters are influenced by either their peers or heroes. Many a story exists where an artist admits that when writing one of their hits, they were actually trying to copy a song like…*fill in your desired choice of song*. For example, when writing “Up The Junction”, Squeeze’s Chris Difford admitted he wanted the song’s title to only be sung in the final line just like “Virginia Plain” by Roxy Music. The next hit on this TOTP was another such song written in the style of another. The title of “The Everlasting” was devised by Manic Street Preachers lyricist Nicky Wire as a deliberate attempt to come up with a song with the same naming format as Blur’s “The Universal” or Joy Division’s “The Eternal”. In the end, he borrowed the title from a poem by his brother Patrick Jones. Well, tick that box but what other boxes were checked by this song? Sweeping strings? Check! Melancholy tone? Check! Slowly building anthem? Check! Commercially successful? Well, yes check but with caveats. By debuting at a peak of No 11, it ended a run of five singles that went Top 10 and as a follow up to their previous hit “If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next” which gave them their first chart topper then I guess maybe it was a disappointment? In truth though, the album had been in the shops for three months by this point so sales of that were bound to affect subsequently released tracks from it. All of the above makes me wonder quite why it took that amount of time to release a follow up single? Three months seems like a long time though I haven’t done any research into release schedules to be fair.

Fancy an unlikely duet? This TOTP has you covered as we are offered Bryan Adams and Melanie C with “When You’re Gone”. I say unlikely as, at this point, the only Spice Girl to have dipped her toe in the waters of a solo career was Mel B who’d released one solitary single on her own (albeit a No 1). Despite having left the organisation, Geri Halliwell was still five months away from releasing her first solo single. In other words, the era of Spice Girls operating outside of the group had yet to take hold. Within a couple of years, all five members would have solo careers of varying levels of success but in late 1998, routinely seeing any one of these household names out there on there own was not an everyday occurrence. Melanie C, who would come out of the traps fast with two No 4s and two No1s in her first four solo singles, had a trial run when she teamed up with ‘The Groover from Vancouver’ on this second track released from the latter’s “On A Day Like Today” album.

It was a mutually beneficial arrangement as the single’s peak of No 3 not only helped to establish the idea of Melanie C as an artist in her own right but it also furnished Adams with his biggest UK hit since his collaboration with Rod Stewart and Sting on “All For Love” from The Three Musketeers soundtrack. You could hear why. A slick, uptempo, radio friendly, soft rock track with a swirling organ accompaniment and some clever lyrical pacing (“even food don’t taste that good”) creating organic hooks. However, given the general perception that Mel C was in possession of the best vocals within the Spice Girls, I’m not sure that her voice is on point all the time here. Originally, Bryan wanted to record the song with Sheryl Crow but when she failed to take him up on his offer, a chance meeting with Miss Chisholm in a hotel lift in Los Angeles led to him giving the job to the Spice Girl. I think I would have preferred Sheryl to have had a go at it if I’m honest. The single proved to be extremely hardy spending ten consecutive weeks inside the Top 10 bumping around between No 5 and No 8 and not leaving the Top 40 for nearly four months.

One of those songs now that would highlight the out of kilter-ness (that’s a word right?) that sometimes exists between the UK and the US. Brandy was fast on her way to becoming a superstar around this time. Not only did she have the starring role in hit US sitcom Moesha but her singing career was also in full ascendancy off the back of her huge smash “The Boy Is Mine” with Monica which was the second best selling song of 1998 in America. Indeed, it had also been a big hit on these shores going to No 2 and being our own 18th best selling single of the year. She’d followed that with “Top Of The World” in the UK which again made No 2 but was nowhere near as big a seller as its predecessor. Her record label Atlantic chose not to release that track in the US and instead opted for the Dianne Warren penned “Have You Ever?”. Atlantic seemed to know what they were doing when this track followed “The Boy Is Mine” to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart. When released in the UK though, it stalled at No 13, spending just five weeks in total in the lower reaches of the Top 40. So why the commercial differences on display here? Was it a cultural thing? I have no idea but take my lead from the young woman in the studio audience of Brandy’s performance here who is stood to the left of the screen with her arms permanently crossed, half-heartedly swaying as if to say “Is this it?”. To be fair to her, it does sound like a filler track for a Toni Braxton album.

Not that I’ve given this much thought before but the release history of LeAnn Rimes is a bit of a mess. OK, it’s not something most people would care about (and if not for writing this blog neither would I) but it is all over the place. In the UK, we’d never heard of LeAnn until she recorded that song from Con Air which would become the hit with the most longevity by becoming our sixth best selling single of the year despite never getting higher than No 7 (six seven!). Albums wise, she’d already released four studio albums to that point none of which had done anything over here. Then came “Sittin’ On Top Of The World” which didn’t originally include “How Do I Live” but which was added for the UK release thereby sending it to No 11. Two tracks that were always on the album and which were lumped together as a double A-side as the follow up to “How Do I Live” were “Looking Through Your Eyes” and “Commitment” but that single would only spend a solitary week at No 38 in the UK Top 40, unable to compete with the extraordinary ongoing sales of its predecessor which was still in the charts. Once it finally tailed off enough to allow for another single to be released, LeAnn’s record label went back to the title track of her third (but major label debut) album “Blue” that had come out two and a half years prior! Sensing this would be another big hit, they added it to “Sittin’ On Top Of The World” as an extra track just as they had done with “How Do I Live”. Keeping up? Good. However, “Blue” would debut at a chart peak of No 23 then spending three weeks at the outer reaches of our Top 40 before departing.

The song itself was originally recorded in 1958 by Bill Mack who I thought was the washed up rock singer from Love Actually who ends up having a Christmas No 1 but who was in reality an American songwriter, country artist and DJ. A very retro country & western song featuring a slide guitar, it’s been covered many times including famously by Patsy Cline and, of course, by Rimes when she was just 11 on her second studio album “All That” released independently. She re-recorded the track when she was 13 for the “Blue” album but apparently it’s the earlier version that was released for some reason. See, I told you it’s all a mess.

What was it with 1998 and Swedish pop acts? The UK charts were full of them in this year with hits from the likes of Robyn, Eagle-Eye Cherry, Ace Of Base and The Cardigans. Then came Emilia and her song “Big Big World”. Discovered by Lars Anderson, son of ABBA manager Stig Anderson, Emilia hit the ground running when her debut single went to No 1 in eight countries and made No 5 in the UK. What sounded like a very simple song with an almost nursery rhyme quality to it, was actually based on a classical piece of music – ‘Peasant Cantata’ by Johann Sebastian Bach. This made for a second big hit this year to channel the German composer after Sweetbox’s “Everything’s Gonna Be Alright” which sampled ‘Air on the G String’. It would prove to be Emilia’s only success in this country but it did allow many a lazy music journalist (and our host Jamie Theakston) to bang on about it being ‘a big, big hit’. It’s very much a ‘marmite’ song I think – you either loved it or hated it (I was in the latter category) which might account for my perception that you don’t hear it much on the radio these days. Emilia continued releasing music into the new millennium and tried out to be the Swedish entry in the Eurovision Song Contest in 2009 but failed to make the grade. Similarly, her lyrics to “Big Big World” wouldn’t have passed any exams – look at this shocking use of tenses:

But I do do feel
That I do do will
Miss you much
Miss you much

Source: LyricFind. Songwriters: Emilia Hanna Rydberg / Lars Anderson Big Big World lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

If it’s 1998, it must be time for another Robbie Williams hit. “No Regrets” was his fourth of the year and his least likeable to my ears. I don’t know why I could never get along with it but it just never pushed any buttons for me. It’s all very well constructed and all that but it just lacks that pop sensibility. Was it too worthy? Too overly earnest? Enough people liked it to send it to No 4 so maybe I was missing the point or something? Maybe, I was too overly concerned with the deliberately dramatic ending that I could never get along with? Robbie should have gone straight to “Strong” for his follow up to “Millennium” rather than mess about with “No Regrets” in my humble opinion but having said that, when he did release it a the third single from the album, it also made No 4 so maybe Robbie had no regrets on that score.

It’s the seventh and final week at the top for Cher with “Believe”. It was quite a remarkable feat given that its parent album had also been out for nearly two months and had itself gone double platinum. The follow up to “Believe” taken from the album was “Strong Enough”, an almost carbon copy of its predecessor and that got to No 5 over here. The UK really couldn’t get enough of Cher’s late 90s sound.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Jay-Z	Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)	No
2	Manic Street Preachers	The Everlasting	Nope
3	Bryan Adams / Melanie C	When You’re Gone	Nah
4	Brandy	Have You Ever?	Negative
5	LeAnn Rimes	Blue	Not for me
6	Emilia	Big Big World	Never
7	Robbie Williams	No Regrets	No thanks
8	Cher	Believe	I did not

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002np2q/top-of-the-pops-11121998

TOTP 04 DEC 1998

Posted on December 26 by 80stastic

We’ve entered December, the month of Christmas, time off work* and office parties talking of which, our presenter, Kate Thornton, looks like she’s come dressed for the party season-in a sparkly red dress and crimped hair. I wonder if any of the tunes on this show might have soundtracked some office parties that festive season.

*I only got Christmas Day off this year as the record shop chain I was working for (Our Price) introduced Boxing Day opening for the first time. Bah and indeed, humbug!

As it’s Christmas, we start with a ballad. Not just any ballad mind but a boy band ballad. Yes, just seven days after Five threw their hats into the ring for a huge hit with a big love song, so did Boyzone. I have to admit that I can’t place “I Love The Way You Love Me” at all but if I had to, it would be in the bin. A country-tinged ballad, it redefines the word ‘cynical’ meaning that it’s an ‘ickle’ song that it was a ‘sin’ to record. Oh alright, it’s not that bad but it’s not that good either is it? Again like Five, the vocal heavy lifting is done by just two of the five members of the band but then that was pretty much always the case with Boyzone – did any of the other three that weren’t Ronan or Stephen ever get a solo spot? I don’t think so, not on the hits anyway. And yet it went straight in at No 2 and but for the Cher phenomenon would have been another No 1 for them. Two and a half years on from the initial demise of Take That, you’d have to say that the five Irish lads had taken their opportunity to be the UK’s biggest boy band. In that period, of the eight singles which they released, four went to No 2 and four went to No 1. They loved the way you loved them.

Would it have made an office party playlist? Unlikely but maybe it could have soundtracked an illicit snog by the photocopier.

A ‘forgotten’ single next or at least one that isn’t well remembered I suspect. “War Of Nerves” by All Saints anyone? The fifth and final track lifted from their debut eponymous album, it was presumably released just so the fans had something to buy at Christmas. Or was it, as we saw recently with the example of James releasing a remix of “Sit Down”, just an attempt to revitalise sales of an album which had already been in the shops for more than a year? Either way, its peak of No 7 was a long way short of the success of their previous three singles which all topped the charts. Was that down to the fact that so many people had already bought the album or was it just that the song wasn’t that strong? I think probably the former as, although “War Of Nerves” is understated, it does have a quiet power and definite charm. Maybe it worked better as an album track? Certainly the performance here is very laid back and not at all pushy nor forward with the group all sat on a sofa or a plush chair possibly due to Melanie Blatt’s baby bump as prefaced by Kate Thornton in her intro. However, if any of us thought that the All Saints bubble had burst with the smaller hit that “War Of Nerves” gave the group, we would all be proved wrong and then some when their next release – “Pure Shores” – was their fourth No 1 hit.

Would it have made an office party playlist? Doubtful. More likely “Never Ever” or “Lady Marmalade” might have got a spin.

Did anyone else watch Ally McBeal back in the day? For a while there it as quite the TV sensation. Winning a Golden Globe Award and an Emmy in its first two seasons, the legal comedy-drama TV series starring Calista Flockhart was seen as groundbreaking in its use of surreal running gags and its uptake of one of the very first internet memes ‘The Dancing Baby’.

My wife and I enjoyed the show at the time but I don’t think we watched it much after those first two series when the ratings started to fall away. Anyway, as well as internet memes, the show heavily featured a soundtrack that was provided by the previously unknown Vonda Shepherd. OK, not completely unknown as she’d had a hit in 1987 in America with “Can’t We Try”, a duet with Dan Hill of “Sometimes When We Touch” fame. In the UK though, zip, nothing, nada. Then came the Ally McBeal break. “Searchin’ My Soul” was the theme tune and would be the single released from the soundtrack album but Shepherd was more than just a one track pony. She recorded the whole album though, in fairness, most were cover versions of pop standards. She even bagged herself a regular cameo spot on the show as the resident singer at the bar the show’s protagonists would often find themselves visiting (usually at the end of each episode). Here’s the thing though. Despite the fact that I used to watch Ally McBeal in its early years, I don’t recognise its theme tune at all. How can that be? Yes, it was never played in full on the show but even so.

However, I definitely remember something quite specific about this whole Ally McBeal era. The Our Price shop where I was working would sometimes receive promo copies of forthcoming albums to play in store and plug ahead of the release date. We received one such promo for the Ally McBeal soundtrack. It wasn’t the whole album just a sampler with maybe half a dozen songs on it. We hadn’t really played it that much and it was just knocking about near the shop stereo. Anyway, a customer came in and she was desperate to buy the music from Ally McBeal, her favourite TV show. I explained that neither the album nor the single had been released yet. However, I suddenly remembered that promo CD. Now, in theory, such promo material should only be signed out to staff but the poor woman was desperate to go home with something and as I’m a generous type of guy, I said I would ask the manager if it could be signed out to her. In return, I asked if she could make a donation into one of our charity boxes. Everyone’s a winner! Except…the manager was dead against the idea despite my protestations that it might inspire customer loyalty. In the end, he relented but made me feel like I was out of order for even suggesting such a thing. This was the manager who I just couldn’t get along with and who was a protagonist in my deteriorating mental health. He had a problem with trying to do a customer a small favour yet I’d witnessed some of his practices that were undoubtedly not squeaky clean including flouting health and safety rules when it came to his staff. As before, I won’t mention his name but let’s just say he went be getting a Christmas card from me anytime soon.

Would it have made an office party playlist?Probably not well known enough even despite Ally McBeal.

“So which one’s your favourite?” asks Kate Thornton at the end of the next performance which is “Tragedy” by Steps. Clare Richards always seemed to be the vocal focal point of the group but personally, I always had a soft spot for Faye Tozer – can’t think why (ahem). I couldn’t really be doing with the two blokes and that just leaves Lisa Scott-Lee. Have I ever told you my incredibly tenuous connection story to Lisa Scott-Lee? I once worked with someone who was friends with someone who was related to Lisa! Said relative worked in McDonalds at the time which seemed light years away from the life Scott-Lee was living and I always wondered if her relation held any feelings of jealousy towards her? Anyway, apparently she’s the best member of Steps and here’s why…

Lisa Scott-Lee is clearly the best member of Steps and here’s why that is

Would it have made an office party playlist? Most definitely.

Faithless are up next with a second single lifted from their “Sunday 8PM” album. Not quite as impactful as “God Is A DJ”, “Take The Long Way Home” nevertheless adheres to the their usual sonic blueprint of a dominant portentous, ominous sound punctuated by Maxi Jazz’s almost spoken word vocals and those fleeting, shuffling beats. If the track’s title sounds familiar, like me, you may be thinking of that song by Supertramp from their “Breakfast In America” album. It got me thinking what Faithless would have done with a cover version of “Take The Long Way Home” as opposed to their own composition so I asked AI. This is what it said:

“If Faithless covered Supertramp’s “Take the Long Way Home,” it would likely transform the classic rock ballad into an anthemic, pulsing electronic track, blending Maxi Jazz’s soulful vocals with Sister Bliss’s sweeping synths and Rollo Armstrong’s beats, creating a euphoric dancefloor version full of spiritual depth, contrasting the original’s wistful melancholy with rave energy, akin to their own hits like “Insomnia” but with Supertramp’s narrative heart…Ultimately, a Faithless cover would flip the Supertramp classic from a reflective, almost sad, acoustic-driven song into a hands-in-the-air, communal dance anthem”.

Hmm. It’s not really telling me anything I couldn’t have thought up or written myself. In fact, it doesn’t really say anything at all other than generic guff. It did do it in seconds though whereas I seem to be taking longer and longer to write these reviews. I guess AI isn’t distracted by cups of tea or mince pies like I am. Or is it?

Would it have made an office party playlist? Not mainstream enough I would have thought but probably caused some dance floor action in a club setting.

After tempting Madonna into the TOTP studio for only the second time in 14 years, executive producer Chris Cowey wasn’t going to show Madge’s performance of her latest hit “The Power Of Goodbye/Little Star” there just once. Inevitably, it would get re-shown two weeks on and, as that first performance was an ‘exclusive’ a fortnight ahead of the single’s release, Cowey even had the added rationality for featuring it again as it had only just entered the charts at No 6. A canny move by the Mackem TV producer. Kate Thornton rather over eggs her intro by saying “This next lady’s sold over 100 million albums but she still likes to drop into TOTP”. Two in person appointments within a 14 year period would suggest the opposite Kate.

Would it have made an office party playlist? No chance. Far too slow a track. “Holiday” on the other hand…

A grinning Will Smith appearing on screen with a message for his UK fans whilst introducing the video for his latest hit seemed to be a regular event around this time. Here he was again with a segue into “Miami”, his third Top 3 hit of the year. Taken from his “Big Willie Style” album, it was yet again a pop/R&B/rap track based around a retro hit. After borrowing from Sister Sledge and Bill Withers/Grover Washington Jr previously, Smith turned to the 1979 smash “And The Beat Goes On” by The Whispers this time. You’d have to say that the writing team behind those hits were right on the money when it came to nailing their commercial appeal. The formula would continue to be applied into 1999 with a further brace of No 2 hits built around samples from the likes of The Clash, Grandmaster Flash And The Furious Five and Stevie Wonder.

Would it have made an office party playlist? Yeah, maybe.

It’s six weeks out of seven in the top spot for Cher with “Believe”. Keeping the challenge of Boyzone at arms length this time around, the sales of her hit were showing no signs of slowing down. Could she manage to hold on to not only have the biggest selling single in the UK that year but also the Christmas No 1? History shows that she didn’t with *SPOILER ALERT* the Spice Girls securing their third consecutive Yuletide topper but “Believe”’s chart position of No 4 in Christmas week, over two months on from its debut showed how much hold it still had on the record buying public.

Would it have made an office party playlist? Absolutely!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Boyzone	I Love The Way You Love Me	Never
2	All Saints	Wart Of Nerves	No but I think my wife and the album
3	Vonda Shepherd	Searchin’ My Soul	Nope
4	Steps	Tragedy / Heartbeat	No
5	Faithless	Take The Long Way Home	Nah
6	Madonna	The Power Of Goodbye/Little Star	See 2 above
7	Will Smith	Miami	I did not
8	Cher	Believe	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

TOTP 27 NOV 1998

Posted on December 19 by 80stastic

After featuring nine songs in the last TOTP, we’re down to seven this time though six of them are new to charts (sort of). Our host is Jayne Middlemiss and we start with that ‘start of’ hit which is from Steps. The reason for it’s unclear categorisation is that whilst “Heartbeat” hasn’t been on the show previously, it wasn’t actually a new chart hit being the other track to their double A-side single alongside their cover of “Tragedy” which we saw on the previous programme. Now, I said in the last post that I didn’t think that I’d ever heard “Heartbeat” before such was the ubiquity of “Tragedy” and I stand by that statement having listened to it today. There’s no bells ringing (even though it’s Christmas time) and I’m rather glad there aren’t as it’s a sickly, saccharine pop ballad that cloys but leaves no cultural nor sonic sustenance whatsoever. It’s literally like a musical form of candy floss. Surely punters weren’t buying the single for this track but purely for “Tragedy”?

“Cor! It’s the Corrs!” or so Jayne Middlemiss in her intro would have us believe that’s what the male population would be saying at this point. Bit sexist that isn’t it Jayne? Well, it was the time of lad culture and Jayne herself had spent time as a glamour model early in her career so maybe all that informed her comments. Or maybe she was just reading the lines written in a script (presumably by a man). Let’s not tie ourselves up in knots about all that. On with the music and “So Young” was the third hit on the trot for The Corrs this year. Written by violinist Sharon about her parents and the notion that no matter how old they got, they seemed to her to be forever young in spirit and outlook. All this talk of ageing and youth got me thinking about who are the eldest and youngest Corrs and the order of the ages in the middle. So how about a festive game of ‘Guess the age of the Corrs’? I’ll start. I’m going:

Jim – eldest
Sharon
Andrea
Caroline – youngest

How did I do?

*checks Wikipedia*

Ooh! Almost! These are their actual ages:

Jim – 61
Sharon – 55
Caroline – 52
Andrea – 51

This, of course, means that even “the beautiful Corrs” (© Ant and Dec) are all now in their 50s.* Time waits for no man…or woman.

*Before you all accuse me of ageism and misogyny, I’m sure they are all still beautiful and absolutely agree that age should have no bearing on perceptions of attractiveness. I was trying to make a point about the passing of youth and how time marches on but I’m regretting saying any of it now. Let’s move on quickly…

…to the Vengaboys! NOOO!!! We can’t have reached that time already. 1998 you really have been a pile of steaming shite and this is the little twist on the turd after it’s been curled out. Too graphic? I care not a jot when it comes to this lot. Which despicable people were responsible for this utter crapola? I’ll tell you who – a couple of Dutch producers who went by the aliases Danski (real name Dennis van den Driesschen) and Delmundo (Wessel Dietrich van Diepen) who threw (according to the official Vengaboys website) impromptu and illegal beach parties from their worn out school bus in the early 90s. Deciding to grow their operation, they recruited some singers and dancers to spice up their DJ sets and then took it a massive step further by deciding to form a record label and produce records. With that concept established, the task of fronting said records would fall to those dancers and singers they had already recruited. After a couple of minor hits in their own country, they went truly international with the release of “Up & Down” which was a Top 10 hit all around Europe and topped the US Dance Club Play chart.

This whole thing has given me some strong 2 Unlimited vibes. The Dutch duo began their run of hits with the track “Get Ready For This”, the single edit of which was essentially an instrumental with the occasional shout out thrown in which many (me included) thought would make them one hit wonders. They made mugs of us though by proceeding to have a run of 14 Top 40 singles including that No 1. Similarly, the Vengaboys, for all the world, looked like being a one-off, almost novelty act with “Up & Down” the lyrics of which consisted of the words ‘up’, ‘and’, ‘down’, and ‘woo!’. Just like 2 Unlimited though, they would follow it with a string of hit singles (including two No 1s) between 1998 and 2001. All of which means we’ve only just scratched the surface of the crust of the Vengaboys planet of which we will all become inhabitants (willing or not) until the end of the 90s.

Ah that explains it! Here’s @TOTPFacts with the reason why there’s only seven songs on this repeat:

Edited out here: the Celine Dion and R Kelly duet “I’m Your Angel”, which was at its number 3 peak. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) December 12, 2025

Moving on very quickly we find Sash! with yet another hit in “Move Mania”. This was the trio’s* sixth consecutive UK hit but the first not to debut at either No 2 or No 3 when it made its chart entry at No 8.

*Yes, Jayne Middlemiss, Sash was a three man production team not a single person and certainly not an “international man of mystery” as you describe them in your intro.

In their continual conveyer belt of guest vocalists, for this release they have teamed up with Shannon who had a couple of hits in the mid 80s notably with “Let The Music Play” though she also featured on Todd Terry’s 1997 Top 20 hit “It’s Over Love”. Maybe it’s the Shannon effect but “Move Mania” sounds very retro to me by which I mean retro even in 1998. It’s all very frantic, frenetic and furious – dare I say like an 80s Hi-NRG track? Maybe I’m reaching a bit there but it didn’t have the same feel as some of the other Sash! hits to this point. Although the hits certainly didn’t dry up after this slight downturn in chart fortunes for “Move Mania”, they didn’t sustain at that previous high level either with only one of their subsequent six UK entries making it to No 2, the mention of which allows me to trot out this well worn fact about Sash! – they remain the act with the most No 2 hits (five) without ever having a No 1. In the dark times that we currently live in, this bit of pop trivia somehow gives me the slightest slither of hope for the world.

And that slither of hope is extinguished immediately by this next hit. Not another Latin flavoured dance track! How many times have we seen this sort of thing during these late 90s TOTP repeats? Here’s just a few I can think of:

Dario G – “Carnaval De Paris”
Echobeatz – “Mas Que Nada”
Ricky Martin – “(Un Dos Tres) Maria”
Bellini – “Samba De Janeiro”

That’s was surely more than enough of that kind of thing no? No, it wasn’t apparently as here were Ruff Driverz and their flamenco inspired track “Dreaming”. Officially, this was credited as being ‘Ruff Driverz Presents Arrola’ who was the vocalist who has worked with loads of dance acts (sometimes under her real name of Katherine Ellis) including 4-2 The Floor, Eruption and Utah Saints amongst many others. Similar to Sash! and the Vengaboys earlier, the people behind the hit were a DJ/Production team who in this case consisted of Brad Carter and Chris Brown whom for some reason thought that it what the charts needed, as Christmas approached mind, was a flamenco themed hit that surely would have been more suited to a Summer release. As ever though, what did I know as it debuted at No 10 becoming, in the process, the seventh new hit to chart inside the Top 10 that week. What a time to be alive!

After coming up with a true banger with their last single “Everybody Get Up”, Five have resorted to the usual marketing trick of releasing a slushy ballad just in time for Christmas. “Until The Time Is Through” is almost mechanical in its construction, adhering to the accepted boy band blueprint at every turn. Perhaps in an attempt to mix things up a bit, they’ve settled on a rather odd performance for this TOTP appearance. As Jayne Middlemiss says in her intro, the vocals on this one are handled by Richie and Scott presumably because it was their turn with Abz and J having taken the lead on rapping duties on “Everybody Get Up” – poor old Sean never seems to get a go in the spotlight.

Anyway, with those two situated at the front of the stage, the other three are sat right at the back on chairs. I’m sure it sounded like a good idea on paper but the optics of it look a bit odd. They never move once from their seated position which created the impression that they’re rather disinterested in what was happening in front of them. There’s something a bit ‘three wise monkeys’ about them with Abz sat with his chair back to front, J with it the right way around and Sean with his angled to one side. Was that deliberate? You know what would have livened things up? If they’d played a game of musical chairs whilst performing. That would have been a first and created a talking point! As it is, the only talking that happens is right at the very end when J turns to Sean and appears to say something to him. I wonder what he said? “Thank God that’s over”? “I could have sung that better than those two”? “Last one to the BBC bar gets the drinks in”?

It’s a fifth week at the top for Cher and “Believe”. What else is there to say about this one? I’ve covered its chart and sales data, the auto tuned vocals, its awards…what else is there? OK, how about who wrote it? Originally it was a demo worked up by Brian Higgins in 1990 who would gain fame via his Xenomania production team who wrote hits for Sugababes, S Club 7, Girls Aloud and The Saturdays. Higgins couldn’t get any interest in the track (apparently Saint Etienne were one of the artists offered it who turned it down) but he submitted it to Warners chairman Rob Dickins after a chance meeting. Dickins thought it was terrible but had a great chorus and so he employed two more songwriters (Steve Torch and Paul Barry) to work on it. Cher herself added some lyrics but did not get a writing credit though three other names did alongside Higgins, Torch and Barry. Cher admitted in 2023 that she regretted not asking for a songwriter’s credit. With worldwide sales of 11 million, I’m not surprised.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Steps	Heartbeat / Tragedy	No
2	The Corrs	So Young	Nope
3	Vengaboys	Up & Down	NOOOO!
4	Sash! / Shannon	Move Mania	I did not
5	Ruff Driverz	Dreaming	Nah
6	Five	Until The Time Is Through	Never
7	Cher	Believe	Negative

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002nd35/top-of-the-pops-27111998

TOTP 20 NOV 1998

Posted on December 17 by 80stastic

Those pesky BBC4 programmers have slipped an extra TOTP repeat into the schedule this week meaning I have three shows to review rather than the usual two. I think it’s to make up for the fact that they only showed one last week due to the snooker coverage and so, in order to get the 1998 shows to sync with 2025 real time, they’ve had to go with three this week. As if that wasn’t enough, this one features nine instead of the standard eight acts. I’ll never get all my Christmas shopping done at this rate!

Anyway, our host is the increasingly annoying Jamie Theakston and we start with a repeat showing of last week’s performance by the now trio of East 17/E-17 and their hit “Each Time”. With a debut chart position of No 2 and a solid second week of sales sustaining it in the Top 5, this single looked like it would foreshadow a new period of success for the group after the recent negative publicity surrounding Brian Harvey’s ‘drug interview’ and the trauma of chief songwriter Tony Mortimer’s departure. It would prove to be a false dawn though as the poor chart showing of parent album “Resurrection” indicated that there wasn’t a big appetite within their fanbase for a slimmed down version of the band with a new R&B direction and a truncated name. Subsequently, the group were dropped by their label Telstar Records in 1999. Bizarrely, the album would be released by Demon Music Group in 2013 but retitled as “Greatest” despite not actually being a collection of their biggest hits and also ignoring the fact that there were already four Best Of albums in existence by this point. Crucially though, none of those albums contained the word ‘greatest’ in their title. What a shady practice.

2025 Update: It was reported in the press this week that songwriter Tony Mortimer earns about £97,000 in royalties each year from “Stay Another Day”. What a Christmas pension pot!

What was it about the mid to late 90s and Bee Gees cover versions? Take That, Boyzone, N-Trance, Adam Garcia and 911 all had hits with their treatments of classic songs by the brothers Gibb and now here were Steps adding their name to that list with their take on “Tragedy”. As with the 911’s cover of “More Than A Woman”, this was taken from a Bee Gees tribute album but was released as a double A-side with a track called “Heartbeat” from the group’s debut album “Step One” (it would also appear as the first single on their follow up “Steptacular”). I’m sure I can’t be the only person who could genuinely claim to have never heard “Heartbeat” possibly because you couldn’t escape from “Tragedy”. This single just sold and sold and sold and then the next day it would do the same all over again. It would spend a whopping 23 weeks on the UK Top 40 and 15 consecutively inside the Top 10 including (after a wait of two months) one at No 1. It sold more than all their previous three singles put together and was surely the piece of concrete evidence that Steps were going to be around for quite some time.

So why did the nation go barmy for the Steps version of “Tragedy”? Well, it was a tightly produced and faithful-to-the-original cover of a dance classic which helped and maybe the younger elements of their fanbase didn’t even know it wasn’t a Steps original but I think what really propelled it to its commercial heights was the dance that went with it. Involving hand gestures that framed the face, shoulder twists and arm raises, it maybe wasn’t as iconic as vogueing as popularised by Madonna but it was up there. It looks pretty impressive in this performance anyway. I reckon we’ll see loads of this one in future repeats so I’ll leave it there for now.

2025 Update: Steps performed at Blackpool recently as the musical interlude for Strictly Come Dancing to promote the opening of the Steps musical.

Despite being released originally in 1989 and again in 1991, come 1998 the story of “Sit Down” by James still had another chapter to be written in the form of a remix and yet another release. The rather unimaginatively titled “Sit Down ‘98” was commissioned by the band’s label Mercury to help re-promote sales of their first “Best Of” album (which had hit the shops in the March) in the run up to Christmas. As far as I can tell though, this version never actually made it onto said Best Of nor was there a rerelease of it with the ‘98 remix added onto the track listing. It was what was known as a standalone single. Wouldn’t it have been better just to rerelease the hit version of “Sit Down” from 1991 if Mercury wanted to associate it with the Best Of album? I’m guessing that wouldn’t have been creative enough for Tim Booth though and so we got an Apollo 440 mix of the classic track which probably made sense at the time given their high profile and whilst their treatment of “Sit Down” is interesting, it does lose some of its charm in the process it seems to me. It would appear not to have stood the test of time either. Do you ever hear it played on the radio instead of the hit version? Nor did it have the desired effect of re-energising the Best Of album’s sales. As far as I can tell, it spent the whole of November and December skirting around between Nos 75 to 60 in the charts. Could you say the whole idea was ridiculous and touched by madness? Only if you’re trying to squeeze in some pathetically obvious “Sit Down” references to finish this bit off like I am.

2025 Update: In an unexpected turn of events there’s another Strictly Come Dancing story – I’ve just seen “Sit Down” performed by James on the results show. It wasn’t the ‘98 remix obviously but just like in 1998, the band have a new Best Of album out to promote called “Nothing But Love: The Definitive Best Of”.

I’ve checked and this is the fifth time “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing” by Aerosmith has been on the show over a period of just under three months. FIVE times in THREE months! Those two numbers are remarkable! Firstly that a hit that never got higher than No 4 could be on that many times but secondly that it was in the charts for that long! Actually, I should be more precise with that chart figure – it spent nine consecutive weeks inside the Top 10 and 18 (EIGHTEEN!) on the Top 40 in total. This week it was at No 8 but, given that this was the fourth time of seeing that satellite concert performance, were there not any other songs in the Top 40 that could have taken its place in the running order? Hang on, I’ll check…

…well, Marilyn Manson was a new entry at No 12 but maybe he was seen as not a safe enough choice. Further down the chart there are the likes of Tina Cousins, Karen Ramirez and Air but I think I would like to have seen the song at No 39 get a look in – “All I Want” by Puressence. That was never going to happen though.

2025 Update: A collaboration between Aerosmith and Yungblud topped the album charts just a week or so ago thus becoming the band’s first ever UK No 1 album some 38 years after their chart debut. Quite extraordinary.

I was right in what I said in the last post! There is someone from the Fugees on the show every week! After Wyclef Jean last time, we get Pras in this TOTP. In fact, Pras was also on with Wyclef Jean alongside Queen in that appearance seven days prior so the show really was full of Fugees around this time. “Blue Angels” is the track that Pras is promoting and although it features a sample from Frankie Valli’s “Grease”, there’s another film that is mentioned in the lyrics that caught my attention, one that I’d never heard of before but which seems to have been quite the influence on many a hip hop artist. 1984’s Beat Street was set in South Bronx with a plot surrounding the hip-hop lives of a pair of brothers and their group of friends. Now I’ve never heard of nor come across this film before but it had a cultural reach I would never have imagined. In Germany for example, which was still divided into East and West at this point, it had a particularly seismic impact. Released in the former to supposedly highlight the evils of capitalism, it instead promoted the more visual images of hip-hop and ushered in an emerging scene there. The film has been name checked in tracks by the likes of The Notorious B.I.G., Jay Electronica and AZ.

Now clearly, a white 16 year old living in Worcester in the West Midlands at the time of its release (that’ll be me) was never going to be its target audience but the fact that it bypassed me completely is surprising. I mean, I was aware of the breakdancing phenomenon at least if only via the hits of Break Machine. Did it not get UK distribution? Maybe not. Still, it’s opened my eyes a little. This blog was never meant to be educational but I seem to be learning about things I was never aware of as a by product of it.

2025 Update: In November this year, Pras was sentenced to 14 years in prison for his part in an alleged criminal conspiracy re: the illegal transfer of funds into the Barack Obama 2012 presidential campaign.

The first of three new hits now starting with Robbie Williams who made a rather cringeworthy cameo appearance during the James performance earlier trying to convince us all that he was a rock god axeman. After his first No 1 single “Millennium” earlier in the year, presumably hopes were high that he would repeat the trick with follow up “No Regrets”. However, it would debut and peak at No 4 when it was eventually released ten days after this TOTP performance. Why didn’t it go straight to the top of the charts when many press reviews had picked it out as one of the strongest tracks on parent album “I’ve Been Expecting You”? The answer possibly lies with that old issue of timing. Said album had already been out for a month by the time “No Regrets” made it into the shops so perhaps punters who might have shelled out for the single had already bought the album and didn’t feel the need to buy both? Perhaps anticipating that outcome, was that why record label Chrysalis made the single a double A-side with Robbie’s version of “Antmusic” by Adam And The Ants making up the other track? Wait, Williams did a version of “Antmusic”? I don’t recall this! I have to check this out…

…Oh dear God! That’s horrible! Just awful! What was he thinking?! What was Adam Ant thinking letting him butcher it?! Anyway, back to “No Regrets” and I have to say I never really liked it that much. It didn’t have the quirky charm of “Millennium” and always struck me as a bit miserable to be honest. Maybe its source material of his time in Take That meant it was inevitably going to create a less than joyful sound given how it ended and that it was all a bit raw at the time. The overly dramatic ending when Robbie says “Guess the love we once had is officially – dead!” always seems a bit…well…overly dramatic to me, like it was trying too hard. The third single from the album released in March 1999 – “Strong” – was a much more radio friendly, pop track that maybe should have been the song to follow up “Millennium” it always seemed to me. By comparison, “No Regrets” sounded like an album track. Just my opinion of course – I could have it completely wrong but I have no regrets about sharing it.

2025 Update: And now another Yungblud story! This week the singer revealed that he had received a letter of support from Robbie Williams after admitting to mental health struggles.

Blimey! This is a bit of a thing! Madonna on TOTP in person! Seriously, this hardly ever happened. I checked the wonderful Top Of The Pops Archive website which gives a breakdown of appearances by every artist and this is as only the fourth time ever that she was in the studio over a fifteen year period (not including repeats of performances in things like year end specials or anniversary shows). How had executive producer Chris Cowey managed to pull this coup off? For the record, her previous appearances had been performing “Holiday” and “Like A Virgin” (the one with the pink wig) in 1984 and “You’ll See” in 1995 but here she was again to promote the fourth single of her “Ray Of Light” album called “The Power Of Good-Bye”. As with Robbie Williams before her, this was actually a double A-side with the other track being “Little Star”, another song from the album but I only recall “The Power Of Good-Bye” being played on the radio. It’s essentially a ballad though one that sounded nothing like a traditional slow song with acoustic guitars, strings and almost hypnotic electronic beats. This was the William Orbit effect coming into play again as it had done across the whole of the album which he co-produced and which almost redefined how a pop song could sound.

As for the performance here, Madge has sleek, shiny black hair (almost a negative of that pink wig) and a sheer black outfit but, despite the sombre appearance, you can see that, in 1998, she still retained the presence of one of the most famous people on the planet with those in the studio audience stretching out their hands just to get a touch of her as if she was a deity with life healing properties. I can’t shake the feeling that she has been totally usurped by Taylor Swift in the present day. At the end she still had the grace and humility to say thank you and touch some of those aforementioned outstretched hands. They were simpler times for us all back then.

2025 Update: Just a day ago, Madonna was pictured with her ex-husband Guy Ritchie for first time since their divorce in 2008 when they both attended the latest art show of their son Rocco in London.

After a string of medium sized hits to this point, the Stereophonics suddenly exploded with the release of “The Bartender And The Thief” which debuted at No 3. The lead single from sophomore album “Performance And Cocktails”, it’s a high-octane, relentlessly driving rock track that barely draws breath at any point but which has enough melodic hooks to make the trip totally worth it.

Written by Kelly Jones after an observation in a bar in New Zealand whilst waiting for a plane, it expresses the idea that the bartender must see multiple different characters and their changing moods as they transcend from sober to drunk during the course of their shift. Its success would help propel the album to the top of the charts and nearly two million sales in the UK. Four more hits from it would follow including two further Top 5 placings – Stereophonics were officially big news. As with their debut album “Word Gets Around”, I seem to recall playing “Performance And Cocktails” lots in the Our Price store where I was working, so much so that my wife would scratch that itch for me by buying it me for Christmas that year. The Apocalypse Now themed video for “The Bartender And The Thief” reminded me of a long night with school mates watching that film at one of their houses when I was 17. You can read that particular story here if you feel so inclined…

TOTP 12 MAY 1983

2025 Update: The band are currently on tour playing a number of Arena dates in December.

Cher is No 1 again with “Believe” for a fourth of seven weeks. This run at the top really wasn’t the norm back then. Only Run D.M.C. vs Jason Nevins and “It’s Like That” could rival it in 1998 which had six weeks at the top. At the time of this chart, “Believe” was only the fifth single in two years to have spent more than three consecutive weeks at No 1 which just goes to show the power it was wielding over the record buying public.

2025 Update: Cher has denied rumours she is ready to marry her boyfriend who is 40 years younger than her ahead of her 80th birthday next year. And who is her boyfriend? The aforementioned rapper AZ. Sometimes the planets just align and the blog writes itself!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	East 17	Each Time	Negative
2	Steps	Tragedy / Heartbeat	I did not
3	James	Sit Down ’98	No but I had that first Best Of album
4	Aerosmith	I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing	Nah
5	Pras	Blue Angels	Nope
6	Robbie Williams	No Regrets	No
7	Madonna	The Power Of Good-Bye	No but my wife had the album
8	Stereophonics	The Bartender And The Thief	No but I had the album
9	Cher	Believe	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/m002nd33/top-of-the-pops-20111998

TOTP 13 NOV 1998

Posted on December 12 by 80stastic

That’s not Kate Thornton! She may have similar hair but it isn’t Kate. And it’s certainly not Jayne Middlemiss so who’s this on hosting duties for this particular TOTP? Well, it was Katy Hill (she does tell us that’s her name right at the very start of the show to be fair) and she was a Blue Peter presenter who went on to appear on kids Saturday morning show Live & Kicking. Was executive producer Chris Cowey auditioning her to become part of the roster of regular presenters? If so she can’t have passed as this was her one and only TOTP gig. Was she trying to diversify? I guess Blue Peter wasn’t known for regularly featuring pop artists. In fact, did they ever have any chart acts on? A quick search of the internet doesn’t reveal many. In terms of actual performances, we have McFly, Ed Sheeran and Olly Murs but there doesn’t appear to be many names from back in the day though I could be wrong. I wonder if any of the acts on tonight’s show could ever have been on Blue Peter?

We start with Touch And Go and their salacious hit “Would You…?”. The guy behind the record, one David Lowe produced and mixed the single in his modest recording studio on the western slopes of the Malvern Hills, not far from my hometown of Worcester. There’s another tenuous link between me and “Would You…?” though. Lowe had an ongoing association with Oval Records which was run by Charlie Gillett the British radio presenter, musicologist and writer. Lowe came up with the concept of Touch And Go in collaboration with Gillett who was always on the look out for unconventional music apparently. What’s any of this got to do with me? There is the tiniest of connections. In the mid 90s, I signed up for a further education course on 50s music. After the course had finished, all us students went for a drink and at said gathering, one of the attendees told us that he had been to school with Charlie Gillett who had been a very quiet lad who’d never spoken of his passion for music (especially rock ‘n’ roll) and so when he went onto have his illustrious career in that field, it had been a total shock to his schoolmates and peers. And that is my Touch And Go/Charlie Gillett story.

Would they have ever appeared on Blue Peter? Absolutely NOT!

When Madonna got rare permission from Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus of ABBA to use a sample from “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)” for her global smash “Hung Up”, it was only the third time such a request had been granted by the Swedish superstars. However, back in 1998, Madge herself was the recipient of an application to use one of her own songs in somebody else’s hit. According to Wikipedia, her agreement toallow“MaterialGirl” to be sampled for “If You Buy This Record (Your Life Will Be Better)” by The Tamperer featuring Maya was the first time she had ceded to such a petition. However, I wish she hadn’t. Whereas Madonna’s “Hung Up” was a great song making brilliant use of the ABBA source material, The Tamperer’s effort was a horrible noise with the melody from “Material Girl” just plonked incongruously into the mix of a track that had barely anything about it at all. In fact, it was so simple – it’s ‘hook’ was a stuttering cry of “f-f-f-f-f-f-fabulous” – it could have been a blueprint for all those hits by the Vengaboys. Has there ever been a more inappropriately named hit?

Would they have ever appeared on Blue Peter? Featuring the lyric “I got a party in my pants”? No chance.

Whilst we all know who Will Smith is (one of the most famous people on the planet I would surmise), how many of us are instantly familiar with the name Tatyana Ali? Well, if you’ve forgotten or never knew in the first place, she was a regular member of the cast of The Fresh Prince Of Bel–Air alongside Smith playing his young cousin Ashley Banks. After the show ended in 1996, Smith supposedly stepped up his efforts to get Ali to consider a career in music (in some of the later episodes of the show, her character had been involved in storylines that required her to sing). The culmination of Smith’s prompting was that Ali joined the roster of artists on Michael Jackson’s record label MJJ Music with an album called “Kiss The Sky” being released. The album underperformed and Ali was eventually let go from the label but it did leave us with three hit singles, the first of which was “Daydreamin’”. Peaking at a perhaps surprising high of No 6, to me, it was a decent attempt at sounding like Janet Jackson and no more. Inevitably, there would be a release that featured Will Smith which would come with the next single “Boy You Knock Me Out” which would eclipse the chart high of its predecessor by going to No 3. She returned the favour by adding vocals to a track on Smith’s “Willennium” album but would never release another album of her own, instead returning to her acting career and adding her support to Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.

Would they have ever appeared on Blue Peter? Oh, I think so. Ali had a pretty clean living image and her song was praised for its lack of references to sex and violence.

In the course of the nearly nine years of writing this blog, I’ve witnessed many an artist just repeat the formula of their debut hit by releasing something very similar. However, Eagle-Eye Cherry took that strategy to a new level by coming up with an almost facsimile of that first success. “Falling In Love Again” sounds so similar to “Save Tonight” that I checked to see if the guitar chord structures he employed were the same in both and they damn near were. Look at this:

Save Tonight: Am – F – C – G

Falling In Love Again: Am – C – G

I’m not saying it’s not a pleasant sound but that does seem to be taking the piss rather. His sister never took such liberties with her audience I don’t think.

Would they have ever appeared on Blue Peter? Quite possibly. I think he would have met the required levels of safeness.

Like most people I’m guessing, all I knew of Faith Evans was her part in the gigantic 1997 No 1 record “I’ll Be Missing You” alongside Puff Daddy. However, there was more to her than that. She’d already had her own US platinum selling album called simply “Faith” and contributed a track to the soundtrack for Waiting To Exhale. After the death of her partner – the rapper Notorious B.I.G. – she re continued her solo career in 1998 with the album “Keep The Faith”*. The lead single from it was “Love Like This”, an out and out R&B track built around a Chic loop (weren’t they all?) that did well in all the urban charts and in the US Billboard Hot 100 but curiously failed to become a huge hit over here peaking at No 24 in our national chart. Indeed, she was bested by the improbable occurrence of another Faith in the Top 40 at the same time – Faith Hill whose “This Kiss” topped even Alanis Morissette’s “Thank U” for unlikely song words by managing to get the phrases “ centrifugal motion”, “perpetual bliss” and “pivotal moment” into its lyrics.

*The use of her name and its derivatives would be a theme Evans would keep coming back to. Subsequent album titles included “Faithfully”, “A Faithful Christmas” and “Something About Faith”.

Would they have ever appeared on Blue Peter? Married to the ultimate gangsta rapper who was murdered in a drive by shooting and an association with Puff Daddy/P Diddy/ Sean Combs and all his baggage? Never happening.

It’s the return of East 17 next or rather E-17 as the group rebranded themselves in the wake of various bust ups, negative press coverage and even a question raised about them in the House Of Commons. The fall out from Brian Harvey’s disastrous radio interview in 1997 where he endorsed the taking of the drug ecstasy claiming “it can make you a better person”, would have an everlasting effect on the group putting in motion line up changes that would become the norm in subsequent years. Harvey was initially sacked by the rest of the band but was reinstated the following year after chief songwriter Tony Mortimer himself left due to irreconcilable creative differences. The three piece vowed to carry on, bagged themselves a new record deal with Telstar and released their first new material as E-17 with the single “Each Time”. Although this entered the charts at No 2, I don’t recall hearing it at all at the time. Were they suffering an image backlash in the form of an airplay embargo? Anyway, I think I knew it was meant to be a new direction for the band with more of an emphasis on the ubiquitous R&B sound. As such, I was never that interested in actually listening to “Each Time” but now that I have, it’s not as bad as I’d feared. Quite tuneful in fact. It’s maybe a shame that this new path for the group was never given more time to play out. Sadly, that never happened as despite a No 2 position for the single, the parent album “Resurrection” never even made the Top 40 and they were left to sign off their chart career with a No 12 hit called “Betcha Can’t Wait” in 1999 and that was it. East 17 are still going (after a fashion) but with just one original member (Terry Coldwell) still in the line up. They may not be having hits anymore but they’ll always get some work at Christmas thanks to “Stay Another Day”.

Would they have ever appeared on Blue Peter? What with all those negative drug taking headlines and their ‘bad boy’ image, it was surely never on the cards unless it was to light a candle on the Christmas Advent Crown whilst singing that song. They’d have probably set fire to it anyway. Oh no, that was John Noakes wasn’t it?

Is it me or did there seem to be someone from the Fugees on the show or in the charts every week at this point? In October we had Lauryn Hill with “Doo Wop (That Thing)” riding high inside The Top 5 and just seven days prior to this, Pras dropped in to the TOTP studio to perform “Blue Angels”. This week it was the turn of Wyclef Jean but he wasn’t on his own. No, he’s got the aforementioned Pras with him alongside someone called Free Marie who is a rapper and nothing to do with the 70s rock band who had hits with “Alright Now”, “Wishing Well” and “My Brother Jake”. There was, however, a different rock band involved in Wyclef’s hit which, once you know its title is “Another One Bites The Dust”, means that you instantly know who I’m talking about. Apparently the Queen fanbase were none too pleased about this classic track by their favourite band being hijacked by Wyclef for inclusion on the soundtrack of the film Small Soldiers and I can sort of understand why. He basically took the original track and just (c)rapped all over it. Not especially creative nor indeed respectful. Also not respectful was Wyclef Jean’s video message which introduces the video we see here when he says “ C’mon Freddie Mercury, where you at?”, a line he also repeats in the actual track. Well Wyclef mate, he’d been dead for seven years so I’m not sure why you were expecting to see him! This whole project just felt all wrong from initial conception to its bad execution but it didn’t stop the sometime Fugee from doing loads more subsequent collaborations with the likes of Bono, Tom Jones, Mary J. Blige, Missy Elliott and even The Rock.

Would they have ever appeared on Blue Peter? No, I don’t think he would have been a natural fit.

Cher reigns supreme at the top of the charts with “Believe” for a third straight week of seven. This really was a transformative hit not only for Cher for whom it marked a massive uptick in her commercial fortunes after the disappointment of her last album “It’s A Man’s World” but also for the wider music world. The fact that Cher was 52 years old at the time meant that middle aged female artists suddenly had licence to show that this wasn’t a one-off and would follow in her footsteps with the likes of Diana Ross, Tina Turner, Donna Summer, Madonna and Cyndi Lauper all releasing albums that were of a dance music flavour.

Would they have ever appeared on Blue Peter? I think Blue Peter might not have been a big enough show for Cher. A bit beneath her. Still, she may have won a Grammy for Best Dance Recording with “Believe” but she hasn’t got a Blue Peter badge I’ll wager.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Touch And Go	Would You…?	No, I wouldn’t and indeed didn’t
2	The Tamperer featuring Maya	If You Buy This Record (Your Life Will Be Better)	Hell no
3	Tatyana Ali	Daydreamin’	No thanks
4	Eagle-Eye Cherry	Falling In Love Again	Nope
5	Faith Evans	Love Like This	Nah
6	East 17 or (E-17 if you prefer)	Each Time	No
7	Wyclef Jean / Pras / Free Marie / Queen	Another One Bites The Dust	Never
8	Cher	Believe	I did not

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002n30j/top-of-the-pops-13111998

TOTP 06 NOV 1998

Posted on December 9 by 80stastic

We’ve got through the October TOTP repeats and the end of the year is finally appearing upon the horizon and not a moment too soon – 1998 has been a real slog. Our host is Kate Thornton who seems to have styled her hair on Billie’s barnet but more of her later. We start though with Alanis Morissette whose video for her hit “Thank U” we saw on the previous show. There was no way the BBC would have let her recreate her look from that promo what with her being naked and all so she’s gone for pigtails and…well…clothes for this appearance. I have to say that her song’s lyrics includes some of the most eloquent words ever to appear in a hit record. Look at these:

Disillusionment
Frailty
Consequence
Masochistic
Divinity
Unabashedly

However, my favourite lyric is “transparent dangling carrots” which could also be a description of those pigtails of hers. However, she then spoils it all by wailing the following in the outro…

Yeah, yeah
Oh, oh, oh
Yeah, oh, oh
Yeah, oh, oh, whoa
Yeah, no, oh, oh

No, oh, oh, oh
No, oh, no, oh
No, oh, no, no
No, oh
No, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh
Ooh

Source: Musixmatch

Songwriters: Glen Ballard / Alanis Nadine Morissette

Thank U lyrics © Universal Music Corp., 1974 Music, Arlovol Music

Oh. And indeed no. Or yeah.

Ah, it’s the aforementioned Billie and she does indeed have hair that looks like Kate Thornton’s or is it the other way around? Billie is here to perform her former No 1 single “Girlfriend” and when I say former I mean literally about a month ago. So why is she back on the show now that she’s at No 10 in the charts? I can only assume it’s because her single has remained at No 10 for two consecutive weeks. “Do you have a minute?” Billie sings. No, not really. Not after all this time. I can’t give you one minute more. Sorry. Next!

If I thought Billie was in overkill territory, how do I describe the decision to feature “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing” by Aerosmith again?! Excessive? Or just plain ridiculous? By my reckoning, this was its ninth week on the chart and it had just dropped from No 7 to No 8 having been as high as No 4 a month before. In terms of its appearances on TOTP, this was its fourth of five meaning yes, executive producer Chris Cowey wasn’t done with the song yet. Once more it’s that satellite performance that is shown presumably because of all the TOTP branding that can be seen all over the stage – Cowey was trying to sell the show into other territories around this time. As for our theme of female hairstyles, has any male rock star’s locks looked more like a woman’s than Steven Tyler?

What on earth is going on here?! Kate Thornton has just propositioned a young woman to go to bed with her! WTF?! Well, yes, precisely. It’s all to do with the next hit song in the show which is “Would You…?” by Touch And Go. The story behind this one is that Touch And Go were a jazz pop ensemble led by one David Lowe who would go on to forge a career composing music for television, radio and commercials including the theme tune to the BBC News and has worked on such shows as The One Show, Panorama, Cash In The Attic and Grand Designs. In 1998 though, he was behind this almost novelty single which took a Herb Alpert trumpet solo and added the flat toned voice of a woman speaking the lines “I’ve noticed you around / I find you very attractive / Would you go to bed with me?”, hence the intro from Kate Thornton. It’s all rather bizarre but the sort of strange curio that could often flummox the UK record buying public into shelling out its hard earned cash to purchase it. And buy it they did, 200,000 copies worth to send it to No 3. Designed to be the ultimate icebreaker for supposedly reserved and tongue-twisted types in nightclubs (surely not!), its lyrics were inspired by a 1978 psychological study. If that’s piqued your interest, then here’s @TOTPFacts with the story behind the statement:

The lyrics of “Would You…?” echo questions from a psychological study first conducted in 1978 by psychologist Elaine Hatfield, designed to test how receptive men and women are to sexual invitations. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) November 28, 2025

Women and men approached other students on campus, opening by saying, “I have been noticing you around campus. I found you to be very attractive.”…” #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) November 28, 2025

… They then proceeded to ask one of three questions: “Would you go out with me tonight?”
“Would you come over to my apartment tonight?” “Would you go to bed with me tonight? #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) November 28, 2025

When women asked men, the “Yes” results were 50% (go out with me)/69% (come over)/75% (go to bed with me).
When men asked women, the “Yes” results were 56% (go out with me)/6% (come over)/0% (go to bed with me). #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) November 28, 2025

Those results remind me of an interview with Paddy McGuinness who said of the game show Take Me Out which he presented that they had to have women picking a man as if it had been the other way round, all the men would have just kept their lights on permanently.

It might have escaped your attention with everything else going on in the world (it did mine) but just last month one Prakazrel Samuel Michel was sentenced to 14 years in prison. Well, put like that it might not ring any bells but what if I said Pras of hip hop group the Fugees was sent down on criminal conspiracy charges for alleged illegal donations to President Barack Obama 2012 presidential re-election campaign? Yep, that’s the attention grabbing headline. Back in 1998 though, Pras was onto his second solo hit after the hugely successful “Ghetto Superstar” (That Is What You Are)”. After interpolating “Islands In The Stream” for that track, he once again used some very familiar source material as the basis for “Blue Angels” by sampling “Grease” by Frankie Valli. For me, this didn’t work nearly as well as its predecessor. It just didn’t have that immediate hook that pulled in pop and rap fans alike. There’s some very verbose rapping going in which somehow manages to reference the Bosley character from the Charlie’s Angels TV series which must be a first. However, by the end, as so often happens with these rap performances on the show, it descends into the artist shouting “wave your hands in the air like you just don’t care”. I bet Pras dreams of being so carefree in his current situation.

For me, one of the more surprising success stories of 1998 was Another Level. Yes, you could argue that although we’d had loads of boy bands in the UK during the 90s, we hadn’t had many with an R’n’B slant so maybe there was a gap in the market? On the other hand, there had been many a US R’n’B boy band in our charts and, indeed, we had one British example of the genre in Damage so was there room for another one? There proved to be at least another level needed on the UK R’n’B boy band car park and it was taken by…erm…those Another Level boys. Having already had two big hits this year (including the No 1 “Freak Me” no less), a third was always on the cards and so, just in time for the Christmas market, a ballad was released. Cynical? Maybe. Guaranteed sales? Certainly. Having said that, “Guess I Was A Fool” only spent four weeks on the Top 40 and just one inside the Top 10. Maybe that was because we’d seen the likes of this track all before done much better by groups like Boyz II Men whom Another Level seemed to be doing their best impression of here. A handful of hits would follow in 1999 for the AL boys but the game was up by the new millennium as they failed to progress to the next level (I’ll stop now).

The era of M People is nearly through but unlike the near title of that book by Edgar Rice Burroughs and subsequent 1977 film, I don’t think it has been a case of ‘The M People That Time Forgot’ (ahem). Nineteen charting singles in seven years plus three Top 3 albums is a pretty decent legacy to leave behind. Sure, not every one of those nineteen hits was a top drawer banger (anyone for their cover of “Itchycoo Park”? Thought not) but some of them were the most memorable hits of the whole decade. I’m thinking “One Night In Heaven”, “Moving On Up”, “Search For The Hero” etc but by the end of their run, some of the hits didn’t quite match up to their predecessors. Take “Testify” for example. Released as a new track to promote their first Best Of album, it’s not terrible but it’s not terrific either. My sixteen year old son would describe it as “meh” or “mid” I’m sure. I’m not sure that the title being a legal term and all is particularly suitable for a ballad or maybe it is. After all, a couple getting married to prove their love to each other also creates a legal contract in law between them. Maybe I’m just remembering it being used by Smash Hits magazine to describe the likes of Billy Idol pulling a fist clench move in concert and describing it as “testifying on stage”. “Testify” was the 18th of those 19 hits peaking at No 12 meaning that there might just be one final appearance for the group to come.

P. S. Whilst we’re talking about women’s hairstyles (as we were), mention must go to Heather Small and her various (mostly towering) looks that she has spotted down the years. Quite remarkable.

Cher is No 1 for a second week of seven with “Believe”. So, I guess we should address the issue of her vocals. Much was made in the press at the time that it was due to a vocoder which was a reasonable claim given its previous usage in music production. As far back as 1969, Sly and the Family Stone used it on a song on the album “Strand!” before electronic pioneers Kraftwerk took up the mantle alongside experimental jazz fusionist Herbie Hancock. Come the 90s, French electronic music duo Daft Punk consistently used the vocoder in their work so it didn’t seem too much of a stretch that it could feature on a global smash albeit from an unlikely source in Cher. However, that wasn’t actually true. The vocal effect had been achieved using the extreme settings of Antares Autotune, pitch correction software designed to correct sharp or flat notes in vocal performances. Keen to keep their technological discovery to themselves, the produces made the vocoder claim. However, the manual for subsequent releases of the software refer to that use of it as ‘The Cher Effect’.

After last weeks host Jamie Theakston referred to Cher as being no spring chicken but remaining a game old bird (or something like that), Kate Thornton doubles down on the ageist remarks by pointing out that the singer (no stranger to a variety of hairstyles herself down the years) was still two years older than her Mum. Was there meant to be a compliment in there Kate? If so, I’m not sure that there was.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Alanis Morissette	Thank U	No
2	Billie	Girlfriend	It’s a no
3	Aerosmith	I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing	I did not
4	Touch And Go	Would You…?”	No thanks
5	Pras	Blue Angels	Nope
6	Another Level	Guess I Was A Fool	Never
7	M People	Testify	Nah
8	Cher	Believe	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/m002ms9d/top-of-the-pops-06111998

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My memories of 90s chart music

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